TICE TO THE JEW : STORY OF WHAT HE HAS DONE FOR THE WORLD N AND REVISED EDITION DISON C. PETERS f tWiVERSITyoF / CAUPORNU / w* GIVEN BY JUSTICE TO THE JEW THE STORY OF WHAT HE HAS DONE FOR THE WORLD NEW AND REVISED EDITION BY MADISON C. PETERS There is no virtue su truly great and Ood-like as justice JOSEPH ADDISON NEW YORK THE TROW PRESS MCMX Copyright, 1908, hy Tlie McClure Company Published, March, 1908 PREFACE It is nine years since the first edition of " Justice to the Jew " was gi\'en to the public. The book met with a success far beyond any anticipation of the author, who, nevertheless, was well aware of its many imperfections, which seemed to accusingly stare at him from almost every page. Though written with a very definite purpose in view, it was composed very hurriedly in the white heat of a busy pastorate, and besides, the materials on which to build such a work were far from being as plentiful then as now. The facts needed were scattered and had to be picked out from forgotten tomes and musty manuscripts buried in the obscurity of libraries and private col- lections. To gather a sufficiency was no small task, and when gathered, to chronologically collate it was almost as difficult, but as it was a labour of love with the author, who brought to his researches the en- thusiasm and belief that he was working for a good cause, the drudgery was materially lightened. [v] PREFACE Though the author has written much and spoken more in behalf of the Jew, he is not a Jew, but on the contrary is descended from an ancestry inimical to Israel, a people who carried down with them through the years the senseless prejudice and foolish hatred of their forefathers. His ancestors came to America from Germany one hundred and fifty years ago, and it would be false for him to assert that Germany has ever shown any love to the children of Abraham ; he has to admit that she has ever been in the vanguard of their persecutors. Only within the last few decades of the nineteenth century did Jews get an oppor- tunity to prove their worth in Germany. Therefore, as a boy among the Pennsylvania Germans, the au- thor of this book drank in the absurd prejudice and blind bigotry displayed towards the Jew, but as he grew to manhood and studied the histories of men and the accomplishments of the children of men, his views in regard to the Jews underwent a radi- cal change. His personal contact and observation strengthened and confirmed what he had read. Hence he resolved that he would do his part to dispel the clouds of ignorance, misconception, and bigotry which obscured the Jew and placed him in such a sinister light. He would endeavour to the best of his ability to put the Jew on his proper pedestal, so [vi] PREFACE that the world could view him as he was and is, not as represented by maligners, traducers, and calum- niators ; especially was it his desire to speak a word for justice to the Jew in free America, the land that has never closed her doors in the face of the perse- cuted, the oppressed, the down-trodden, no matter at what altar they bent the knee to adore their God. The Jews were rapidly becoming a part of the na- tional and social life of the country, and the time was ripe for all to know them. The author had de- livered some popular (rather unpopular) addresses on the world's indebtedness to the Jews which were widely published and translated into many European languages, and the spoken words, impassioned and sometimes impetuous, formed the nucleus of the book which became more enlarged than at first intended. The reception extended to the work both by Jews and Christians was cordial, but the author was fully conscious of its defects. He had the plates destroyed after the first two years and began writing a series of books along similar lines, and although these were well received, the old title of " Justice to the Jew " more forcibly appealed to the people ; therefore, to satisfy the public demand the author undertook to rewrite the book. He now sends it forth upon the world in its new dress, the only old thing about it [vii] PREFACE being the title, and it is to be hoped the reader will find it more interesting and instructive than when it first appeared. No pains or time have been spared to make the information absolutely trustworthy, so that it may be used as a reference book as well as a handy repository of historical data and interesting facts. Space will not permit even mention of the many works consulted in its compilation ; the cream of the libraries, however, has been skimmed and this, with matter not accessible to the ordinary student of Jewish history, has been blended in such a way that the mixture may be taken as entirely wholesome and trustworthy. Words and allusions obscure to the general reader have been explained in the text, and there are many facts given for the first time which, no doubt, will be strange to the majority of Jews as well as to the Gentiles. We speak of non-Jews as Gentiles (in Hebrew phraseology Gentiles were all the nations or peoples besides the Jews) because their treatment of the Jews makes Christian a misnomer. Indeed the word " Chris- tian " in many places in this work must be understood generically, and not taken in the sense of one who possesses the spirit and follows the teachings of Him who gave the word its origin. [viii] PREFACE Various are the names by which Jews are known. The Bible calls them " the people of God." Mordecai said : " For he had told him that he was a Jew." From the time of Babylon and the Great Dispersion the descendants of the patriarchs have been called Jews {Jehudim) or descendants of Judah. Jonah said : " I am a Hebrew." Hebrew is derived from Ibri, meaning the other side of the Euphrates, or from Eber, the great-grandson of Shem. Elijah said: " Israel shall thy name be." Israel (prince or pre- vailer with God) in commemoration of Jacob's con- flict of faith with the heavenly messenger at Peniel. If what is written in this book will essentially modify the views which the Gentile world holds with regard to the position of the Jew, and will lead Chris- tians to grant to him the possession of the mental, moral, and spiritual qualities which history affirms, and if every Jew can be made to feel as Lord Bea- consfield felt, then Benjamin Disraeli, when taunted in the House of Commons for his Jewish extraction and when he hurled back, " I can well afford to be called a Jew," the author shall feel he is well repaid for the labour involved in this refined stud}' of history. Madison C. Peters. New York Citt. M SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS PAGE Introductory Essay 3 The Hebrew Commonwealth the Model for THE American Republic. By Oscar S. Straus. The Constitutions of New England Colonies Framed upon the Model of the Mosaic Code — Sermons Discussing the Political Situation of the Times Founded on the Civil Polity of Israel — The Religious Spirit of Puritanism A Reversion to Biblical Precedents. I Jews, Not Jewels, in the Discovery of America Jewish Money Backed by Jewish Genius Encouraged Columbus— Isabella Unable to Furnish Financial Aid— No Jewels to Pawn — Louis Santangel, Gabriel Sanchez and Juan Cabrero Back their Belief in Columbus with Good Spanish Ducats — Without the Scientific Achievements of the Jews Columbus's Wonderfully Well-Planned Voyages Would Have Been Impossible— The First White Man to Set Foot on American Soil A Jew 29 11 The Jews in Early America Brazil the First Part of the Western World to Give a Home to the European Jew — The First Jewish Colony on the North American Continent — Peter Stuyvesant, the Jew-Hater — The Jews Under the English — Why the Jews Left New York for Newport — Pre-Revolutionary Settlements in Philadelphia [xi] SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS PAGE and Pennsylvania — Maryland, South Carolina, Geor- gia and Virginia — Early Settlements in the Western States — Canada Never a Favorite Land with the Jews. 41 III The Jew As A Soldier and Patriot What Makes a Patriot — Renan's, Goldwin Smith's and Mark Twain's Sneers Refuted — Jewish Patriots Ripened Even in the Sun of Oppression — In Spain They Fought as Vahant Knights — Jewish Defense for Polish Territory During Onslaught of Cossacks upon Poland During Thirty Years' War — Conspicuous Jews in the Austrian Army — Their Bravery in the Franco-Prussian W^ar — During Napoleonic Cam- paigns — Marshal Massena— Soldiers Before Recog- nized As Citizens — In the French Army To-day — The Dreyfus Case — Jews as British Soldiers — Under Wellington at Waterloo— Their Prominent Part in the South African War — In the German Army — In Italy, Even Russia and Other European Countries — Jews as American Soldiers— Prominent Jews in the Revolutionary War — Haym Salomon's Response to Robert Morris's Appeal — Jews in the War of 1812 — Judah Touro and the Bunker Hill Monument — ^The Jews As Abolitionists — The Honorable Record of Jews in the Regular Army and Navy — Jews in the Ci\il War — In the War With Spain No Nationahty Displayed Greater Heroism 69 IV What the Jew Has Done for the World Other Nations Change, Jews Remain the Same — Ever Workers — The World's Indebtedness to the Jew — [xii] SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS PAGE In the Earliest Ages Interested in Astronomy — The Great Strides Made in the Knowledge of the ^Heavenly Bodies and Their Movements — Distin- guished Astronomers and Their Contributions to Astronomical Knowledge — Mathematical Knowledge in Talmudic Times — Works on Mathematics — Early Jewish Commentators on Euchd — As Inventors Jews Have Manifested Mechanical Genius of High Order — ^Their Inventive Faculty — Jews As Explorers Well to the Front — In Medicine the Jews' Record Antedates ^Esculapius — The Ancient Jews Proficient Pathologists — Skillful Surgeons — Splendid Dentists — The Great Doctors of the Middle Ages Were All Jews — ^Time When the Jews Held the Lives of Royal Europe in their Hands — Even Popes, Though Issuing Condemnatory Bulls Would Allow None But Jewish Physicians to Attend Them — Jews in Our Day Distinguished in Every Realm of Medicine — The Wonderful Penchant of Jews for the Legal Pro- fession—Great Jurists of the Nineteenth Century — Distinguished Jews in European Politics— In Ameri- can Politics — -Jewish Poets — The Drama — Ancient and Modern— Prominent Playwrights and Actors — Music Early Cultivated by the Israelites — Jewish Musicians of Modern Times — Composers, Performers and Conductors— -The Jews Founders of Our Scien- tific Philology — As Philosophers Jews First in the Field — Israehtes Remarkable Historians — As An- tiquarians and Economists — Distinguished Semitic NoveUsts — Famous Painters and Sculptors — The Great Masters of Prose — Literary Critics . . . 107 V Money and the Jews Jews Not As Rich as Popularly Supposed — No More of An Usurer Than His C'hristian Brother — False the [ xiii ] SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS PAGE Jew that Shakespeare Drew — The Jews of the Middle Ages the Sole Possessors of the Wealth — In Finance Jews Are Creators Rather than Pullers-Down — , Capital and Jew Not Synonymous Terms — The Jews of New York. ....... 177 VI Jewish Traits and Characteristics A Jew A Jew the World Over — No Affectation of "Blue- Blood " Among the Jews — Yet They Were the Torch- Bearers of the World When the Ancestors of European Kings Were Bending Their Backs to the Commands of Their Superiors — Why the Jew Wins — His Home Life — Why A Longer-Ijived Race than Any Other — Law-Abiding — Why An Increasing Number of Criminals in Modern Times 199 VII Justice to the Jew Time to Quit Hating One Another for the Love of God — Jews and Christians Alike Make Ignorance of Each Other A Claim for Judgment — Jesus a Jew — Yet in His Name Christians Have Made War Upon Those Who Have Given Christianity to the World — Free America the Promised Land — Still America While Granting Liberty to the Jew Denies Him Fraternity and Equality — Not Looked Upon as a Brother — Ostracized Socially — Blackballed in Clubs — Caricatured on the Stage — Shut Out of the Fashion- able Private Schools — Denied in Many Hotels the Rights of a Common Citizen — Give the Jew the American Square Deal— All He Asks is JUSTICE . 225 [xiv] THE INFLUENCE OF THE HEBREW COM- MONWEALTH UPON THE ORIGIN OF REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED STATES The whole year 1789 contains the germ of Hebraism. The idea of right and social justice is an Israelitish idea. The advent of justice on this earth has been the dream of our peo- ple. To find the first source of man's rights, we must go bacls farther than the Reform or the Renaissance, farther back even than antiquity or the Gospel, as far back as the Bible, the Thora, and the prophets. Our rabbis, the Isaiahs and Jeremiahs, were the first revolutionists. . . . From our Bible came the Reformation. From it came the inspirations of the poor wretches of the Low Countries. Puritans in Eng- land and America appropriated the language of our judges and prophets. To the Bible belongs the success of those revo- lutions, of those Anglo-Saxons who boast of being your mas- ters. That superiority they owe to a better acquaintance with Israel. The Huguenots and the Bible would have triumphed in France if only the Revolution had burst forth a century earlier, and in that event it would have had a different issue. . . . In teaching that all men descended from one Adam and one Eve the Bible proclaimed that all were free, equal, and broth- ers. So in the principles of the Revolution our hopes are the same. For this unity, this fraternity, our prophets show us, have been ours in the past, as they must be in the future. They were Israel's ideals. The Revolution with its hopes is in its issue nothing more than the actual testamentary execution of the will of Isaiah. Social renovation, equality of rights, the uplifting of the lowly, the suppression of privileges, of class barriers, the brotherhood of races, everything aimed at or dreamed of by tlie Revolution, was proclaimed some twenty- five centuries ago by our own true believers. Words which M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, the eminent Frenchman, puts in the mouth of an Israelite who is sup- posably present at a banquet celebrating the centenary of 1789. THE INFLUENCE OF THE HEBREW COMMON- WEALTH UPON THE ORIGIN OF REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED STATES Introductory Essay by Oscar S. Straus, Litt. D., LL. D., Sec- retary of Commerce and Labour. It is remarkable, that of the many historians who have written so ably and minutely of the history of the United States, none should have observed in his writings the relationship between our republic and the commonwealth of the Hebrews, especially in the light of the earliest constitutions of several of the New England Colonies, expressly framed upon the model of the Mosaic code as a guide, and of the frequent references thereto made by the ministers in their political sermons, who constantly drew their civil creed from the history of those times, and held up this ancient form of government as a model inspired under the guidance of the Most High. The distinguished Jonathan Mayhew, the divine whom Robert Treat Paine styled " the father of [3] JUSTICE TO THE JEW civil and religious liberty in Massachusetts and in America," who suggested to James Otis the idea of a committee of correspondence, a measure of great efficiency in producing concert of action between the Colonies, and who as early as 1750 delivered a discourse against unlimited submission and non-resist- ance, a sermon which was characterised as " The morning gun of the Revolution," in a later discourse delivered in Boston on May 23, 1766, on the " Repeal of the Stamp Act," says : " God gave Israel a king (or absolute monarchy) in his anger, because they had not sense and virtue enough to like a free com- monwealth, and to have himself for their king, — where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty, — and if any miserable people on the continent or isles of Europe be driven in their extremity to seek a safe retreat from slavery in some far-distant clime, oh, let them find one in America." Samuel Langdon, D. D., the President of Harvard College, who, through the influence of John Hancock, was installed in that office as the successor of Samuel Locke, and who afterwards, in 1788, was a member of the New Hampshire convention, when the constitution came before that body for adoption, in his election sermon, delivered before the " Honourable Congress of Massachusetts Bay," on the 31st of May, 1775, [4] JUSTICE TO THE JEW taking as his text the passage in Isaiah i. 26, " And I will restore thy judges as at the first," etc., de- livered a most eloquent discourse, wherein he traces the history of government from the first recorded be- ginning, and defines its functions and prerogatives with a logic that proves him to have been well versed in the doctrines of civil liberty as handed down through the writings of Sidney, Milton, Hoadley, and his eminent predecessor, Locke. These are his words : " The Jewish government, according to the original constitution which was divinely established, if considered merely in a civil view, was a perfect re- public. And let them who cry up the divine right of kings consider, that the form of government which had a proper claim to a divine establishment was so far from including the idea of a king that it was a high crime for Israel to ask to be in this respect like other nations, and when they were thus gratified, it was rather as a just punishment for their folly. Every nation, when able and agreed, has a right to set up over itself any form of government which to it may appear most conducive to its common welfare. The civil polity of Israel is doubtless an excellent general model, allowing for some peculiarities ; at least, some principal laws and orders of it may be copied in more modern establishments." [5] JUSTICE TO THE JEW By a special vote Dr. Langdon's sermon was or- dered to be printed and sent to each minister in the colony and to each member of the Congress. What effect such words as these had on the minds of the people in general in preparing them for independence, as well as upon the founders of our republic, each and all of whom doubtless read this sermon, is scarcely a matter of conjecture when we take into consider- ation that he was not only a ripe scholar occupying the most important literary position in America, as President of Harvard College, but one of the fore- most ministers and pulpit orators, as well as an ac- knowledged authority in the science of government. On the 17th of May, 1776, which was kept as a national fast, George Duffield, the minister of the Third Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, with John Adams as a listener, drew a parallel between George III. and Pharaoh, and inferred that the same providence of God which had rescued the Israelites from Egyptian bondage intended to free the colonies. The election sermon of the following year was preached on the 29th of May, 1776, some forty days before the Declaration of Independence, before " the Honourable Council and the Honourable House of Representatives of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay," by the Rev. Samuel West. He was not behind [6] JUSTICE TO THE JEW his professional brethren in zeal for the welfare and liberty of his country. He was a member of the con- vention for forming the constitution of Massachu- setts, and of that of 1788, which ratified the Constitu- tion of the United States. He took his text from Isaiah i. 26, the same as was taken by Dr. Langdon above quoted. He discusses the entire political situa- tion of the times. " We are to remember that all men being by nature equal, they have a right to make such regulation as they deem necessary for the good of all ; that magistrates have no authority but what they derive from the people." He then passes in review those two famous passages from the New Testament, which I have already referred to, under whose au- thority monarchs, tyrants, and usurpers have claimed as sanctioned by Holy Scriptures the right of obedi- ence under all circumstances, and from which were deduced the doctrines of " Divine Right," and " Un- limited Submission." From this he passes in review the history of civil government, and sums up by say- ing: " There was great deal of propriety in the ad- vice Jethro gave to Moses to provide able men — men of truth — and to appoint them for rulers over the people [then quoting the words of David] : ' He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.' " in JUSTICE TO THE JEW The election sermon in 1780 was delivered before the same body, the Council and House of Representa- tives of the State of Massachusetts, by the Rev. Mr. Simeon Howard, who succeeded Dr. Mayhew as pastor of the West Church of Boston. Among his hearers were Robert Treat Paine and Samuel Adams. The latter submitted to Rev. Mr. Howard the resolutions of both Houses of the General Assembly, containing an expression of thanks, and requesting a copy for the press. Taking as his text Exodus xviii. 21, " Thou shalt provide out of all thy people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating coveteousness ; and place such over them to be rulers," he divides his sermon under four heads: Ist, Necessity of civil gov- ernment ; 2d. The right of the people to choose their own rulers ; 3d. The business of rulers ; and 4th. The qualifications as pointed out in the text as necessary for civil rulers. His sermon is almost entirely de- voted to the exposition of the Hebrew Commonwealth under Moses ; that it was a government by the people under the guidance of God Almighty ; and the rulers were not appointed, but elected. His words are: " This is asserted by Josephus and plainly intimated by Moses in his recapitulatory discourses, and indeed the Jews always exercised the right of choosing their own rulers; even Saul and David and all their sue- [8] JUSTICE TO THE JEW cessors on the throne were made kings by the voice of the people," On May 8, 1783, at Hartford, before " His Ex- cellency Governor Trumbull and the Honourable General Assembly of the State of Connecticut," the election sermon was preached by the eminent Presi- dent of Yale College, Rev. Dr. Ezra Stiles, who as early as 1760, predicted that " the imperial dominion will subvert as it ought in election." He was the life- long friend of Franklin, and to whom Franklin, who was regarded by some as an atheist, because his pure and simple deism conformed with no established sect, wrote in his eighty-fourth year as follows : " You de- sire to know something of my religion ; it is the first time I have been questioned upon it. Here is my creed: I believe in one God, creator of the universe; that he ought to be worshipped ; that the most ac- ceptable service we render to him, is doing good to his other children. As to Jesus of Nazareth, I think his system of morals, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw, or is likely to see ; but I ap- prehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have some doubts as to his divinity." Dr. Stiles, taking for his text Deut. xxvi. 19, " And to make thee high above all nations which he had made, in praise, and in name, and in honour," etc., delivered [9] JUSTICE TO THE JEW a discourse, subject, " The United States Elevated to Glorj and Honour." This sermon takes up one hundred and twenty closely printed pages, and as- sumes the proportions of a treatise on government from the Hebrew Theocracy down to the then pres- ent, showing by illustration and history that the cul- mination of popular government had been reached in America, transplanted by divine hands in ful- filment of biblical prophecy from the days of Moses to the land of Washington ; and discussing from an historical point of view " the reasons render- ing it probable that the United States will, by the ordering of Heaven, eventually become this people." His words are: "Here (at the foot of Mount Nebo) the man of God, Moses, assembled three mil- lions of people — the number of the United States — recapitulated and gave them a second publication of the sacred Jural Institute, delivered thirty-eight years before under the most awful solemnity at Mount Sinai. He foresaw indeed their rejection of God, whence Moses and the prophets, by divine direction, interspersed their writings with promises that when the ends of God's moral government should be an- swered, he would recover and gather them (quoting Deut. XXX. 3) ' from all the nations whither God had scattered them.' . . . Then the words of Moses [10] JUSTICE TO THE JEW hitherto accomplished but in part, will be literally fulfilled. I shall," he continues, " enlarge no further upon the primary sense and literal accomplishment of this and numerous other prophecies respecting both Jews and Gentiles in the latter-day glory of the church ; for I have assumed the text only as intro- ductory to a discourse upon the political welfare of God's American Israel, and as allusively prophetic of the future prosperity and splendour of the United States." Referring to the success of our armies un- der Washington, whereby the independence and sov- ereignty of the United States was established and recognised by Great Britain herself in less than eight years, he says : " Whereupon Congress put at the head of the spirited army the only man on whom the eyes of all Israel were placed. Posterity, incredulous as they may be, will yet acknowledge that this Ameri- can Joshua was raised up by God for the great work of leading the armies of this American Joseph (now separated from his brethren), and conducting these people to liberty and independence." Such is the rea- soning of Dr. Stiles, a man who was held in the highest esteem and most profound respect by every American for his learning, patriotism, and wisdom. Chancellor Kent said of him, in an address delivered at the Yale Commencement in 1831 : " A more constant and de- [11] JUSTICE TO THE JEW voted friend to the revolution and independence of his country never existed. Take him for all in all, this very man was undoubtedly one of the purest and best- gifted men of his age." On December 11, 1783, appointed as a day of thanksgiving by Congress, upon the restoration of peace. Rev. Dr. Duffield, of the Third Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, and one of the chaplains of Congress, preached the sermon of the day before a most distinguished audience of citizens and legis- lators. Dr. Duffield was also one of the most eminent divines in America, recognised not only for his great learning and eloquence, but prominent by reason of his zeal in the cause of independence, and for his de- votion to the public welfare, and for his commanding influence among his fellow men. This sermon, to- gether with others to which reference has been made, illustrate how thoroughly the pulpit was imbued with the Mosaic ideas and polity. The affairs of the Colonies in their every condition were constantly com- pared with those of the children of Israel. Dr. Stiles, in his celebrated sermon above quoted, went so far in that direction as to advance reasons why the abo- riginal Americans were none others but the lost tribes of Israel, and that therefore the same Providence guided their destiny. Dr. Duffield, referring to the [13] JUSTICE TO THE JEW causes which led to the American revolution, that it was brought about by reason of the British monarch's determination to reduce the colonies into absolute vassalage, carries forward the analogy in these words : *' Some have ascribed this extravagant conduct to the same spirit of jealousy which once influenced the councils of Egypt against the house of Joseph, lest waxing too powerful they might break off their con- nection, and pursue a separate interest of their own." He calls attention to the providential success that crowned the American cause, that in eight short but eventful years the thirteen dependent Colonies had become thirteen independent States. He explains how these wonderful results were brought about in a sum- ming up that consists of a climax of Mosaic analogies. " 'Tis He, the Sovereign Disposer of all events, hath wrought for us, and brought the whole to pass. It tvas He who led his Israel of old, by the pillar of fire and the cloud, through their wilderness journey, wherein they also had their wanderings. 'Twas He who raised a Joshua to lead the tribes of Israel in the field of battle ; raised and formed a Washington to lead on the troops of his chosen States. 'Twas He who in Barak's day spread the spirit of war in every breast to shake off the Canaanitish yoke, and inspired thy inhabitants, O America ! It was He who [13] JUSTICE TO THE JEW raised up Cyrus to break the Assyrian force, and say : * Let Israel be free ' ; endued the monarch of France with an angel's mind, to assert and secure the freedom of his United American States. And He alone who saith to the proud waves of the sea : ' Hitherto shall ye come, but no farther.' " These constant references, parallels, and analogies to the children of Israel in their struggle for political liberty would not have been made again and again if they did not meet with a responsive echo in the minds and sentiments of the large audiences to whom they were addressed throughout the thirteen Colonies. A volume would not contain all the politico-theological discourses delivered during the decade prior to the restoration of peace, wherein the Hebrew Common- wealth was held up as a model, and its history as a guide for the American people in their mighty struggle for the blessings of civil and religious liberty. I have purposely only quoted such of these discourses as were delivered by ministers who were eminent not only in the pulpit, but were equally dis- tinguished as scholars, as patriots, and as legis- lators. Thus far the Hebrew Commonwealth has been re- ferred to as the model and guide adopted in the ser- mons and discourses of our patriotic divines ; we shall [14] JUSTICE TO THE JEW noT" trace it In the halls of legislation, and in the writings and political pamphlets published during tUe period prior to the adoption of the Constitution. We must not lose sight of the fact that neither the Declaration of Independence nor the success of our armies in the struggle decided for us our form of gov- ernment, or secured for posterity the blessings of civil and religious liberty, — the form only served to make the latter possible. These were the victories of the statesmen, the heroes, and of the patriots of the pen. The machinery of government under the articles of confederation was so defective, weak, and ineffectual, that men, wise men, true and loyal Americans, aye, many in the army, by reason of the inability of the government to pay the half-starved soldiers, de- manded a government that would revive from pros- tration the public credit and faith of the nation, that would provide for the payment of interest on the pub- lic debt; they felt the need of a government with a strong arm, an elective monarchy. " Now, just as day was dawning and independence about to be se- cured, everything seems to tumble in chaos about them, threatening a state of things worse than their former condition as colonists." A paper embodying the views of the army of Wash- ington while stationed about Newburg was drawn up [15] JUSTICE TO THE JEW and presented to their commander-in-chief by Colonel Nicola, an old army officer, held in high esteem by Washington, This, after describing the perilous state of feeling in the army and the dangerous aspect of affairs, and showing the necessity, now that peace was assured, of settling at once on a form of govern- ment which should be a strong one, took up the sev- eral forms of government in the world, and summed up by declaring that a republican government was the most unstable and insecure, and a constitutional monarchy like that of England, the strongest and safest, and In short, offered to make Washington dictator. It concluded by saying : " Owing to the prejudices of the people it might not at first be pru- dent to assume the title of Royalty, but if all other things were adjusted, we believe strong arguments might be produced for admitting the title of King." Like Gideon, the righteous judge of the Hebrew Com- monwealth, whom the people of Israel offered to make king in their unbounded gratitude, and in admiration of his signal service in delivering them from the hands of their most powerful enemies, Washington declined the crown. This monarchical-party spirit was so strong that it survived even after the adoption of the Constitu- tion until the election of Jefferson as President, who [16] JUSTICE TO THE .JEW refers to it in his inaugural address. No one arraigned the monarchical tendencies with a more vigorous and fearless pen ; no one contributed more in keeping alive the fires of liberty during those times that tried men's souls, than Thomas Paine, that much maligned and abused man, who has been accused of every crime that malice could invent. Paine was the friend of Franklin, through whose patronage he came to America ; he was the editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine^ the Secre- tary of the Committee of Foreign Affairs of the Con- tinental Congress ; he was beloved and esteemed by Washington, by whom he was invited, when in dis- tressed circumstances, to share the hospitalities of his home ; to whom James Monroe, in 1794, then Min- ister to Great Britain, wrote, while Paine was con- fined in the Luxembourg as prisoner, by the order of Robespierre, for espousing the cause of liberty in France, as follows : " You are considered by them (the people of the United States) as not only having rendered important services in our own revolution, but as being on a more extensive scale the friend of human rights, and a distinguished and able advo- cate in favour of public liberty. To the welfare of Thomas Paine the Americans are not, nor can they be, indifferent." Washington says of the author of " Common Sense," in a letter to Joseph Reed, dated [17] JUSTICE TO THE JEW January 31, 1776: "A few more of such flaming arguments as were exhibited at Falmouth and Nor- folk, added to the sound doctrine and unanswerable reason contained in the pamphlet * Common Sense ', will not leave numbers at a loss to decide on the propriety of separation." " This book (" Common Sense "), says Dr. Rush, " burst forth from the press with an effect that has been rarely produced by types and paper in any age or country." The former part of this remarkable production is devoted to the sub- ject of " Monarchy and Hereditary Succession." The argument is drawn entirely from the Hebrew Com- monwealth. " Monarchy is ranked in Scripture," says he, " as one of the sins of the Jews, for which a curse in reserve is denounced against them." " All anti-monarchical parts of Scripture have been very smoothly glossed over in monarchical governments, but they undoubtedly merit the attention of coun- tries which have their governments yet to form." And then he recites the history of the entire " transac- tion," to the introduction of Saul as king. " But where, say some," are his words, " is the king of America? I'll tell you, friend: he reigns above,- and doth not make havoc of mankind like the royal brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defec- tive even in earthly honours, let a day be set apart [18] JUSTICE TO THE JEW for proclaiming the chapter ; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God ; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know that, so far as we approve of monarchy, in America the law is king." He narrates the conduct of that truly great judge of Israel who was summoned by the voice of the people from the wheatfield to assume the chief magistracy of the nation and to deliver his people from their strongest and most powerful foes, the Midianites. These are his words, in the second chapter of " Com- mon Sense " : " The Jews, elated with success, and attributing it to the generalship of Gideon, proposed making him king, saying: 'Rule thou over us, thou and thy son and thy son's son.' Here was temptation in its fullest extent ; but Gideon, in the piety of his soul, replied : ' I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you ; the Lord shall rule over you.' Gideon doth not decline the honour, but denieth the right to give it." Paine then continues the scriptural narrative concerning the people demanding the kings, about one hundred years after this period, under Samuel, and quoting in full Samuel's admonitions, concludes in these words : " These portions of the Scripture are direct and positive ; they admit of no equivocal construction. That the Almighty hath here [19] JUSTICE TO THE JEW entered his protest against monarchical government is true, or the Scriptures are false." Unfortunately, we have in most instances only skeleton reports of proceedings and debates of the Federal and State conventions on the adoption of the Constitution. Doubtless the model of the ancient commonwealth, its history and lessons were frequently employed by the distinguished representatives; the meagreness of the records leaves this to conjecture only. In the Legislatures of the various States before whom the Constitution came for adoption, the dele- gates again and again referred to this original model of popular government. In New York, for instance, Robert R. Livingston, the Chancellor of the State, refers to it ; so also John Lansing, who, in his speech urging its adoption, says : " Sir, the instances from the history of the Jewish Theocracy evince that there are certain situations in communities which will un- avoidably lead to results similar to those we experi- ence. The Israelites were unsuccessful in war; they were sometimes defeated by their enemies. Instead of reflecting that these calamities were occasiond by their sins, they sought relief in the appointment of a king, in imitation of their neighbours." So also the Hon. Mr. John Smith, who quotes in full the admonition of Samuel to the children of Israel, describing the man- [30] JUSTICE TO THE JEW ner in which a king would rule over them. In short, again and again, in and out of our halls of legislation, was the history of the Hebrew Commonwealth re- ferred to, narrated, rehearsed, and analogies drawn therefrom by the advocates of a republican form of government in answer to those who favoured mon- archy, so that the admonitions of Samuel were as familiar to the people of America as the words of the Lord's Prayer. In the light of these facts it Is not at all sur- prising that the committee, which was appointed on the same day the Declaration of Independence was adopted, consisting of Dr. Franklin, Mr. Adams, and Mr. Jefferson, to prepare a device for a seal for the United States, should, as they did, have proposed as such device, Pharaoh sitting in an open chariot, a crown on his head and a sword in his hand, passing through the dividing waters of the Red Sea, in pur- suit of the Israelites ; with rays from a