Chapter M: Gaster, 1906

THE HALLOWING OF JEWISH HISTORY

THE first part of Jewish history, the Biblical part, is a source from which, for many centuries, millions of human beings belonging to the most diverse denominations have derived instruction, solace, and inspiration. Its heroes have long ago become types, incarnations, of great ideas. The events it relates serve as living ethical formulas. But a time will come――perhaps it is not very far off――when the second half of Jewish history, the record of the two thousand years of the Jewish people’s life after the Biblical period, will be accorded the same treatment. The thousand years’ martyrdom of the Jewish people, its unbroken pilgrimage, its tragic fate, its teachers of religion, its martyrs, philosophers, champions――this whole epic will in days to come sink deep into the memory of men. It will speak to the heart and conscience of men, not merely to their curious mind. It will secure respect for the silvery hair of the Jewish people, a people of thinkers and sufferers. It is our firm conviction that the time is approaching in which the second half of Jewish history will be to the noblest part of _thinking_ humanity what its first half has long been to _believing_ humanity, a source of sublime moral truths.

S. M. DUBNOW, 1893.

ISRAEL’S MARTYRDOM

IF there are ranks in suffering, Israel takes precedence of all the nations; if the duration of sorrows and the patience with which they are borne ennoble, the Jews can challenge the aristocracy of every land; if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies――what shall we say to a National Tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and the actors were also the heroes?

LEOPOLD ZUNZ, 1855.

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COMBINE all the woes that temporal and ecclesiastical tyrannies have ever inflicted on men or nations, and you will not have reached the full measure of suffering which this martyr people was called upon to endure century upon century. It was as if all the powers of earth had conspired――and they did so conspire――to exterminate the Jewish people, or at least to transform it into a brutalized horde. History dare not pass over in silence these scenes of wellnigh unutterable misery. It is her duty to give a true and vivid account of them; to evoke due admiration for the superhuman endurance of this suffering people, and to testify that Israel, like his ancestor in the days of old, has striven with gods and with men, and has prevailed.

H. GRAETZ.

UNDER THE ROMAN EMPERORS

THERE had now a tumult arisen in Alexandria between the Jewish inhabitants and the Greeks, and three ambassadors were chosen out of each party that were at variance who came to Caius (Caligula). Now, one of the Greek ambassadors was Apion, who uttered many blasphemies against the Jews; and among other things he said that while all who were subject to the Roman Empire built altars and temples to Caesar, and in other regards universally received him as they received the gods, these Jews alone thought it a dishonourable thing for them to erect statues in honour of him, as well as to swear by his name.

Hereupon Caligula, taking it very heinously that he should be thus despised by the Jews alone, gave orders to make an invasion of Judea with a great body of troops, and, if they were obstinate, to conquer them by war, and then to erect the statues. Accordingly Petronius, the Governor of Syria, got together as great a number of auxiliaries as he possibly could, and took with him two legions of the Roman army. But there came many ten thousands of the Jews to Petronius, to offer their petitions to him, that he would not compel them to transgress and violate the law of their forefathers. ‘If’, said they, ‘thou art entirely resolved to bring this statue, and erect it, do thou first kill us, and then do what thou hast resolved on; for, while we are alive, we cannot permit such things as are forbidden us to be done by the authority of our Legislator.’

Petronius then hasted to Tiberias; and many thousands of the Jews met Petronius again, when he was come to Tiberias. Then Petronius said to them: ‘Will you then make war with Caesar without considering his great preparations for war and your own weakness?’ They replied: ‘We will not by any means make war with him, but still we will die before we see our laws transgressed’. So they threw themselves down upon their faces, and stretched out their throats, and said they were ready to be slain. Thus they continued in their resolution, and proposed to themselves to die willingly rather than to see the dedication of the statue[23].

FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS, 1st cent.

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IN the world-wide Roman Empire it was the Jews alone who refused the erection of statues and the paying of divine honours to Caligula, and _thereby saved the honour of the human race_ when all the other peoples slavishly obeyed the decree of the Imperial madman.

J. FUERST, 1890.

IN MEDIAEVAL ROME

IN the whole history of heroism there is nothing finer than the example of the Jews of the Roman Ghetto, a handful of men who for 1,500 years and longer remained true to their own ideals――unmoved and undazzled by the triumphant world-power of the dominant faith; and undaunted

By the torture prolonged from age to age,
By the infamy, Israel’s heritage,
By the Ghetto’s plague, by the garb’s disgrace,
By the badge of shame, by the felon’s place,
By the branding tool, by the bloody whip,
And the summons to Christian fellowship.

Helpless victims of all the horrors enumerated in these burning lines of Robert Browning, these Jews were yet _free men_. Not a trace of what a modern Jewish thinker――Achad Ha’am――has called ‘spiritual slavery’ was theirs. In all fundamental matters they were totally indifferent to the opinion of those who might torture the body but could never crush the soul.

J. H. HERTZ, 1915.

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THE history of the daughter religions of Judaism is one uninterrupted series of attempts to commit matricide.