II
⭘ Lucas: The Jewish Year, Macmillan, 1898. Every one of Mrs. Lucas’s admirable versions of the principal mediaeval Jewish hymns quoted in this book are from the above volume.
⭘ Levi: See Miss Helen Zimmern’s monograph on ‘David Levi, Poet and Patriot’, in the J. Q. R., 1897.
⭘ Zangwill: ‘The Position of Judaism’. North American Review.
⭘ Schechter: Seminary Addresses. ‘Higher Criticism—Higher Anti-Semitism’.
⭘ Sulzberger: From Address at the Decennial Meeting of the J. P. S.
⭘ Leeser: Preface, The Twenty-four Books of the Holy Scriptures.
⭘ Adler: From a Sermon, ‘This Book of the Law’.
⭘ Rashi: On Exodus vi. 9. Scripture must be interpreted according to its plain, natural sense—an epoch-making pronouncement in the history of Bible exegesis. Though he is not the author of this canon of interpretation, Rashi is the first seriously to attempt its application. ‘Rashi deserves the foremost place which the judgment of Jewish scholars generally accords him. He has two of the greatest and rarest gifts of the commentator, the instinct to discern precisely the point at which explanation is necessary, and the art of giving or indicating the needed help in the fewest words.’ (G. F. Moore.)
⭘ Halevi: Cusari, ii, 56. Translated by H. Hirschfeld under the Arabic title Kitab Al-Khazari (Routledge), 1905.
⭘ Geiger: Judaism and its History, I, 3.
⭘ Jacobs: Jewish Contributions to Civilization, J. P. S.
⭘ Shemtob: A remarkable anticipation by over three and a half centuries of the modern view of the rôle of the Prophets.
⭘ Compare with the two other selections on the Prophets the following by Felix Adler:—
‘Either we must place nature uppermost, or man uppermost. If we choose the former, then man himself becomes a mere soulless tool in the hands of destiny, a part of a machine, the product of his circumstances. If we choose the latter, then all nature will catch a reflected light from the glory of the moral aims of man.
‘The Hebrew Prophets chose the latter alternative. They asserted the freedom of man; and the general conscience of mankind, despite all cavilings and sophistry to the contrary, has ever responded to their declaration with a loud Amen. They argued, to put their thought in modern language, that we may fairly judge of the whole course of evolution by its highest outcome, and they believed its highest outcome to be, not mere mechanical order of beauty, but righteousness.
‘The Hebrew Prophets interpreted the universe in terms of humanity’s aspirations. They believe that the ends of justice are too precious to be lost; that, if righteousness is not yet real in the world, it must be made real; and, hence, that there must be a Power in the world which makes for righteousness.’
⭘ Darmesteter: Selected Essays, translated by Jastrow, N. Y., 1895.
⭘ Lazarus: The Spirit of Judaism, New York, 1895.
⭘ The Literary Remains of Emanuel Deutsch, 1874. The Talmud: Two Essays by Deutsch and Darmesteter, J. P. S., 1911.
⭘ Chapters in Jewish Literature, J. P. S. Preface.
⭘ Magnus: Outlines of Jewish History, J. P. S., p. 333.
⭘ Jacobs: Jewish Ideals and other Essays, 1896.
⭘ Halevi: Cusari, ii, 36.
⭘ Gaster: Presidential Address, Transactions of Jewish Historical Society of England, vol. viii.
⭘ Jewish History, concluding paragraph.
⭘ Zunz: Synagogale Poesie des Mittelalters, chap. ii. ‘Leiden.’ This wonderful presentation of the Sufferings of the Jews in the Middle Ages has been translated by Dr. A. Löwy in Miscellany of Hebrew Literature. First Series, 1872; and has been republished in the ‘Library of Jewish Classics’, Bloch Publishing Co., New York, 1916.
⭘ Antiquities of the Jews. Book xviii, 8.
⭘ Dean Plumptre, Lazarus and other Poems.
⭘ Heine: The following is a more literal version by Nina Salaman:—
Break out in loud lamenting,
Thou sombre martyr-song,
That all aflame I have carried
In my silent soul so long.
Into all ears it presses,
Thence every heart to gain—
I have conjured up so fiercely
The thousand-year-old pain.
The great and small are weeping,
Even men so cold of eye;
The women weep and the flowers,
The stars are weeping on high.