pillar of fire beaming on Moses, who is represented as standing on the shore extending his hand over the sea, causing it to overwhelm Pharaoh ; and underneath, the motto : " Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." Dr. David Tappan, who, after the declaration of peace, was chosen professor at Harvard College, in the course of his lectures on the " Jewish Antiquities " [21] JUSTICE TO THE JEW says, that the demand of the children of Israel to Samuel to set a king over them was exceedingly dis- pleasing to Samuel, and when he referred the matter to God, the Most High declared that by this act they had rejected him; that he should not reign over them. *' From hence some writers have inferred that mon- archy is in its very nature criminal ; that it impiously invades the prerogative of the Supreme Ruler, as well as the equal rights of man." " This inference," says the learned professor, " was plausibly enforced on the American people, in the beginning of the year 1776, by a very popular but desultory writer (doubtless meaning Thomas Paine), and this sentiment, with others equally well timed, operated, with the swift- ness and force of the electric fluid, in preparing the country for a formal separation from the British monarch." Many more authorities can be adduced on the same subject, but they would only be cumulative. Through more than a century and a half the Puri- tan ministers never tired of dwelling upon the trials, sufferings, and fortitude of the children of Israel during their long and weary wanderings from the land of their oppressors until the organisation of popular government on the banks of the Jordan. To what extent these preachings and teachings served [22] JUSTICE TO THE JEW as an inspiring incentive to the American people in their heroic struggle for civil and religious liberty, and to what degree the oft-quoted warnings of the last Judge of Israel, followed by the corroborating revelations of scriptural history, supplied the argu- ment that battered down the enslaving doctrine of " Divine Right of Kings," and its corollaries, — " Un- limited Submission," and " Non-Resistance," we leave for the reader to draw his own conclusion. We neither claim nor wish to be understood as in- ferring that the structural parts of our form of gov- ernment were derived from what was believed to be the components of the Hebrew Commonwealth, but only that this scriptural model of government, which was democratic, as distinguished from kingly rule, had a deep influence upon the founders of our gov- ernment and prepared the minds of the people, espe- cially in the New England colonies, so that they not only longed for, but would not content themselves with any other form of government than that form which had the divine sanction, the government of the Hebrews under the Judges. Looking backward over a period of nearly three hundred years it may be difficult for us in this age to understand why the early Puritans should have gone back nearly three thousand years for their form [23] JUSTICE TO THE JEW of government, but we must not forget the intense religious spirit of Puritanism, which was a Protestant renaissance of the Old Testament and a reversion to biblical precedents for the regulation of the minutest details of daily life. They were not content even to administer justice by the civil or the common law, but regulated the punishment of crimes by the Penta- teuch, and in framing their criminal code every sec- tion cited the biblical chapter and verse. In the study of the history of the development of our form of government, to leave out of account the ecclesiastical side, freedom from Lords-bishop as well as from Lords-temporal, is to overlook not only im- portant but essential elements. In the resolution which led to the first meeting of the Continental Congress, passed by the House of Representatives of Massa- chusetts Bay on June 17, 1774, appointing Samuel and John Adams, Thomas Cushing, Robert Treat Paine, and James Bowdoin a committee to meet dele- gates and representatives from the other colonies, at a congress to be held in Philadelphia the following September, the reasons recited for such action were "to deliberate and determine upon wise and proper measures, to be by them recommended to all the Colo- nies for the Recovery and Establishment of their Just Rights and Liberties Civil and Religious." In [24] JUSTICE TO THE JEW devising the plan of our government, the founders not only drew their inspiration from first sources, but reverted to first principles, the " unalienable rights " of man. Through the windows of the Puri- tan churches of New England the new West looked back to the old East. [25] JEWS, NOT JEWELS, IN THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA It chanced that one of the last vessels transporting into exile the Jews expelled from Spain by the religious intoler- ance of which the recently created and odious Tribunal of the Faith was the embodiment, passed by the little fleet bound in search of another world. As though the sun were not to shine for all, as though the will of Heaven had not made us equal, the assured spirit of reaction was wreaking one of its stupendous and futile crimes in that very hour when the genius of liberty was searching the waves for the land that must needs arise to offer an unstained abode for the ideals of pro- gress. Following their narrow views, the powers of the Middle Ages denied even light and warmth to the Jews at the same time that they revealed a new creation for a new order of society, that was predestined by Providence to put an end to all intolerance, and to dedicate an infinite continent to modern democracy. — Emilio Castelar. (This is Emilio Castelar's comment on Columbus' suggestive sentence in his Journal, writing of the first voyage of dis- covery as coincident with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain: "So after having expelled the Jews from your domin- ions your Highnesses in the same month of January, ordered me to proceed with a sufficient armament to the said regions of India.") JEWS, NOT JEWELS, IN THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA Those Americans who to-day turn up their noses and sneer at the Jew as an undesirable element in our national and social life, only display their own igno- rance of the part the despised race of Israel had in the discovery of our country and afterwards in the colonising and building-up process of the virgin land. Columbus only discovered America in name. It was Jewish money and Jewish encouragement which backed the genius and daring of the Genoese navi- gator to brave the terrors of the unknown seas in quest of the further India, which was the lode-star of his day-visions and the magnet of his dreams, and without the financial aid from this source the tattered ensign of Spain would never have been the first flag placed on the soil of the Western world. The fifteenth century witnessed many discoveries. Europe was beginning to awake from a long lethargic [29] JUSTICE TO THE JEW sleep and look around her for new lands into which to extend her commerce and her arts and crafts. On the South the daring of her mariners had penetrated far beyond the Pillars of Hercules, had sped around the coasts of Sierra Leone, doubled the Cape, and pointing their prows northward had come to the land of gold, lying away beyond the Tigris and Eu- phrates, to which had been given the name India, and which was thought to be a part of King Solomon's Ophir. From it an overland trade had been estab- lished with the markets of the West, and the mer- chants of Erzeroum and Bagdad exchanged their Oriental products with their white brothers beyond the Bosphorus and the JEgean. To the West, the East became a land of fabled wealth, and India, the most remote part of the then Orient, was the land to which all eyes were turned. Columbus looked upon India as the Ultima Thule of the world, and since he believed, in fact knew, that the world was round, he came to the conclusion that by sailing far enough to the westward he could come to the extreme East — India. Hence, when at length he did discover the Western continent, he actually believed that he had but arrived at a remote part of India, and so it was that he gave to the natives the name Indians, which has been applied to this day. [30] JUSTICE TO THE JEW Columbus died neglected and broken-hearted, in ig- norance of the great discovery he had made and lit- tle dreaming that his name would be perpekiated throughout the centuries for the honour and the emulation of mankind. Fortunately for the race and posterity, Columbus was a man of adamantine will, whom no obstacles could daunt, no discouragement turn away from his purpose. He got many rebuffs, and his schemes, designs, and theories were regarded as chimerical and impracticable. He had been turned down at the court of Henry VII. of England, France had frowned on him, and the hope thus deferred by fate would have made a less stout heart sick and discouraged, but the brave old Genoese plodded on and finally succeeded in getting the ear of the Spanish sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella. Ferdinand was not a strong historical character, but his consort was a woman of much acu- men and characterised by a strong and overpowering ambition to extend, if possible, the dominions of her country and raise her prestige. She favoured the plans of Columbus, but where were the funds to put them to the test.? Long wars and internecine strife had im- poverished Spain and left her almost on the verge of bankruptcy. There was a depleted treasury, and how- ever willing Isabella may have been to aid the neivi- [31] JUSTICE TO THE JEW gator, she was powerless under the circumstances, and so was reluctantly compelled to turn Columbus away. lAt this time the Comptroller-General of the Province of Arragon, one of the richest men, if not the richest, in the kingdom, was one Luis Santangel, a Marano or secret Jew, whose family had withstood the presecu- tions and confiscations of his race and become a power in the land. He had heard of the plans of Columbus, and he too approved of them, so when he learned of the dismissal of the Italian navigator he repaired to the Royal Court and besought the Queen to order his return and grant his request. When Isabella com- plained of her inability to furnish the financial aid necessary to the project, he assured Her Majesty that the finances of the Province of Arragon alone were in such a flourishing state as to be sufficient to equip whatever expedition Columbus demanded or required. Doubtless Arragon had been very mate- rially enriched by the confiscation of much Jewish property during the persecution of the race in Spain. Santangel very speciously plead the cause of the Genoese seaman and represented to Isabella the great advantages which would accrue to Spain from the dis- covery of a sea-route to the land of gold, India. The Queen promised to give the matter due consideration, and in the meantime Santangel enlisted the influence [32] JUSTICE TO THE JEW of the Royal treasurer, Gabriel Sanchez, another secret Jew, who in turn secured the warm support of his friend, Juan Cabrero, also of Jewish stock, and, thus reinforced, again made his appeal on behalf of Columbus. This time Isabella consented, promising to pawn the royal jewels to secure funds for the expedition, but Santangel had more than words to back his belief in Columbus ; he had good Spanish ducats, and with a chivalry becoming the country in which he lived, would not allow his sovereign to make the sacrifice, though indeed it is to be doubted much if at the time Isabella had any jewels to pawn — they were probably in the vaults of her Spanish " uncle " long before — so he, Santangel, out of his own private treasury, furnished the sum of 17,000 ducats, then equivalent to about $20,000, which would now be almost equal to eight times that amount. On the 30th April, 1492, Columbus received the Royal Commission to prepare his fleet for the voyage of discovery. A month previously the edict expelling Jews from Spain had been proclaimed in all public places in the Kingdoms of Arragon and Castile. It was on a Friday, August 3, that Columbus set sail with his three small vessels, only one of which, the Santa Maria, was completely decked, the other two, the Fiiita and the Nina, being merely caravels. [33] JUSTICE TO THE JEW On the day before, Thursday, August 2, three hun- dred thousand Jews were driven from the land of their birth, because they declined to have Christianity forced upon them, and with the same hand and the same pen and on the same day Ferdinand and Isabella signed that Infamous edict, that authorised Cristobal Colon, as the Spaniards called Columbus, to go forth in search of another world, where, in the words of Castelar, the distinguished Spanish publicist, " Crea- tion should be new-born, a haven be afforded to the quickening principles of human liberty, and a temple be reared to the God of enfranchised and redeemed conscience. . . . The accursed spirit of reaction was wreaking one of its stupendous and futile crimes in that very hour when the genius of liberty was searching the waves for the land that must needs arise to oifer an unstained abode for the ideals of progress." And so the last chapter of the Jews in Spain is their first chapter on the continent of America. To get suflScIent men for the crews of Columbus' fleet, it was necessary to throw open the prison doors, for few indeed were the men at liberty who were will- ing to risk their lives on the boundless ocean in such a hazardous and adventurous undertaking, but of course it was different with the prisoners, they might [34] JUSTICE TO THE JEW as well face death on the deep as finally succumb to it in gloomy, foetid cells. As many of the captives in the dungeon pens belonged to the race of Israel, thrust there because of their allegiance to the ancient faith, it is not to be wondered that there were many Jews under the command of the great navigator in his revolutionising expedition. There was a Jewish interpreter, a Jewish surgeon, and a Jewish physician in the fleet, but these were not prisoners previous to the sailing. The name of the interpreter was Luis de Torres, that of the surgeon Marco, and that of the physician, Bernal. Besides these, there were of Jews, Alonso de la Calle, so called from the Jewish quarter, Calle, and Rodrigo San- chez, who was a distant relative of the royal treas- urer, Gabriel Sanchez. It was a Jew, Rodrigo de Triana, who caught the first glimpse of the new land and called the attention of the others to it, and it was Luis de Torres, taken along as interpreter because he understood Hebrew, Chaldaic, and some Arabic, with a smattering of other Oriental languages, whom Columbus thought would be very useful in the coun- tries he expected to reach, who was the first white man to tread the soil of the Indian Guanahani (called afterwards San Salvador), having been sent ashore to greet the Grand Khan of India, whose country [35] JUSTICE TO THE JEW Columbus believed he had reached by a new route. It was this same Luis de Torres who first discovered the use of tobacco a hundred years before Sir Walter Raleigh introduced the weed to England and Europe. There were many more Jews on the first expedition of Columbus. In fact of the one hundred and twenty souls which composed it, we may say safely that al- most one-fourth was made up of adherents of the ancient faith of Israel. The first letters written by Columbus describing his discoveries and adventures were addressed to his old patrons, Santangel and Sanchez the Jews, one being written at Azores on the return voyage and the other when he landed back at Lisbon. These letters are still published in English and Italian, and show the deep sentiments of gratitude the illustrious navigator ex- pressed for his Jewish friends. It must be borne in mind, that besides a personal, the Jews had another very important part in the discovery of America. Most of the success of Colum- bus' voyage depended upon his scientific knowledge, nautical and astronomical, and this was furnished to him indirectly by Jewish genius and Jewish brains. At that time the best astronomical work was " De Luminaribus et Diebus Criticis," which was of great assistance to the mariner in determining his course [36] JUSTICE TO THE JEW according to the position of the planets. The author of this work was Abraham ibn Ezra, a Jew. The in- vention known as a sea-quadrant is commonly at- tributed to Regiomontanus, but it has been estab- lished beyond question that a Jew, Levi ben Gerson, was the inventor and gave it to the scientific world under the name of " Jacob's Staff." This instrument was used by Columbus on his voyage, as was also another Jewish invention for taking the sun's declina- tion or meridian altitude for the purpose of determin- ing the location in the day-time. And yet another instrument, used for measuring the altitude of the Polar Star, also invented by a Jew, came to the aid of the mariner in his quest for the unknown land. Thus, indirectly, the success of the voyage may be attributed to Jewish brains. In addition, the maps which the navigator daily consulted, though not^ of course, covering the immeas- ureable wastes of the Atlantic, were drawn up by a Jew, Jehuda Cresques, who was nicknamed the " Map- Jew." He was director of the Portuguese Academy at Sayres and instructor in the art of navigation, besides a manufacturer of nautical instruments and maps ; he made many improvements in the compass and in the application of astronomy to navigation. Columbus also derived great assistance from the [37] JUSTICE TO THE JEW astronomical tables of Abraham Zacuto, a Jew. These tables were translated from the Hebrew into Latin and Spanish by Joseph Vecincho, another Jew, who was the pupil of Zacuto, and who became dis- tinguished as a physician, cosmographer, and mathe- matician. He presented a copy of the Tables to Col- umbus which, with notes and glossaries, still exists in Spain. Indeed it can be truly said that the attempt of Columbus to sail over unknown seas in quest of new lands which he considered formed part of India, would have been abortive and ended in failure had it not been for the assistance he derived financially, phys- ically and mentally, directly and indirectly from the Jews, not to speak at all of the money which San- tangel furnished and which made the expedition at all possible. [38 THE JEWS IN EARLY AMERICA The world has by this time discovered that it is impossible to destroy the Jews. The attempt to extirpate them has been made under the most favourable auspices and on the largest scale; the most considerable means that man could command have been pertinaciously applied to this object for the longest period of recorded time. Egyptian pharaohs, Assyrian kings, Roman emperors, Scandinavian crusaders, Gothic princes, and holy inquisitors have alike devoted their energies to the ful- filment of this common purpose. Expatriation, exile, captivity, confiscation, torture on the most ingenious and massacre on the most extensive scale; a curious system of degrading customs and debasing laws which would have broken the heart of another people, have been tried in vain. The Jews, after all this havoc, probably more numerous at this date than they were during the reign of Solomon the Wise, are found in all lands, and prospering in most. All which proves that it is in vain for man to attempt to baffle the inexorable law of Nature, which has decreed that a superior race shall never be destroyed or absorbed by an inferior. — Loud Beaconsfield. II THE JEWS IN EARLY AMERICA Columbus, as has been said, died ignorant of his grand discovery, thinking to the last that the strange, flower-decked islands upon which his eyes had rested in rapturous delight were but a part of eastern coast of Asia, which was known as further India, hence to them were given the name of the West Indies, which they still retain. In all, Columbus made three voyages, looking for the first time on the mainland of the American continent on May 30, 149S. As soon as the hitherto unknown gates of the Western world were thrown open to the white man, Europe, in a frenzy of excitement, turned her gaze towards the new country from which Columbus and his sailors had brought glowing accounts, for in the perspective of ambition, she saw the possibilities it held and how she could use them to enrich herself. Hardy mariners from the Tiber to the Tagus [41] JUSTICE TO THE JEW launched their sharp-nosed barks on the vast ocean which had been robbed of its terrors since the daring Genoese had conquered it, and steered towards the land of the setting sun in quest of fame and gold. A list of these adventurers would read like a regimental roll-call. Of them all, Amerigo Vespucci, a Floren- tine navigator, who made no less than seven voy- ages to the newly-discovered country, has had the honour of giving the name to the Western continent (America), though it is said John Cabot, the Eng- lishman, was ahead of him in setting foot on the mainland. It is not to the purpose here to follow the different migrations from the European countries that settled down at various points on the maritime boundary of the new world. The Spaniards, of course, came over in great numbers and were the first colonisers to pene- trate into the wooded and unknown regions of the West; they were followed by their neighbours, the French, who settled in the northern part, to which they gave the name Acadia. The English first arrived in 1607 and took up a tract of land along a softly- flowing river which they called the James, in honour of the reigning king, the first James of England, but the sixth of Scotland and fore-runner of the cowardly House of Stuart; these British colonists named that [42] JUSTICE TO THE JEW part of the country in which they had settled also in honour of a British sovereign, their late liege-lady, the Virgin (?) Queen (Elizabeth), hence the name Virginia. It was not, however, until 1620 that the first English Colony was established at Plymouth and the sea-board district in which it was situate, termed New England. It was in this year also that the first negroes were brought over from Africa in a Dutch vessel. Various other colonies of Europeans settled in different parts, but finally, in 1760, Canada and many of the other settlements became an appanage of the British Crown, but the English conquest was short- lived. Writhing under British tyranny and British taxes, the Colonies struck for freedom, and the shots fired at Lexington and Concord, which reverberated around the world, practically gave birth to freedom on the soil of peerless America. In 1776 the American Con- gress published the celebrated Declaration of Inde- pendence, the Magna Charta of Civil and Religious Liberty', the war of the Revolution was on and history tells the sequel. To-day America sits in the western sunshine with the crown of freedom on her fair brow and smiles a welcome to every race, but at the same time frowns a defiance to alien governments. All who wish may take [43] JUSTICE TO THE JEW their place beneath the shimmering folds of her starry flag, but they must subscribe to her customs and obey her laws, sink their own nationality and stand before the world — Americans. The greatness and the glory, the fame and for- tune, the prestige and prosperity of this unap- proached and unapproachable land which we to-day feel proud and honoured to claim as Mother, have been contributed by the men and women of every race and every class and every creed beneath the sun, some more, some less, but all giving their quota of strength to build the adamantine foundation upon which rest her present liberty and civilisation. Can anyone stand up and say that the race of Israel did not contribute its share and more than its share to the up-building of free America? From that sunny August day in 1492, when Columbus and his intrepid crews set sail from the port of Palos, Jews have been coming to America and almost all have done their duty, and done it well to the country that opened her doors to let them in to a haven of safety from the tyranny and persecution to which they were being subjected by the effete civilisations of decadent Europe. No people of whom history makes mention has suffered so much as the Jews and none have clung [44] JUSTICE TO THE JEW with such undying tenacity to the faith of their fathers and the traditions of their race. Fire and famine, sword and dungeon, the rack and the gibbet, the thumbscrew and the knout, and every other ma- chination of torture that helhsh vengeance and per- secution could devise, have had no terrors for these strong-willed children of the early Fathers, as with a smile on their dark, Semitic faces, they went forth to their inevitable doom with their last dying glance looking proudly to Heaven, imploring the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob to avenge their wrongs. Despite the infamies and atrocities to which they have been subjected, this wonderful people are as strong to-day as in the days of their pristine vigour. Like the phoenix they seem to arise from >their own ashes. The blood of their martyrs has fertilised the soil to bring forth a goodly crop. There are more than 11,000,000 Jews in the world to-day, an increase of 4,000,000 since the time of David, when the " chosen people " dwelt in peace and contentment, watering their flocks by the tributaries of the Jordan in the Land of Moab. Of course, at the present time, they are wanderers over the earth without a country of their own, but let us not forget that they had a home and a country thousands of years before the trumpet of [45] JUSTICE TO THE JEW civilisation woke Europe from the sleep of barbarism. They were lusty and vigorous before Babylon or Nineveh reared their temples to the sky; they were learned before Rameses I. cut his hieroglyphics on the obelisks of Egypt ; they were skilled architects before the Pharaohs dreamt of laying the first stones of the pyramids ; they were warriors skilled in arms before the Grecian hosts swooped down on the plains of Troy ; they had cities before Romulus and Remus traced the wall of imperial Rome, and they had poets, bards, philosophers, and scholars before the blind beggar-man of Scios lisped his numbers in the myrtle groves of Greece. They have seen Assyria, Carthage, Babylonia, Greece, and Rome sink under the ruins of their own magnificence ; they have witnessed the ascent of the Crescent and looked upon the rise of the Cross, and through all they have kept their eyes calmly, steadily on the Star of Israel, whose light burns as bright to-day as when it first rose over the Eastern hills and shone down on the shepherd kings of Chal- dea, and though they have lost their country they still look to the Star of Jacob to guide them back to the inheritance that should be theirs. Europe never looked with kindly eyes upon the Jew, she never extended to him the right hand of fellowship, and organic Christianity only made her [ 46 ] JUSTICE TO THE JEW regard him with feehng of greater revulsion, for she ignorantly identified the whole race with the cruci- fixion of Jesus of Nazareth, the Founder of her re- ligion. Her hate, however, gave the lie to the Chris- tianity in whose name the tempest-furies of her wrath were unleashed, and the Jews are not the only excep- tion where Christianity has let loose the dogs of war in the name of the Prince of Peace. The English per- secuted the Catholics in Ireland, the Huguenots suffered in France, the Lutherans were harassed In Germany ; in short, bigotry, in the name of religion, has ridden rough-shod over countless multitudes whose only crime consisted in following the light of their own conscience. It is not to be wondered that the Jews came to look upon sufferance as natural and as their lot in life, but still they did not like to lie down and die supinely as dogs beneath the iron heel of the oppressor. They had bodies to be cared, souls to be saved, and a manhood to assert, but the odds against them were overwhelming. For hundreds of years they had been oppressed, impoverished, im- prisoned, burned, expelled, and they had no retreat to which they could flee from the fury of their ene- mies ; they were surrounded on all sides ; they had no refuge but the grave. With the discovery of America by Columbus came JUSTICE TO THE JEW a ray of hope to these children of the ancient race; in the new land they would seek the home and safety denied them in the old. They sought and found both. Brazil was the first part of the Western world to give a home to the European Jew. That country was discovered in 1499 by Pinzon, and independently the following year by Pedro Alvarez de Cabral, who was ably assisted by a Jewish mariner named Gaspar, a man who received warm commendation for his skill and daring from Amerigo Vespucci himself. Immedi- ately crowds of Jews came flocking to Brazil, Portu- gal alone sending two shiploads annually for some years ; 'tis said that these Portuguese Jews introduced the sugar-cane, which has furnished such a staple article of commerce since. The exodus of the Jews was so great to Brazil that in 1557 an edict was passed by the Home Government forbidding Maranos (secret Jews) to leave Portugal, and at the same time a law was passed by the Spanish colonies prohibiting the settlement of Jews. This prohibition was removed in 1577 on payment by the Jews of 1,700,000 cru- zados, or about $714,000. ' The Jews who had come to Brazil under Portuguese auspices were largely supplemented by Dutch con- tingents, and both helped the Dutch West India Com- pany to get a permanent settlement. In 1642 a party [48] JUSTICE TO THE JEW of 600 additional Jews arrived from Amsterdam. 'Among these were Hakam Isaac Aboab, who was the first Rabbi to expound the Jewish doctrine on the continent of America, and Ephraim Sueiro, step- brother to Manasseh ben Israel, the great Dutch polyhistor, rabbi, and polemical writer, whose par- ents had migrated from Lisbon to Amsterdam. Be- fore 1654 there were more than 5000 Jews in Brazil who enjoyed the same rights as their fellow-citizens and rendered valuable services both in civil and mili- tary life, but in this year the Portuguese conquest of the Dutch in Brazil led to the breaking up of the Jewish colony. Many returned to Amsterdam, some "Went to the French settlements of South America, some remained as Maranos, that is, they outwardly denied their religion for policy's sake, while inwardly clinging to its every tenet, and about twenty-three of the fugitives, enamoured of the Dutch consideration they had experienced in Brazil, made their way north to the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, and there on a strip of land which afterwards came to be known as Manhattan Island, formed the nucleus of the first Jewish colony on the North American continent, though there seems to be evidence that Jews, soldiers and sailors, reached New Amsterdam, as New York City was then called, as early as 1652, having been [49] JUSTICE TO THE JEW sent here by the Directors of the West India Com- pany. At this time the Governor was Peter Stuyvesant, a stern, unbending, narrow-minded bigot, whose veins had been inoculated with the virus of Calvinism and to whom all other sects were insufferable, especially the Jews ; therefore, with characteristic alacrity, de- spite his wooden leg, he began preparations to have the Jews banished from the community. He peti- tioned his employers, the Dutch West India Company, for permission to drive them beyond the pale of the New Netherlands, but the worthy directors were more tolerant than their representative, to whom they replied, saying, that his request " was inconsistent with reason and justice." To further show their dis- approbation of Stuyvesant's bigotry, they passed an act permitting the Jews to reside and trade in New Netherlands, stipulating that they — the Jews — would care for their own poor, to which they willingly ac- quiesced. From time immemorial it has been char- acteristic of the Jews to look out for the destitute classes among their race. In the following year the Jewish colony was aug- mented from Holland, and in addition, remnants of the Brazilian Jewry were still making their way northward, so that in a short time there was a goodly [50] JUSTICE TO THE JEW number of the race interspersed among the Dutch colonists. Stuyvesant was inwardly fuming at the increase, but he was powerless to check it or in any way make trouble for the Jews, for he had again been instructed by the Company to see to it, " that the Jews enjoy all the civil and political rights in New Netherlands which would be accorded to them in Amsterdam." This settled it, and the Jews were left in peace to go their ways and pursue whatever avoca- tion they deemed best. Most of these early colonists were of Sephardic stock (descendants of the Jews who were expelled from Spain and Portugal), and besides those who came from Brazil and the West Indies were made up of the emigrations from Portugal and Holland, though but a short time elapsed before a contingent arrived from England, to be followed closely after by a large number of German and Polish Jews, but of course all of these did not settle down among their co-religionists in the New Netherlands. They scat- tered all over New York State, Pennsylvania, Mary- land, Virginia, and South Carolina. Among the pio- neers of the New Netherlands colony of Jews there are many names which have come down to us as repre- sentative of men who laboured long and earnestly to give their brethren a firm footing in the new coun- [51] JUSTICE TO THE JEW try. The first two to arrive, November 9, 1654, in the ship Pear Tree, whose names have been handed down, were Jacob Aboaf and Jacob Barsimson, and these at once began to plan for the reception of those that were to follow, a party of twenty-three who ar- rived in the bark St. Catarina from Brazil. These fugitives were not able to pay the master of the vessel that brought them, and accordingly two of their num- ber, David Israel and Moses Ambrosius, were held as hostages until the obligation was satisfied. One of the sturdiest of the New Amsterdam colony was Asser Levy, who, it is said, was the first Jew that ever owned real estate in America, being the owner of a parcel of land on which the Capitol at Albany now stands. Much credit is given to this man for the indomitable spirit he displayed in demanding justice for his race. Step by step he fought every grievance and disability under which they laboured, until in the end he finally triumphed by obtaining for them equal rights with their fellow men. He himself was refused permission to become a soldier and stand guard like the other burghers, but he made such a strong and unanswerable plea to the home authorities that the permission was granted, as also every other privilege which the rest of the colonists enjoyed. Abraham de Lucena was another hardy pioneer [52] JUSTICE TO THE JEW who fought consistently and well for his brothers of the faith ; not alone did he look after their interests when living, but his solicitude surrounded them when dead. The Jews had been again and again refused land for a burial-plot, but Lucena agitated so vigor- ously that in the end he was successful in securing a cemetery plot for the respectable interment of the dead. Though Asser Levy had so broken down the wall of bigotry and prejudice as to be permitted to purchase real estate, that privilege was strenuously de- nied to D'Andrade, as well as to all others, for Stuyvesant, together with the majority of his coun- cil, were violently opposed to the race obtaining any permanent footing in th* land. Indeed the open hos- tility of Stuyvesant to the Jews never for a moment abated, and he seems to have been implacable in his enmity. He would not let them trade as far north as Fort Orange (Albany), or as far in the other direction as the South River (Delaware), and in numberless other ways showed his petty spite and smallness of character. In 1664 the British swooped down on New Amster- dam, captured it, and in honour of the Duke of York, afterwards the cowardly James II., they named it New York. How the Jews fared under the British is a matter of much conjecture, as there is very little [53] JUSTICE TO THE JEW historical data on which to found authentic state- ments. Nothing definite is known concerning them for a period of more than fifty years posterior to the Enghsh conquest of the Dutch, but it is supposed that during this period they increased but httle, as no immigration from the " old country " augmented their ranks. That they enjoyed religious freedom is evidenced by the fact that in 1682 they rented a wooden building in Mill Street for the purpose of public worship. However, it was not until 1729 that they had a real synagogue. In 1749 a riot broke out in New York, which, ac- cording to Governor Clinton's report to London, was directed " against a Jew and his wife." These un- fortunates, according to the Governor's testimony, had but recently arrived from Holland, where they had lived in handsome style, " even to keeping their coach," but had been reduced by misfortune. A Mr. Delaney appears to have been the leader in the as- sault, and he, with several others, " with their faces blackened and otherwise disguised, smashed all the windows, broke open the door, and tore everything to pieces." The outcome appears to have been more satisfactory to several members of the bar than to the unfortunate Hebrew, for Governor Clinton avers that " the Jew was advised to go to Mr. Murray, the [64] JUSTICE TO THE JEW attorney, for his opinion, who took a fee, and advised him not to take up the case, as the persons concerned were related to the principal people of the town. Mr. Chambers advised the like, and told him he would be ruined if he proceeded against them. Mr. Smith advised the same." From the period of the above riot to the Revolu- tion there was but little increase in the Jewish popu- lation. During the troubled era of the war for free- dom the Jews of New York were divided in their opinions, the majority, however, inclining to the patriot cause, among whom was the minister of the congregation, Gershom Mendes Seixas, who as soon as the British entered the town, stripped the syna- gogue of all its belongings and with a few of his faithful followers fled to Philadelphia, where he founded another congregation, which he named the Mickve Israel. It must be remembered that the Jews had made mighty strides before the Revolutionary fires were kindled, though their numbers had not materially in- creased. Some of them had become men of wealtla and influence in the community. Hayman Levy had become a power in the land as a merchant ; in fact, was the merchant-prince of that day. He carried on an extensive fur business and traded in valuable [55] JUSTICE TO THE JEW skins with the Indians. Owing to Parliamentary re- striction, however, and the colonial policy pursued by the government, which almost ruined all business, he failed in 1768, but the assignees were enabled to discharge the whole of the indebtedness with interest. 