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Israel in Europe "DS A12. Cornell Univmitg Jibcatg BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT- FUND THE GIFT OF Sienrg W. Sage 1891 .^!.2l'j.f..x.2>^,. 9963 DATE DUE Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028772923 ISRAEL IN EUROPE ISRAEL IN EUROPE BY G. F. ABBOTT KNIGHT COMMANDER OF THE HELLENIC ORDER OF THE SAVIOUR AUTHOR OF "songs OF MODERN GREECE," "tHE TALE OF A TOUR IN MACEDONIA" "through INDIA WITH THE PRINCE," ETC. LONDON MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1907 GLASGOW : PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD. PREFATORY NOTE The aims and the limits of the present work are sufficiently explained in the Introduction. Here it only- remains for me to perform the pleasant duty of record- ing my gratitude to Mr. I. Abrahams, of Cambridge, for his friendly assistance in the revision of the proofs and my indebtedness to him for many valuable suggestions. He must not, however, be held to share all my views. G. F. A. CONTENTS PAGE Authorities -__-._.. xi Introduction ------- -xv CHAPTER I Hebraism and Hellenism ----- i CHAPTER II The Jew in the Roman Empire - - - - i8 CHAPTER III Judaism and Paganism - - - - - - 28 CHAPTER IV The Dispersion -------34 CHAPTER V Christianity- and the Jews ----- 41 CHAPTER VI Middle Ages --------62 viii CONTENTS CHAPTER VII PAGE The Crusades --------83 CHAPTER VIII Usury and the Jews ------ 105 CHAPTER IX The Jews in England - - - - -115 CHAPTER X The Jews in Spain - - . - - - 141 CHAPTER XI After the Expulsion - - - - - - 167 CHAPTER XII The Renaissance - - - - - -178 CHAPTER XIII The Ghetto - - - - - - - -196 CHAPTER XIV The Reformation and the Jews - - - - 214 CHAPTER XV Catholic Reaction ------- 232 CHAPTER XVI In Holland -------- 245 CONTENTS ix CHAPTER XVII PACE In England after the Expulsion - - _ . 255 CHAPTER XVIII Resettlement - - - - - - _ -275 CHAPTER XIX The Eve of Emancipation - . - _ 286 CHAPTER XX Palingenesia - - - - - - - -301 CHAPTER XXI In Russia -----_-._ 329 CHAPTER XXII In Roumania -------- 379 CHAPTER XXIII Anti-Semitism -------- ^04 CHAPTER XXIV Zionism --------- 482 Index - - - - - - - - -519 MAP Approximate Density of the Jewish Population At end. AUTHORITIES GENERAL H. Graetz's " History of the Jews." Dean Milman's " History of the Jews." "The Jewish Encyclopedia.' PARTICULAR Ch. I. E. R. Bevan's "The House of Seleucus"; "High Priests of Israel." Ch. II., IV., V. " J. S. Riggs' History of the Jewish People during the Macca- baean and Roman Periods." W. D. Morrison's " The Jews under Roman Rule." Mommsen's " History of Rome." Gibbon's " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Ch. VI., VII., VIII. Benjamin of Tudela's "Travels." Transl. by Asher. " I. Abrahams' Jewish Life in the Middle Ages " ; " Maimo- nides." Hallam's "Middle Ages." S. P. Scott's " History of the Moorish Empire in Europe." Gibbon's " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." A. Mars'hall's " Principles of Economics." xii AUTHORITIES Ch. IX. J. Jacobs' "The Jews of Angevin England." B. L. Abrahams' " The Expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290." " Residence of J. E. Blunt's History of the Establishment and the Jews in England." M. Margoliouth's "The Jews in Great Britain." Ch. X., XI. A. de Castro's " History of the Jews in Spain." " J. Finn's History of the Jews in Spain and Portugal." E. H. Lindo's " History of the Jews in Spain and Portugal." Prescott's " Ferdinand and Isabella." Ch. xii. The Cambridge Modern History: Vol. I., "The Renaissance." W. Roscoe's " The Life and Pontificate of Leo X." Ch. XIII. I. Abrahams' "Jewish Life in the Middle Ages." W. C. Hazlitt's "The Venetian Republic." Ch. XIV. The Cambridge Modem History : Vol. II. " The Reformation." Ch. XV. " J. Finn's History of the Israelites in Poland." The Cambridge Modern History: Vol. III., "The Wars of Religion"; Vol. IV., "The Thirty Years' War." Ch. XVI. Motley's " Dutch Republic." Ch. XVII. J. E. Blunt's "History of the Establishment and Residence of the Jews in England." M. Margoliouth's " The Jews in Great Britain." " AUTHORITIES xiii Ch. XVIII. Lucien WolPs "Resettlement of Jews in England"; " Manasseh ben Israel's Mission to Oliver Cromwell." S. R. Gardiner's "History of the Commonwealth and Pro- tectorate." J. Morle/s "Oliver Cromwell." Ch. XIX., XX. M. Samuel's " Memoirs of Moses Mendelssohn." Solomon Maimon's " Autobiography." Transl. by H. Clarli Murray. E. Schreiber's " Reformed Judaism and its Pioneers." The Cambridge Modern History: Vol. VIII., "The French Revolution"; Vol. IX., "Napoleon." Encyclopadia Britannica: Article, "Jews." Ch. XXI. Prince San Donato DemidofF's " The Jewish Question in Russia." Transl. by H. Guedalla. L. Cerf's " Les Juifs de Russie." Leo Wiener's "History of Yiddish Literature in the 19th Century." Beatrice C. Baskerville's "The Polish Jew." Ch. XXII. Israel Davis' "Jews in Roumania." " E. Sincerus' Les Juifs en Roumanie : Les lois et leurs con- sequences." A. M. Goldsmid's " Persecution of the Jews of Roumania." " H. Sutherland Edwards' Sir William White : His Life and Correspondence. " Rumania and the Jews," by " Verax." Ch. XXIIL Joseph Jacobs' " The Jewish Question." " Aspects of the Jewish Question," by " A Quarterly Reviewer." Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu's " Israel parmi les Nations." xiv AUTHORITIES Ch. XXllL—conlJ. E. Drumont's "La France Juive." Encyclopedia Britannka : Article, " Anti-Semitism." W. H. Wilkins' "The Alien Invasion." C. Russell and H. S. Lewis' "The Jew in London." Ch. XXIV. H. Bentwich's "The Progress of Zionism." R. Gottheil's " The Aims of Zionism." T. Herzl's "A Jewish State." "The Jewish Question," Anon. (Gay and Bird, 1894). "Aspects of the Jewish Question," by "A Quarterly Reviewer.' Encyclopadia Britannica : Article, "Zionism." In addition to these main guides reference, on special points, is made to particular authorities in the footnotes. INTRODUCTION It was not without reason that Philo, the famous Graeco- Jewish scholar of Alexandria, regarded Aaron's rod, which " was budded, and brought forth buds, and bloomed blossoms, and yielded almonds," as an emblem of his race. Torn from the stem that bore and from the soil that nourished them, and for nearly twenty centuries exposed to the wintry blasts of adversity and persecution, the children of Israel still bud and blossom and provide the world with the perennial problem now known as the Jewish Question—a question than which none possesses a deeper interest for the student of the past, or a stronger fascination for the speculator on the future; a question compared with which the Eastern, the Irish, and all other vexed questions are but things of yesterday ; a question which has taxed the ingenuity of European statesmen ever since the dispersion of this Eastern people over the lands of the West. " What to do with the Jew .'' " This is the question. The manner in which each generation of statesmen, from the legislators of ancient Rome to those of modern Roumania, has attempted to answer it, forming as it does a sure criterion of the material, intellectual and moral conditions which prevailed in each country at each period, might supply the basis for an exceedingly interesting and instructive, if somewhat humiliating, study of European political ethics. Here I will content myself with a lighter labour. I propose to sketch in outline the fortunes of Israel in Europe from the earliest times to the present day. It is a sad tale, and often told ; but sufficiently important to bear telling again. xvi INTRODUCTION My object—in so far as human nature permits—will be neither to excuse nor to deplore ; but only to describe and, in some measure, to explain. It is no exaggeration to say that the Jews have been in Europe for a longer period than some of the nations which glory in the title of European. Ages before the ancestors of the modern Hungarians and Slavonians were heard of, the keen features and guttural accents of the Hebrew trader were familiar in the markets of Greece and Italy. As early as the fourth century b.c. we find the Hebrew word for "earnest-money" domiciled in the Greek language (appa^wv), and as early as the second century in the Latin {arrhabo)—a curious illustration of the Jew's commercial activity in the Mediterranean even in those days.i And yet, despite the length of their sojourn among the peoples of the West, the majority of the Jews have remained in many essential respects as Oriental as they were in the time of the Patriarchs. A younger race would have yielded to the influence of environment, a weaker race would have succumbed to oppression, a less inflexible or unsympathetic race might have conquered its conquerors. But the Jews, when they first came into contact with Europe, were already too old for assimilation, too strong for extermination, too hardened in their peculiar cult for propagandism. Even after having ceased to exist as a state Israel survived as a nation ; forming the one immobile figure in a perpetually moving panorama. The narrow local idea of the ancient Greek state was merged into the broad cosmopolitanism of the Macedonian Empire, and that, in its turn, was absorbed by the broader cosmopolitanism of Imperial Rome. But the Jew remained faithful to his own olden ideal. Monotheism superseded Polytheism, and the cosmopolitanism of the Roman Empire was succeeded by that of the Roman ^ The oldest Greek author in whose works the term occurs is the orator Isaeus who flourished b.c. 364.; the earliest Latin writer is Plautus who died b.c. 184. Of course, the word, though very good Hebrew, may have been imported into Europe by the Phoenicians.
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