And all these tears are flowing
In silent brotherhood,
Southward-flowing and falling
All into Jordan’s flood.
⭘ Curiosities of Literature, vol. ii.
⭘ Abarbanel’s Reader.
⭘ Poems of Emma Lazarus, New York, 1889, vol. ii.
⭘ Songs of Exile, J. P. S., 1901.
⭘ From ‘Jewish Ethics’ (M. Joseph) in Religious Systems of the World, London, 1892.
⭘ ‘Vindiciae Judaeorum’, i. 7, in L. Wolf, Manasseh Ben Israel’s Mission to Oliver Cromwell, 1901.
⭘ Hirsch: Nineteen Letters of Ben Uziel, 16th Letter (Funk and Wagnalls) New York, 1899.
⭘ J. E., vol. xii, 348.
⭘ Hertz: ‘Lord Rothschild: A Memorial Sermon.’
⭘ History of the Jews in Poland and Russia (Putnams), 1915, conclusion.
⭘ Past and Present: A Collection of Jewish Essays, chap. xvi, Ark Publishing Co., Cincinnati, 1919.
⭘ ‘What is a pogrom? Better than any abstract definition is a concrete record taken haphazard of an actual pogrom. Orscha is a town of 14,000 inhabitants, half of them Jews. On October 18, 1905, the news of the proclamation of the Constitution reached Orscha. On the 19th the general strike stopped; Jew and Christian embraced; the houses were hung with flags, a service of thanksgiving was held; processions filled the streets. In the evening the Mohilev police officer Misgaib entered the town, and the rumour ran round that a patriotic demonstration was to take place and the Jews to be beaten. On the 20th, drunken men gathered to take the official’s orders. On the morning of the 21st, the peasants entered the town armed with axes and guns. “The village authorities have sent us; whoever does not come will be punished. We are to do whatever is ordered.” At one o’clock a priest exhorted the crowds of the faithful to purge their city of the aliens, and the cry arose, “Long live absolutism! Down with the mayor, who has sold the town to the Jews”. The first murders followed. The house of a rich Jew was stormed. Without the soldiers fired, a priest held service, and a band played the national anthem; while within eight men, women and children were tortured to death. The appetite was only whetted. At six o’clock the peasants begged the police for more orders, more work. They were told to wait till daylight; the darkness might encourage the Jews to resist. On the same day twelve Jewish youths came from Shklov to help their brethren. They were met at the station and murdered, and for seven hours every man that passed mutilated or insulted their dead bodies. The massacre became general. The 23rd was given up to plunder. At mid-day the Vice-Governor spoke to the crowds: “Children, it is enough. You have had three days’ amusement, now go home and sing ‘God save the Czar’”. The pogrom at Orscha was typical of the 690 greater and lesser pogroms which took place that October.’ (H. Sacher on ‘Die Judenpogromme in Russland’. Jewish Review, i.)
⭘ Wolf: ‘The Legal Sufferings of the Jews in Russia.’
⭘ Lazarus: First appeared in ‘Songs of a Semite’, New York, 1882.
Each crime that wakes in man the beast,
Is visited upon his kind.
The lines, written in 1882, apply with hundredfold force to the uninterrupted pogroms that have been raging in the Ukraine throughout 1919. More than 100,000 Jews—men, women, and children—have been butchered in cold blood by the hordes under Generals Denikin and Petlura. The soldiery, intoxicated with blood, invented the most diabolical tortures. See the Report on Jewish Pogroms by Kieff Pogrom Relief Committee, controlled by the Russian Red Cross, London, 1920. ‘Our masses in Eastern Europe have been facing death in seven circles of hell. It is sufficient to remember the multi-massacres of Ukrainia. For this cold murder of whole communities not Heaven itself nor all the mercy of the angels could find palliation. There is no instance that shows so much as this the ghastly descent of human character into primitive brutality and cannibalism. This is a deed which in its horror and wicked purposelessness should have stunned the world.’ (Nahum Sokolow, Opening Address of London Zionist Conference, July 7, 1920.) The following stanzas are from Mr. Zangwill’s appeal to American Jewry on behalf of the victims:—
OUR OWN
By devastated dwellings,
By desecrated fanes,
By hearth-stones, cold and crimsoned,
And slaughter-reeking lanes,
Again is the Hebrew quarter
Through half of Europe known;
And crouching in the shambles,
Rachel, the ancient crone,
Weeps again for her children and the fate that is her own.