'Again, in 1776, the great fire destroyed all his prop- erty, but he started afresh and carried on the fur business until his death in 1790. It was while in Levy's employ that John Jacob Astor, founder of the family of that name in America, gained his first experience of the fur trade, whereby he laid the foundation of the fortune which he after- wards made in real estate. He received a dollar a day from Levy for beating skins. Another of Levy's em- ployees was Nicholas Low, ancestor of Seth Low, former mayor of New York city. This Low laid the foundation of his great fortune in a hogshead of rum purchased from his former employer, who rendered him much financial assistance. Samson Simson was another extensive Jewish mer- chant of the time and a ship-owner as well — a man of strict integrity and great liberality, who aggres- sively resisted the British Government. When the fires of the Revolution had been quenched on a hundred battlefields, many of the Jews who had left returned to New York and fell into line with the [56] JUSTICE TO THE JEW rest of their co-religionists and began with a will to upbuild the fortune of the infant Republic. Ephraim Hart, a man popular with all classes, on May 17, 1792, with twenty-one others, organised the first board of stock-brokers in the New York Stock Ex- change. He was State Senator in 1810, and at his death was a partner of John Jacob Astor. Bernard Hart, in view of his distinguished commer- cial position, social distinction, and great humanity, towered aloft among the magnates of the city. Dur- ing the prevalence of the yellow fever in New York in 1795 he worked night and day among the sick and dying, and was declared by a writer of the time " an angel of mercy in the awful days of that great pesti- lence." There were scores of other Jewish merchants at this period in New York, famed for their philan- thropy and charity. The prosperity of the Jews at this time is attested by Lord Bellamont's reports in October, 1770, advising the English Government that he has " much trouble in paying the soldiers' subsist- ence in money weekly," that they " would advance no money whatever on his orders, so that were it not for one Dutch merchant and two or three Jews that lent me money I should have been undone." The prohibition against the Jews going into retail trade, which was a Dutch law that somehow remained [57] JUSTICE TO THE JEW operative under English law, was gradually dropped, for we find Jews engaged in retail trade in numerous instances in the eighteenth century. On a question concerning the contested seat of Colonel Frederick Phillips of Westchester County, the General Assembly of New York on September 23, 1737, resolved that Jews could neither vote for repre- sentatives nor be admitted as witnesses. The Jews in New York were not on a footing of political equality with Christians prior to the Revolution. By the first Constitution of the State of New York, adopted in 1777, they were put on an absolute equality with all other citizens, and thus New York was the first State to actually give full religious liberty to the Jew. In the other centres of the country where the Jews had made settlements they showed, when unmolested, that they could be a thrifty, law-abiding people who attended to their own affairs. Many of the race who had settled in New Amsterdam, chafing under the petty tyranny of Stuyvesant, were attracted to Rhode Island by the broad-mindedness of Roger Williams, who himself had experienced the iron heel of bigotry, and who was not only the pioneer of religious liberty in America, but the first true type of an American freeman. Williams fearlessly proclaimed his prin- ciples in these words : " I desire not the liberty to [58] JUSTICE TO THE JEW myself which I would not freely and impartially weigh out to all the consciences of the world beside." In 1652 the colony of Rhode Island enacted that " all men of whatever nation soever they may be, that shall be received inhabitants of any of the towns, shall have the same privileges as Englishmen, any law to the contrary, notwithstanding," and thus was the little tract of land made the Mecca for all who sought full liberty, fraternity, and equality. For many years prior to the Revolution Newport was one of the principal cities of the American col- onies, ranking with Boston and Philadelphia in com- mercial importance, and to say that New York would equal Newport in importance some day was considered the vapouring of irresponsibility. Soon after the New Amsterdam Jews had sought the paternal government of Roger Williams they were joined by others of their race from Spain, from Jamaica, from Portugal, from Holland, and several other centres of the Semitic people. In 1658 fifteen Jewish families arrived together from Holland, and there has been handed down definite and unquestion- able knowledge that among these families were sev- eral members of the Masonic Order, who for the first time introduced it to America and exemplified the first degree of Masonry. As early as 1658 religious [59] JUSTICE TO THE JEW services were held in Newport. In this community many of the race, too, rose to high eminence as mer- chants, and the names of Lopez, Hart, Rivera and Pollock were in the foremost ranks of the commerce of the world. At one time Lopez owned as many as thirty vessels. Rivera, who originally came from Por- tugal, was the first to introduce the manufacture of spermaceti in America. In 1763 a synagogue was completed and the Rev. Isaac Touro, a rabbi from Jamaica, was chosen as minister. At this time there were about seventy Jew- ish families in the town and all attended worship. In this Newport synagogue was preached the first Jewish sermon ever delivered in America ; the preacher was rabbi Hayyim Isaac Karigel, from the Biblical city of Hebron in Palestine, and who spoke in the Spanish language; the sermon was afterwards published in English; the date of this memorable event was May 28, 1773. The population of Jews at this time com- prised not less than two hundred families. These, in a great measure, were dispersed by the war, never to reassemble again, and thus Newport passed away as a Jewish centre in America. Washington was presented with an address by whatever Jews that remained, as he was passing through the town in August, 1790, and was enter- [60] JUSTICE TO THE JEW tained at the home of Moses Isaacs, who espoused warmly the side of the patriots. In Pennsylvania the Jews did not altogether settle in Philadelphia, but penetrated into the interior and formed colonies around SchaefFersville and Lancaster. Besides, unlike their co-religionists in New Nether- lands and Rhode Island, they were mostly German Jews. Among them also were many men of impor- tance. In 1740 Joseph Simon was the largest real estate holder in the community of Lancaster. He also traded extensively with the Indians. Myer Hart was one of the founders of Easton, and became a natural- ised citizen. Aaron Levy, who settled in Northumber- land County about 1760, owned much property, and in 1786 projected the town of Aaronsburg in the county of that name. The first Jewish settler in Philadelphia of whom there is record was Jonas Aaron, in 1703, who lived a solitary life among his Christian and Indian neigh= hours until he was joined by Arnold Bamberger in 1726- The first Jewish congregation in Philadelphia met for services in a little log shack in what was known as Sterling Alley, afterwards Cherry Alley, between Third and Fourth streets. This was in 1747* The worshippers for the most part consisted of Ger- man and Polish Jews. During the Revolution the New [61] JUSTICE TO THE JEW York rabbi, Gershom Mendes Seixas, came to Phila- delphia, as has been before stated, and conducted services according to the Portuguese rite. The soil of Pennsylvania seemed congenial to the race, and on it they multiplied and flourished exceedingly well. Bancroft has referred to Maryland as "among the first colonies which adopted religious freedom as the basis of the state," but its religious freedom was limited to those who believed in Christ, and was ac- companied by a proviso which declared that any per- son who denied the Trinity should be punished with death. Even after the Revolution no one could hold any office under the government of Maryland without signing a declaration that he believed in the Chris- tian religion, and not until 1825 did the Legislature pass the bill according to the Jew his full civil rights. Yet in the very early history of Maryland we find the names of a few prominent Jews. Mention is made of one Mathias dc Sousa, and Isaac Markens tells us that " there resided in that province (Maryland) as early as 1658, one Jacob Lumbrozo, late of Lisbone in the Kingdom of Portugal, who was known as ' ye Jew doctor.' " Lumbrozo was committed for blas- phemy in the year mentioned, and in the year 1663 he was granted letters of " denizacion " (citizenship). [62] JUSTICE TO THE JEW In 1665 he received a commission to trade with the Indians. On July 7, 1733, a party of forty Jews sailed up the Savannah River on a vessel direct from London. These were befriended by Governor Oglethorpe, who was engaged in apportioning out land to the colonists, and they in return for his patronage began to labour with industry and intelligence to assist him in carry- ing out his plans. The colonists were idle, lazy, dis- solute, sullen, and unwilling to protect their claims from the ravages of the Spaniards, so the arrival of the Jews was most opportune to Oglethorpe, but as soon as the latter departed from Georgia the Jews lost prestige in Savannah and had to seek pastures new. Among them was a Dr. Nunes, who did much effective work among the sick, and Abraham de Lyon, a horticulturist, who was the first in this country to successfully introduce and cultivate useful foreign plants. The descendants of these early Jewish immi- grants became scattered over all parts of the country. The first male white child born in the State of Georgi«i was a Jew — Isaac Minis. The Jews that had left Savannah settled in Charles- ton, S. C, and as early as 1750 had formed into a small congregation which worshipped in a little wooden building on Union, near Queen Street. They [63] JUSTICE TO THE JEW had no rabbi, but the President was Jacob Cohen, who in the name of the congregation sent a lengthy con- gratulatory letter to Washington on his elevation to the Presidency, and to which there came a suitable reply from the illustrious Father of his Country. During the struggle for Independence the Jews of Charleston distinguished themselves by a spirit of patriotism, there not being a single Tory amongst them. A few struggling Jews came to Virginia in 1658, but this part of the country could not boast of a synagogue until 1791, for the worship of the con- gregation, Beth Shalom. There were some Jews who fought under Washington in the Virginia regiments. The first Jew to penetrate as far as the Western States arrived from England in Indianapolis in 1794, but the race made no headway in Indiana for a long time. Those who came to Ohio cannot be classed among the early settlers, for the pioneer in this State, Joseph Jonas, did not arrive in Cincinnati until 1817. The colonisation of Illinois by Jews is still of later date, though they muster strong both in Ohio and Illinois to-day. The migration of Jews to most of the other parts of the country did not precede the beginning of the nineteenth century. Canada has never been a favourite land with the [64] JUSTICE TO THE JEW Jews, for Canada, on almost all occasions, has turned the " cold shoulder " to the children of the ancient faith, and has looked upon their advances as an en- croachment on the sacredness of her rights as a Christian and a British country. Aaron Hart, who had been a soldier in the English army, came out in 1760. Ten years or so later there were about a dozen more colonists of the faith settled in the vicinity of Montreal; all had prospered and were quite well to do, and formed themselves into a small congregation and took the name of Shearith Israel. No descend- ants of these original Jews are to be found in that part of Canada now. Jews were disbarred by the Legislature down to 1831, when the disabilities were removed, and this was almost a quarter of a century before Jews could take a seat in the House of Com- mons of the mother country. Disraeli, of course, was elected to Parliament in 1837, but he, having been baptised in youth, took the oath as a true Chris- tian. The first synagogue in Canada was established in Montreal in 1788, with the Rev. J. R. Cohen as rabbi. All over the country from Baffin's Bay to the Gulf, from Maine to the Golden Gate, we can trace Jewish footsteps, and everywhere we find that they have left silent monuments, eloquently testifying to their thrift [65] JUSTICE TO THE JEW and industry, their devotion to high ideals, their love for liberty and fairness between man and man, their unquenchable thirst for knowledge, their un- swerving devotion to the principles of their race and the tenets of their faith, and above all, their willing- ness to suffer to conserve the heritage of the illus- trious past, so that they might look forward with hope to a glorious future. [ 66] THE JEW AS SOLDIER AND PATRIOT The patriotism of the Jew is to me his greatest virtue. In this he stands peerless in the mighty tomes of history. To be a patriot to a country that degrades, to love a people that despises, is divine. Of such a divine nature was, and still is, the patriotism of the Jews. He loves the country in which are clustered the proudest reminiscences of the history of his race, but more, much more, the country where his home is, where his dear ones live or lie buried. Where his home is, there his heart is, and where his heart is, there his love is, and where his heart and home and love are, there is his patriot- ism, — and let the treatment accorded him by his country be ever so cruel, and the ignominies heaped upon him by his fel- low men be ever so degrading — no matter what the treat- ment, he still obeys the words of Jeremiah addressed to the Jewish captives at Babylon: " Build ye houses and dwell in them, and plant gardens and eat fruit of them. Seek the peace of every city whither you are carried as captives, and pray unto the Lord for it, for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace." No matter what the law, he still obeys the les- son taught by the great teacher Mar Samuel, " to hold the law of the country in which he lives as the highest law." No matter how cruel the government, he prays for its welfare week after week. No matter how ill his patriotism is repaid, the duties of patriotism are impressed upon his children, in their religious school, year after year. — Joseph Kbauskopf. Ill THE JEW AS A SOLDIER AND PATRIOT A patriot is defined as a lover of country, the word coming through the Latin patria, from the Greek pater (-TraTrjp), signifying father, and therefore strictly means " a lover of fatherland." In view, then, of the fact that the Jew has no fatherland to love, can he, under any circumstances, be called a patriot? Despite the subtleties of lan- guage, the term must be considered in its ordinary ac- ceptation and the question answered in the affirmative. A man may be a patriot to a country as alien to his feet as the wilds of Siberia or the wastes of Labra- dor. If he prove his love by servitude to its cause and devotion to its interests, he is a patriot, and to be called such it is not at all necessary for any man to serve merely the land that gave himself or his fathers birth. After all, very few can boast a land of their own, no matter how ancient their lineage. If a man is born in a stable, he is not a horse, and similarly, being born in a certain country, does not [69] JUSTICE TO THE JEW necessarily make a man a native of that country. A black man will remain black, no matter where he first saw the light, and the white man will never be black though born on the banks of the Senegal or Gambia. To-day in free America we are all proud to call ourselves Americans, no matter what flag waved over the land of our birth, and we are ready to make a panther-spring at any who would dare to question our fealty or allegiance to the " Stars and Stripes." Thousands, tens of thousands cradled by the banks of the Rhine and the Shannon poured out their hearts' blood freely on American battlefields in defence of the Union, and with their last dying glance looked lovingly on the folds of " Old Glory," realising their sacrifice was not in vain. Will anyone have the temerity to say that these men were not patriots to the land of their adoption, patriots of the purest and best brand? And along with these heroes, side by side, in trench, on field, in bivouac and camp, first in the red gap of danger, last to turn their backs to the foe, were many of the sons of Israel, and who will deny them a share in the glory as they were partners in the danger, who will say that they, too, were not American patriots .f* Yes, the Jew can be a patriot and a good one when [70] JUSTICE TO THE JEW occasion demands his patriotism to come to the front, when duty calls him to prove his fidelity and devotion to principles when dangers threaten the interests that he holds dear. Indeed, if we look at the matter in the right light, the Jew is patriotic above all men, for he was in the world before most other countries had sons to love them. A good many of the patriots of history who fought, suffered, bled, and died for the homes they called their own, were simply off- shoots from the parent Jewish stem. At the dissemination of the children of men some went north, some south, others east and others west, and settled here, there, and everywhere over the face of the earth, and it was only environment that divided them into races and classes and castes and creeds ; all sprang from a common ancestry in the valley of the Euphrates, the Semitic branches settling down in that part of the world, the others journej-ing in divers directions. The Jews became the most important of the descendants of Shem, and according to both Chris- tian and Hebrew belief God revealed himself to Abra- ham the Father of the Jews and afterwards to Moses to whom He gave the Law on tables of stone. The name of " chosen people," to differentiate them from the rest of mankind, was given to them as expressive of the idea of their having been chosen by God to [71] JUSTICE TO THE JEW fulfil the mission of proclaiming His truth among all nations. They are pre-eminently the chosen people of religion just as the Greeks were the chosen people of art and philosophy and the Romans the chosen people of law and politics. From time to time great kings and leaders, patriarchs and prophets appeared among this people, and their fame and name went forth over the face of the earth. For two thousand years the Kingdom of Judah remained a whole. It was not until Jesus of Nazareth unfurled His banner of salvation on the hills of Galilee that the Jewish citadel began to tremble and finally collapse alto- gether with the last expiring sigh of the Nazarene on the Cross of Calvary. The glory of Israel passed away and her children became wanderers in all lands, but still carrying with them the traditions of their race, cherishing every principle of their forefathers and clinging with un- dying faith to the religion of the patriarchs and prophets. Though poverty and persecution followed close in their wake, they never forgot that they sprang from a royal line that boasted the kingly David and the wise Solomon, and so they smiled in their souls at the Gentiles' sneers, knowing deep in their hearts that they could well afford to overlook ignorance and vanity. [72] JUSTICE TO THE JEW And to-day it is just the same as in the ages past. , The Jew is pachydermatous to taunts and jeers and mockery and insults, — they cannot penetrate him. Vihfications and calumnies, when applied to the Jew, are like drops of water on a duck's back — they quickly run off, and leave the feathers all the cleaner for their having been there. He goes his way unmind- ful of all ridicule and contumely, attending to his own business, interfering with the rights of none, and serving God in his own way. He is not a natural- born fighter ; in fact, he is opposed to the use of force, except when absolutely necessary, but he can take care of himself and look out for his own inter- ests. He tries to live peaceably with all men, and subscribes to the laws of the country in which he lives, so that it can be said that the Jew on almost all occasions makes a good citizen, when he gets the opportunities, though no less an authority than Renan said : " A Jew will never be a citizen ; he will simply live in the cities of others." But Renan, at the best, was but a sour philosopher, tarred with the same stick as the bigoted anti-Semites of Europe and America. Our own " Mark Twain " used to play on the same fiddle, but he changed his tune when convinced that he was badly off the key. In his innocent artless- ness, Mark once wrote a magazine article, entitled, [73] JUSTICE TO THE JEW *' Concerning the Jews," in which he had this passage, *' By his make and his ways he is substantially a for- eigner wherever he may be, and even the angels dislike a foreigner," Further on in the same article he re- peated the old accusation, " The Jew is charged with a patriotic disinclination to stand by the flag as a soldier — like the Christian Quaker." When the great humourist's attention was called to the charge he looked up the Jew's record as a soldier, found that he had erred in his estimation, and quickly came to the conclusion that it was a slander to cast aspersion on Jewish patriotism — a slander " that has done its work, done it long and faithfully and with high ap- proval ; it ought to be pensioned off now, and retired from active service." Goldwin Smith is another who had his fling at the expense of the Jews, but who has not as yet had the magnanimity to acknowledge his mistake. He writes : " The Jews have now been everywhere made voters ; to make them patriots while they remain genuine Jews is beyond the legislator's power." Does Goldwin Smith know that the whole trend of the Jewish Bible is an inculcation of patriotism, and has he ever learned that in Israel's wars, from Joshua's conquest to the sixth century of the Jewish era, such a patri- otism was engendered among the Jews that its inten- [74] JUSTICE TO THE JEW sity was responsible for the lives of thousands of martyrs, men and women? Has Goldwin Smith read the Talmud? All through it patriotism is held up as a virtue to the eyes of the people. Among the Dia- spora it was enjoined as a special virtue. Samuel lays down the principle when he says, " The law of the country is the law." Jose goes further when he states, " The laws of the country, even if wrong, must be obeyed." There is abundant testimony to prove that in many cases the Jew obeyed the laws when those laws were wrong and wicked. On many occasions he gave his services and his time and his talents to the states that wronged and persecuted him, as well as to those which had given him equality with his fellow- men. But it is not to be wondered that the worm will sometimes turn. The dog does not always lick the hand that is upraised to strike it. Persecution some- times went too far with the Jew. Do insults and in- juries, do vilifications and calumnies, do confiscations and robberies, do the dungeon cell and the hangman's noose, do the pangs of hunger and the throes of de- spair, instil patriotism into any human breast for the country that inflicts those wrongs, whether it be that of Gentile or Jew, Christian or Pagan, Ma- hommedan or Buddhist? Has a country ever made [75] JUSTICE TO THE JEW patriots out of men it has scorched and flogged, hunted and hounded, shamed and degraded, whom it has trodden underfoot and ground down into the slime of the earth? When men are deprived of every human right, when they are treated as beasts and not as men, when every device that hell can suggest is put into operation for torturing them, is it to be expected their patriotism will thrive on such treat- ment? For nineteen hundred years almost, the Old World has been meting out such treatment to the Jews, and when the poor, writhing worms turned ere they were crushed altogether, the furies of hell were let loose upon them by Christian (?) bigotry and Christian (?) hate, until they were almost annihilated, then over the Haceldama was waved the Cross in the name of Him who came with the glad message of peace on earth, good will to men, and hallelujahs for the victory (?) rose from the unhallowed lips of tyrants and murderers. Can you ripen patriots in the sun of oppression? History will not deny that the Jew has sometimes given as good as he received. He is human and has human feelings, and is just as susceptible to kindness as any other. Give him a chance and he will embrace it, give him the opportunity of showing his patriotism and it will come to the surface. During the past [76] JUSTICE TO THE JEW century, the Jew was rarely permitted to fight for the country of his adoption, but when he was allowed to do so he proved that the contumely heaped upon him had not quenched his manhood. Once his hands were freed he showed he knew how to use them. They were bound long. As Moses Mendelssohn said a hun- dred years ago, " Our hands are bound, and we are blamed for not using them." But as soon as the manacles were removed, the despised son of Israel stepped to the front to let the world see he was as good a man as any. AS SPANISH SOLDIERS In the Spanish land, which has witnessed so much of their suffering, where they had been treated so cruelly and inhumanly, they heaped coals of fire on the heads of their persecutors by returning good for evil. They fought for her cause as valiant knights among the bravest of her bravest. Forty thousand of them fought with the flower of Castilian chivalry on the side of Alphonso \T., many of whom left their bones to bleach on the fatal field of Ucles, while an equal number fought valiantly among the ranks of the victorious 'Ali. They also fought heroically on behalf of Alphonso VIII. against the Almohades. Alphonso X. rewarded them en masse for their mar- tial services by giving them grant of an entire village, [77] JUSTICE TO THE JEW which they called Aldea dc los Judeos. They fought heroically for Don Pedro, even after the Black Prince had forsaken him, defending Burgos to the last man, saying, " God would never have it that they should deny obedience to their natural lord — Don Pedro — or to his rightful successor." Don Enrico publicly recognised the patriotism of the Jews. In the army of King Philip the Handsome of France were 30,000 men of the ancient faith when he marched against Count Guy of Flanders in 1297, when the latter renounced his allegiance. Wherever the Jew found a friend in his country, the country found a friend in the Jew. History records no braver defence than that of the Jews for Polish territory during the terrific onslaught of the Cossacks upon Poland during the Thirty Years War. Still preserved in the synagogue at Prague is the worn flag of Ferdinand III., given to the Jews in 1648 for their gallant defence of the city against the Swedes. IN THE AUSTRIAN AEMY In the Austrian army the Jews were serving as far back as 1781 ; they played a conspicuous part in the international war during the first decade of the past century, one of their number, Emmanuel Eppinger, receiving decorations from the hands of two emperors [78] JUSTICE TO THE JEW for personal bravery. Jews still continued to hold their ground in the Austrian army. In 1866 one Moses Weber distinguished himself at Skalitz for intrepidity and daring. A Jewish comrade — Pul- chreiner — was wounded in both legs ; Weber, amid a rain of bullets, drew him from the lines, put him on his shoulders and carried him to the rear. He returned just as his superior officer was shot down. Weber im- mediately took charge of the command and led his men into the very jaws of death and successfully brought them out again. In 1893 there were 40,344 Jewish privates and 2179 Jewish officers in the Aus- trian army, fully four per cent, of the whole force. A Jewish Colonel of Infantry, Heinrich Forges, was raised to the rank of Major-General and given an important command; General Popper is a world- famous naval constructor, while another Jew was Director-General of the army medical department. The Czar of Russia conferred a high decoration on General Edward von Schweitzer, a Jew, commandant of the 26th Regiment of Infantry, and one of Austria's most distinguished officers. In the Hapsburg Monarchy are many famous Jewish officers, the best known being General Alex- ander von Eisz, a favourite of Kaiser Franz Joseph and a veteran whose breast glitters with orders and [79] JUSTICE TO THE JEW decorations, and one of whom martial Jewry feels proud. In the Franco-Prussian war, which drew all Europe into its deadly maelstrom, the Jews proved their devotion to the Fatherland. Phillipson, in his *' Memoirs," calculates there were 2531 Jewish sol- diers in this war, but these figures fall far short of the actual number, for they do not include the reports of the large Jewish communities of Berlin, Breslau, Posen, and Frankfort. Altogether there must have been not less than 5000 Hebrews engaged in that his- toric conflict, for Germany had already, in 1866, in her war with Austria, 1025 Jews who had seen active service. In this Franco-Prussian war 448 Jews were wounded or killed and 373 received the Iron Cross or other decoration of equal importance, for bravery on the field of battle. IN FRENCH WARS During the Napoleonic campaigns Jews were not found wanting in the ranks of the gr^at little Cor- sican. One of the most intrepid of his marshals was a Jew, — Massena, — the name simply being an inter- polation of the Judaic Manasseh. Two decorated Jewish soldiers of Napoleon, Jean Louis May and Simon Mayer, sat in the Sanhedrin of 1806. Na- opleon did not recognise the Jews as citizens prior to [80] JUSTICE TO THE JEW this period. In 1808, out of the 77,000 Jews in all France, there were 797 men serving in the army. A Jew named Berko, who commanded a regiment with the forces of Kosciusko, became a Colonel in the French service. Among the most prominent Jewish officers in the French army to-day are Generals Valabreque and Laroque. The first Hebrew officer in the French army was Captain Anselm Nordon. The Jews had only been just emancipated by the Revolution in 1792. France had just declared war against Russia, and at once the Jews took to heart their duty to the Fatherland. In all parts, even abroad, volunteer legions were or- ganised in order to defend its cause. One of these was the German legion, which also included Alsatians and Lorrainers in its ranks. It was to the latter category that Nordon belonged. The vile men who concocted the odious conspiracy against Dreyfus could find no fault in this patriot, except that he was a Jew, and therefore, certain to be condemned without evidence ; the more they lied, perjured, and forged, the more they convinced the world of the absolute innocence of Dreyfus. The Jews, though numbering only 80,000 in all France, have more than three hundred officers in the [81] JUSTICE TO THE JEW army, ten times as many as the proportion between Jewish and Gentile Frenchmen would show to be owing to their country. On the great day of Waterloo Jewish blood dyed the Belgian plain — some shed for the honour of France and some for the glory of England, for be it known that not less than fifteen Jewish oflBcers served under Wellington at Waterloo, not to speak at all of the men in the ranks ; and when the opportune and decisive moment came, when the destiny of nations trembled in the balance, when the immortal words of the Iron Duke rang out like a clarion blast, *' Up, lads, and at them," there were heroes in whose veins coursed Jewish blood, ready to obey the command. At Waterloo fought Cornet Albert Goldsmid, who had two horses shot under him, and who afterwards rose to the distinguished rank of Major-General in the British service. Sir David Ximines and Sir Jacob Adolphus preceded Goldsmid in the rank of General, the latter holding the office of Inspector-General of hospitals ; before these was yet another Jew, Sir Alexander Schomberg, who distinguished himself in the British navy. AS BRITISH SOLDIERS To-day the adherents of Israel stand high in both the army and navy of Britain, and entrance into [82] JUSTICE TO THE JEW either of these departments certainly constitutes a supreme test of fitness, and moreover, a superlative test of patriotism. Not reckoning those of Jewish descent, but merely those of Jewish birth, there are at present about fifteen naval and marine officers, over forty oflScers of the regular army, twenty officers of militia, and ninety officers of volunteers, all ex- clusive of the Colonial officers in foreign possessions who have done gallant service for the mother country. In the late Boer war more than 2000 Jews fought on the side of England, but of course these figures are not given in the official returns, for the Jews in the British army, especially the rank and file, often conceal their religion for various reasons, and many of them, through policy, outwardly subscribe to the Church of England, but under the red uniforms of such Maranos beat hearts as faithful to every tenet of Israel as were those which followed the standards of Joshua or of David. In fact the Jew made a record very early in South Africa. In 1847 Captain Joshua Norden was the first Jew to fall in the warfare of the Dark Continent. The Jewish fatalities in the Boer war have never been compiled, but it is known that many of the race sacrificed their lives in the cam- paign. Colonel A. E. W. Goldsmid, chief of staff to General Kelly-Kenny at Aldershot, and of the Sixth [83] JUSTICE TO THE JEW Division under the same General, which cornered Cronje at Paardeburg, where two shots wounded his horse, a third smashed his water-bottle, and a fourth penetrated into his saddle-bag, and after organising transport columns, became Commandant at Naau- poort, and later on Inspector of the Western section of the Lines of Communication, is a Jew; Colonel Harris, who commanded that regiment of crack shots, the Kimberley Rifles, is a Jew ; Lieutenant F. N. Raphael, of the First South Lancashire Regiment, killed at Spion Kop while trying to rescue one of his own men badly wounded, was a Jew; Major W. D. Karri-Davis of the Imperial Light Horse and his partner. Woods, whom the Boers kept as prisoners for a long time because they reused to give their parole not to fight, were both Jews, Afterwards Karri-Davis was badly wounded at Ladysmith, and seven Jews fighting with him in the same engagement were killed. He had long been famous in the Trans- vaal ; the king conferred on him the decorations of Companion of the Order of the Bath and Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, two of the greatest marks of esteem he had in his power to bestow. Lord Roberts mentioned Karri-Davis in sev- eral dispatches for " distinguished bravery." Lieu- tenant Clive Behrens, son-in-law of the powerful [84] JUSTICE TO THE JEW banker, Rothschild, gallantly went to the front im- mediately after his marriage, to brave the bullets of the Boers and prove himself no feather-bed warrior. Another Jew who took a leading part in hostilities was Captain Alfred Brown, who joined Thorney- croft's Mounted Infantry. Captain J. W. Cohen, with his father, equipped the Thirteenth Middlesex Volunteer Rifles for service at their own expense. Captain E. C. Arnold, Seventh Battalion Royal Fusi- liers ; Captain Robinson and Captain Barret of the Welsh Yeomanry ; Captain Frielander of Kitchener's Fighting Scouts; Major Weil, Imperial Transport Service; Captain E. S. Goldschmidt; Lieutenant- Colonel F. P. Lousada, and Captain Claude L. Marks, are but a few of the names of the twenty-two captains, forty lieutenants, sixty-two second lieutenants, medi- cal officers, orderlies, nurses and men who fought and laboured for the " Union Jack " of Old Eng- land. In one regiment alone, and, by the way, one which did brilliant work throughout the campaign, — the Middlesex Yeomanry, — were three Jew brothers, viz., Sergeant Alfred A. Asher, Sergeant Michael Asher, and Private Henry Asher. No more striking testimony can be borne to the prominent part taken by the Jews in the South African war than the standing joke which was cur- L85J JUSTICE TO THE JEW rent in Australia at the time, which was, that Eng- land was drafting Cohentingents to fight the Boers. The Jews never more strikingly repudiated the calumny that they never could be patriots as long as they remained Jews. And yet despite all, the calumny still continued to circulate in England, and Jews were still being persecuted in London. A well- known gentleman, supporting the action of the mobs, in an address, said : " The Jews make money here in London. They share our prosperity, but they do not share our dangers. A Jew will cheerfully take a con- tract to supply the British army in Africa at a profit. What Jew would take up a gun or a sword on behalf of the nation that shelters him? What Jew has figured in England's wars.