Chapter XXXII: 48

MANASSEH BEN ISRAEL.

=1. His Early Life.=――The Amsterdam settlement increased and prospered. Its members were distinguished in learning and in commerce, and by degrees their presence and their influence were not confined to the Dutch capital. Early in the seventeenth century an important branch colony of Spanish and Portuguese immigrants was formed at Hamburg, and, a little later on, another at Copenhagen. But Amsterdam continued to be the centre of the revival, and new refugees from the Peninsula were always arriving in Holland, to take the place of the younger and more adventurous spirits who sought their fortunes further afield.

Under Philip III. of Spain there was a fresh outbreak of activity on the part of the Inquisition. In January 1605 an _auto-da-fé_ was held at Lisbon, in which 150 Jews and Jewesses literally walked ‘in the shadow of death,’ and were only set free from that fearful procession, at the last moment, on payment of an enormous fine. Their ransom money paid, these poor souls hastened to leave the land which bigotry had made intolerable to them, and, broken in health and ruined in fortune, they made for the friendly shores of Holland. Among these refugees was a certain Joseph ben Israel and his family, the youngest member of which was a year-old baby named Manasseh. Joseph ben Israel received the kindest of welcomes from his old friends, who were now no longer professing Catholics, but very earnestly practising Jews. The Rabbi of the Amsterdam congregation, Isaac Uziel, in due time became tutor to the little Manasseh, and by the year 1622, when Manasseh was barely eighteen, the office of Rabbi having become vacant through Uziel’s death, the appointment was given to the promising son of Joseph ben Israel. So, from the early age of eighteen, Manasseh preached and taught with great satisfaction to himself and his congregation, and to the benefit also of many learned Christian scholars, who, interested in the Jewish community in their midst, would often pay a visit to the synagogue or the school. It was an honoured and an honourable position which Manasseh held, but it was not a well-paid one, and, like the older Rabbis, Manasseh had to supplement head work by hand work. He set up a printing press, and in 1627 he issued a prayer-book, which prayer-book was the first Hebrew publication that ever appeared in Holland. Perhaps the opportunity of being able to publish whatever he might like to write had something to do with making an author of Manasseh, for, without any great original talent, he became a prolific writer. In 1632 he brought out a book called the ‘Conciliator,’ the object of which was to reconcile conflicting passages in the Pentateuch. There are no valuable independent ideas in the ‘Conciliator,’ and, perhaps, what it shows most clearly is how indefatigably Manasseh read before he began to write. There were five years spent on the composition or compilation of this work, and it contains quotations from, or references to, over two hundred Hebrew, and fifty Latin, Greek, and Spanish authors. It was written in Spanish, though it might as readily have been written in Hebrew or Latin or English, for Manasseh was a most accomplished linguist. The research of the book, and the industry and talent of the author, gained it fame. The ‘Conciliator’ was speedily translated into Latin and Italian, and attracted to Manasseh a great deal of complimentary attention from the scholars of the day. Money, however, was still lacking, and began to prove a somewhat serious difficulty, for Manasseh had married young, and his wife, though a great-granddaughter of Abarbanel,[46] and bringing him delightfully patriotic memories as her portion, had brought him no solid dowry. And, of course, there were children to make the ideal of ‘plain living and high thinking’ somewhat of a practical puzzle. By 1640 Manasseh began to seriously face the necessity of turning to mercantile pursuits, and of emigrating to the Brazils. His congregation, which seems to have been a little slow to recognise his talents till the outer world pointed them out, and not very quick or very liberal in rewarding them even then, would have let him go, and only regretted him as a printer of prayer-books, but, luckily, two brothers named Pereira were wiser than the rest of the Amsterdam community. These brothers, who were wealthy men, came forward very liberally, endowed a college, and made Manasseh the head of it. Thus set free from pecuniary cares, Manasseh ben Israel, at the age of thirty-six, was able to give himself up to his books, and to his duties in the pulpit and at the schools.