No laughter rings in these ruins
Save of girls to madness shamed.
Their mothers disembowelled
Lie stark ’mid children maimed.
The Shool has a great congregation
But never a psalm they drone.
Shrouded in red-striped Tallisim,
Levi huddles with Kohn;
But the blood from their bodies oozing is the blood that is your own.
Shot, some six to the bullet,
Lashed and trailed in the dust,
Mutilated with hatchets
In superbestial lust—
No beast can even imagine
What Christians do or condone—
Surely these bear our burden
And for our sins atone,
And if we hide our faces, then the guilt is as our own.
At last but a naked rabble,
Clawing the dust for bread,
Jabbering, wailing, whining,
Hordes of the living dead,
Half apes, half ghosts, they grovel,
Nor human is their tone,
Yet they are not brutes but brethren,
These wrecks of the hunger-zone,
And their death-cry rings to heaven in the tongue that is your own.
⭘ For an historical account of these child-martyrdoms, see Dubnow, History of the Jewish Russia and Poland, J. P. S., 1918, vol. ii, pp. 18–29.
⭘ Stories and Pictures, J. P. S., 1906, contains the best work of Peretz. The Yiddish original of ‘Bontzie Schweig’, with English translation, is published in Wiener, pp. 332–53.
With Peretz, Yiddish letters ‘enter into competition with what is best in the world’s literature, where he will some day occupy an honourable place. Peretz offers gladly all he has, his genius, in the service of the lowly. Literature, according to him, is a consolation to those who have no other consolation, a safe and pleasurable retreat for those who are buffeted about on the stormy sea of life. For these reasons he prefers to dwell with the down-trodden and the submerged.’ (Wiener).
⭘ Cf. Emma Lazarus’ Banner of the Jew:—
Oh for Jerusalem’s trumpet now,
To blow a blast of shattering power,
To wake the sleepers high and low,
And rouse them to the urgent hour!
No hand for vengeance—but to save,
A million naked swords should wave.
Oh deem not dead that martial fire,
Say not the mystic flame is spent!
With Moses’ law and David’s lyre,
Your ancient strength remains unbent.
Let but an Ezra rise anew,
To lift the Banner of the Jew!
A rag, a mock at first—ere long,
When men have bled and women wept
To guard its precious folds from wrong,
Even they who shrunk, even they who slept,
Shall leap to bless it, and to save.
Strike! for the brave revere the brave!
‘When the anti-Semite agitation took the form of massacre and spoliation, several pamphlets were published by Jews in Russia, advocating the restoration of the Jewish State. They found a powerful echo in the United States, where a young Jewish poetess, Miss Emma Lazarus, passionately championed the Zionist cause in verse not unworthy of Yehudah Halevi.’ (Lucien Wolf, Encyclopaedia Britannica, ‘Zionism’.)
⭘ Seminary Addresses, ‘Zionism’.
⭘ Selected Essays, ‘Moses’.
⭘ Jewish Review, I.
⭘ Herzl: ‘Herzl’s personal charm was irresistible. His sincerity, his eloquence, his tact, his devotion, his power, were recognized on all hands. He spent his whole strength in the furtherance of his ideas. Diplomatic interviews, exhausting journeys, impressive mass meetings, brilliant literary propaganda—all these methods were employed by him to the utmost limit of self-denial. He was beyond question the most influential Jewish personality of the nineteenth century. He effectively roused Jews all the world over to an earnest and vital interest in their present and their future. Herzl thus left an indelible mark on his time, and his renown is assured whatever be the fate in store for the political Zionism which he founded and for which he gave his life.’ (I. Abrahams in Encyclopaedia Britannica.)
⭘ Herzl: Address at Zionist Congress, London, 1900.
⭘ Hertz: Address at Thanksgiving Meeting for the Balfour Declaration, Dec. 2, 1917.
⭘ Herzl: Address at First Zionist Congress, Basle, 1897.
⭘ Schechter: Aspects, 105.
⭘ Noah: See ‘Noah’s Ark’ in Zangwill’s Dreamers of the Ghetto for an account of this early American Zionist.