^* " It is incomprehensible that any Englishman of intelligence, with any claim to knowledge, could stultify himself in this manner. Of Jews in the British army and navy, there were serving in the year 1902, enrolled of their own free will, 120 in the Royal Navy, 550 in the regular army, 180 in the British Militia, 800 in the British Yeo- manry and Volunteers, 500 in the Colonial Militia and Volunteers. These figures, of course, are ex- clusive of those who pass as Christians and who amount to many hundreds more. Some of the best known British Hebrew oiOBcers [86] JUSTICE TO THE JEW to-day are Sir E. G. Barrow in the Indian service, and Sir M. Nathan, Governor and Commander-in- Chief of Hong Kong and its dependencies. AS SOLDIERS IN OTHER EUROPEAN COUNTRIES There are in the German army to-day over 6000 Jews. If the principle prevailed in that army of " equal rights for all," we would undoubtedly find as many qualified officers of the Jewish faith as exist in the other European countries. Count von Blumen- thal, one of the most distinguished strategists of modern Germany, was by birth and by inherited genius, a Jew. Count von Mossier, aide-de-cai7hp to the Emperor William, is a Jew both by birth and by faith. In the Hungarian Revolution 35,000 Israelites were drawn towards Kossuth, at whose hands they expected redemption from civil and political degradation. The Sultan of Turkey has gone on record as saying that there is not one of his Jewish subjects upon whom he could not rely in time of war. General Elias Pacha is not only an admiral in the Turkish navy, but the Sultan's private physician, being the first Hebrew to hold such high official rank. The Jews were not permitted to enter the Italian army until 1848. No soldier in Italy stood higher than the late Lieutcnant-Gcncral Giuseppe Otto- [87] JUSTICE TO THE JEW lenghi, a strict Jew, and King Humbert's Minister of War. In Italy fourteen per cent, of all Italian Jews are in the army, against eleven per cent, of the nationality of the country. Out of every five Jews serving in the King's army, one is an officer, against one in twelve in the Italian army as a whole. No Jewish soldier in the Roumanian army can be promoted to a commission, however brave and loyal he may be. Under the most adverse circumstances we hear oc- casionally of a Jew in the Russian army achieving distinction, like the late Heinrich Schapiro, whose services as a military surgeon in the Turko-Russian war, and other labours, brought him the reward of the title " Professor " at the St. Petersburg Military Medical School — a very rare honour for a Jew. There were 5000 Jews among the Russian troops in China. It is estimated that there were 15,000 He- brews fighting in the Russian army in Manchuria, and many of them died for the Czar. M. Trepov, Governor of Taurida, attending a memorial service at the synagogue in Theodosia, said to the congrega- tion : " In the ranks of the Russian army there are Hebrews, who, like the Russians, shed their blood and died for the fatherland. Many Hebrews have already distinguished themselves. Especially noteworthy is [88] JUSTICE TO THE JEW the heroic deed of the Hebrew musicians of the Eleventh Regiment, who during the fighting did not cease playing, and, when the chaplain of the regi- ment fell on being shot, assisted him until the regi- ment succeeded in breaking through the lines of the enemy and retreating. The Hebrew musicians thereby saved the chaplain and the regiment from certain disaster. Continue to bring up your children in this spirit and I shall be very glad if the rights of the Hebrews are more and more extended." Among the Jews who were promoted on the battle- field was a New York Hebrew, an engineer and archi- tect, M. Minifsky. After having been engaged by the Russian Government as architect at Irkutsk he was ordered to Tomsk ; the hated Jew was sent to build bridges and railroads ; he did his duty, and so credita- bly, that contrary to his expectations, he received high commendation for the remakable role he played. The absence of Hebrews from the Japanese army is to be accounted for by the fact that the Land of the Rising Sun does not permit any foreigner to take up arms in her defence. One would think that the facts mentioned, which might be multiplied indefinitely, and which speak volumes for the patriotism of the Jew, and serve an object lesson to the world of the success which waits [89] JUSTICE TO THE JEW upon a policy of wise toleration and justice, would make Jew-baiters blush, if shame were not dead. THE JEW AS AN AMERICAN SOLDIER That the Jew has also done his share in the Ameri- can army no one laying any claim to knowledge of American history can deny. From the very inception of that army he has played his part. At the begin- ning of the Revolutionary War there were in all about three thousand Jews on the North American conti- nent, but, as yet, they were far from having equal rights and privileges with their fellows. Some of the Colonies were most intolerant, and even after the war continued to discriminate against the Jews. In Maryland, as we have seen, down to 1825 no one could hold any office under the State Government without signing a declaration that he believed in the Chris- tian religion. So it will be readily inferred that Jews were, in most places, disbarred from military service, no matter how willing and anxious they may have been to do their duty to the country in which they had settled. Nevertheless more than fifty Jews fought for the patriotic side in the Revolutionary War, twenty- four of whom were officers, the names of two. Colonel Isaac Franks and Colonel David Salisbury Franks, being prominent in the cause. [90] JUSTICE TO THE JEW But if the Colonists did not desire the Jews as soldiers and disbarred them, in a great measure, from becoming such, thej did not disdain Jewish money to purchase the sinews of war, and only for Jewish money no successful war could have been waged by the patriots. When Robert Morris appealed for funds to wage the struggle, it was a Jew, Haym Salomon, who most generously responded. Salomon lived in Philadelphia, and had been the countryman and intimate associate of both Pulaski and Kosciusko. He immediately subscribed $300,000 to the cause, and in all gave $658,007.13, not a penny of which has ever been repaid to his heirs. Besides his contribu- tions, he supported delegates to Congress and officers of the army and of the Government with the means of defraying their ordinary expenses, among whom were Jefferson, Madison, Lee, Steuben, Mifflin, Sin- clair, Wilson Monroe, and Mercer. Was not such a man a patriot.'' It may be stated that Salomon was captured by the British, thrown into prison and died before he himself could take any steps to secure reimbursement for the wealth he had expended, leaving his wife and four small children in want. Haym Salomon was not the only Jew who sacrificed his fortune for Independence, for we find that, among [91] JUSTICE TO THE JEW the signers of the bills of credit for the Continental Congress in 1776, were Benjamin Levy of Philadel- phia and Benjamin Jacobs of New York. Samuel Lyon of New York was among the signers of similar bills in 1779. Isaac Moses of Philadelphia contributed $15,000 to the Colonial treasury, and Herman Levy, another Philadelphian, repeatedly advanced consider- able sums for the support of the army in the field. Manuel Mordecai Noah of South Carolina not only served in the army as an officer on Washington's staff, and likewise with General Marion, but gave $100,000 to further the cause in which he was enlisted. Cyrus Adler recently called attention to the follow- ing incident. His information was based on an un- published letter of Jared Sparks : " At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War a Mr. Gomez of New York proposed to a member of the Continental Congress that he form a company of soldiers for service. The member of Congress remonstrated with Mr. Gomez on the score of age, he then being sixty-eight, to which Mr, Gomez replied that he ' could stop a bullet as well as a 3'ounger man.' " Mordecai Sheftall was appointed Commissary- General of the troops of Georgia in 1777, and soon thereafter was also appointed Commissary to the Continental troops. When the British attacked Sa- [92] JUSTICE TO THE JEW vannah in 1778 Sheftall's name appears as one of the most patriotic of the defenders. He also con- tributed large sums of money. Major Benjamin Nones, a Jew of Bordeaux, France, served with signal success on the staffs of both Washington and Lafay- ette. He became Major of a legion of four hundred men composed largely of Jews, and fought in nearly every battle of Carolina. He was attached to Baron de Kalb's command, and when that splendid soldier fell, mortally wounded, it was Major Nones and his Jewish comrades, Captain Jacob de la Motta and Captain Jacob de Leon, who carried him off the field. Philip Moses Russell, in the spring of 1775, enlisted as a surgeon's mate under command of General Lee; after the British occupation of Philadelphia in Sep- tember, 1777, he became surgeon's mate to Surgeon Norman of the Second Virginia Regiment. Russell went into quarters with the army at Valley Forge, 1777-1778. Sickness forced him to resign in 1780. He received a commendation from Washington for " his assiduous and faithful attentions to the sick and wounded." Solomon Bush, Emanuel de la Motta, Benjamin Ezekiel, Jason Sampson, Jacob de la Motta, Aschcr Levy, Nathaniel Levy, David Hays and his son Jacob, Reuben Etting, Jacob J. Cohen, Major [93] JUSTICE TO THE JEW Lewis Bush, Aaron Benjamin, Isaac Israel, and Benjamin Moses, are names of some other Jews who distinguished themselves on the battlefields of the Revolution. Jews in the War of 1812 who fought for the infant Republic were Colonel Nathan Meyers, Captain Meyes Moses, Adjutant Isaac Meyers, Samuel Noah, Isaac Mertz, Benjamin Gratz, David Metzler, Judah Touro and many more of the old faith. Touro must not be passed with a mere mention of the name. After the Revolution he went to the French territory of Louisiana, settling at New Orleans (1802). During Andrew Jackson's memora- ble defence of that city after the territory had be- come part of the United States, Touro, who had amassed a great fortune and was numbered among the most prominent merchants of the place, entered the ranks as a common soldier and was severely wounded, being given up for dead. The commemora- tion of the first battlefield of the Revolutionary War was made possible through Touro, who, upon learning that Amos Lawrence of Boston had pledged to give $10,000 to complete the Bunker Hill monument, if any other person would be found who would give a like amount, sent his check for that sum. In the ^Mexican war of 1846 the men of Israel [94] JUSTICE TO THE JEW responded to the call and valiantly marched to the front. There were over sixty in line, a dozen being officers. General David de Leon twice was voted the thanks of the American Congress for ability and dar- ing. Surgeon-General Moses Albert Levy, Colonel Leon Dyer, Quartermaster-General under Winfield Scott, Lieutenant Henry Seligson, who was sent for by General Taylor and complimented for his bravery at Monterey, IMajor Alfred Mordecai, Sergeant Jacob Davis, Sergeant Samuel Henry, and Corporal Jacob Hirschborn are names of some others who proved their patriotism by service and sacrifice. IN THE REGULAR ARMY AND NAVY From the earliest period of the republic to the present time the Jew has been a conspicuous figure in our regular army and navy, and in every branch of the service he has made an honourable record. Major Alfred Mordecai is a recognised authority in the military world in the field of scientific research and in the practical application of mechanical deduc- tion to war uses. His son and namesake has been an instructor at the Military College of West Point. Three Jews rose high in the navy. Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy attained the rank of flag-officer, the highest in his day ; it was he who secured the [95] JUSTICE TO THE JEW abolition of corporal punishment; he died in 1862. Levi Myers advanced to a naval captaincy ; he was a man of much force of character, daring and ability ; he died in 1870. Adolf Marix, conspicuous for his bravery in the Spanish-American War, was the Judge- Advocate of the Maine Disaster Board of Inquiry. THE JEWS AS ABOUTIONISTS In the political movements for the abolition of slavery the Jews took a leading part in creating public opinion. As early as 1853 a fugitive negro, arrested by a United States marshal, was liberated by a crowd of citizens, led by Michael Greenbaum ; and, on the evening of the same day, a big meeting was held to ratify that act. The first official call to organise the abolition movement was signed by George Schneider, Adolph Loeb, Julius Rosenthal, Leopold Mayer, and a cigar-dealer named Hanson — four Jews among the five leaders of the German population of Chicago in a great political movement. In the columns of the New York Tribune, Michael Heilprin, who had previous to his coming to America shown his love of liberty as a member of Kossuth's civil staff during the Hungarian Revolution, vigor- ously exonerated the Old Testament from favouring [96] JUSTICE TO THE JEW slavery. Dr. Edward Moritz of the Philadelphia Demokrat ; Rabbi Samuel M. Isaacs, as preacher and editor of the Jemish Messenger; Rabbi Liebman Adler in Detroit; Dr. Horwitz in Cleveland, and Dr. Fel- senthal in Chicago, were sowing the seeds of liberty. Rabbi Sobati Morais, on account of his anti-slavery sentiments, was elected an honourary member of the Union League Club of Philadelphia, an honour shared with the Rev. Dr. David Einhorn, who, in 1856, came to pro-slavery Baltimore from Austria, where his tem- ple had been closed against him by the imperial government on account of his alleged revolutionary utterances. From the sacred desk of the Har Sinai Congregation, with fiery eloquence, and in his Sinai, a German monthly, in unanswerable arguments, Dr. Einhorn poured forth shot and shell from the Old Testament armory into the ranks of the advocates of slavery and the time-serving attitude of the churches, until driven out of the city and his return prohibited under martial law. Dr. Einhorn in Baltimore, and later in Philadel- phia, did as much as any man of his day to create the public sentiment which shivered that colossal iniquity. In New York, Judge Philip J. Joachimsen, as As- sistant United States District Attorney, vigorously prosecuted certain slave-dealers. Moritz Pinner, on [97] JUSTICE TO THE JEW January 1, 1859, began the issue of an abolitionist paper, the Kansas Post, at Kansas City. As delegate to the National Republican Convention, he, with other Jews, like Judge Dittenhoefer of New York, worked earnestly among the Germans for the nomi- nation of Abraham Lincoln. At the battle of " Black Jack " in Kansas, June 2, 1856, among the fourteen indifferently armed " Free State " men under Captain John Brown's leadership, were two Jews — Theodore Wiener and August Bondi. The fourteen men fought for four hours seventy- five pro-slavery border ruffians, armed with United States guns. This was the first clash between the North and South. JEWS IN THE CIVIL WAR It was left for the Civil War to bring out the quali- ties of the Jew as a genuine soldier, as one whom no terrors could daunt, no dangers intimidate, no suf- ferings weaken, an automaton of flesh and bone im- pervious to fatigue and hunger. The Civil War tried the souls of men as well as their bodies, yet the Jew did not shrink. When Lincoln called for volunteers the sons of Israel rushed to don the blue and followed the flag to death or victory. Great numbers were also in the ranks of the Confederacy, a fact which stifles [98] JUSTICE TO THE JEW the calumny that the Jew when he does fight has no heart m the struggle, but merely fights perfunctorily and with no object in view. For the time being, Judaism was forgotten and the Jew in Blue faced the Jew in Gray with a deadly earnestness, each be- lieving heart and soul in the cause for which he had unsheathed his sword. " Stonewall " Jackson and Robert E. Lee gallantly fought for the " Lost Cause," and though they were defeated, they were not conquered, and of all the brave sons of the South who fought and bled beneath their lead- ship, none put up a more stubborn fight than the Jewish Confederates. In the Northern army there were seven Jews who received medals at the hands of Lincoln himself for surpassing bravery on the field. In the great struggle on both sides upwards of 8000 Jews took part, although there were but 150,000 Jews in all the country at the time. There were 11 naval officers, 40 staff officers, 9 generals, 18 colonels, 8 lieutenant-colonels, 40 majors, 205 captains, 325 lieutenants, 48 adjutants, and 25 surgeons. There was also one Jewish chaplain, the Rev. Jacob Frankel. The highest-ranking Jewish officer was Brevet-Major- General Frederick Knefler of Indianapolis. So many played conspicuous parts in the conflict that it is no [99] JUSTICE TO THE JEW easy task to pick out the most prominent names. Mjer Asch, Nathan D. Menken, and Louis H. Meyer served on the staff of General Pope ; Dr. Morris Asch on the staff of General Sheridan; Major Lully, who had served on Kossuth's staff in the Hungarian Revo- lution, rendered valuable service under the direction of the Secretary of War ; Captain Dessauer and New- man Borchard served on the staff of General Howard — the former was killed at Chancellorsville ; Max Cornheim and M. Szegley served on the staff of General Sigel. Jewish staff officers on the Confederate side were equally prominent. North Carolina sent six Cohen brothers ; South Carolina five Moses brothers ; Georgia, Raphael Moses and his three sons, while yet another Moses brother came from Alabama. Arkan- sas furnished three Cohen brothers ; Virginia sent out three Levy brothers ; Louisiana, three brothers also Levys ; while a trio of Goldsmiths went forth from the South, two from Georgia and one from South Carolina ; Mississippi sent five Jonas brothers, Ed- ward fighting in the Fiftieth Illinois against his four Confederate brothers, one of whom was Benjamin F. Jonas, former United States Senator from Louisiana. On the Union side New York alone furnished 1996 soldiers, among them the five Wenk brothers, Colonel Simon Levy and his three sons — Captain Ben- [100] JUSTICE TO THE JEW jamin C, Lieutenant Alfred, and Captain Ferdinand. From Ohio, which furnished 1004, were three Koch brothers, and Pennsylvania, among 527, had three Emanuel brothers, and so fourteen Jewish families furnished fifty-three men to both armies in the con- flict. Among the distinguished officers may be men- tioned, next to Knefler, Edward Solomon, Colonel of the Eighty-second Illinois Volunteer Infantry, who fought in six battles of the campaign and was brevetted Brigadier-General ; Leopold Blumenberg, a Baltimore merchant who left his business and organ- ised the Fifth Regiment of Maryland Infantry and fought at Antietam ; he too was brevetted Brigadier- General; Philip J. Joachimsen, who organised and commanded the Fifty-ninth New York Volunteer Regiment, in recognition for his services Governor Fenton of New York appointed him Brevet-Brigadier- General ; Colonel Marcus Spiegel of the One Hundred and Twentieth Ohio Infantry ; Max Einstein, Colonel of the Twenty-seventh Regiment of Pennsylvania Vol- unteers ; Colonel Max Freedman of the Fifth Penn- sylvania Cavalry ; Lieutenant-Colonel Israel Moses of Sickles' Brigade; Isaac Moses, Adjutant-General of the Third Army Corps of the Army of the Potomac ; Colonel H. A. Seligson of Vermont ; Lieutenant- [101] JUSTICE TO THE JEW Colonel Leopold C. Newman, to whose dying bed President Lincoln brought his commission promoting him to the rank of Brigadier-General ; Colonel Ansel Hamberg of the Twelfth Pennsylvania Infantry ; Abraham Hart, Brigade-Adjutant-General of the Seventy-third Pennsylvania Infantry ; Elias Leon Hyneman of the Fifth Pennsylvania Cavalry ; Cap- tain Joseph B. Greenhut ; Lieutenant Max Sachs, who was killed at Bowling Green ; Colonel Newbold of the Fourteenth Iowa, killed at Red River ; Adolph A. Mayer, Inspector-General by special appointment of President Lincoln, transferred from New Mexico to Pennsylvania ; David Manheim, Colonel First Cav- alry ; Herman Bendell, Surgeon Eighty-sixth New York Infantry ; Adjutant Abraham Cohen of New Hampshire ; Captain A. Goldman of Maine ; Sergeant Leopold Karpelles of Massachusetts ; Sergeant- Major Alexander Appel of Iowa; David A. Brauski ; Henry Heller, Abraham Gumwalt and Isaac Gans of Ohio — were all brave and daring soldiers who did their duty well by their country and reflected honour on the race from which they had sprung. IN THE WAR WITH SPAIN In the late war with Spain no nationality displayed greater heroism. It is said that the first volunteer to [ 103 ] JUSTICE TO THE JEW answer McKinley's call was a Jew, and also that the first to fall in the skirmish was also a Jew. It is well known that the Jews served both in the army and navy in numbers far beyond their numerical propor- tion to the population, while the much-maligned Rus- sian Jews furnished more than double their share of volunteers. In the army were 32 officers ; in tlie navy 27, while the non-commissioned men amounted to 2451 in the army and 42 in the navy, but we may be sure that the total aggregate of Jews that took part in the conflict on land and water exceeded by far this number, as many enlisted concealing their identities as Jews. Indeed it is safe to say that there were fully 5000 men of the Jewish faith in the Span- ish War, for the records of the Department show that over 4000 furloughs were granted to soldiers for the purpose of celebrating the feasts of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Seven Jews made the dash up San Juan with Roose- velt, some were behind the guns of Dewey at Ma- nila, and of the land forces of the Philippines the first man to fall in the attack of Manila was Sergeant Maurice Justh of the First California Volunteers, a regiment which numbered no less than one hundred Jews, Among the ninety-nine men of the Astor Battery ten were Jews. There was not a single en- [103] JUSTICE TO THE JEW gagement during the whole war in Cuba, Porlo Rico, or the Phihppines in which Jews did not fight as bravely as they did at Leipzic and Waterloo ; under Kossuth and Garibaldi ; before Sebastopol, Sadowa, and Sedan. On the battlefields of Europe and America the Jew has certainly shown by his coolness, courage, and daring, that he is a soldier inferior to none, but superior to many, and has proved his patriotism by offering his life as a sacrifice on the altar of the country that gives a home to himself and his race. [ 104] WHAT THE JEW HAS DONE FOR THE WORLD If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one per cent, of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puflF of star-dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contribu- tions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvellous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Baby- lonian, and the Persian arose, filled the planet with sound and splendour, then faded to dreamstulf and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twi- light now or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew, all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality? — Mabk TwAiK, " Concerning the Jews." IV WHAT THE JEW HAS DONE FOR THE WORLD From the days of Abraham, or almost for the past four thousand years, the Israelites have kept to them- selves as a distinct race, preserving their own identity, adhering to every tenet of their religion, retaining every trait of character and jealously guarding every product which they deemed to be theirs. They have presented to the world a unity which no other people has been able to show. Though scattered throughout all lands from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof, the children of Zion are one to-day in blood, in instinct, in faith, and in fidelity to their race. Time or place makes no difference; the Jews of the present, whether on the snow-clad wastes of the Arctic, under the genial skies of the Temperate or beneath the burning suns of the Torrid, are as much Jews in heart and soul, in thought and tem- perament, in manner and voice, and even in physical appearance as were the far-off ancestors whom Moses [107] JUSTICE TO THE JEW led from the vale of bondage back to the verge of the Promised Land. All other nations change — they rise, flourish, and decay ; but the Jews without a country remain sta- tionary, the same to-day as in the ages that have passed and gone forever. They have seen the proud dynasties of history crumble in the dust, they have seen victorious hosts returning from their conquests, they have seen civilisation in its swaddling clothes, and have watched it grow to a lusty youngster and develop into a full-fledged maturity ; the world has grown old as they have looked on, yet here they are as pristine in their vigour, as robust in their manhood, as strong in their faith, as true to their racial char- acteristics as they were in the long gone days when the earth was young. Yet with all their unity of race and faith and pur- pose, there has been no people more cosmopolitan. Without losing a single traitj they have amalgamated with all nations and adapted themselves to every en- vironment, taking active part in the political, social, and intellectual life of their surroundings. Keeping true to themselves and their traditions, throughout every phase and under all circumstances, nevertheless, they have laboured faithfully and well for the common interests of all with whom their lot [108] JUSTICE TO THE JEW was cast, irrespective of all considerations of race or creed. The Jew has been ever a worker and has cheerfully contributed the best that was in him to the community and country of his adoption. The debt that the world owes to the Jew is no small one, and time will never be able to repay even the principal to the race. Up to the present the only interest they have received has been contumely, insults, buffetings, and perse- cution, but unmindful of all, they have still persevered and done their duty to the world as men and as citizens. We cannot realise all that the Jews have done for civilisation and progress and enlightenment until we imagine their work taken away and view the vacuum that would be left. Science would become bald and ragged, some of the brightest jewels would drop from the crown of Literature and the fairest garments would be shed from the shoulders of Art. THE JEWS AS ASTRONOMERS In the earliest ages the Jews were interested in astronomy ; when tending their flocks on the hills of Judea, they would watch the sun in his diurnal motion from the time he rose in the Orient until he set in the Occident, and they would note the different seasons of [109] JUSTICE TO THE JEW the changing year as measured by the relative posi- tion of the earth to the heavenly bodies. At night when the stars came out one by one and studded the infinite fields of heaven like sparkling diamonds on a canopy of blue, these black-bearded men of a deeply religious nature and strong faith were struck with awe, and they bowed down in adoration before the wonders of the mighty Jehovah. From the beginning the Jews connected the stars with their religion and regulated the feasts and festivals in accordance with their movements, which they closely observed until they could with certainty tell the period of their revolutions. A great value was put upon astronomical knowledge, and those who were able to read the riddle of the stars were held in respect and reverence. Johanan ben Zakkai, a Palestinian tanna of the second century of the era, and who was called " Kab- bah " (the Great), knew, among other sciences, astronomy to a very high degree; he was the first to master a knowledge of the solstices and the calen- dar and had the ability to compute the orbits of the sun and other planets. The importance attached to the science of as- tronomy may be gathered from the words of an early writer who declared that, " to him who can compute [110] JUSTICE TO THE JEW the course of the sun and the revolution of the planets and neglects to do so, may be applied the words of the prophet (Isaiah v. 12), * They regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operation of His hands.' " The Jews, however, at this time were not as far advanced in astronomical knowledge as the Baby- lonians, and the first real observations were not made until the year 250 of their era, when Samuel, who had learned in the Babylonian schools, measured the heavens and claimed to possess as exact a knowledge of the starry regions as he had of the streets of his own city, Nehardea. As to the movement of the stars round the earth, of course the Talmud subscribes to the geocentric world conception, as did all astronomers before the time of Copernicus. After the first period, great strides were made in the knowledge of the heavenly bodies and their move- ments, and soon the Jews turned their attention to the compilation of Tables. In 830 Sind ben Ali, under the patronage of the Sultan, IMaimum, compiled a series of very valuable astronomical tables and data. In 1080 twelve Jews had a part in drawing up the Toledo tables under the direction of Ahman ibn Zaid, and the famous tables of Pedro IV. were also com- [111] JUSTICE TO THE JEW piled by Jews. In the year 1357 (Heg. 750) Joseph ibn Wakkar still improved the aforementioned tables. Others who assisted materially in table-making for astronomical observations were Mordecai Comtino, Mattathia Delacrut, Farissol Botarel, Abraham ibn Ezra, Jacob ben Makir, Emanuel ben Jacob, Jacob ben David ben Yom-Tob Poel, Solomon ben Elijah, and Abraham Zacuto. However, the earliest Jew to treat the science sys- tematically was Abraham bar Hiyya, who wrote at Marseilles, 1134. Levi ben Gerson, in his " Wars of the Lord," laid down a new astronomy different from the conceived idea. In Europe the chief Jewish name connected with astronomy after the Renaissance is that of David Gans, of Prague, who died in 1613. Gans knew the Copernican system, but stuck to that of Ptolemy. He corresponded with Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and Regiomontanus. The modern epoch of Jewish astronomy is headed by Sir William Herschel, who far eclipsed any of his predecessors. He made a systematic survey of the heavens, catalogued the nebulas and clusters, and crowned all with the great exploit of discovering Uranus, the most distant planet in our system. He [112] JUSTICE TO THE JEW was ably assisted by his sister, Caroline Herschel, who had also a wide knowledge of the science. Sir John Frederick William Herschel, son of Sir William, also contributed much to the advancement of astronomical knowledge. Other Jews who distinguished themselves in this field during the nineteenth century were W. Beer (1797-1850), brother of the famous composer, Meyerbeer, and who was the first man to draw a map of the moon; H. Goldschmidt (1802-1866), who dis- covered no less than fourteen asteroids, and the late Morris Loewy, director of the Paris Observatory, who invented the elbow telescope, by which the stars can be studied without bending the neck or back. AS MATHEMATICIANS The necessity of studying astronomy for calendric purposes made the Jews cultivate different branches of mathematics, especially geometry and arithmetic. The terms " bigon," " trigon," " tetragon," and " pentagon," as distinguishing figures with two, three, four, and five angles, occur several times in the Talmud. The ancient Jews were acquainted with the properties of the circle, and had definitely correct the ratio between circumference and diameter — 3 1-7 to 1. But although in the Talmudic times there was much [ 113 ] JUSTICE TO THE JEW mathematical knowledge, there was no work on the subject until the Judaeo-Arabic period, to which belongs the " Mishnat Middot," the oldest mathemati- cal work in Hebrew, and which was an attempt at propounding the elements of geometry. It was first published in Berlin in 1864. No other works on mathematics were written in Hebrew until the twelfth century, but the great Jewish astrologer, Ma Sha Allah, wrote a treatise on the subject at the begin- ning of the ninth century in Arabic, as did also his contemporary, Abu Othman Sahl ibn Bishr ibn Habib ibn Hani, dealing chiefly with algebra. A Jewish con- vert to Islam, Sind ben Ali wrote a commentary on the elements of Euclid. A work published in 1895 by the Mekize Nirdamin Society was a geometry written by Abraham bar Hiyya ha-Nasi in the tenth century, entitled " Hibbur ha-Meshihah weha-Tishboret." In 1278 Euclid's elements were translated from the Arabic by Moses ibn Tippon, and he was followed by more than a hundred Jewish commetators on Euclid. The works of " the father of geometry " were first published by Abraham ben Joseph Minz in Berlin, 1795, under the title of " Reshit Limmudim hu Sefer Iklides." In the thirteenth century Jacob ben Machir translated from Arabic the work on spherical figures of the Alexandrian mathematician, Menelaus. In the [114] JUSTICE TO THE JEW sixteenth century David Gans, already mentioned, wrote three learned treatises on mathematics. In the seventeenth century Joseph Delmedigo wrote on ge- ometry, trigonometry, and algebra. The most noted Jew mathematician in the eighteenth century was Elijah Wilna, who compiled works on geometry, alge- bra, and astronomy, and touched upon almost all branches of the science. During the last century many works on different branches of mathematics were published by Hebrews. Sylvester especially is highly distinguished in the field of algebra. Jacobi (1804-1851), the German geometrician, gave his name to certain functions. Cremona Filipowski, Ter- quem, Maurice Levy, Gompertz, Bendavid, Blum, Kronecker, and Cantor are European Jews who gained high places as mathematicians among modern scholars. The foremost living authority on the theory of numbers is Minkowski. Pasch has made important geometrical investigations on complexes, Prinsheim on the theory of functions, and Schlesinger on dif- ferential equations. Schwarzchild, director of the Ob- servatory at Gottingen, has added much to the knowl- edge of mathematical astronomy. Weingart is the foremost living authority on the theory of surfaces. Italian Jews have made famous records, especially in the domain of analytic and synthetic geometry, [115] JUSTICE TO THE JEW notable among them being Castebiuovo, Enriquez, Fano, Jung, Beppo Levy, Levi-Civita, Segre, Loria, and Volterra. Russian Jews have not lagged behind in the same domain. Schapiro is known to scholars the world over for his co-functions and algebraic iteration, and Slonimski as the inventor of a counting-machine, be- sides being the editor of Jewish calendars. AS INVENTORS As inventors Jews have manifested mechanical genius of a high order whenever an opportunity was given them for a display of talent in this direction. They were cunning artisans at the very earliest period in their history, showing much skill in metal-working, as well as in wood-carving and stone sculpture. They invented very ingenious tools which enabled them to excel in many handicrafts and trades. For gold- smelting and refining they had a pot called the " kur," of a peculiar shape, by which the pure metal could be very easily separated from the ore or any alloy with which it was associated. When refined they could chase and emboss it to a high degree of perfection in art. Even though the time of which we speak was primitive the Jews had made a wonderful progress [116] JUSTICE TO THE JEW as farmers and tillers of the soil, and in order to expedite their work in this direction invented divers kinds of implements and machinery which served their purposes equally as well as the boasted inventions of modern time serve us. They had ploughs, harrows, threshers, and winnowing devices, and for the pur- pose of transit made comfortable seats which they slung over the sides of the oxen and tied by a series of straps in such a position that it was impossible for the animals to discard their riders. Oxen were the beasts of burden used for all occasions. They were strong and with kind usage became exceedingly tractable. For the weaving of textile fabrics and for em- broideries, the ancient Jews had curious looms which turned out the finished product in a way which would baffle the genius of modern mechanism. This ancient weaving is a lost Art, buried in the centuries of time. After they had lost their individuality as a distinct nation, the inventive faculty of the Jews lay dormant for a long period, and during the weary wanderings and the series of persecutions to which they were sub- jected, there was but little encouragement to arouse it from the torpor into which it had fallen, but at length the march of modern necessity awoke it from its slumber, and despite the many obstacles in the [117] JUSTICE TO THE JEW way, it has enabled the Jew to give a good account of himself in the world of invention. Richard Lie- briech, an ophthalmologist, invented the eye-mirror which has done excellent service for the profession and was the forerunner of many devices along similar lines. Abraham Stern, a Polish Jew, was among the greatest inventors of Europe in the early part of the nineteenth century. He was born at Lublin, 1769, and died at Warsaw, 1842. In 1817 he perfected a device for calculating the square root of numbers, which attracted wide attention ; he next invented a topographical wagon for the measurement of level- surfaces, an invention which proved of valuable as- sistance to civil and military engineers. He also turned his faculties to the improvement of agricul- tural machinery, and designed threshers, harvesters, and other implements and machines for the farm, with the result that manual labour was brought to a discount. The sickle Stern invented came into general use all over Europe. In addition to all these, he showed his fertile genius in a device by which the danger of runaways became eliminated by means of a detachable tongue and brake. Besides being an in- ventor, Stern was a poet of high merit. A. Bernstein (1812-1884) patented an invention [118] JUSTICE TO THE JEW by which two distinct telegraph messages could be sent over one wire at the same time. He also invented an automatically closing gate for railway crossings which, had it been universally put into operation, would have saved hundreds of lives. Slonimski, the Russian Jew already mentioned as the inventor of a calculating machine, discovered a chemical process for plating iron vessels with lead, and also brought out an electro-chemical device for sending quadruple tele- grams. On this the late Lord Kelvin (Sir William Thomson) based his system of multiple telegraphy. Slonimski was one of the greatest scholars and writers of his age. Emile Berliner invented the loose-contact telephone transmitter or microphone, now universally employed, and he also has given us the gramaphone. In the Patent Office at Washington are hundreds of Jewish names, showing that the freedom of America has been conducive in bringing out the in- ventive genius of the race and fostering it into a good fruition. AS DISCOVERERS AND EXPLORERS The civilisation of the world has been much bene- fited by the hardy daring of the Jew in opening up unknown lands for the pioneers of progress. In various ways members of the race have contributed [119] JUSTICE TO THE JEW to the advancement of geographical science. Ben- jamin of Tudela was the chief traveller of the Middle Ages. He explored almost the whole world of his time, in the eight years from 1165 to 1173. His book, " Iter Benjaminum," has been translated into nearly every European language. Pethahiah of Regensburg was a contemporary of Benjamin, and travelled from Poland to Bagdad and Jerusalem and back through Greece and Bohemia. In 1306, after the expulsion of the Jews from France, one of their number, Estori Frahi, travelled over Spain and thence to Egypt and Palestine, gathering much geographical knowledge of those countries. We have seen that the Jews in the fifteenth century very materially helped Columbus in the discovery of America. A Jew named Jehonadab, of Morocco, explored the whole northern part of Africa, and in his travels ac- quired twenty-eight languages and dialects. Antonio de Montesinos penetrated into the wilds of South America, and on his return claimed to have discovered there the lost Ten Tribes of Israel. During the past century the Jews came well to the front as explorers. Joseph Wolf went into hitherto unknown Bokliara. Nathaniel Isaacs travelled over Zululand and Natal, and C. S. Pollack braved the [120] JUSTICE TO THE JEW dangers of far-off New Zealand. W. G. Palgrave gave an interesting account of Arabia, Arminius Vamberj told of his experiences in Central Asia, Captain Binger discovered the bend of the Niger, and Captain Foa wandered from South to North Africa. Angelo Heilprin, Israels, and Bessel were among the daring spirits that made a dash for the Pole. Emin Pasha (Schnitzler), (1840-1893), Gus- tav Oppert, the German explorer, and Ed. Glaser, the Arabist, are a few names of Hebrews who in re- cent years won distinction as discoverers. THE JEW IN MEDICINE The Jew in the professions occupies such a large space that to individualise would be a presumption and an injustice as well, for the risk is that the least deserving might be favoured at the expense of those of the best merit, yet there are some who cannot be passed, and their names will be the only excuse for giving them mention here. In medicine alone the Jew has a record from a time which by far antedates ^sculapius down to the great physicians and surgeons of his race who are blessing and benefiting the world at the present time by their knowledge and skill. Perhaps the great number of doctors to be found in all ages and all countries [121] JUSTICE TO THE JEW among the children of Israel may be accounted for by the fact that those who minister to the health of their fellows are looked upon by the rest of the race as the messengers of God and the executors of His will. " I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal," said the Lord through His servant, Moses (Deut. xxxii. 