=2. His Writings and his Friends.=――The exceptional position which the Jews held in Holland gave to any distinguished member of their community a quite exceptional prominence. The Amsterdam Rabbi, as Manasseh ben Israel was called, came to be quite a celebrated personage. He was looked on as an encyclopædia of knowledge, and scholars of both sexes came from far and near to consult with him on learned subjects, and Hebrew came to be quite a fashionable study, even among Jews and Jewesses. There is no doubt that Manasseh’s character had as much to do with his popularity as his attainments. He was a thoroughly upright man, and most courteous in his manners. He was, moreover, never sparing of time or trouble when the results of his really wide and varied reading were in request. Grotius, the author of the ‘Law of Nations,’[47] Caspar Barlæus, who has been called the Virgil of his age, the whole of the learned family of Vossius, father and sons, all came to know and to esteem Manasseh, though neither one of them was naturally fond of Jews. And as Isaac Vossius was not only a distinguished scholar, but also chamberlain to Christina, Queen of Sweden, his friendship proved, by-and-by, a very useful one to Manasseh. Not useful in the vulgar sense of gaining for the Jewish Rabbi the right of rising in influential Christian society, but useful for the patriotic end, the טוֹב לְעַמּוֹ――the good of his people, which Manasseh, like Mordecai, was always seeking. Manasseh was no great author, as we have seen, yet even in his authorship he had a patriotic ideal. He was always meaning to write a ‘Heroic History,’ as he called it, by which he meant a history of the Jews, who were his heroes. He never did it, and possibly our libraries are not the poorer for the lack, whilst our lives are certainly the richer. For Manasseh was destined to make an altogether new chapter in Jewish history, instead of expending his energies in compiling many prosy ones. In truth, the works which he did publish add but little to his reputation. There were a great many theological treatises, some translations, and some compilations, all alike showing signs of industry and of reading, but none affording much trace of critical or original thought. Perhaps the most widely read of his works at this time was a little book called ‘The Hope of Israel,’ which tried to prove that some aborigines in America were lineal descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel. The ‘Hope’ seems to have rested on no more solid foundation than a traveller’s tale of savages met with in the wilds, who included something that sounded like the שְׁמַע in their vernacular. The story was quickly translated into several languages, but it was almost as quickly disproved, and Manasseh’s illusions, which were founded on the ‘Hope,’ were somewhat roughly dealt with.

=3. Manasseh finds his Vocation.=――Till the age of fifty, Manasseh continued to lead his honourable, useful life in Amsterdam, ‘doing with all his might whatsoever his hand found to do,’ and making of the things that lay close to him his nearest duties. But alike in the happy home life, and in the pleasant social intercourse; as he preached his helpful discourses, and as he compiled his rather dull books; when he was teaching or when he was printing, Manasseh seems to have been always, and all the while, conscious of a certain purpose in life, which his life, busy and useful as it was, had not as yet fulfilled. _He_ was happy and honoured, and in any country he might have chosen to visit would have been welcomed by the wisest and the best, but his people were still outcasts, and that, to our Amsterdam Rabbi, spoilt it all. Manasseh valued the position he had won chiefly for his people’s sake, and by the time he was fifty years old he had come to a definite determination of how to use it for their benefit.

=4. Negotiations begun for the Return of the Jews to England.=――The Amsterdam Rabbi wanted to insure for the Jews another such welcome as Holland had given to them. He wanted to find for the proscribed and exiled race a home as free citizens among a free people. His relations with Grotius and with Vossius made his thoughts turn, in the first place, to Sweden, with whose queen, Christina, he had had, too, some literary correspondence. But before the Swedish project came to any practical issue, the course of events happily made him direct his energies towards England, where the struggle for a nation’s ‘rights’ had but lately been won at the cost of a king’s life. In 1649 Charles I. had expiated his hateful, harmful weakness on the scaffold, and though John Hampden’s brave voice, which had aroused the English conscience like a trumpet call, was, since June 1643, stilled in death, his cousin, Oliver Cromwell, was at the helm, and sternly and uncompromisingly directing it to good ends. The first demand of the victorious army of Independents, who had fought not for place, but for principle, was liberty of conscience, and equality before the law for all religious denominations. In this new attitude of Puritan England, and in the earnest character of its new and uncrowned ruler, Manasseh ben Israel saw and seized his opportunity. In the year 1650 he forwarded to Cromwell his ‘Hope of Israel,’ and, by the help of influential friends, he caused petitions for the re-admission of Jews to England, with rights secured to them of worship, of commerce, and of burial, to be laid before the Long and the Rump Parliaments. He busied himself also in the composition of a pamphlet, called _Vindiciæ Judæorum_ (Defence of the Jews), which proved, on its completion, the most powerful and the least pedantic of his writings. It was not, however, finished when, in 1655, the way having been now, as he considered, sufficiently prepared by correspondence, he resolved on trying the effect of personal intercession with the Protector. To quote his own subsequent and simple words on the subject, ‘I could not be quiet in my mind until I had made my humble addresses to the Lord Protector, whom God preserve. And finding that my coming over would not be altogether unwelcome to him, with those great hopes which I conceived, I joyfully took leave of my house, my friends, my kindred, all my advantages there, and the country wherein I have lived all my lifetime under the benign protection and favour of the lords, the States-General, and magistrates of Amsterdam. In fine, I say, I parted from them all, and took my voyage to England.’