39). In ancient times the art of heal- ing was transmitted from father to son, and was deemed a part of the religion. All the Rabbis were skilled in pathology, and they were the very first to recognise that the symptoms of all diseases are out- ward signs of internal changes in the tissue. Besides pathology and medicine, the ancient Jews devoted much time to the art of surgery, in which they became highly proficient, and even at that early day they had anaesthetics to deaden the pain of operations, but strange as it may seem, with a race which has preserved every vestige and trace and tradition and manner and custom of its progenitors, the secret of the anaesthesia of the old Semitic surgeons was lost through the ages, and though an American has dis- covered an effective pain-killer, it is safe to say that its components differ much from those used in Tal- mudic times, and that it is of inferior efficacy. The Jewish physicians, too, were all well skilled in the use of anodynes. The surgeons were strong advo- [122] JUSTICE TO THE JEW cates of venesection, going the length of teaching that all normal individuals to keep in health should be bled once a month, and we know that this doctrine of theirs came down to recent date in the form of what has been known as " cupping " or blood-letting, and is even practised to this day. The old Jews also bled by leeches the same as modern surgeons. In setting bones they were most skilful and could even trephine the skull, and it is also interesting to know that these primitive surgeons of a far-off time were splendid dentists ; they extracted teeth pain- lessly and inserted false ones, made out of gold or silver, with an adeptness and skill that could make a modern disciple of the art grow green with envy. For this work, as for all kinds of surgery, they had as delicate and perfect instruments as any of the present time. In fact the ancient Jews were experts in all kinds of surgery, and, it may be stated, per- formed the so-called Caesarean operation — cutting the foetus from the side — a thousand years before the great Roman came into the world in that manner. As to circumcision, it is distinctly a Jewish rite, but not exclusively Jewish, for it was practised in Arabia and all over Ethopia, and it is interesting to note that the custom has prevailed among savages, who possibly could never have heard of the Jews, nor [123] JUSTICE TO THE JEW much less have had any communication with them. From the earUest explorations in Africa it was found a common practice with the black man, and the aborigines of Australia performed it long before Van Dieman or Tasman or old Dirk Hartog set eyes on the Southern continent. Therefore, the question may be asked, how did the rite or custom originate among these savages? Probably in the self-same way as among the Jews, viz., Nature taught it to them for utilitarian purposes, though it is claimed that it was not on these grounds that it was practised among the Jews. The latter regarded it both as a consecra- tion to God and also as a sacrifice. The Book of Jubilees (xv. 26-27) says: "Whosoever is uncircum- cised belongs to the sons of Belial, to the children of doom and eternal perdition. . . . God's anger will be kindled against the children of the Covenant, if they make the members of their body appear like those of the Gentiles, and they will be expelled and exterminated from the earth." The proselytes who were brought over to the Abra- hamic faith had to undergo circumcision before being admitted to the fold. No matter what its origin, whether utilitarian or religious, the custom has survived through the ages, and that it is a good one from a hygienic standpoint [134] JUSTICE TO THE JEW there can be no doubt. Modern surgery has recognised the good that is in it, the best physicians advise the operation, cleanHness demands it, so that in the progress of civilisation, it may become an universal custom among all peoples. The uncircumcised are most liable to suffer from phimosis, which is a most annoying condition resulting from the pus secreted between the prepuce and the glans, and which, in re- turn, gives rise to many serious diseases, even epilepsy and insanity. Not alone was the early Jew distinguished in sur- gery, but he had a good knowledge also of materia medica. He was a man who liked to wrest the secrets of Nature from her, and therefore he diligently studied in Nature's great book. He acquired much from the study of plants and herbs, so that it may be said he had a pharmacopoeia of his own in the early days before the schools of Greece or Rome taught the healing art or understood even the func- tions of the human body. The persecutions of the Jews under Honorius (404-419) gave a great setback to medicine, for, apart from the physical suffering, they were, in ad- dition, deprived of the right to study or practise either medicine or surgery. But with the spread of Mohammedanism a favourable period dawned for the [125] JUSTICE TO THE JEW Israelites, and they were allowed again to take up the study of medicine and surgery. Great doctors arose among them — Abu Hafsah Yazzid (643), physician to Mohammed's successor, the Caliph Omar ; Masar- jawaih (Messer Jawait) (883), another royal phy- sician, who translated into Arabic a work on plant life and foods; Ishak ben Amram (799), who wrote a work on toxicology ; the great Haroun al Raschid (786-809), founder of the University and Medical Schools of Bagdad; the renowned Maimonides (1135- 1205), who went from Spain to Egypt and became Court physician to the Sultan Saladin, and who had five descendants who also held the office of nagid. The pupils of this famous physician were renowned for knowledge and skill and reflected much credit upon his teaching; Ibn Zakariyya (1190), physician to the Mongol Khan, Arghun, and who was killed because he could not cure his master of an incurable malady ; Haroun al Raschid's son, the Caliph Mamun, founder of the University of Bassora, and Ephraim ibn Alf- zaran, who had also been a physician to the Sultan Saladin. After the fourteenth century the Jewish doctors scattered westwards, following in the wake of the conquering armies of Arabia. They travelled over Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Spain, Italy, Germany, [126] JUSTICE TO THE JEW France, and even England. The Spanish doctors be- came the best known, but in 1412 John II. issued an edict forbidding them to practise in that country, and so they were compelled to cross over the border and join their French brethren. Among the names which stand out pre-eminently in the profession at this time are those of Jacob Lunel, Nathan Touros, Hayyim Bendig, Simon Mordecai, and Cohen of Marseilles. From France many distinguished men passed over to Belgium and there founded medical schools from which came numbers of distinguished students. In Germany Jewish doctors had also a good stand- ing, though the Universities of the country were then closed against them. There were Jacob of Stras- bourg, who practised at Frankfort (1378), Barusch (1390), Solomon Pletsch of Ratisbon (1394), Isaac Friedrich, Speyer, and Lembelin ; at Wurzburg there was Seligman (1407), physician to Bishop John I., whose successor, John II., permitted a Jewish woman, Sarah, to practise medicine in his diocese, the pioneer feminine ^sculapian in Germany ; another Jewess named Zerlin in 1745 was an oculist at Frankfort-on- the-Main. Many others of the ancient race achieved fame in the medical field in Germany, but at the be- ginning of the sixteenth century hostilities broke out against Jewish physicians and surgeons, and for a [ 137 ] JUSTICE TO THE JEW long time they suffered in silence and resignation. Although they were openly denounced and denied the rights of their Christian fellow men, in secret they were regarded as able exponents of their profession, and this was true, not alone of Germany, but of other countries that were openly hostile to them. While they were looked down upon on account of their faith, they were looked up to for learning and skill. While many of the Popes were fulminating against them and issuing condemnatory " bulls," they them- selves would allow none but Jewish physicians and surgeons to attend to the ills of their bodies. Some of the Jewish doctors came over to Christianity, the most notable of these being Josiah Lorki of Spain, physician to Benedict XIII. ; this man became the most rabid persecutor of his former co-religionists in the profession, so that he received the nickname of " The Calumniator." Other Jewish physicians to the Popes were Isaac Zaarfati, attendant of Clement VII., Giacomo Mantini, of Paul III., Grosefonti Zaar- fati, of Julius II. As attendants on royal sovereigns, Don Judah ben Moses Cohen served Alfonso X., sur- named " the Wise," of Navarra, Joseph Orabuena, Charles III., Meier Alguades, Don Henry III. of Castile; in Germany, Jacob ben Jechiel Loans, Fred- erick III. ; Benjamin Musafia, King Christian IV. of [ 128] JUSTICE TO THE JEW Denmark ; and Elias Montalto, Maria de Medici., Francis II. of France refused to employ Christian physicians, and when on sending to Spain for a Jew- ish physician he could not obtain any from there, he sent to Constantinople. Farragut was court phys- ician to Charlemagne. Maimonides was physician to Saladin and refused the invitation to be court phys- ician to Richard Coeur de Lion. Rodrigo Lopez was court physician to Queen Elizabeth. There was a time indeed when the Jews held the lives of royal Europe in their hands. Coming down to our own times we find that the Jews distinguished themselves in every realm of medi- cine and surgery during the nineteenth century, as anatomists, physiologists, microscopists, embryolo- gists, pathologists, clinicians, gynaecologists, phar- macologists, aurists, ophthalmologists, laryngolog- ists, dermatologists, neuropathists, osteopathists, psychiatrists, electrotherapists, hygienists, balneolog- ists, and biologists in general. Just a few out of hun- dreds of the leaders may be mentioned ; Bernhard van Oven, London (1787-1860); Martin Steinthal, Ber- lin (1798-1892); Raphael Kosch, Berlin (1803- 1872) ; Maximilian Heine, brother to the famous poet, St. Petersburg (1805-1879) ; Isaac A. Frank- lin, London (1812-1880); Ludwig Traube, Berlin, [139] JUSTICE TO THE JEW (1818-1876), great as clinician, famous as teacher, and whose essays were epoch-making ; Jacob Eduard Polak, Vienna (1819-1891); Ernest Abraham Hart, London (1836-1898) ; Freidrich Gustav Jacob Henle, Gottingen (1809-1885); Jacob Herz, Erlangen (1816-1871); (to this doctor has been erected one of the three monuments allowed to be dedicated to Jews in Germany) ; Seigmund Spitzer, physician to the Sultan, Constantinople (1839-1894) ; Moritz SchifF, Geneva (1823-1896) ; Ludwig Traube, father of experimental pathology, Berlin (1818-1876); Michelangelo Asson, Venice (1802-1877); Michael Levy, Paris (1809-1872) ; and Ludwig Lewin Jacob- son, Copenhagen (1783-1843). O. M. E. Liebreich discovered in 1869, among other new remedies, the use of the narcotic effect of chloral hydrate. Sem- melweis first discovered the true cause of puerperal infection (child-bed fever). In the United States of America Jews have well sustained the reputation of the profession. Jacob Lumbrozo was the first Israelite to practise medicine ; he located in the State of Maryland as far back as 1639. Others followed from time to time, coming from almost every European country. At the present time in some of the towns and cities, Jewish doctors are in the majority. During recent years the race has [130] JUSTICE TO THE JEW been represented by such men as Mark Blumenthal, David A. D'Ancona, Max Rosenthal, J. F. Scham- berg, C. D. Spivak, Albert Abrams, Isaac Adler, Nathan Jacobson, M. D. Lederman, Solomon da Silva SoHs-Cohen, Joseph Frankel, and Jacques Loeb. It may be stated that Jews also came well to the front as dentists in America, the best known in this branch being Leopold Greenbaum and John I. Hart. At the present day the Jewish physicians and surgeons oc- cupy a commanding position as to numbers and skill, both in Europe and America, but discrimination pre- vents the mention of names. IN THE LAW As to law, it would almost serve our purpose to say that the Jew is a born lawyer. He springs from a nation of law-makers and law-givers, and as such law may be said to be flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone. To him the " Torah " is part of his life, as necessary to being as air and water. He subscribes to all the teachings of his faith as laid down in Talmudic form ; this is the codal and ceremonial law, and as the civil law is based upon this, it is to be expected that the Jew is more or less acquainted with his duties towards the comnmnity in which his lot is cast. No one can deny that as a man the Jew is [131] JUSTICE TO THE JEW a law-abiding citizen and very seldom breaks the laws of the country of his adoption ; in fact, as long as he keeps true to his faith and the traditions of his ancestors, he does not break them at all; it is only when he mixes with aliens and imbibes their vices and imitates their manners and customs that he falls away from a righteous living and infringes the statutes of his country. In many lands he helps to make the laws and sustain them. He is in the senate, on the bench, he acts as prosecutor, and he takes his place as advocate; in a hundred ways it is given to him to conserve the interests of justice. In all countries the Jew has a wonderful penchant for the legal profession ; he naturally gravitates to- wards it, for he is generally gifted with a forensic talent which he knows will serve him in good stead in this calling; he is a born pleader, and will not give in his gun until the last shot has been fired, and although he may be often conquered, he will never acknowledge defeat. He has made a mighty reputa- tion both at the bar of Europe and America. One of the greatest jurists of the nineteenth century was Eduard Gans (1798-1839), the associate of the famous Hegel, whose philosophical opinions he adopted. Having become a nominal convert to Chris- tianity, he was appointed a professor extraordinary [ 132 ] JUSTICE TO THE JEW in the University of Berlin, where his lectures drew crowded audiences. Edward Lasker (1839-1889) gave to the world an erudite work on the constitu- tional history of Prussia. L. Goldsmidt (1829-1897) was another distinguished German jurist. A Jew, T. M. C. Asser, is the foremost Dutch jurist of the century. In France, Isaac Adolphe Cremieux (1796- 1881 ) rose to a high degree of fame at the bar, while Luigi Luzzati has reflected an equal lustre on Italian jurisprudence. J. Glaser (1831-1885) was the most prominent figure on the legal stage of Austria. Francis Goldsmid, admitted to practise at the Chan- cery bar in 1833, was the first of his faith to be ad- mitted to the English bar, which he adorned by his eloquence and wit. He was followed in the British courts by John Simon, who was the first Jewish bar- rister in England to practise at the common-law bar, being admitted 1842. In 1873 George Jessel was ad- vanced to the high dignity of Master of the Rolls. Another Jew, Sir George H. Lewis, became the most successful solicitor in London ; he instructed the late Lord Russell of Killowen, then Sir Charles Russell, in the great libel action of Parnell against the Times, and he was engaged in many other celebrated cases, and earned for himself the title of the English Choate. [133] JUSTICE TO THE JEW In America the foremost legal light of the Jewish race was Judah P. Benjamin, who declined President Pierce's offer of a judgeship on the Supreme Court Bench on account of his extensive private practice, and who was chosen in 1852 as United States Senator from Louisiana. On one occasion he appeared for the side opposed by Daniel Webster in the United States Supreme Court ; Webster talked for three hours and made one of his finest efforts. Then came Benjamin, a little wizened, dried-up man, with a thin and hollow voice, and talked for twenty minutes, when the Chief Justice turned to his colleagues and whispered : " Great Heavens ! that little man has stated Webster out of court in twenty minutes." On Benjamin's withdrawal from the United States Senate on February 4, I860, he was at once appointed At- torney General in the Provisional Government of the Southern Confederacy. In the following August he was appointed Acting Secretary of War ; subse- quently he became Secretary of State, which posi- tion he held till the downfall of the Southern Con- federacy. In 1865 he went to London and was called to the English bar. At first he had very hostile op- position, but he overcame it by his genius and con- verted it into respect. When failing health compelled him to retire in 1883 the most famous men in London [ 134 ] JUSTICE TO THE JEW tendered him a banquet in the Inner Temple and vied with one another to honour the httle man who had conferred honour on the bar of the metropoHs. America has also seen other great Jewish lumi- naries pass across her horizon. Moses Levy, admitted to the Philadelphia bar in 1778, became presiding judge for the District Court of the city and county of Philadelphia. Franklin J. Moses (1840-1877) was Chief Justice of South Carolina ; Solomon Heyden- feldt was Justice of the Supreme Court of California in 1871. At bench and bar many Jews hold dis- tinguished places to-day, reflecting lustre on the country they are proud to call home and on the race to which they are also proud to belong. IN POLITICS Not until recently has the Jew come forward promi- nently in politics, and this can be attributed to the fact that throughout the ages he had always been subjected to more or less persecution, and therefore, he naturally did not take much interest in the gov- ernment under which he lived only on sufferance, under which he was deprived of the same rights as his fellows ; nevertheless, even in early ages we find Jews occupying high governmental positions. Chas- dui ben Isaac ibn Shaprut, sometimes called Hasdai [135] JUSTICE TO THE JEW ha-Nasi, Spanish physician and patron of scienca became practically the vizier of Caliph 'Abd al-Rah- man, as he arranged all foreign alliances and received the envoys sent by the Caliph to Cordova. He had control of the customs and ship dues of this city, and here also received embassies from the Byzantine Emperor, Constantine VIII., and from the German Emperor, Otho I. In the eleventh century Samuel ibn Nagrela was for thirty years the virtual ruler of the kingdom of Granada under the monarch, Habus, in whose palace he lived. Under the Ali in Spain were several Jewish ambassadors. Amram ibn Shal- bib represented Alfonso VI. at several courts, and Joseph ben Salamo ibn Shoshan acted in a similar ca- pacity for Alfonso VIII. Benveniste Halevi was privy councillor and treasurer to Alfonso XI., and many other Jews were in the service of the Spanish kings as ambassadors, counsellors, advisers, and representa- tives of different kinds. Pope Alexander III. had a Jew, Jechei ben Abraham, for his financial adviser. In Portugal, as in Spain, the Jews were elevated to very important ministerial oflSces. In modern Germany they made rapid advancement in politics. Ferdinand Lasalle, the darling of the German working classes, jurist, economist, orator, philosopher and poet, made Socialism a force in [130] JUSTICE TO THE JEW European politics, and when he died in a duel in 1863 at the age of thirty-eight, Bismarck and he were con- sidered the two foremost men of the Fatherland. Ed- ward Lasker, another idol of the German working people, was born in Prussian Poland in 1829. He became known first as a member of the Prussian Chamber, but subsequently entered the German Im- perial Parliament. He was one of the founders of the National Liberal Party, although he sometimes voted with the Progressive Party. For a long time he remained the acknowledged leader of the Reichstag. He supported Bismarck until the latter's administra- tion introduced a bill which aimed to limit the free- dom of speech in Parliament, when he became his avowed antagonist. A Jew, J. Manheimer, was elected to the Presidency of the Prussian Diet in 1848. In the same year the famous Gabriel Riesser was elected Minister of State to the Prince Protector of Germany, John of Austria. Ludwig Bamberger, Max Hirsch, Anton Ree, Ludwig Lowe, Leopold Sonneman, Max Kayser, and E. Singer were other Jews who fearlessly expressed their opinions in the German Parliament. In France the sons of Israel began to distinguish themselves in politics at the beginning of the last century. Cremieux, to whom allusion has been made, [137] JUSTICE TO THE JEW became a member of the Chamber of Deputies in 1842 and encouraged the Revolution of '48. Under the Provisional Government he was Minister of Justice. Out of his private funds he gave one hundred thou- sand francs towards the payment of the war debt to Germany. Achille Fould (1800-1867) was four times Minister of Finance under the Presidency of Louis Napoleon. In 1852 he was made Senator and Minister of State and was created a Commander of the Legion of Honour. The great ultra liberal, Gambetta (1838- 1882), was of Genoese- Jewish descent. David Raynal of Bordeaux became Senator, Minister of Public Works, and Minister of the Interior, in fact, the real ruler of the country. Jules Simon became Minister of Education under Thiers from February, 1871, to May, 1873. Camille See, the successful champion of female education, Alfred Naquet, friend and adviser of General Boulanger, were two other Jews who dis- tinguished themselves in French politics. Only seventy odd years have elapsed since the Jew began to have any rights in Italy at all, yet during that time he has made his voice be heard in the coun- cils of the nation. Isaac Pesaro Maurogonato be- came " an athlete in Parliamentary debate." He was born at Venice in 1817 ; in 1848 he became postmaster general of that city and in 1849 Minister of Finance [138] JUSTICE TO THE JEW and Commerce. In 1860, when Venice became a part of the kingdom of Italy, Maurogonato was elected a deputy to Parliament. D. Manin (1804-1857), an- other Jew, was one of the foremost of Italian patriots and a defender of Venice. Italian Jews really had not equal rights until Victor Emanuel II. ascended the throne. The brilliant services of Luzzati in more than one Cabinet of recent years have not been forgotten. Wollemborg, among other offices of trust, was given that of Minister of Finance. In Italian diplomatic service the Jews have highly distinguished themselves : Polacco, Minister Plenipotentiary for Italy in Bul- garia ; Artour, Minister to Denmark ; Count Mi- nerbi. Councillor of the Italian Embassy in London ; Artom, whose profound genius was recognised by Count Cavour, was sent again and again on delicate diplomatic missions. The present mayor of Rome is a Jew. In England the children of Israel suffered under many disabilities until the beginning of the last cen- tury, but when in 1829 the Catholics were granted full civil and religious liberty, Jewish hopes rose high, that they, too, would obtain a similar concession, but although a bill with this object was brought into Parliament, it was thrown out of both the Commons and the Lords time after time, until those who ad- vocated its passage, became " sick of hopes de- ri39] JUSTICE TO THE JEW ferred." However, in 1845 a bill was carried by which the Jews were enabled to hold municipal offices, and in the following year the Religious Opinions Relief Bill removed a number of disabilities affecting the Jews and other dissenters from the Established Church. By the clauses of this bill all portals may be said to have opened to the Jews except entrance to Parliament, and for this prerogative the men of the race began to agitate. They determined to bring their grievance to an issue at once, and for this purpose Baron Lionel de Rothschild was returned to Parliament from the City of London in 1847, and a bill was introduced to carry out the wishes of his constituency by having him take his seat, but this, although it passed the Commons by a good majority, was rejected by the Lords. Rothschild was again elected in 1850 and the very same thing happened. In the following year David Salomons, who had success- fully contested the Shrievalty and Aldermanic hon- ours, was returned member from Greenwich. Salo- mons insisted on defying the House and took his seat. The Prime Minister himself proposed that he should withdraw, whereupon the Jew had the nerve to make a speech on the motion, defending his principles, but the Premier's motion was carried by a large majority. Salomons, burning with indignation and rage, had [140] JUSTICE TO THE JEW recourse to the courts, but the law held that the Jew had no right to vote without having taken the oath of abjuration, and he was mulcted in a fine £500 ($2500). A series of bills was again introduced with the object of doing away with the clause in the oath obnoxious to the Jews, but all were rejected until 1858, when the Oath Bill was so reformed by the Lords that all objectionable matter was eliminated. The clause relating to the Jews was taken out alto- gether. The Commons put up a bitter fight over the bill as sent down to them from the Upper House, but finally a compromise was reached by which either House might admit Jews by resolution allowing them to omit the words, " on the true faith of a Christian." Consequently, on July 26, 1858, Baron Lionel de Rothschild took the oath with covered head, substitut- ing for " on the faith of a Christian " the words " so help me, Jehovah," and took his seat as the first Jew- ish member of the British Parliament. Prior to the Parliamentary agitation Jews were allowed to hold very high municipal offices in Eng- land, for the old-time prejudices had been dying out for some time, at least from the beginning of the cen- tury which was to witness their emancipation from most of the disabilities from which they were suffer- ing. Many circumstances contributed to the change [141] JUSTICE TO THE JEW of feeling towards the once hated and despised race, and it may be interesting to state that among these was the prominence a few Jews created for them- selves as exponents of the fistic art in the prize ring. These brought to the sport a science with which the English up to then had been unacquainted, and robbed it of the brutal, slugging tactics which had hitherto characterised it. Their light physique made it incum- bent for the Jewish boxers to depend more on skill than strength, hence they brought boxing to a high degree of perfection, in fact made it, not alone a science, but a fine art. In 1789 Daniel Mendoza de- feated Humphries the title-holder of England and became chamipon of the country, far out-classing any and all comers. Samuel Elias, known as " Dutch Sam," knocked out the best men of his day, and to him be- longs the fame of having invented the celebrated " upper cut." It was Elias that first made boxing really fashionable among the upper classes. It is a remarkable fact that a race of people who are of a most pacific disposition by nature, and who have meekly submitted to the yoke of the tyrant and task- master through the centuries, should produce such a great number of prize-fighters. In America to-day are many Jews who have won both fame {?) and fortune in the roped arena. IU2] JUSTICE TO THE JEW Another circumstance which tended to alter the English attitude towards the Jews was the hope en- tertained that numbers of them could be brought over to swell the ranks of the national church, but this hope has never been realised, for though many of the faith may have outwardly renounced it, they inwardly clung to it. Whenever the Jew made a change in his religion he did it for policy and policy alone. The Bernels, the Ricardos, the Lopezes, the Samudas, the Bassevis, the Aguilars, the Herschels, the Disraelis allowed their children to grow up in the Established Church, so that they might get an opening into the professions and otherwise advance themselves in life, but converts (?) such as these were never personoe grata to orthodox Jews or to Chris- tians either, for the one class despised them for their defection, the other for the blood that flowed in their veins, though let it be said that the English did not feel the same contempt for those who clung to the faith of their race as they did for those who dis- carded it for worldly motives. This was strikingly seen in the case of Benjamin Disraeli, afterwards Lord Beaconsfield. Through all his life he was made an object for taunts and sneers, and the butt of jokes and repartee. Daniel O'Connell once said he could trace Disraeli's ancestry back to the impenitent thief [143] JUSTICE TO THE JEW that was crucified beside Christ on Calvary, and Con- servative though Beaconsfield was, he never was the favourite with the British Queen that Gladstone made himself. Victoria hated Gladstone's politics, but she loved and admired the man for his greatness of head and heart, while she despised Disraeli, or rather Bea- consfield, though he was the exponent of her own politics. Though his great talents elevated him to the highest pinnacle, both in politics and litera- ture, he never was a popular idol, never an idol at all. After being allowed to enter Parliament many Jews rose high in the councils of the nation. In the first Ministry of Gladstone, a Jew, Sir George Jessel, acted as Solicitor-General. In 1885 Sir Nathaniel de Rothschild came to the ermine and wool-sack as Lord Rothschild. The next Jew to get a similar honour was Baron Henry de Worms, who became Lord Pir- bright. July 19, 1895, Mr. Sydney Stern took his seat in the Upper House as Lord Wandsworth. Mr. Stern is also a Portuguese viscount by hereditary right. In 1890 all restrictions on Jews in British politics were removed, and every oflSce became open to them except those of monarch. Lord Chancellor, and Lord- Lieutenant of Ireland. [144] JUSTICE TO THE JEW Many Jews have done their part and done it well to entwine the laurel around the political brow of England. In the British Parliament such men as Sir Francis Goldschmidt, Q. C, Baron Meyer de Roths- child, Nathaniel de Rothschild, Julian Goldsmid, Saul Isaac, Arthur Cohen, Q. C, Sydney Woolf, Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, Walter Lionel de Roths- child, and many others of the old faith have shed a lustre on the island empire by lives of high ideals, devotion, and patriotism. The late Lord Herschell, Chairman of the Anglo- American Joint High Commissioners from Great Britain, twice Lord High Chancellor during the Gladstone ministries and former Chancellor of the London University, whose sudden death at Washing- ton a few years ago grieved the nations, was of Jewish descent and not ashamed to acknowledge it. In America politics came as natural to the Jew as swimming to a duck. The first Hebrew member of Congress was Israel Jacobs, sent from Pennsylvania in 1791. Since then twenty-one of the same faith have served in that famous law-house of the nation, while in the Senate or Upper House, the first Jew elected was Judah P. Benjamin, who has been previously noted. Other Jewish luminaries have arisen above the [145] JUSTICE TO THE JEW horizon of American politics, whose light has shed a bright effulgence over our national life and gained for Judaism a conspicuous place in the political life of our country. In this connection it may be well to state that Oscar S. Straus, a Jew, has become a prominent member of President Roosevelt's Cabinet. Mr. Straus also served under Cleveland and McKinley as Minister to Turkey. He is a statesman, scholar, diplomat, who docs honour to the country he serves and reflects lustre on the ancient race to whose faith and principles he proudly acknowledges allegiance. JEWS AS POETS In all departments of literature call the bead-roll of fame and a million Jews will answer from their graves in almost every land beneath the sun. In the sun-kissed fields of poesy they have swept the chords of Apollo's lyre, invoking strains whose magic music thrills the souls of men. From royal David, who wrote the Psalms, which lay bare the workings of heart and brain, and which have been lisped by the lips of the learned and unlearned for more than three thousand years, down to Aba K. Schapira, who makes his poetry " a fiery pyramid of song, leading Israel's caravan of affliction in the wilderness," the Jews have been a music-loving, poetry-breathing race, and [146] JUSTICE TO THE JEW throughout almost all their poetry we find a deep reverence for God and a holy love for Zion. We may say that the earliest Jewish literature took the form of poetry. The poetic narrative of the battle of the Israelites with the Canaanites called " The Song of Deborah " is a much older account of that battle than the prose, and we may conclude that many of the great events in Israelitish history were chronicled in verse. Indeed many go so far as to say that the whole of the Old Testament may be classed as poetry, and this is partially true, but apart from the Bible, the major portion of all the early Hebraic poetry was halakic. The didactic poem also came into vogue at an early time. The lyric poetry, as expres- sive of the personal feelings and emotions of the individual, was also strongly devotional, and no form of it was neglected — ode, sonnet, elegy, or song. Secular poetry dates from the ninth century. The earliest piece of secular lyric poetry written by a Jew is a wine-song ascribed to Solomon ibn Gabirol, and was composed in ridicule of a niggardly host, but the first to give prominence to this kind of poetry was Moses ibn Ezra (1070-1139), who wrote " Tarshish," a praise of wine and music, friendship and love, but who was not such a poetic genius as his famous contemporary, Jchudah Halevi (1086-1142), [ 11' ] JUSTICE TO THE JEW who wrote some of the most beautiful secular lyrics to be fouud in any tongue. His forte was wedding songs and panegyrics, but he produced many other great metrical compositions which have come down to us at the present day. Heine says of Halevi: " Ah ! he was the greatest poet. Torch and starlight to his age. Beacon-light to his people; Such a mighty and a wondrous " Pillar of poetic fire, Led the caravan of sorrow Of his people, Israel, Through the desert of their exile. " Pure and truthful, fair and blameless Was his song, and thus his soul was. When the Lord that soul created. With great joy His work beheld He." Hebrew poetry had not the fiery passion which gives it tone put into it until Immanuel of Rome be- gan to write, about the beginning of the fourteenth century. This man was the most interesting of the Italian Jews. He was born at Rome, 1270, and came of a wealthy family and was well versed in the lore of his day, but he especially devoted himself to writing verse. He acquired the easy, flippant tone [148] JUSTICE TO THE JEW which " caught " the public fancy, so that his poems and songs were on every tongue. He satirised both poHtics and rehgion, excoriated them with a stinging, biting lash, under which they writhed in agonies of unavailing rage. To the warm nature of the Orient he added the imagination peculiar to those who dwell in the sunny Italian land, and both combined to make a hot, passionate poet. He died at Fermo, 1330. The next great Jewish lyric poet was Moses Najara, who flourished in the first half of the seventeenth century. He also enthused much fire and spirit into his verse, which, however, was almost purely devotional in tone. He is reckoned as one of Israel's sweetest singers. For some time after Najara, lyric poetry was quiescent among the Jews, but the Muse arose again in the first half of the eighteenth century, when many true lyric poets turned their harps to dulcet sounds, notable among them being Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, who was born at Padua in 1707 and was a man of wide range of learning. At an early age he began to study poetry, and soon was writing epithalamia and elegies, one of which was a dirge on the death of his teacher. At the age of seventeen he had produced a Biblical drama, and before he was twenty he com- menced the composition of one hundred and fifty hymns based on the Biblical Psalter. He then essaj-cd [149] JUSTICE TO THE JEW a large work which he called " Leshon Limmudim," a discussion of Hebrew style, with a dissertation on Hebraic versification. After this he produced a four- act play founded on the marriage of his friend, Israel Benjamin Bassani, in which he introduced Roman, Latin, and Biblical characters. It was a masterly piece of work, some of the lyric pieces in it coming up to a very high standard. For a time Luzzatto gave up poetry and devoted all his time to mysticism. He was attracted by the Cabala, and became the victim of illusions, imagining that he conversed with the patriarchs and prophets. In fact, he developed into what we now would call a Spiritualist, and his de- lusions became so intensified that he finally convinced himself he was the Messiah. He wrote several Caba- listic works, and gathered around him a goodly num- ber of followers or disciples. A ban was put upon him by the Rabbis, and he had to leave Italy and seek a home in Amsterdam, where his fame had preceded him and where he was warmly received in recognition of his great mental qualities, despite his Cabalistic theories. He lived in Amsterdam ten years, then jour- neyed to Palestine, where with his wife and son he died of the plague at the early age of forty. Luz- zato, notwithstanding his Cabalism, is considered by the critics one of the brightest intellects Jewry has [ 150 ] JUSTICE TO THE JEW given to the world. Other Italian poets of the Jewish faith were the late David Levi, philosopher as well as poet ; Deborah Ascarelli, who flourished at the be- ginning of the seventeenth century ; and Rahcl Mor- purgo, who was born in 1790, and lived to 1871. In Austria rose L. A. Frankl (1810-1894), Karl Beck (1817-1879), L. Wihl (1807-1882), and L. Kalisch (1814-1882). In France there was Eugene Manuel (1803-1901), and in Denmark Henry Hertz (1798-1870). Of course the first Jewish poet of Germany is Hein- rich Heine, of whom, despite his frailties, the race feels proud. In order to be admitted to the legal pro- fession, Heine allowed himself to be baptised into the Protestant Church, June 28, 1825, taking the name of Christian Johann Heinrich Heine, but he never used the " Christian Johann," for at heart he was a Jew and he remained a Jew in every thought and instinct and leaning until the day his frail body gave up his impassioned soul on his " mattress-grave " in Paris. Poor Heine! like many another great man he was not appreciated when living ; his talents were not recognised either by Jews or Christians ; nevertheless by supreme genius and indomitable courage in the face of suffering, he placed himself next to the giant Goethe in German literature. His " Buch der Lieder " [151] JUSTICE TO THE JEW is one of the most exquisite volumes ever produced by a German poet, or in fact by a poet of any nation- ality. On his deathbed Heine gave recognition and appreciation of the creed in which he was born, and paid many splendid tributes to Judaism, one of these being his striking picture of Jehudah Halevi, from which an excerpt has been given. Voicing the senti- ments of his heart a short time before he passed away, he writes : " . . . I have learned to value them (the Jews) better, and if every kind of pride of birth were not a foolish contradiction in a champion of revolution and democratic principles, the writer of these pages might be proud that his ancestors be- longed to the noble House of Israel; that he is a descendant of those martyrs who have given to the world one God and a moral law, and have fought and suffered in all the battlefields of thought." Heine died in Paris, February 17, 1856; the German government would not allow a memorial to be erected to his memory at Diisseldorf, his native place, on account of his anti-German writings, and possibly, and the more likely, on account of his Jewish origin, but the sons of the Fatherland in exile, to their credit be it told, have erected a splendid monument to the memory of Heine at 161st Street and Mott Avenue in the Bronx Borough of New York City, one which will [152] JUSTICE TO THE JEW fittingly commemorate his name and fame in free America. Other German Jews who wooed the Muse of Song include E. M. Kuh (1828-1876), whose tragic fate has been told by Auerbach in " Dichter und Kaufmann " ; Ludwig Steinheim (1790-1866), Sel Heller ("Ahasver") (1831-1892), Th. Creize- nach (1817-1877), M. Hartmann (1821-1872), S. H. Mosenthal (1821-1877), Henrlette Ottenheimer (1807-1883), M. Sachs (1808-1864), and Moritz Rapaport (1808-1880). Among the poets of England may be named Man- uela Nunes da Almeyda (1720-?), although her verses were mostly written in Spanish, with her two gifted daughters, Benvenida Cohen Belmonte and Sara de Foncesca y Pimentel, authoresses of many charming lyrics, as also Isaac Gompertz (1774-1856), Emma Henry (1788-1870) ; and Moses Mendez (.P-1758). The Jewish writers of verse in America include Emma Lazarus (1849-1887), Peninah Moise (1797- 1880), and Morris Rosenfeld. The best Jewish exponents of poetry at the present time are the Russians. When Wessely's " Songs of Glory " appeared their great success tempted young writers to essay the epic and soon the Russians eclipsed the Germans. Abraham Dob Bar Lebensohn [153] JUSTICE TO THE JEW and his son, Micah, were the recognised leaders among the former, who soon outclassed all rivals with the possible exception of Joseph Almanzi and Samuel David Luzzato of Italy, and Meier Letteris and Napthali Herz Imber of Galicia. Judah Lob Gordon was a master of satire and almost eclipsed his mas- ter, Lebensohn, just mentioned. Schapira, to whom allusion has already been made, Z. H. Manes, M. M. Dolitszky, and D. Frischman were among the best known lyrists of the modern school. Of living poets, H. N. Bialik and A. Libushitzky are forging fast to the front. THE DRAMA Of Jewish dramatists in early times the number is small when compared with those in other departments of literature. Indeed it may be said that the Jewish drama has never been much of a success, and doubt- less this is due to the fact that from an early period the people were taught to look upon false representa- tions of life, as seen on the stage, with feelings of resentment, such having the tendency not alone to corrupt the young, but to give them wholly erroneous ideas of the world, and this notion still continued to prevail with the Israelites. The Yiddish dramas are in most cases but mere translations from other languages ; those that are [154] JUSTICE TO THE JEW genuinely Yiddish in language, thought, and sub- stance may be almost counted on the finger tips. Jews have contributed, however, to the drama from the earliest time despite the prejudice of the race towards it. One hundred and fifty years before the Christian era we read of the first Jewish dramatist, Ezekielos (Ezekiel), whose play " The Exodus from Egypt," was modelled after Euripides. From this time onwards until the adaptation of Biblical subjects to the stage by the Spaniards in the tenth century, very little is heard of Hebraic drama. Of the dramas written in Hebrew, the oldest is " The Eternal Foundation," by Moses Zacuto of Am- sterdam, composed in 1642. Its foundation is Bibli- cal, being woven around the legend of Abraham destroying the idols of his father. Samuel Roman- elli of Mantua in 1791 at Berlin wrote an allegorical melodrama called " The Voices Cease," founded on classical mythology. " Esther," based on Racine's drama, was published by Joseph Haltern in 1795. In the same year a drama in two parts was published at Sklow (Russia) by Hayyim Abraham b. Arych, the first part — The Weighing of Actions — treating of the sale of Joseph by his brethren, the second part — An Open Warning — dealing with the discussion of Joseph's brethren with the magicians, and describes [155] JUSTICE TO THE JEW how the former were recognised by Joseph. In 1806 another Biblical drama was brought out by Moses Neumann in Vienna, entitled " The Daughter of Jephthah." " Amal and Tirzah," an allegorical drama in three acts, was published at Rodeheim in 1812 by Shalom ha-Kohen, who had already written " Naboth of Jezreel." The Jews essayed the drama at an early date in Spain. The first original drama in Spanish litera- ture, " Celestina," is attributed to a Jew, Rodrigo da Costa. Towards the end of the seventeenth cen- tury the Portuguese language usurped the place of the Spanish among the Jews and we immediately hear of a Jewish dramatist, Antonio Jose da Silva. In 1763 Joseph pensa de la Vega wrote a Jewish drama en- titled " Asire ha-Tikvah " (The Prisoners of Hope), although but a boy of seventeen. In the early part of the eighteenth century Yiddish drama was presented in Germany, Baerman Limburg producing at Frank- fort-on-the-Main his play, " Mekirat Yosef " (sale of Joseph). There are many other Yiddish dramatisa- tions of the story of Joseph. In 1820 Saphir wrote a farce " Der Falsche Kaschtan," criticising Jewish communal affairs. Schertspierer of Vienna wrote the drama " Moses," which was staged in that city in 1838. The Russian Yiddish drama began with Aksen- [150] JUSTICE TO THE JEW feld's plays, all of which principally were a glorifica- tion of " Haskalah," or the progressive movement. The first Jewish dramatist to use German was Bene- dict David Arnstein of Vienna. He was succeeded by L. M. Biischenthal. Since that time poets of the Jew- ish race have enriched every department of dramatic literature, among whom may be named Mosenthal, Kalisch, Jacobson, Fulda, and Schlessinger. Ludovic Halevy, the composer's nephew, in opera, comedy, and vaudeville, next to D'Ennery, another Jew, was the most prolific of French dramatists. Abraham Cremieux and Millaud made great contri- butions to the French stage. Von Weilen and Burger are two of the chief dramatists in Austria. Among the early and most prominent American dramatists were Mordecai M. Noah, Samuel B. H. Judah, Jonas B. Phillips, and H. B. Sommer. Among the most successful dramatists to-day are Charles Klein, Sydney Rosenfeld, Martha Morton and David Belasco. Not alone as playwrights, but as actors, the Jews have taken a prominent part. The greatest name among French actresses is Rachel (1820-1858), the daughter of a Jewish peddler, and her only rival in European fame is another Jewess, Sarah Bernhardt. Adolph Ritter von Sonnenthal is the dramatic idol of [157] JUSTICE TO THE JEW the Austrian capital, and one of the greatest inter- preters of the drama. John Braham (1774-1 864), whose dramatic genius was equalled by his peerless voice. In the category of European singers we find Jewish nightingales at every turn — Pauline Lucca, Caroline Gompertz Bettelheim, the famous Austrian Court contralto, are just a few out of the many in the galaxy of song. Passing on to Jewish actors and actresses on the American stage we find such a numerous and goodly company that to call the roll would be an invidious distinction. The introduction of opera into the United States was due largely to Jewish instrumentality. A few Jews practically control the theatres of the country. THE JEWS IN MUSIC The stage is so closely connected with the musical profession that the one naturally follows the other. Music was early cultivated by the Israelites, being contemporaneous with poetry, for the poems were nearly always sung to accompaniment, and also from the earliest days music was used in connection with the religious rites. All festivals were celebrated with song and psaltery, victorious leaders were welcomed back with rejoicing paeans, and every important event was celebrated by song and sound. On the mountains [158] JUSTICE TO THE JEW and in the valleys, when attending their flocks, the shepherds would while away the tedious hours by reed and flute, and when friend met friend at the gates of the city, one would evoke a welcome to the other from the reeded instruments they carried. So great was the estimation in which singers were held that they were allowed to wear the white priestly garb. Antiphonal singing was a feature of the Temple service, a precentor taking up one strophe in a high key, the rest of the choir singing it several notes lower. This custom still prevails in the Orient. Syna- gogal music at first followed as closely as possible that which was practised in the Temple, but coming under the influence of tonal surroundings in many lands, it has gradualy become extended into the vocal melody, solo or choral, in which modern Jewry now presents the traditional services, and even this has been subject to change by environment. The father of modern synagogal composers was Solomon de Rossi, who in 1622 published at Venice his " Ha-Shirim Asher li-Shelomoh," and who was the first trained musician who laboured for the regeneration of the songs of Zion. There were many other Jewish musi- cians in Italy at that time who also contributed much to perfect and beautify the music of the sanctuary, but it was not until the early part of the last century [ 159 ] JUSTICE TO THE JEW that the real renaissance In sacred music was begun by men who longed to awaken the sweet strains of the old harp of Israel. To Solomon Sulzer must go the honour of awaking to life and melody the slumbering music of Judah's fold. He was the acknowledged leader of all the Jewish musicians of modern days, and though he has passed, he is still looked upon as the first star in the firmament of Jewish psaltery. This famous cantor and composer was born in the Austrian Tyrol in 1804, and died at Vienna in 1890. The original name of his family was Loewy. This man gave a dignity and tone to ritual music which it never had before and laid down the canons which should govern its rendering. His methods are almost uni- versally observed in the synagogue. He was followed in 1843 by H. Goldberg of Brunswick, who attempted to regulate congregational singing. H. Weintraub in 1859 restored intonation to the former importance it had, before giving place to choral development. Abraham Baer of Gottingen tried to unite the old intensity with the modern cultivated taste, and in 1878 brought out his monumental work " Ba'al Tefil- lah, oder der Praktische Vorbeter," in which he set forth the vocal expression of the whole Jewish liturgy. It was a work of great value, but despite the labours of such men, very many synagogues still cling to the [160] JUSTICE TO THE JEW old traditions and still keep the old form of music as was rendered in the Temple. In the world of secular music Israel has brought forth many geniuses, such as Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847)— the Wunderkind of mod- ern music — Jacques Francois Fromenthal Halevy (1799-1862), Giacomo INIcyerbeer (1794-1863), Jacques Offenbach (1818-1882), and Karl Goldmark (1830 ). England produced J. Moschelles (1794-1870), F. H. Cowen (1852 ), Sir Julius Benedict (1805- 1885), Sir M. Costa (1810-1878), and C. K. Sala- man (1814-1901). Among the Swedes J. A. Josephson achieved fame. Dr. Leopold Damrosch was one of the great musical conductors of modern times, whose crowning achieve- ment was his successful establishment of German opera in New York. As performers Jews stand as high as they do as composers. Rubinstein, Rosenthal, and Hofmann will always be reckoned among the world's best pianists. Joseph Joachim has never been equalled as an artist. When Wagner produced an opera to show the Teu- tonic superiority over the Jews, he was dumfoundcd when, on the night of the performance, he saw all the first viohns in the hands of the Jews. [161] JUSTICE TO THE JEW THE JEWS AND THE BIBLE To return to literature, justice must acknowledge that the world owes more to the Jews than to any other race. It was the Jews who gave us the Book of books, the Rock of Ages, upon which is built the foundations of all wisdom, that treasure-house from which the children of men have been enriched, that inexhaustible fountain from which the wise drink deep draughts of knowledge and inspiration, that great physician to whom all the afflicted go for cure, that minister who ever solaces the sorrowful, comforts the comfortless and gives hope to the hopeless, that epit- ome of all that is good and great and noble and elevating and hopeful In the world, in a word, that connecting link between God and man, — the bible. All the books of the Bible, both Old and New Testa- ments, with the possible exception of the Book of Job, were written by Jews. And who can tell how much the poets, philosophers, sages, and thinkers owe to the Bible .f* Upon the Bible has been upraised the lofty domes of thought, whose beacon lights guide the world and save it from destruction. The Bible gave us a Dante, a Milton, and a Shakespeare, and millions of others who went to Its fountain to seek the source of knowledge, so we can say that In- [162] JUSTICE TO THE JEW directly all Christian literature owes much to the Jews. But apart from the Bible, the Jews have con- tributed largely to the knowledge of all nations. They have left us priceless heirlooms that we guard with jealous care. AS PHILOSOPHERS As philosophers Jews were first in the field. Philo, the Alexandrian philosopher of the first century, was a man of encyclopaedic knowledge, versed deeply in the arts and sciences. He was the ornament of the Hellenic literature of the period. The highest virtue, according to him, contains two main duties — the worship of God and love and justice to all men. The most powerful light of the Middle Ages was the illus- trious Maimonides (1135-1204-), who has been called " the Jewish Aristotle." His great philosophical work, " The Guide for the Perplexed," has been translated time and again into all European lan- guages. IMaimonides tried to reconcile divine with hu- man wisdom as manifested by Aristotle. Levi ben Gerson, defender of Maimonides, attracted the spe- cial attention of Reuchlin and Kepler. Chasdai Cres- cas, opponent of Maimonides, whose " Light of God '* appeared in 1-ilO, was the first to combat tlie phil- osophy of Aristotle. Solomon Malmon (1753-1800) was another remarkable philosopher that Judaism [1G3] JUSTICE TO THE JEW produced. Though his metaph3'sical powers were soon eclipsed by Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling, it is con- ceded that his criticism struck at the root of the Kantian system. Maimon was also one of the earli- est forerunners of symbolic logic. Spinoza laid the foundation for the rationalistic school of Germany in their interpretation of the Bible. Moses Mendels- sohn stood in the foremost ranks of modern German classical scholars. He was looked upon as the great- est sage since Socrates, but though he was the orna- ment of the nation, he was merely tolerated as the " shopman " of a Berlin co-religionist merchant. Other Jews who were preeminent in philosophy were H. Steinthal (1823-1899), M. Lazarus (1824-1903), A. Franck (1809-1892). Herman Cohen is acknowl- edged the chief authority on Kant. AS PHILOLOGISTS Jews excel as scholars when they seriously apply themselves, consequently we find many eminent philol- ogists among them. Indeed Jews may be said to have been the founders of our scientific philology. The philosophic side of this subject is dominated by the school of M. Lazarus and H. Steinthal, above men- tioned. One of the acknowledged authorities on com- parative etymology was Th. Benfey (1809-1882), he [164] JUSTICE TO THE JEW being to Germany what Max Miiller was to England. Michel Breal (1832 ) is regarded as the best authority in France on both mythology and phil- ology. In classic philology M. Bernhardy (1800- 1875), the famous historian of Greek and Roman literature, Ludwig Friedlander (1824<-?), Jacob Bernays (183'1-1882), W. Freund (1806-1894) and Henri Weil (1818-?) were other Jews, looked upon as the foremost philologists of the past century, who claimed Germany as their country. Modern languages are easy to the Jews ; they ac- quire them most readily and become masters of their grammar and rhetoric. Among the European poly- glots may be enumerated David Kimhi (1160-1235), the French Hebrew scholar, whose exegetical and linguistic writings are still considered standard works; A L David (1811-1832), born in London, was a famous Orientalist, who at the age of fifteen began the preparation of a Biblical encyclopaedia. He wrote a grammar of the Turkish language and dedi- cated it to the Sultan. Cholera cut him oflp at twenty- one; Armin Vambery, who occupied the chair of Oriental Languages at the University of Buda Pesth ; Arsene Darmesteter (1846-1888), the French philolo- gist, and his brother, James (1849-1884), the great Orientalist who travelled in the East, making himself [1G5] JUSTICE TO THE JEW familiar with the customs, manners, and traditions of the people, as well as proficient in their various dia- lects; Daniel Sanders (1819-1897), who made a great reputation among Greeks and Germans ; Ollendorf (1805-1865), who invented a method for teaching modem languages; Jules Oppert (1825 ), who became the greatest Assyriologist after Rawlinson and A. Geiger (1810-1867)— were all Hebrews of the deepest learning. It was Jewish Rabbis that furnished to Martin Luther the knowledge of the whole Bible in the original text, and the Jews, Abdallah ibn Salam and Mukchairik, helped Moham- med to draw up his Koran. AS HISTOaiANS As historians the Israelites have been remarkable from the very beginning of the race, as is well evi- denced by the productions of Bible times in the books from Genesis to Kings, but even before the Penta- teuch there must have been annals upon which to build. During the time of the Kings there was an official called the " mazkir," who chronicled the events of each reign, and besides the data furnished by these there was a series of accounts given by the seers and prophets. In the Hellenistic period writers in Greek translated from the Hebrew. Philo of Alexandria, already mentioned, wrote an account in five books of [166] JUSTICE TO THE JEW the persecutions under Caligula. Of all the early his- torians of the race, the most prominent was Joseph, the son of Matthias, commonly called Josephus. He wrote " Jewish Antiquities " and the " Jewish Wars," which was and is the main source of information for the fall and decline of the Jewish nation. For a long time after their dispersion no one arose to chronicle the wanderings of the Jews, so that we have to depend much on tradition for a knowledge of the doings of the race after the fall of Jerusalem. The revival of Jewish history appears in southern Italy in the tenth century in the " Yosippon," de- scribing the period of the Second Temple. Its author is supposed to have been Joseph b. Gorion. A series of chronicles was begun in Spain by the " Sefer ha- Kabbalah " of Abraham ibn David of Toledo in 1161, and continued by Abraham ben Solomon. Abra- ham Zacuto in 1505 completed a work which he called " Sefer Yuhasin," brought down to that year. Some recent books published by the German Jewish Historical Association give accounts of the persecu- tion of Jews in the Middle Ages written by Jews with the Crusades. During these persecutions and long afterwards the attention of Europe was drawn to the anamolous position of these people, with the result that information was eagerly sought regarding their [167] JUSTICE TO THE JEW history, hence a mass of material was collected which has served moderns in good stead. The Israelites themselves became the most eager to learn everything concerning their race. In the first half of the nine- teenth century Israel Marcus Jost, a German Jew, attempted, in his " Gesch. der Israeliten," to give the political history of the Jewish people, and followed this up with another work " Gesch, des Judenthums," in which he tried to trace the literal and spiritual de- velopment of the race. After Jost came Heinrich Graetz, another German Jew, who, in his " Gesch. der Juden," devoted himself to the literary and religious growth of the Israelitish people. The year 1887 marks an epoch in the study of Jewish history. This was the year in which the Jews came together for the purpose of studying the his- tory of their own people. The Anglo-Jewish Histori- cal Exhibition was the first attempt to bring together historical records. Many important works were un- earthed from all sources ; archives were searched through Europe and the whole of the Old World as well as the New, and much material was secured. A complete bibliography of Anglo-Jewish history by Jacobs and Wolf, the only one of its kind then, was on exhibition. In 1892 the American-Jewish Histori- cal Society was formed, and now there are similar [168] JUSTICE TO THE JEW societies throughout all Europe to those in New York and London, and a great quantity of historical data has been collected. Of course, apart from their own history, Jews have given much of their attention to this branch of literature. The original name of Neander (1789-1850), the greatest historian of the Christian church, was David ]Mendel, whose father was a Jewish peddler. Alfred Edersheim (1825-1889), whose "Life of Christ" is the best ever written, defending the orthodox dogma of Jesus against the attacks of Strauss, w^as a Jew. AS ANTiaUARIANS AND ECONOMISTS As antiquarians the Jews have been more or less known. One of the chief authorities on ancient epi- graphy was M. A. Levy (1817-18T2). The Reinach brothers in France have distinguished themselves in this field. In America Dr. Cyrus Adler of Smith- sonian Institute is regarded as a high authority on Oriental history and archaeology. Maurice Bloomfield, of Johns Hopkins, is recognised as the chief living authority on the Atharva Veda. Among the Jews may be found economists like Ricardo, Marx, and Lassalle, and M. de Bloch, the Russian banker, whose book on the cost of modern warfare has been translated into all European Ian- [169] JUSTICE TO THE JEW guages, and is believed to have given the impetus to the Czar for the convention of the Peace Conference at The Hague. From the ranks of Jewry come such original thinkers as Csesare Lombroso and Max Nordau, the apostles of the theory of degeneracy, whose argu- ments and submitted proofs have startled the world and are already accepted as the New Gospel, whose light discloses the hidden springs of crime. AS NOVELISTS In the realm of lighter literature the Jew is a familiar figure. Some of the best living fiction writers are men and women of the ancient faith. The Jew by nature is peculiarly adapted to this kind of writing. He is imaginative, has a buoyant temperament, a dogged, go-ahead persistence about him which will recognise no obstacles. While few really great works of fiction have come from Jewish pens, the majority of the work along this line is far from mediocre. Berthold Auerbach, born in the Black Forest in 1812, is famed for his thrilling descriptions of German vil- lage life, and whose stories are remarkable for both their philosophical reflection and poetic feeling. The works of L. Kompert (1822-1886), and A. Bernstein (1812-1887), the first novelist to popularise science, [ 170] JUSTICE TO THE JEW are so well-known that comment is unnecessary. But the one great novelist, the man who rose head and shoulders above all others, was Benjamin Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield), who became popularly known as ** the Statesman-novelist." No need to go into the many works of brilliant fiction that came from his facile pen, as they are read to the present day by men and women of all classes the world over. " Vivian Grey " and " Coningsby " are household classics wherever the English language is spoken. In our day the leading and most representative Semitic novelist is the London Jew, Israel Zangwill, whose stories of Ghetto life command wide attention. ESSAYISTS A more serious class of writers — the essayists — next claim attention. Some of the greatest masters of prose are Jews. Ludwig Borne (1786-1837), the brave warrior In the literary war of liberation, may be placed at the head of the class, but Gabrielle Rcisser (1806-1863) deserves companionship with Borne. Grace Aguilar, in whose soul burned the sa- cred fires of the prophets, though a writer of a different class, may be mentioned in this connec- tion. To these writers we may add literary critics. The [ 1^1 ] JUSTICE TO THE JEW chief name in this branch among the living is George Brandes, while the dead are represented by Isaac Disraeli, father of Lord Beaconsfield, and Michael Bernays ( 1834-1 89T). From belles-lettres we turn to the Press, and in this department we find that Jews have outdistanced all other competitors. Anti-Semites assert, and with truth, that the Jews own and control many of the most influential daily papers in Europe and America. PAINTING AND SCULPTURE Coming to the world of painting and sculpture, we may say, that owing to the strictures that were put on their religion, the Jews have just begun to achieve distinction. Joseph Israels is famed for his celebrated delineations of Dutch fisher life. Solomon J. Solo- mon stands high among English artists. In France the brothers Lehman, Jacobs, Levy, Ulmann, and Worms have made indelible marks in the gallery of Art. In Germany Meyerheim and Schlessinger made splendid reputations for almost faultless work. Among Americans Henry Mosler and Ben Austrian have won honours at home and abroad ; George D. INI. Peixotto is another Jew who reflects credit on the art of America. Max Rosenthal and his son Albert have become known to fame both as etchers and portrait [172] JUSTICE TO THE JEW painters. Of illustrators in America none is better known than Louis Loeb. With the sculptors we find Antokolski, greatest artist in stone of all Russians, while the carvings of Moses J. Ezekiel have been ex- hibited in all the art centres of Europe. His work " Religious Liberty," in Fairmount Park, Philadel- phia, was the first public monument erected by Jews in the United States. We are conscious that in this narrative of the world's indebtedness to the Jew we have left out many deserving names. In every department of literature, science, and art, in every field of human endeavour, in every path traversed by the genius of man we could have multiplied names indefinitely and yet not have exhausted the number of the worthy. Few indeed know the relatively great and glorious part taken by the Jews in the civilisation and advancement of mankind. Beaconsfield when taunted in the House of Com- mons for his Jewish extraction, exclaimed, " I can well afford to be called a Jew," and so can every other one of the race, a race that has never decayed, a race that has never lost its love or its hope, a race that is still as loyal to every tradition, still as strong in faith, still as pristine in vigour, still as buoyant and [173] JUSTICE TO THE JEW hopeful as in the days when the Asiatic had but left the cradle and the European was yet unborn. When an impartial historian shall write the won- derful achievements of the race of Israel, famous names shall appear on every page, for Zion has pro- duced a greater number of great men than any other nation of whom history bears record, and the Jewish people may well take to heart Goethe's true lines: Willst Du immer weiter schweifen? Sieh, das Gute liegt so nah. [174] MONEY AND THE JEW One beautiful June evening in Paris I strolled with a friend into a caf^ on the Boulevard. We had been to hear " Robert le Diable " at the French Opera, and gaily humming and gos- siping we sat upon the broad walk that was still thronged on the still summer night. Presently a dark-haired man came quietly along and seated himself at a table near by. He was alone and seemed not to care for recognition. He was simply dressed, and was entirely unnoticeable except for the strong Jewish lines in his intellectual face. My companion whispered, " That is the man to whom we owe the delight of this evening; that is Meyerbeer." After a while he added with feeling, " How much we owe to the Jews, and how mean Christen- dom is." It was remarkable how much of the conspicuous work and influence of that evening was due to the genius of a people whose name is so constantly used as a word of reproach. A few months before, Felix Mendelssohn had been buried in Leipsic, and in Berlin I had heard the memorial concert of his music at the Sing-Akademie. Rossini was still living, and Verdi was writing operas, but Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer were the recognised masters of music. The evening before, I had seen the Jewish Rachel in " Phedre" — the one woman who contests the laurel with Mrs. Siddons, and who was then the greatest living actress. Beyond the channel, Disraeli, the child of Spanish Jews, was just about to kiss hands as Chan- cellor of the Exchequer, and to become the political leader of the British Tories. While in Paris and London and Frankfurt and Vienna the great masters of the mainsprings of industrial activity, the capitalists, who held peace and war in their hands, and by whose favour kings rule, were Jews. The philosophy, the art, the industry, the politics of Christendom were full of the Jewish genius, the gaiety of nations, the delight of schol- summer night, and the words of my friend are still as shame- ars, the sceptres of princes, the movements of civilisation, hung in great degree upon it. It is as true to-day as in that long fully true: " How mean Christendom is." — G£ohg£ William CUBTIS. MONEY AND THE JEW An impression has sunk deep into the mind of the world in general that the Jewish people arc possessed of great wealth, and that a Jew is seldom if ever in poverty. When we wish to convey the idea that an individual is of high financial standing in the com- munity, we shrug our shoulders and say, " Oh ; he's as rich as a Jew," thereby meaning that he has amassed money and property to an almost unlimited extent. In fact, we make the word " Jew " a syno- nym for money, whereas it is very often the antonym of that word. Jews are just the same as other people from a pecuniary standpoint — there are rich and poor among them, prosperity or failure depending upon personality, environment, opportunity, and the many other causes which determine social position. If a man is industrious, self-reliant, frugal, yet hon- ourable in all transactions, it will follow as a corol- lary, that he will come to be a power in his community and command respect, but if, on the contrary, he be [177] JUSTICE TO THE JEW idle, careless, reckless, and untrustworthy, it does not require a great stretch of the imagination to perceive the goal at which he will arrive. Of course we are speaking generally. Many a man undeservingly has riches thrust upon him, while, on the other hand, there is many a worthy man poor — the victim of circum- stances, for, as we have said, environment and oppor- tunity play a very important part in life. The Arabs have a word, " kismet," which they apply to the de- terminative forces controlling destiny. The transla- tion of this word in our language is simply " fate," and without laying ourselves open to the accusation of being called fatalists, we may say that fate seems to be responsible in very many cases for man's suc- cess or failure. Environment has much to do with shaping destiny: " Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen And waste its sweetness on the desert air." The philosopher is often hidden in the ploughman, and the brain of a Newton or a Shakespeare is some- times concealed beneath the battered hat of a wayside tramp. A man born and reared in the dark Ghettos of the [ 1^8 ] JUSTICE TO THE JEW great cities — places which put to ridicule the saying, "As rich as a Jew," spots where the sunlight of heaven seldom, if ever, enter, where the atmosphere is poi- sonous, where breathing creatures in the shape of hu- man beings herd together, not like cattle, but like wild, terrified animals trying to escape a common enemy, where a morsel of wholesome food never tickles the palate of gaunt and spectral men and women — cannot very well be expected to compete in the race of life with his brother to whom fate has given a golden start on a congenial track. The child of the Glietto is handicapped by environment, and opportunity de- nies him her gifts, hence we find thousands, yea, tens of thousands even of Jews in the great hives of hu- manity living in a state of veritable peonage to the awful surroundings that confront them. Proportion- ately there are by far more poverty-stricken Jews than Christians, and just as in the case of the latter division of mankind, it sometimes happens that from the ranks of the very poorest and most oppressed of the children of Israel come men who, by the innate force of genius, by indomitable perseverance, by unconquerable grit, raise themselves to positions of prestige and power, as in the case of the great banker, Rothschild, who was born Mayer Anselm Bower, of the poorest of poor Jewish families in the Ghetto [179] JUSTICE TO THE JEW quarter of Frankfort in 1743. This child of a down- trodden and despised race, who commenced Hfe as a money-lender on the smallest scale under the " Red Shield " (Rothschild), raised himself to a position of the highest eminence, founded the great banking- house which bears his name, and left a reputation that shall never fade among his race. That there are enormously wealthy Jews in the world, we all know, but that these successful members of the House of Israel amassed their colossal fortunes by underhand methods to which Christians would not resort, is an accusation as unjust as it is untrue. In most cases the Jew makes his money and increases it by taking care of it, by habits of thrift and economy, by industry and frugality, and by look- ing forward to the proverbial " rainy day," whereas the Gentile too often is indolent and careless, never thinks of the morrow, labours under the impression that the sun will always be shining, and so lets his opportunities slip through his fingers. It has been laid to the charge of the Jew that he is parsimonious and miserly, that he would sell his soul for gold, that he hoards his treasures without benefiting his kind, that he is usurious, and that he is inexorable in his dealings in all money matters. That the Israelite keeps a firm grip on his purse we admit, [180] JUSTICE TO THE JEW but that he does no good with his money we deny. Jews have been among the greatest benefactors of the human race. They have been foremost in philan- thropy and charity the world over ; they have erected costly buildings for the glory of God and the good of man ; they have endowed institutions of learning ; they have patronised science and the arts ; they have contributed in every way to the elevation of mankind, and while Christians who make the charge of parsi- mony against them have neglected the poor and left them to starve and die of hunger by the roadside, the Jews have ever taken care of their own brethren and provided for their wants. When old Peter Stuy- vesant fought to keep out the Jews in New Amster- dam, the Dutch East India Company allowed them to enter on condition that they would not become a bur- den, that they would provide for their own poor. This they have nobly done to the last letter of tlie law. To-day there are almost 800,000 Jews in New York City, and there are only twenty-six pauper Jews in the almshouse, of whom the majority are afflicted with some peculiar defect which precludes their admission to the existing Jewish charitable institutions. Can the race not feel proud of such a record.'' Jews do no good with their money ! What a charge ! How ridiculous! How absurd! Why, the strongest [181] JUSTICE TO THE JEW stones in the world's foundations, the stones upon which rest civihsation and progress and enhghten- ment, have been laid with Jewish money. The Jew spends his money, but he does not spend it recklessly or squander it on unworthy objects, therefore he has got the reputation of being close-fisted and miserly. There was a time when he was compelled to be close- fisted — the compulsion made him acquire the habit he still retains — a time when he was hunted from post to pillar, driven from country to country, banned, proscribed, outlawed, when, if he had money to-day, to-morrow he might have none, when he had no tenure in the land, and when his life was not safe from the unreasonableness of bigotry and prejudice. You, who criticise his love for gold, would you not cling to it, too, if you realised it was your only hope; would you, too, not count your pennies and hoard them, if you knew that the acquisition of more depended upon the contingency of circumstances ; would you not look out to-day, lest you starve to-morrow? The Jew took care of his money when he got it, because it was all he had to take care of, and it was very hard for him to get It, too. And when by unremitting effort and toil and privation and self-denial he did amass a con- siderable sum, can you blame him for not letting it slip through his hands to the improvident idlers on [182] JUSTICE TO THE JEW easy terms? The Jew became a money-lender — why? Simply because there were but few others who had money to lend. You cannot eat your cake and have it, too. The Christians ate their cakes, so they had to go to the Jews for more. Can anyone find fault with the Jews for selling their cakes (money) to the best advantage they could? Surely not. The wise man always tries to make a good bargain. If you sell your horse or cow, or house or lot, you try to do the best you can — to sell to the best possible profit to yourself, and just because the Jews tried to sell their money to the best advantage they were branded with the odious epithet of usurers, and so the term " Jew him down " came into use when anyone asked an exorbitant price for his property or wares. The Jew was no more of an usurer than his Christian brother ; in fact, not as much, as we shall see later. To apply the name to him is a slander, it is more, a calumny, yet for the past three hundred years he has been branded with it throughout the English-speaking world, and the man of all others most accountable for this aspersion on the race of Abraham was William Shakespeare. That teeming, ever-fertile brain which so enriched the world con- ceived the idea of portraying a Jew, and called into existence Shylock and placed him on the stage of life. [183] JUSTICE TO THE JEW In the time of Shakespeare Jews were only known in England by hateful traditions handed down from the time they were expelled from that country in 1290. These traditions grew in intensity of feeling, until, in the time of the master dramatist, the Jews came to be regarded by the English as children of Belial, anathematised by God; therefore, no colours could be too black in which to limn the hated race. It Is doubtful if ever Shakespeare saw a Jew, yet he dipped his pen in the ink of national prejudice and painted such a verbal portrait of a Jew as was never seen before, and doubtless one that shall endure as long as the English language is used as a means for the intercommunication of the ideas of mankind. It is Shakespeare's " Shylock " beyond question that still fans the fires of English animosity towards the race of Zion. The genius of William Shakespeare was so far-reaching, so all-embracing, his experience so vast, his knowledge so profound, that his writings came to be looked upon as an oracle which could not utter falsehood ; therefore his pictures came to be regarded as truthful delineations of life, and " Shylock " was taken as the ideal representative of his race, but we know now, in the light of history, that " False was the Jew That Shakespeare drew," [184] JUSTICE TO THE JEW for, as has been said, the probabiHty is that the im- mortal poet never saw an Israehte in his hfe, as there is good ground for believing that a Jew did not set foot on English soil from 1290 to 1665, which was a period of forty-nine years after Shakespeare's death. Therefore, the dramatist could not have drawn his character from experience. It is thought that he took his plot from an English version of Giovanni Florentine's " II Pecorone," written about 1378, but the story appeared in many forms from very early times. The case of the creditor exacting his pound of flesh is very old indeed. Some trace it as far back as the ancient Hindoo mythology ; others to a short time after the beginning of the Christian era. In many versions the creditor who exacts the awful liquidation of the debt is not a Jew at all. The first in which a Jew is introduced as the creditor is the English, " Cursor Mundi," written about the begin- ning of the fourteenth century, in which the plot centres around the finding of the true cross, and where Queen Helena forgives a Jew for cruelty on the condition that he point out to her the spot of the crucifixion. Though Shakespeare has portrayed Shylock as a man-monster, and one at total variance with the Jewish character, we are constrained to say that the [185] JUSTICE TO THE JEW words which he puts into the mouth of the old Jew under the circumstances and in view of such deep provocation would be natural to anyone, Jew or Christian ; even a saint might be tempted to use them if as sorely tried. No wonder Shylock is vengeful ; he is persecuted, he is derided, he is crowned with infamy, he is deprived of his money, and, excelling all the other abuses, he is robbed of his ancient faith. Who would not turn against such oppression.? Despite the awful portrayal of Shylock as an incarnated fiend, Shakespeare could have made no stronger plea for the race than in the speech, which is one long, pitiful wail for justice from the oppression of centuries: " Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, aflFections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same dis- eases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his suffer- in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? revenge; if a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his suffer- ance be by Christian example? why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I wiU execute; and it shall go hard, but I will better the instruction." Poor Shylock! we pity him as a thing of flesh and [186] JUSTICE TO THE JEW blood though but the pen-creation of Shakespeare. He was not the first, nor the last to make such a bar- gain. Though the barter of human flesh for gold seems appalling to us, yet if we consider we shall find that every day just as rash and foolish wagers are made without a thought as to their dreadful import. How often do we hear such expressions as, " I bet my head," " I bet my life," " I bet my bottom dollar," etc., when the person giving utterance to them has not the slightest conception of their relative serious- ness. It appears to have been a common custom among Italians to say, " Scometto una libra di care del mio corpo "; (I wager you a pound of flesh from my body,) when there was not the slightest intention to literally forfeit a pound of flesh. The following may be interesting as showing the attitude of the Church towards this reckless kind of betting. In his life of Pope Sixtus V. Gregorio Letti, the biographer, tells us that in 1587 Paul Maria Secchi, a merchant of Rome, gained the information that Sir Francis Drake, the English admiral, had conquered San Do- mingo. He communicated this piece of news to Sam- son Cenado, a Jewish merchant, to whom it appeared incredible, and he said: " I bet a pound of flesh that it is untrue." " And I lay one thousand scudi against it," rephed Secchi. A bond was drawn up to that [187] JUSTICE TO THE JEW effect ; after a few days news arrived of Drake's achievement, and the Christian insisted on the fulfil- ment of the bond. In vain the Jew pleaded, but Secchi swore that nothing could satisfy him but a pound of the Jew's flesh. In his extremity the Jew went to the Governor, who promised his assistance, but who, in the meantime, communicated the facts of the case to Pope Sixtus. The Pope was exceedingly wrath, and condemned both to the galleys, the Jew for making such a wager, the Christian for accepting it. They released themselves from imprisonment by each paying a fine of two thousand scudi toward the hospital of the Sixtus Bridge which the Pope was then rebuilding. Usury is no more a Jewish than it is a Gentile characteristic. As we have said, all that was left to the Jew was his money, and that money was held under the precarious conditions dependent upon the caprice of tyrannical rulers. That Jewish usurers were not as grinding as their Christian neighbours, who, in some cases, had money to lend, is well au- thenticated by the historical fact, that when by law it was forbidden Jews in France to exact usury, the law was very soon repealed in response to the people's demands and the nobles' advice, because the Chris- tian usurers to whom they had then to resort were so [188] JUSTICE TO THE JEW exorbitant in their demands that the Jews were con- sidered lenient by comparison. Bernard of Clair- vaux, writing in the twelfth century, says that Chris- tian usurers were much worse in their practice than Jews. The Jews of the Middle Ages, who were the sole possessors of the wealth, as they were also of learn- ing, were always, by the exigencies of the savage and rapacious princes, subjected to frightful extortions. In 1210 the detestable King John withdrew the privileges accorded the Jews and their families who did not heed his command to pay all their money into his exchequer. In the year of 1241 and in 1243 the Christian authorities again forced the Jews to sub- mit to extravagant extortions. These extortions were repeated in 1250 and once more in 1255. When the rapacious Henry III. went so far as to demand the money of the Jews — with the alternative of their being all hanged, they petitioned the brutal monarch to allow them to depart, but the bankrupt king bade them stay, and as he needed money to supply his son, Prince Edward, he forced the Jews to remain and robbed them as his financial exigencies required. Money-lenders were permitted legally to accept as high as forty-eight per cent, on loans, in some cases fifty per cent., therefore little need we wonder, when [189] JUSTICE TO THE JEW we remember how strong the love of gain reigns in our own hearts, that the Jews braved the prejudice, like others of the age, and remained in England to benefit by the high profits which were then given for the use of money. When, in 1290, King Edward II. could extort no more gold from the Jews, he banished them from England. The Jews became usurers, but who taught them usury.'' When you single out the Shylocks eager for their pounds of flesh, with their palms itching for other people's gold, don't forget to line up the Chris- tians guilty of the same sin and count heads. Don't merely go to the doors of the synagogues to seek the sleek usurers filing in to return thanks for their suc- cess at cheating and chicanery, but go to the Chris- tian churches as well, and look on the smug-faced hypocrites beneath the pulpits, who think that one hour on one day of the week given to the service of God will recompense for the preceding six days spent in the service of the devil. Glance over the world to-day and see if you can find a Jew amassing wealth by any means too base for a Christian to adopt. You cannot find such a Jew. Look again, and say if you can find a Jew coining his gold from the blood and bone, not alone of help- less men and women, but of innocent children as well, [190] JUSTICE TO THE JEW driving the chariot of money-lust over the crushed and bruised and broken bodies of thousands of his unfortunate fellow-beings. You may find him, but you will have to search far and search long, but you will not have to search at all for the Gentiles who, by a damnable alchemy, are converting human lives into the gold whose touch is accursed, who are throw- ing youth and innocence and beauty and virtue and all that is good in manhood and noble in womanhood into the reeking cauldrons of the workshop and the mill, the factory and the mine, to be boiled down with the scum of the pit into a grimy, slimy, blackened, stench-laden mass of humanity whose presence curses the world they were originally intended to bless ; you will see these Christians (?) at your very doors rob- bing the poor and the suffering of every attribute which life holds dear, stealing the bodies and destroy- ing the souls of little children to sacrifice them on the altar of Mammon before the shrine of the Moloch they adore. Who are the millionaire vampires of the American land to-da}', who are sucking the blood from the veins of their victims to the last drop of exhaustion, and then casting their emaciated, worn, done-out bodies on the wayside to die as scurvy-infected dogs in the gutters of misery and want ; who are the men who compose the Trusts that drive the juggernaut [191] JUSTICE TO THE JEW of oppression over the bowed necks of a helpless and hopeless people and pillage them of every right after they are left crushed and bleeding in the tracks of that relentless chariot ; who make up the bloated Cor- porations that prey with wolfish ferocity on the best interests of our homes, poisoning with pestiferous breath all that they are unable to devour? Answer! Are these thieves of the people's rights, these oppres- sors of the poor, these moral and physical tyrants who keep the world in bondage and ignorance for the sake of their own aggrandisement, — Jews? There are Jews among them, but their number is small. There is more oppression beneath the standard of the Cross than under the Star of Israel. The Jew likes gold, but at the same time he concedes to every man the right to live. He desires to be well-off himself from a wordly standpoint, but he is seldom envious of his neighbour's prosperity. Though he has seldom if ever, gotten the " square deal " himself, he believes in giving it to others and takes for his motto, " Live and let live." In finance, he is a creator and not a puller-down. Many of the great fortunes which have been made, notably in America, have been made by wrecking rail- roads and other established and incorporated indus- tries. The Jews, with comparatively few exceptions, [ 192 ] JUSTICE TO THE JEW made their money as manufacturers and merchants. Capital and Jew are not synonymous terms, yet the leading spirits of the antagonistic forces — Capital and Labour — are Jews. There are financiers, like the Rothschilds and the Bischoffscheims, and there are socialist Jews like Marx and Singer. The capitalists cannot curse the Jews, and the socialists cannot dyna- mite the Jews without abandoning their very leaders. Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labour, with a membership estimated at over 2,000,000, the largest body of workingmen in the United States, possibly in the world, is a Jew. Six hundred thousand Jews living in Africa and Asia are poor. The five millions who live in the East of Europe are only just raised above pauperism, while a goodly proportion are sunk even below that level. Among the nearly five millions of Russian Jews, only a few names, like Ginsburg, Iscman, Kronen- berg, Posnanski, Bregman, Zuckerman, the Zabludow- skis, RafFalovitch, Poliakoff, Ephrussi, Brodski, de Bloch and Rothstein rise above the general level of hard-working poverty. On the continent, besides the Rothschilds, we find not more than fifty Jewish capitalists. In xVmerica the Jew does not stand as high in finance as is generally supposed. To-day there arc [193] JUSTICE TO THE JEW perhaps six thousand milHonaires in the United States, and of these, only some three hundred claim the faith of Israel, but the number is increasing. The total Hebraic population of the country at present is almost 1,500,000, or about one-sixtieth of the whole, and these strike the gamut of every trade, craft, pro- fession, avocation and calling. There are Jewish cap- tains of industry in every field of human enterprise, from brewing to pork-packing, from realty to dry- goods, from law to liquor, from money-changing to clothing, from newspaper publisher to manufacturer, from cotton to tobacco, from grocer to miner, and from marketing to medicine. In Greater New York alone there are more than 800,000 Jews, making the metropolis of America the greatest Jewish centre in the world. There are more members of the Semitic family in New York than in all the German Empire, two and a half times as many as in Great Britain, seven times as many as in London, and ten times as many as in France. Yet out of this enormous number there are not more than one hun- dred millionaires, while there are more than fourteen hundred so-called Christian millionaires, which very emphatically shows that the Jew is very far indeed from being the monetary power in New York, as is popularly supposed. Indeed there are hundreds of [194] JUSTICE TO THE JEW Jews in the New York Ghetto who eke out their miserable lives in the direst, most abject poverty con- ceivable, and it is only as a last resort that any of these will appeal to their co-religionists for charity, though, as has been said, the Jews take care of their own poor well. The United Hebrews' Charity Society of New York collects and disburses more money an- nually for the Jewish poor than any other similar institution in the world. During the last fiscal year almost 12,000 families were compelled to apply to this Society for assistance, but of these only two per cent, were born in the United States, and of whom the majority were of the first generation. Practically speaking there are no American-born Jewish poor. The poverty is brought from Russia, from Roumania, from Bulgaria, and the other South Europe countries, and the congestion in the Ghetto increases it, intensi- fies it, until the charity of the race has to come to the rescue. 'Tis a remarkable fact that the poorer the Jew becomes, he clings to his religion the more ten- aciously. Just as the Irish cherished and adhered to their religion through centuries of persecution and poverty and famine, the Jews have held aloft the torch of the faith of Zion, which shone all the brighter for the persecutions and hardships to which its devoted children were being subjected. [195] JEWISH TRAITS AND PECULIARITIES The Jew is without doubt the most remarkable man of this world — past or present. Of all the stories of the sons of men, there is none so wild, so wonderful, so full of extreme muta- tion, so replete with suffering and horror, so abounding in extraordinary providences, so overflowing with scenic romance. There is no man who approaches him in the extent and char- acter of the influence which he has exercised over the human family. His history is the history of our civilisation and progress in this world, and our faith and hope in that which is to come. From him have we derived the form and pattern of all that is excellent on earth or in heaven. If, as DeQuincey says, the Roman Emperors, as the great accountants for the happiness of more men and men more cultivated than ever before were intrusted to the motions of a single will, had a special, singular, and mysterious relation to the secret coun- cils of heaven— thrice truly may it be said of the Jew. Pales- tine, his home, was the central chamber of God's administra- tion. He was at once the grand usher to these glorious courts, the repository of the councils of the Almighty, and the envoy of the divine mandates to the consciences of men. He was the priest and faith-giver to mankind, and as such, in spite of the jibe and jeer, he must ever be considered as occupying a peculiar and sacred relation to all other peoples of this world. Even now, though the Jews have long since ceased to exist as a consolidated nation inhabiting a common country, and for eighteen hundred years have been scattered far and near over the wide e&rth, their strange customs, their distinct features, personal peculiarities, and their scattered unity make them still a wonder and an astonishment. — Zkbulon B. Vakce. VI JEWISH TRAITS AND PECULIARITIES A Jew is a Jew the world over ; there is an indefinable something about him which differentiates him from the representative of any other nationality. You can- not fail to know him in a crowd, that is, if you are gifted with any power of intuition, have any faculty of perception or any bent towards discrimination. You may mistake a German for a Swede, you may mix up an Irishman with a Spaniard, or you may swap a Greek for an Italian, but you will never, if you know anything about human characteristics at all, confound a Jew with any other people but his own. The Israelite, no matter where he goes, is hall- marked, warranted, and patented, with all rights reserved ; therefore, he who would encroach on these rights by personation would be sure to be quickly found out. This is why Christian actors score failure in nearly all cases when they essay the role of a Jew on the stage. 'Tis only a Jew can successfully per- [199 J JUSTICE TO THE JEW sonate and mimic his brother Jew and " take off " his character and manner. Even the great Sir Henry Irving himself, inimitable actor that he was, to a great extent failed in his portrayal of Shylock. He simply gave a personality to Shakespeare's creation and declaimed Shakespeare's words with high elocu- tionary power, but despite make-up and rare simula- tion, it was plain to be seen that it was an English- man who trod the stage and not a Jew. A jackdaw once borrowed a peacock's feathers and tried to strut around in imitation of the beautiful bird he envied so much, but although he had the feathers he could not erect them into the fantail which all so admire on the peacock; therefore they were useless to him, and he became the butt of ridicule among his feathered friends. This fable strikingly illustrates the folly of the Christian in trying to personify the Jew. He simply cannot do it. He may steal the Jew's outward semblance, but that does not constitute him a Jew. The ass can parade in the lion's skin; never- theless he is not a lion, he is still an ass. Though the Hebrew people have the same feelings, the same passions, the same emotions, the same hopes, the same yearnings, ambitions, and aspirations as the rest of the world, and are subject to heat and cold, hunger and thirst, and heirs to the common ills of [200] JUSTICE TO THE JEW humanity the same as everybody else, they, neverthe- less, stand out solitary, alone from every other branch of the human family. For four thousand years they have kept by themselves, forming a distinct race that has never amalgamated itself with other races, a stream that has never mingled its waters with the waters of others, but has flowed on by itself in the vast ocean of humanity, in it but never one with it. Apart from their distinctiveness as a people, the Jews have traits and characteristics peculiar to them- selves, just as other nationalities have. For instance, the German or Teutonic people are of a rather slow, phlegmatic temperament and plodding nature, look- ing upon the serious side of life and never rashly un- dertaking any important work without giving such deep consideration ; whereas the Gallic races, of whom the Irish are the best representatives, are of sunny temperament, cheerful disposition, always look on the bright side of things, unhesitatingly undertake the most serious tasks, laugh at their own blunders, and when they fail begin again with as light hearts and high hopes as on the first occasion. Prometheus is the god of the former, Epimetheus the deity of the latter. Probably the one characteristic which most dis- tinguishes the Jews is the strong bond which unites [201] JUSTICE TO THE JEW them and keeps them the distinctive whole of which we have spoken. Jews band together in poverty and misfortune as well as in wealth and prosperity, and a rich Jew seldom looks down with contempt on a poor co-religionist, but takes him by the hand and regards him in every way as a brother and an equal. This feature widely differentiates this people from the Christians. There is no affectation of " blue blood " among the Jews, and yet they have a pedigree worth while, for when the ancestors of European kings and nobles were revelling in coarseness or ignorantly bending their backs to the commands of their superiors, the Jews were the torch-bearers of the world. What are your Sons and Daughters of the Revolution compared to the Levys, sons of the Levites, and the numerous Cahens, Cohens, Kohns, and Coehns, whose undis- puted ancestors were the Cohanim, priests of the synagogue, who burned incense before Jehovah pre- paratory to going in the shade of Babel to discuss the origin of the world with the Augurs of Chaldea and the Magi of Iran .'* At a dinner party two or three men got into a somewhat tiresome talk about the antiquity of their families, when Benjamin Disraeli, turning to a friend, said : " Think of these fellows talking about [202] JUSTICE TO THE JEW the antiquity of their families to me — to me, whose ancestor was the accepted lover of the Queen of Sheba ! " It is related that when Sir Moses Montefiore was taunted by a political opponent with the memory of Calvary, and described as one who sprang from the murderers who crucified Christ, the next morning the Jewish philanthropist, whom the Christian world has learned to honour, called upon his assailant and showed him the record of his ancestors which had been kept for two thousand years, and which showed that their home had been in Spain two hundred years before Jesus of Nazareth was born. We here repeat that Jews seldom look down upon their own. How different it is with professing Chris- tians who propose to teach the world its duty to God, and profess the brotherhood of man. Why these Christians not only consider poverty a crime, but despise and trample on the poor man. Churchianity pats a scoundrel on the back, if he has money, no matter how despicable he may be, and among Chris- tians, as among Jews, there are those who think more of the man with bonds in his pocket than of the man with bonds on his hands and feet. If a man has money, it matters not how deficient in mind, vulgar in person, and ugly in features, the most orthodox churches [ 203] JUSTICE TO THE JEW swing wide their gates ajar, and the portals of the most select (?) society open for him to enter, while they make a pariah of the poor man and clash their doors in his starving face. Not so with Jewry. When a poor Israelite gets down, willing hands are stretched from the Temple of Jacob to lift him up and put him on his feet again ; he is still a child of the fold of Judah, and as such must be cared for ; if he is so unfortunate as to become an object of charity, he finds that Charity quickly comes to his aid, not with frowning face, but with smiling countenance ; not to expose him to the world before she ministers to his wants, but to throw the aegis of her protection over him, that others may not see him until he is able to take care of himself. The Jews stick by one another in sunshine and in shade, and " While their enemies join in hate. They always join in love." The devotion of the Jews to their children and their ambition for their future welfare are distinguishing traits which do the race honour. The Jew is prepared to suffer any privation and hardship, to undergo any labour and toil, to even face death itself for the sake of his boy, in order to secure for him the advantages which will enable him to be successful in the battle [204] JUSTICE TO THE JEW of life. The father who has suffered himself will make any sacrifice to assure his son from undergoing a like ordeal. This self-denial on the part of Jewish parents is well illustrated in the case of the Russian Jews in New York ; these men have known poverty and perse- cution at home, and when a free country opens wide her doors to let them pass to the land of opportunity, they are not slow to avail themselves of every means for the sake of their children. As the author of this book was writing the first chapter, a Russian Jewish peddler came to his door in a suburb of New York City ; the peddler offered his wares, consisting of remnants, samples, needles, threads, and other flot- sam and jetsam of the clothier; the pack was almost as big as himself. On being questioned, he volunteered the information that competition and hard times had driven him out of business as a merchant tailor, but he could not be idle, so he got his pack on his back and set out as an itinerant merchant. " Though I am a peddler," said he proudly in his broken English, here corrected, " I have one son graduating this month (June) from the High School, and another one in Harvard University." Surely this Russian refugee, uncouth in appear- ance, unlettered, a stranger in a strange land, igno- rant to a great degree of its manners and customs, [ 205 J JUSTICE TO THE JEW should be an exemplar well worth copying to many American parents. Read the names published annually of the public school children who pass with flying colours the en- trance examination to the College of the City of New York, and you will find heading the lists the Cohens, Cosinskys, Levys, Greenbaums, Sesmorskys, Schapi- ros, Fleishers, Bernsteins, Rosenbergs, Goldsteins, Kopfsteins, Czarkowskys, and other names of unmis- takable Jewish families from Germany and from Rus- sia and very few names of children of American de- scent. The same is true of other American cities. Fifty per cent, of the students in Columbia University are Jews, and of the 146 graduates of the College of the City of New York last year, 122, or 83 per cent., were the sons of Russian refugees. Surely such a record should make the Jews feel proud and pleased. It goes to show that these people avail themselves of every privilege of their surroundings, no matter where their lot may be cast, and they look upon education as the best of all privileges, for they know that with its assistance they can overcome obstacles which would be otherwise impossible, and attain to heights which compel the respect and admiration of their Christian brethren, hence their eagerness to secure it. As has been shown in a preceding chapter the Jew [ 206] JUSTICE TO THE JEW can distinguish himself in the world of intellect, so if Jewish children at all get a chance they prove them- selves apt scholars, in a short time out-distancing the majority of their Christian competitors. The only way to prevent Jewish scholars from winning most of the prizes is to shut them out of the competition. In the wake of educational opportunities follows the social propaganda ; that is to say, the younger element of the Jewish population band into societies for the common good and mutual improvement. Clubs and debating-schools spring up as if by magic, and nightly the youthful Hebrews, and indeed many of the older ones, meet for the purpose of discussing questions and debating problems germane to them- selves and their present and future welfare. Espe- cially do such clubs flourish in the large cities of America, and nearly all Jewisli young men belong to them, though of course there are some who have Americanised in the wrong way, and instead of at- tending the club or the synagogue for either mental or moral improvement, prefer the corner saloon and the nearest pool-parlour. If the Jew has been brought up in a really Jewish atmosphere and taught to reverence the traditions of his race, it is rarely indeed that the tempter succeeds in dragging him to the downward path; but if he [207] JUSTICE TO THE JEW springs from a family that has more or less grown cold in the old faith, he is very liable to fall. Years ago it was very seldom you would see Jewish boys and girls on the streets after nightfall unless on legiti- mate business, but now it is not by any means un- common to see Hebrew youths of both sexes on the streets at all hours, in the concert-halls, the rathskel- lars, the speak-easies, and other disreputable re- sorts, imitating but too well their Gentile exemplars and following in their footsteps on the road that leads to dishonour and disgrace. You will now find Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah in dens and dives which would have shocked every sensory nerve in the being of Abraham and Sarah, their parents. But to the credit of the race be it said that those who fall are as yet comparatively few, and we must remember that the temptations have been many and great. The home life of the Jew has always been char- acterised by the intense devotion of its inmates to one another, but here again the modern congestion in our large cities is aiming a blow at its sanctity. There is no race suicide among the Jews, but on the contrary, there is generally a very numerous family, and often very little space in which to house it. Seven or eight cannot live very comfortably in a three-room apartment, yet in such an apartment it is not unusual [ 208] JUSTICE TO THE JEW to find such numbers, even more, and remember, the Jews are a social people who like to visit one another, especially on feast days and holidays and other spe- cial occasions, such as when the boys of thirteen are being confirmed in the faith (bar mitzvah), or when a circumcision (b'rith milah) takes place. On these occasions the rooms are crowded like the proverbial sardines in a box; where are the young people to go? What are they to do? They are simply crowded out — out into the street, and the ethics of the street at all times are poisonous both for the Jew and Gentile. It is owing to congestion in the thickly populated areas that the Jewish home is losing its influence and that Jewish youth are imbibing the vices so peculiar to our boasted civilisation. One of these vices, and perhaps the worst, is the drink habit. But ten years ago it was an anamoly almost in nature to see a drunken Jew, to-day you can see Jewish loafers hang- ing around the saloons and groggeries in the de- graded quarters of the great cities both of Europe and America ; but let it be said that these are pariahs who have lost all caste and been cut off from com- munion of their brethren, though they have to be recognised as Jews ; but they arc simply warty ex- crescences on the racial body, and just as on the animal body, they must be borne until they fall off [ 209] JUSTICE TO THE JEW as a piece of lifeless inertia. The normal Jew, the Jew who holds dear his patrimony as one of the chosen race, never drinks to excess, and it is to be doubted if a police blotter in the world has ever had to record the crime of public drunkenness against one who rigidly adhered to the faith of Abraham. Nevertheless, the Jew drinks and drinks much, too, of alcoholic beverages. Seldom, if ever, you will find a Jew a teetotaler. In fact the orthodox Jew looks upon drinking as part of his religion, for he cele- brates all his feasts and has celebrated them from time immemorial with the wine-cup. The " Rejoicing of the Law " must be observed, and to observe it well and according to custom, it is imperative, thinks the Jew, to look upon the wine-cup when it is red. The anniversary of the hanging of Haman, the Miracle of Lights, the Maccabean Victories, all are surely occasions to celebrate with hilarity and joy in the good old-fashioned style. But apart from the festal occasions and historic anniversaries, there are other times when the cup that cheers circles freely around the board, such as the events already mentioned — the bar mitzvah and b'ritli milah, and besides these there arc the pidyon ha hen (a ceremony relating to the first-born), the tnoyim (engagement), the wedding, and several others at which wine and often wassail [ 210 ] JUSTICE TO THE JEW reign. The Jew simply drinks when he feels so in- clined, and it is a remarkable fact, physiologically, that he can imbibe a much greater quantity of ardent spirits without showing any visible or external effect than can his Christian brother. Though we see hundreds of sickly-looking Jews with haggard, drawn, cadaverous faces and emaciated bodies, seemingly in the relentless grip of phthisis or tuberculosis, they possess a vitality much stronger and tougher than the Gentiles, and this may, to some extent, be owing to the wandering life of centuries which has inured them to all kinds of climatic condi- tions and adapted them to every environment. That they are a much longer-lived race than any other is fully borne out by the mortuary statistics. In the early times they were remarkable for longevity. Most of the old prophets and patriarchs passed the century mile-stone, some of them reaching a much greater age, though, despite traditions to the contrary, the span of human life was then just the same as it is to-day. The wear and tear and bustle and excitement and never-ending worry of modern society are not con- ducive to an extension of years ; nevertheless, in these, our times the Jew shows a tenacity of life truly re- markable. It was thought that the Quaker in his calm, unruffled serenity, which nothing can disturb, [211] JUSTICE TO THE JEW exceeded the Hebrew in length of years, but this has been disproved. Reliable statistics justify the con- clusion of the learned French physician, Dr. M. Levy, that, while the average term of life among the Gentiles is twenty-six years, among the Jews it is thirty-seven. The life insurance companies who have made the science of statistics a profession, as the basis of commercial computation, will tell you that the life of the average Jew is more than forty per cent, more valuable than that of any other people, not even excepting Quakers and preachers. Jews and preachers are always considered good " risks " by the companies. A writer in the Western Medical Review declares that in spite of the social conditions which surround the mass of the Hebrew population of the world, and especially in the large cities of America, where they form a goodly percentage of the population, the death-rate among the Jewish inhabitants is but little over half of that of the American population. Pro- fessor William Z. Ripley, in his papers on the racial geography of Europe, in the Popular Science Monthly, discusses the question very fully. He states that if two groups of one hundred infants each, one Jewish and one of average American parentage, be born upon the same day, one-half the Jews will not [212] JUSTICE TO THE JEW succumb to diseases before the expiration of seventy- one years. According to Lombroso, of 1000 Jews bom, 217 die before the age of seven years, while 453 Christians, more than twice as many, are likely to die within the same period. In London, according to the testimony of Dr. Behrend, consumption is less frequent among the Jews in the most squalid dens of Whitechapel than among the Christians. Perhaps the great immunity of the Jew from zymotic diseases and many other kindred evils which afflict the Gentiles may be attributed to cleanliness. Cleanliness ! No doubt Christian readers will open their eyes and stare at this word, consider it even grotesque when applied to a Jew. Memory will recall the sights of squalour and filth witnessed in the dark labyrinths of the foul-smelling Ghettos in the con- gested districts of New York and London, of Paris and Berlin, of Vienna and Moscow and the other great human hives where the children of Israel crowd together like sheep in an unventilated pen. They will picture to themselves the gaunt, sallow, corpse-like men they see passing along the streets, clothed in tat- ters, encrusted in dirt, bargaining for old, cast-off clothes (o' cas' co') no matter by whom worn, which they take and try to renew in some vermin-infested basement or cellar where the air is reeking with all [213] JUSTICE TO THE JEW sorts of foul odours, and where the bacilli of every conceivable disease have made their home. But withal, and his physical appearance, and it is this very the Jew is clean. He is clean despite his surroundings cleanliness which, as we have said, probably renders him immune from the bacteria and germs of his environment. In regard to personal cleanliness, we cannot go altogether by appearance, we must take in and con- sider the work and the surroundings. Many a black- smith at his anvil, covered with grit and grime and sweat, is cleaner by far than many a scented band-box dandy strutting along the fashionable throughfares, sucking an ivory-headed cane, sporting a monocle and ogling the ladies. So with the Jews. Many a dirty- looking Jew is cleaner than a clean-looking Gentile. The Jew is extremely fond of soap and water under all circumstances ; especially has he a fondness for the latter. Whenever he gets an opportunity to take a bath he takes one. During summer the public baths are patronised by no people so much as by the Jews. Men, women, and children surround them at all hours anxiously awaiting their turn. At home, if at all possible, the Jew has his bath. No matter how small his apartments, he reserves a space for his ablutions. If there is not a separate bathroom he buys a sheet- [214] JUSTICE TO THE JEW iron receptacle and makes it suffice, for as he will tell you, a bath he must have at least once a week. There are Gentiles who do not take a bath once a month or even once a year. The orthodox Jew also cuts his finger nails and toe nails once a week, for according to the Rabbinical teaching, the dirt beneath contains evil spirits. This is a practice in which the Christian would do well to take the poor Hebrew as an exemplar, for though the dirt beneath the nails may not contain evil spirits, it is certainly likely to contain germs, and besides is most unsightly. As soon as the orthodox Jew gets out of bed in the morning, he must not take more than four steps until he washes his face and hands ; he must also wash his hands before and after each meal, as well as rinse his mouth. These habits are very sanitary and doubtless go a long way to ward off sickness. The apartments are also kept as clean as possible, even when they are very crowded. A room is always kept for the recep- tion of guests, no matter how small the living space, and from this room the family excludes itself, so that it may always be in order. A bright carpet generally covers the floor, but if it happens the carpet is too expensive, the bare boards are scrubbed as clean as a hound's tooth, and whatever furniture there is [215] JUSTICE TO THE JEW shines with the lustre of cleanliness. The kitchen is spotless, the stove or range is sparkling, and the crockery reflect like a mirror. The cooking is all that could be desired and the food above suspicion. This is another reason why the Jew has a better vitality and lives longer than his Gentile brother. It is well known that Jewish meat is much cleaner and purer than that eaten by their Christian neighbours. It must be fresh, for if it be more than three days old it is not kosher (ritually clean), and besides it must be rinsed in water. Only healthy animals are selected for the purpose of slaughter. The pure meat thus eaten by the Jewish people has much to do, it is thought, in keeping at bay the white man's plague — tuberculosis. Christians eat meat from various ani- mals, and it has been shown that the inspection of such has been very loose and defective. Sometimes it is necessary to kill a dozen hogs before a sound pair of lungs can be found ; therefore, is it at all strange that consumption plays such direful havoc with the eaters of swine flesh.'* The orthodox Jew eschews the swine altogether. There can be but little doubt that the great prevalence of consumption among the Gen- tile people is mainly attributable to the food-stufi^s they eat, and among these the most dangerous is the meat from tuberculous animals. Fish is another [216] JUSTICE TO THE JEW staple article of food among the Jews, but it must be fresh ; it is especially looked upon as a dish for Satur- day or the Sabbath. The Jews are not great vegetarians ; indeed, apart from the potato they eat very sparingly of any vegetable. On the whole they are small eaters and very seldom are given to gourmandising, for glut- tony among them is considered a very great sin. A pound of kosher meat with a few potatoes per diem suffices for a poor family of father, mother, and sev- eral children, and when meat is out of their reach they can live on herring, bread, and tea just as well. The only reason for the impression that has gone abroad as to the Jew's uncleanliness is that the Ghettos are, in all cases, situated in the meanest, most squalid parts of the cities, and that here the Jews are compelled to herd together. There is no question that the children of the old faith love to band together and stick by one another, hence the Ghetto conges- tion. But the filth of the Ghetto is not at all to be attributed to the Jews, who try to keep their persons and homes as clean as possible — 'tis the fault of the city. The city is to blame for the tenement rookeries, it is to blame for the defective sanitation, it is to blame for the dirty streets on which it allows nui- sances to accumulate which would not be tolerated in [217] JUSTICE TO THE JEW any other quarter. In this way the innocent Jews have to bear the calumny of uncleanliness for the guilty city. The history of Israel, as regards criminology, has been an almost stainless record until within recent time. Thirty or forty years back, the conviction of a Jew for felony was almost an unheard-of procedure in criminal jurisprudence, but to-day there are offenders among the race of Israel in all countries, and Jewish convicts are behind the bars of every large penitentiary in the world. There are few prisons or penal institutions on the American con- tinent without Hebrews on their roll of infamy. The cause of this deterioration in the civil morality of the race is not far to seek. Keep the Jew from the corrupting influences of the congested centres of the cities and he will remain a law-abiding citizen of his country from boyhood to the grave, but bring him into the places where he sees a premium put upon crime, where he sees vice often rewarded and virtue thrown in the shade, where he sees even men of his own race and faith prostituting themselves, as many do, in adoration of the golden calf, breaking every commandment which Jehovah gave to Moses on Sinai's sacred mount, do you wonder that he, too, will waver in the faith, grow weak, and succumb to the [ 218 ] JUSTICE TO THE JEW temptation that often leads to the portals of a prison and the felon's cell? The Jews can be corrupted just the same as any other people — they are human and have human weak- nesses. It is hard to touch pitch and remain unde- filed. The moth singes his wings when he gets too near the flame. Once the American Indian was among the finest specimens of physical manhood on God's footstool, conscious of his strength, noble in his courage, immovable in his purpose, determined in his convictions. To-day he is weak both physically and mentally, vacillating, wavering, unsteady, even cow- ardly. What brought about the degeneration.'^ Inter- course with the white men degraded the red men and brought them down from their high pedestal of man- hood to a level with their exemplars in vice. So it was the coming to the cities that made the Jews criminals. They were not criminals by instinct, but they became criminal by example. To-day you will find Jews guilty of almost every crime ip the Decalogue, from theft to murder, though it is but seldom the latter crime is perpetrated. Forgery is a common misdemeanour among the race, followed closely by grand larceny. Of late gam- bling has been very much on the increase, and it is not uncommon now to find Jews running pool-parlours, [219] JUSTICE TO THE JEW faro rooms, roulette joints, and other chance resorts under the ban of the law. Environment damned the Jew in the great cities such as London and New York. In the latter city he saw men making fortunes by crooked methods and not alone getting off with their ill-gotten gains, but receiving homage and re- spect for their cleverness. In the old days, under the Tammany regime, when crime walked rampant on our streets and no one had dared to stop the monster in his progress, every rascal was out for as much *' boodle " as he could get, and the poor Jew was too weak, too human to resist the temptation to get a part of the swag, and so he was drawn into the mael- strom of vice. At that time the lower East Side, where the Jews' quarter is situated, became a hotbed of all kinds of immorahty and crime, and the city might as well have had no police force at all. Law and order were simply defied, while Graft sat deified on the throne of Tammany Hall. The reeking stench of brothels and harlotries contaminated the air and filled it with moral poison. Virtue was bought with gold and the unholy traflSc was looked upon as a mat- ter of course under existing circumstances. The youth of both sexes — the assets for future manhood and future womanhood — were put upon the market and " knocked down " to the highest bidder. These [ 220] JUSTICE TO THE JEW young men and maidens were purchased to act as " cadets " or runners for the houses of ill-fame. In a short time the girls were turned out " profes- sionals " on the streets and reaped golden harvests for their masters. They flaunted their prosperity (?) in the faces of their former companions, they showed their gold and jewels and fine clothes to the poor working girls, and told them what fools they were to work hard from morning to night when plenty of money and finery could be had for the asking. Their specious reasoning, with the devil's sophistries their masters had taught them to put forward, succeeded but too well, and innocence was caught in the net of vice. Among these were many Jewish youths of both sexes. Before this time a Jewess wanton had never been seen on the streets of New York, but these Tam- many Universities of Hell now graduated them by the score, and nowadays it is not uncommon to find a Jewess in every batch of " solicitors " raked in by the pohce. But justice must admit that the Jewish women are among the most chaste In the world when among their own race, and Jewish men are ex- ceedingly jealous of the virtue of their womanhood, which they are ready to defend with their lives, if necessary. As long as the Jews remain true to the traditions [221] JUSTICE TO THE JEW of their race and the faith of their fathers, they are able to rise above all environment, overcome all temp- tation, resist all vices, and become good and loyal citizens of the countries of their adoption — law-abid- ing, self-respecting, moral, honest, sober and indus- trious, sustaining the proud record of the House of Israel by being useful to the world as well as to themselves. [222] JUSTICE TO THE JEW Jews claim to be measured by the standard of other com- munities. They do not covet undue commendation; but they emphatically protest against depreciation. They do not desire to be thought better than they actually are. Jews are but human creatures, and therefore, like other human creatures, they are of necessity subject to the infirmities, frailties, and errors common to humanity. They desire to be spoken of as they are, that nothing in their character and conduct shall be extenuated, or aught set down to them in malice. Having en- dured from the wickedness and injustice of mankind more than eighteen centuries of suffering; having more particularly in the barbarous Middle Ages been subject to every conceiv- able phase of wrong and misery; to oppressive and restrictive laws; to usurious imposts from royal and noble robbers; to the exceptional disadvantages of being forced for many ages to pursue, in order to sustain life, many avocations calculated to degrade and depress the human character, it should strike all men of an impartial and unfettered judgment, who reflect seriously on the subject, and take into unprejudiced consider- ation the tremendous post-biblical history of the Jewish na- tion, as bordering almost on the miraculous, that modern Jews should have emerged from so terrible a state of racial adver- sity and degradation with so bright and promising an aspect as they actually present. None but a divinely protected people could have done so ! It is an unanswerable demonstration to persistent traducers of the Jewish people that they are an in- destructible race, and destined, moreover, to develop in the undefined future, the yet unrealised glorious designs of the Eternal. To crush, much less to extirpate, the Jews, a people whom God graciously selected from all other nations as " His peculiar treasure " — sinful though they have been— has repeatedly been proved by the experience of more than eighteen centuries to be impossible. — Charles Kensington Sala^ian. VII JUSTICE TO THE JEW Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his " Over the Teacups," says : " If the creeds of mankind would try to under- stand one another before attempting mutual ex- termination, they would be sure to find a meaning in beliefs which are different from their own." You never see a really big-brained man a bigot — it is the man who thinks himself omniscient, but who is not. There was situated in the Far East a great obelisk, one side of it was white, another side was green, an- other blue, and travellers went and looked at that obelisk, but they did not walk around it ; each man looked only at one side, and when they met they got into a quarrel about the colour of that obelisk; one man said it was white, another declared it was green, and still another persisted it was blue, and when they were in the very heat of the controversy, a more in- telligent traveller came and said, " Gentlemen, I have seen that obelisk, too, and you are all right and you [225] JUSTICE TO THE JEW are all wrong. Why did you not walk around the obeHsk? " Look out for the man that never walks around and sees the truth in its manysidedness. See one side only, and you will be a bigot, enlarge your information and you will change your opinion. Is it not time we quit hating one another for the love of God.'' A gamester once, going to a cocking-main, put two roosters in the same apartment over night. In the morning when he went to spur them for the fight, he found both dead — the one had killed the other. Standing over their dead bodies the poor fellow dole- fully exclaimed : " What a pair of fools not to know you were both on the one side ! " We are all on the same side, but we do not recognise it. We can readily agree with Lessing, when he makes the Christian monk say to the Jewish Nathan : " . . . Heaven bless us ! That which makes me to you a Christian Makes you to me a Jew." It was said of Sydney Smith that he would not read a book which he was to review — reading it might prejudice his judgment. When Charles Lamb was berating an enemy, someone said to him, " Why, you don't know him." Lamb replied, " I don't want to know him, for fear I should like him." [ 226] JUSTICE TO THE JEW Christians and Jews make ignorance of each other a claim for judgment, and seem to be afraid to be- come acquainted for fear that they might like each other. If a man is born of the race of Israel can you blame him for being a Jew? You might as well blame him for the colour of his hair, or of his eyes, or for his gait in walking. The Christian has no right to deride the Jew for his belief, the Jew has no right to scoff at the Christian for his doctrine. Nothing great has been ever accomplished in the world by hate and distrust, but all that is great and good owes its origin to unity and mutual love and trust. God gave the commandment, " Love ye one another," and upon its observance depends the very upstanding of the social fabric, aye, the foundation of humanity itself. What binds together nations and commonwealths and cities and towns, what supports governments and politics, what conserves civilisation and adds to prog- ress? It is the love of man for his kind. That love enables him to work and toil and think and plan to make the world better and brighter. It sends the mariner out to brave the perils of ocean, it accom- panies the explorer to unknown lands to open the way for commerce and trade, it uprears the lofty citadel of civilisation and points the tapering spire to heaven, it speeds the steam-horse snorting on his [227] JUSTICE TO THE JEW way over thousands of miles of land, bearing cheer and hope and comfort. Verily ■* Love rules the world, the camp, the grove." Take it away and the sunlight of earth would be darkened, the stars would fall from their firmament, and sink into the gloom of an everlasting night. All mankind is one family — God's family. What matters it that some of us are white, some black, others yellow? We all had a common origin and have a common Father — God. The dusky-browed savage of the South Seas in his paint and war-feathers, bow- ing down to stick and stone, is as much a child of the Heavenly Father as the lordly European, polished and refined by long ages of civilisation and culture. They are brothers ; we are all brothers, and there- fore should have love for one another. The Jew is brother to the Christian and the Christian is brother to the Jew. We may kneel at different shrines, but we pray unto one God — the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, yet for ages the Christians have been persecuting Jews in the name of the same God. Emperors and kings, presidents and popes, inquisi- tors and reformers have proscribed and banned the followers of Zion in the name of Him who was Him- self a Jew and who came to proclaim " Peace on earth, [238] JUSTICE TO THE JEW good-will to men." Christian monarchs and people have in bigotry and ignorance, driven forth the chil- dren of Abraham from their homes, put a price upon their heads, hunted them as ravening wolves, with the sword and the torch in the one hand and the Cross and the Bible in the other — the Cross the emblem of salvation, the Bible written by Jews as the rule of life for men, the teachings of which those Christians professed to accept and follow as the means by which they could merit eternal life. Strange inconsistency ! to persecute in the name of religion those who had given the religion. The Jews were not only the objects of hatred by one sect of the Christian church as time rolled onward, but by all divisions which believed in the Nazarene and based their faith on the Bible, the epitome of God's law which the Jews themselves had enunciated. Catho- lic Spain, Protestant Germany, Greek Russia massa- cred and murdered Jews while singing the psalmody Jewish patriarchs and prophets had written. Oh! Christianity, what crimes have been committed in thy name! Oliver Cromwell and his Roundheads in Ire- land delighted to hold little children on the point of their spears, laughing at their dying convulsions and singing psalms the while; after a holocaust of wan- ton slaughter, Oliver would write to the Parliament, [ 2:^9 ] JUSTICE TO THE JEW " The Lord of Hosts has given us another victory." Men went to the gibbet and rack in Spain under the Inquisition for the courage of their convictions. The Huguenots suffered for their faith in France, and modern history records many other religious persecu- tions as senseless as they were ungodly. Too often the Cross has been held aloft as the standard of injustice and tyranny, and it is about time the holy emblem was no longer insulted by the profanation of sacri- ligious hands, time that the Star of Bethlehem should shine over a world of peace and love, and it is time, too, that the Star of Israel should be allowed to ascend to the zenith of its effulgence without being obscured and eclipsed by the clouds of bigotry and the penumbra of persecution, time that the curtain should be drawn on the drama of blood, shutting it out forever from the sight of mankind. The hydra- headed demon of racial hatred must be exorcised for all time and its spirit laid deep beneath the sea of oblivion. " Fools rush in where angels fear to tread," and similarly ignorance places itself in antagonism to enlightenment. Too long has the world hated those who gave the world Its first lessons in knowledge and civilisation, too long have Christians made war upon those who gave them their Christianity — the Jews. [230] JUSTICE TO THE JEW What is Christianity? Judaism in evolution. Chris- tians are but Jews come to fruition. The Christian religion is intrinsically Jewish, as was the religion of Moses and the patriarchs. Its Founder was a Jew, born of a Jewess and of a long line of Jewish ancestry stretching back to the Abra- hamic origin of the faith, and the foundation stone upon which Christianity rests is the interpretation of the sacred words of Holy Writ as laid down by Jews in the Bible. The Jew has given to the world the knowledge of the only, true, and living God. He has given Moses, who, in the twelve united states of Israel, gave the world the first republic, and whose laws, after more than thirty-three hundred years, form the basis of the civilised world's jurisprudence. Christianity's cradle was rocked among Jewish tra- ditions by Jewish hands ; it lay in the lap of Jewish faith and was nurtured to a healthy growth by Jewish sacrifice and self-denial. In fact, Christianity owes all it is or can ever expect to be to the race of Israel, which gave to the world the ideal of the race, Jesus the Jew ; Jesus of Nazareth, who built His religion on the foundation stones of brotherly love, yet in the name of this same Jesus Jews have been openly slaughtered, not for being guilty of any crime against the moral or civil code, but simply because [ 231 ] JUSTICE TO THE JEW they happened to belong to the House of Israel, adherents of that faith which God Himself revealed to their first ancestor, Abraham. In Russia, to celebrate Easter, the Resurrection of Christ, mobs, singing anthems of praise, swept the unfortunate Jews through the streets, outraged their womanhood, butchered them in cold blood, then pil- laged and burned their dwellings, while priestly mur- derers in the name of Christ sang Te Deums to the Most High and swung their unholy censers in air, in thankfulness for the slaughter of their fellow-men. Could sacrilege or blasphemy go further than this, not to speak of blind ignorance — to thank God in the name of Christ for murdering His own " chosen peo- ple," and with bloody hands offering such a sacrifice on the altar of Him who was brother to the Jews, a Jew Himself.? Christian hatred of Judaism is in itself a paradox, a contradiction in terms. As well and as wise to speak of Catholic hatred for Papists, or Protestant hatred for Lutherans. In the persecu- tion of the Jews, Christianity has made herself, not alone sinful, but foolish ; not alone wicked, but ridicu- lous, for she has been pursuing a suicidal course; when she was murdering the Jews, she was hacking herself at the same time. On many occasions, in almost every country, [ 232 ] JUSTICE TO THE JEW under great provocation, the Jew has shown himself a better Christian than his hypocritical brother who usurped the name but failed to live up to its teach- ings or act in conformity with that which it repre- sents. Few people have been so true in spirit to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as the Jews, because Jesus only taught what they were accustomed to accept and which they made their life-guide in all things. What Jesus taught, Christianity professes to believe, but the Jews both believe and practise many of the precepts of Jesus, therefore they have a better right to be called Christians than the cant- ing hypocrites and whited sepulchres who practice not what they preach. Paul, the Jew, said : " Now, if any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of His." The Jews have ever in their character ex- emplified the doctrine of non-resistance as taught by the Jewish Founder of Christianity, who when He was reviled, reviled not again, and when smitten, smote not again. And who so often reviled, who so often smitten as the Jews.-^ They did not revenge themselves, but following the teachings of Him whom the Christians call Master, when struck upon one cheek they turned the other to the smiters. Yet, let it not be understood that the Jews were cowards ; when they turned the other cheek it was through a [233]" JUSTICE TO THE JEW spirit of meekness and humility, born of their race through the teachings of the Fathers as well as of Jesus. When occasion requires the Jew can be the bravest of men. It is absurd for Christianity to think that she can upraise new temples on the funeral pyre of Judaism. That funeral pyre she shall never see, fo:* just as the Israelitish nation had its origin in the grey dawn of the world's history, so shall it have its end in the last twilight of time. The waves of hate and op- pression and ignorance may sweep over it, but the shattered hulk shall still float on o'er the waters of time until it joins the ocean of eternity. The Jews are dead as a living nationality, but they are as vital a force to-day in the world as when Solo- mon reared the golden glories of his Temple to the clouds, wherein the great High Priest of Israel ap- proached the inner sancutary of the Holy of Holies and offered the sacrifice of homage and adoration to the omnipotent Jehovah. Though not a stone re- mains upon a stone of that glorious temple of religion, though its sacrificial fires have been ex- tinguished for over twenty-eight hundred years, though the patriarchs and prophets and people who worshipped there have mingled their dust with that of centuries, though their descendants are wanderers [ 234] JUSTICE TO THE JEW and exiles and expatriates over the face of the earth, with no land they can call their own, the Jewish peo- ple have never lost their faith or their love, and are still as strong in fealty and fervour to the religion of their race as in the glorious days long buried in the oblivion of time. Though broken, bruised, and scat- tered from meridian to meridian and almost from pole to pole, they have preserved for thousands of years their individuality as a people, their language as a sacred inheritance, and their faith the most priceless heritage their ancestors could bequeathe. Empires and kingdoms, principalities and republics have crumbled and passed away, but the throne of Israel still remains, not indeed as the seat of an earthly government, but in the hearts of a true, loyal, devoted, and faithful people. The light of Israel has long shone through the night of time, and though, on occasions, it has been obscured, its brilliancy has ever remained the same, to gleam forth at intervals with as pure and holy and strong an effulgence as it did in the Eastern skies when the world was young and not a cloud appeared above the horizon to shade the lustre of its bright- ness. It is still shining, but has deflected its course somewhat from the East to the West, and all observa- tions indicate that it is in the West, not the East, [235] JUSTICE TO THE JEW the Star of Israel shall reach the zenith of its azi- muth. The golden cycle of Judaism is rolling its wheel onward to the Western world, and 'tis there that the scattered children of the Fold of Judah look for the reincarnation of Israel's hopes. The Palestinian dream of going back to the land of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has been long cherished as a delightful vision by the votaries of Zion, but now the cry is, " On to the Palestine of the West." The nascent walls of a new Jerusalem are being erected to-day, and on them the eyes and the hopes of Israel rest. After the long, dark night of persecution, of tyranny, of sorrow, the sunburst of freedom and equality is about to dawn like a new aurora over the hills and valleys of the Promised Land — great, glori- ous, and free America. It has been the custom of Jews in greeting one another on Festival days to say : " Next year in Jerusalem," but now the most optimistic of the race feel that the longings and yearnings of centuries in that direction can never be realised, and if they could, are no longer desirable. America now, espec- ially the United States, is the Mecca of the race, the new Judea which opens wide her gates to let the wanderers enter to enjoy the twin blessings of free- dom and equality. Heine said, " If all Europe were [236 ] JUSTICE TO THE JEW to become a prison, America would still present a loop-hole of escape, and, God be praised ! that loop- hole is larger than the dungeon itself. America is the Zion from which goes forth the law. In America liberty enlightens the world, and the oppressed and down-trodden of all lands find a refuge and a home. Well then may the Jews take their harps down from the willows, and instead of sitting by the banks of the Jordan and the Kedron, sit by the Hudson and the Mississippi, to sing their sweet songs of praise and chant the lays of Zion, In America, they find, not only liberties, but Liberty! " In America the Jew has a double claim to recogni- tion — the claim of the man under the wide tolerance of the twentieth century and the claim of the Ameri- can citizen under the broad spirit of the American Constitution. But though America acknowledges these claims and grants liberty to the Jew, she nevertheless to a great extent denies him fraternity and equality, which are the rights and prerogatives of every free-born and naturalised citizen. As yet the Jew is not wholly looked upon as a brother, nor is he put on a plane of equality with his Christian fellow men. At many of the clubs, social, professional, and even political-^he is ostracised, and even his money cannot admit him [ 237] JUSTICE TO THE JEW into the ranks of so-called Society which worships at the shrine of the golden calf. He cannot send his children to the select private schools of the country, for they will not be accepted as pupils, and often when he takes his seat in public places he is given a wide berth, as the American " milord " and " milady " do not wish to run the risk of social contamination by sitting in juxtaposition to a Jew. The street gamins are allowed under the very noses of the police to insult Jews with impunity in public and hurl at them all sorts of vile epithets and oppro- brious names, the chief appellation of contumely be- ing " sheeny." This word seems to be a corruption of the German schinder, an usurer or extortionist, and as we have seen, is no more applicable to a Jew than a Christian. Often Hebrew peddlers and small merchants have had their wares scattered over the streets by evil-disposed boys and could get no redress from either police or law. On the stage the Jew is caricatured, burlesqued, and lampooned, his speech, manners, and habits parodied and held up to ridicule, while the audience howls its approval in shrieks of delight. Even Jews themselves join with Christians in applauding these insults to their race, and it is no uncommon sight to see Jews at the cheap theatres and vaudeville houses [238] JUSTICE TO THE JEW vociferously encouraging Christian actors to deride and mock their own people by all kinds of grotesque and disgusting representations of Jewish life and character. How can a man command the respect of others if he does not respect himself? In like manner, how can a race of people expect encouragement and respect when it laughs at its own degradation? It would be well for the Jews to take example from the Irish in this matter. The Irish hooted and pelted the vilifiers and traducers of their country off the stage, so that the comic Irishman of the boards has been relegated to the past, never to be resurrected. The Hebrews could accomplish the same, if by concerted action they would chase from before the footlights the cheap artists who pander to the depravity and vitiated tastes of the mobs, by holding up their people and religion to scorn. Wealthy Jews are much to blame for the hoodlumism that is permitted to insult their race. They very easily could take steps to stamp it out in such an effective manner that it would never dare to lift its head again. To a very great extent the Jews in this country have the future in their own hands — they can command respect or merit opprobrium. In the light of history it is no shame to be a Jew, and the Christian who looks down on the Jew dis- [239] JUSTICE TO THE JEW plays his own ignorance, minimises his own quahties, and in every way stultifies himself, yet we find Chris- tians who claim to be cultured and enlightened cast- ing aspersions on the Jews and treating them as infinitely beneath them, not only in the social, but in the natural scale as well. Even at the present time in free America, with all its boasted privileges, the Jew is denied the rights of the common citizen, not to speak at all of the disadvantages under which he labours socially, of which mention has been already made. In many of the hotels and summer resorts conspicuous signs are displayed bearing such bigoted inscriptions as " No Jews Wanted," " No Jews Need Apply," " Dogs Not Taken," etc. Thus is the Jew put on the level of a dog. Recently a most estimable lady of the Jewish faith, sister of a United States Senator and widely known in the world of philan- thropy and charity, beloved and respected by all who know her for her sterling qualities of head and heart, was turned away from an hotel in Atlantic City on account of being a Jewess. The insult thus given to this worthy lady, or rather to her friends whom she expected, and to the race in general, has spread a wave of indignation and shame throughout this broad land, which it is to be hoped will engulf for- ever all racial prejudice and hatred towards the long- [ 240] JUSTICE TO THE JEW suffering family of Israel. A bill has been introduced into the New York Legislature to make it a penal offence to discriminate against the Jew on account of his religion or against a member of any race owing to his religious beliefs. An individual may be objec- tionable in himself, but that is no reason why he should be taken as the representative of a class. The prejudice against the Jew must be traced to this cause — one is made responsible for all and all are made responsible for one. Paul and Iscariot were both Jews, yet many a Christian, while he remembers the betrayer, forgets the Apostle. However, the case of the lady at Atlantic City was not that of the innocent suffering for the guilty, but a discrimination against the Jewish race, and should be keenly resented by enlightened and liberty-loving America, whose watch- words are " liberty," " fraternity," " equality." Hatred of the Jews has even been allowed to enter the public school and thus poison the mind of Young America at its fountain source. In Chicago, former Mayor Harrison had to send a request to the Presi- dent of the Board of Education, the result of which was that the Superintendent of Schools issued in- structions to the principals of all the schools to warn their pupils against calling offensive names, throw- ing stones, or otherwise injuring Jewish children. [241] JUSTICE TO THE JEW These instructions were carried out by means of the principals. The author has seen Jewish boys and girls go home from our public schools in tears be- cause of the offensive names with which they were taunted. This is no credit to our institutions of learning, that hatred is engendered where love should be inculcated. Especially should the young be taught the maxims of mutual consideration and forbearance, and to look upon one another as the units of a whole on whose convergence and unity depend the welfare of the nation. The foundation stones of our great commonwealth were laid by men who differed widely in race and re- ligion, but who came together for a common cause; those stones were cemented by the blood of martyrs, who though widely divergent in many respects, shed their blood on a common altar for a glorious cause, and among these men and martyrs were many of Jewish faith. North, south, east, and west the sun- light streams o'er the graves of Christian and Jewish dead who perished that America might live, might take her place amongst the nations of the world, not the last nor the least, but the foremost and best, great, glorious, and free, invincible and immortal, at one and the same time the envy and the admiration of the world. [242] JUSTICE TO THE JEW In the pantheon of glory, can we admit the Chris- tian and deny the Jew? His numbers may have been small, but he was represented in proportion to his race and opportunities in the upbuilding of the American nation, and therefore his descendants to- day have a claim which honour cannot ignore. And in the present, as in the past, he is doing his share to maintain the prestige, uphold the glory, and spread the fame of the great republic from sea to sea and shore to shore. Despite the penurious reputation which the slanders of centuries has given him, his purse-strings are as loose to-day as they were when the big-hearted Marano, Luis de Santangel, poured out his ducats to enable old Cristobal Colon to brave the dangers of unknown seas in quest of the land which at a far-off day was to open her gates to give a haven to his race from persecution and oppression. As America has given the Jew a haven, let her do more, let her take him to her breast and treat him as she does her other children, and she will find that he will be just as dutiful, even more so. Though as yd she has not given him " the square deal," he has not been unmindful of the filial devotion he owes to her as his adopted mother. Lord Macaulay said : " The Jew is what we made him." He is the handiwork of [243] JUSTICE TO THE JEW our own civilisation. The American Jevr is at the present what America is making him. Not his des- tiny, but his influence for good or evil, lies in her hands. His race is imperishable; republics may rise and fall, nationalities wither and decay, but ever down the stream of time shall sail the barque of Israel until it loses itself in the illimitable vastness of eternity. Whether that barque shall be freighted with a pre- cious cargo or not, depends to a very great extent on the people of America. If they will they can make It valuable and a blessing to their nation, or they can render it harmful and an evil in the land. Yes, America can shape the future of the Jew; she can show him kindness, respect his manhood, and give him opportunity^ ; in a word, she can give him justice, and this is all he asks. The oldest civilisation stands at the door of the youngest, and with sup- phant voice, Zion calls to Columbia for — JUSTICE TO THE JEW THE END [244] UC SOUTH! RN HI GIONAl LIBRARY t ACILITY AA 000 910 552 9 ' ^^'^forma. Sa^ Diego ^^TE DUE ^-fi-^