The Wandering Jew.

A LECTURE BY ISAAC M. WISE.

Introduction. Juiff and the Englishman first chewed it, In my rambles over the pages of history bit of the d and left the poor Jew, as he I have, discovered a time when no Jews made John of Yohanan, James of Yacobus, were persecuted, no missionaries were hired and Jesus of the ancient Yoshua. I was to convert them, no sentimental parsons forced to the conviction, that the Wander­ lamented the fate of the poor lost souls;. and ing Jew had grown on Christian soil. that was in the time of Father Abraham! Many of the good Christians, I know, have The pope or bishop of that classic time, taken stock iu my soul, and are very eager whose name was Malchizedek, was a clever to save it at the lowest expense. So I was gentleman. He offered bread and wine to advised to read the Gospels, and I did. | Abraham, and collected the taxes of him in Among all the miraculous stories, however, the form of tithes, in a truly Mormon style, I found in that book, the Gospel of Nicode­ and everything was pleasant. But right mus included, I found no Ahasverus, no after that the trouble commenced. When Wandering Jew, no cursed Jew, shoemaker Isaac, the son of that same Abraham, raised or clothing dealer, before whose door Jesus, good crops in the land of* the Philistines, he bearing the cross, wanted to rest himself was commanded to. leave, because the Jew which the Jew would not,permit. I found was getting too rich. However, Isaac went that Jesus did not bear his own cross at all. into the well-digging business, and was suc­ Simon of Gyrene did. Moreover, I dis- ,|. cessful, for he dug well, so that the high­ covered, to my utter surprise, that the Jews born lords of Philistine paid him a visit—­ had nothing at all to do with the crucifixion j perhaps to borrow money—and promised to of Jesus, and the academy of France con- I behave in the future! firmed my discovery. Consequently, in the. There I thought the story of the Wander­ Gospels there is not the origin of the Wan­ ing Jew must have had its beginning. With dering Jew. the exception of the poisoned wells, bleed­ ing hosts, slaughtered infants, Christian Der Ewige Jude. blood, witchcraft, usury and other accusa­ A poet and journalist of the last century, tions and side issues, the two stories look Christian Fredric Daniel Schubart, who for exactly alike. Still I saw the mistake in the ten long years was supported by Christian name. For what the English call the charity in the penitentiary at Hohenaspurg, Wandering Jew, the Germans call Den because he had said and written things Ewigen Juden, and the French Le Juif which priests, princes and policemen, and Errant. The Jew Jud or Juif could not have other fat boarders of the German people come into existence before the three great did not like—wrote also that beautiful poem nations had murdered Caesar's Latin and Der Ewige Jude, and points back to the 13th made of the Judaeus the Jud. Of this the century A .c. for the origin of this shifting Frenchman in his hurry made swiftly a myth. This poem is the source from which —2—

Eugene Sue took his idea of Le Juif Errant; Le Juif Errant. and which a German-American poetic soul, This, however, is the ewige Jude of the ill-favored by the Muses in our days and Germans. The French Juif errant, and country, tortured and stretched to a volume partly also the English Wandering Jew, is a of rhymed wooden lines. different character. He is a sound and It was in the German civil war between robust man with the evil conscience that he Adolph of Nassau, and Albrecht of Aus­ is a curse to all around #im. His look de­ tria, toward the end of the thirteenth cen­ stroys blossoms, flowers and the merry tury, when all furies of destruction were let birds. His breath poisons the atmosphere. loose against poor humanity, that under the His steps singe the verdant carpet of nature. leadership of a fiend called Rindfleisch over He is the carrier of misery, tears, pestilence 100,000 Jews were slaughtered in Southern and death. He knows and feels all that, yet Germany, and the destruction of all of he must live in remorse to be a burden' to them was threatened who would not em­ himself and a curse to others. This is no brace the cross. Then it was, it is supposed, popular fiction; it is a metaphysical type, a that the myth of the Wandering Jew personification of skepticism by a theological originated, seeing that all the violence of mobs, priestpoets. anThd princee Jesw succeede appeared nod tt ion the Christian the extermination of the Jew. Der ewige priest skepticism personified, and the Wan­ Jude, "the eternal Jew," was first his name, dering Jew is the type of the Jewish charac­ which meant the indestructible Jew. This ter. Then skepticism was a crime. It de­ outlawed, persecuted, hunted and down­ stroyed the faith of the millions; it engen­ trodden individual could not possibly be dered misery, pestilence and death, certainly happy, it was believed; how could a man in the estimation of the Christian priest, and be happy who did not believe in Jesus? So was its typical representative, the Wan­ He must be namelessly wretched, miserable, dering Jew. crushed down to despair. Why then does he not die? Because he is cursed with Skepticism. eternal life on earth to be miserable forever. It is certainly true that the Jew opposite So the barbarous phantasy of that age de­ all positive religions always was the invinci­ picted a typical character of the Jew and ble spirit of negation, a living protest against called it Den ewigen Juden, the eternal or all dogmas of all creeds; hence lie was to deathless Jew. Ahasverus was imagined them the source and exponent of skepticism, to be an old, feeble, sickly, bent and broken of perpetual doubt. The only question is, man, with a hook nose and an evil eye, dis­ Could the human family exist and reach heveled hair and beard, peeping looks, this state of civilisation without skepticism? a squealing voice and trembling steps, weary I say, no, no, no. Without skepticism, of life, exhausted by misery, always at the hence without the Jew, the human family brink of despair, yet unable to die and con­ could not advance, as little, indeed, as a demned to suffer forever. People, blind with planetary body could move in its orbit with­ fanaticism and stunned with stupidity, could out the co-operation of the centrifugal and not see how in his domestic life and religious centripetal powers. Let us examine the faith the Jew was so much happier than his records of history; they will, perhaps, sub­ persecutors. They could! not comprehend stantiate my proposition. that there is something incomparably great, In our days the word skepticism has lost noble, soothing and cheering in the heroic much of its horror. It is now a philosophi­ conduct of those who rather suffer than lie, cal term, denoting even a particular system. prefer misery to hypocrisy, martyrdom to Everything has changed. The old-fashioned treachery, who live and die for an idea. devil, that northern coarse phantom, in the They understood the character of the Jew hands of Goethe, has become quite a polished as little as Shakespeare did when he de­ Mephistopheles and an amusing companion. picted his Shylock; The bottomless pit is not as deep, hell not as hot and sulphurous as in olden times. — 4 —

The Caucasian Race. delivered, before the beginning of the Chris­ History presents this picture: In pre­ tian era. Now such a calamity could not historic times the Caucasian race, the only occur, of course.

race known to Moses, was divided by migra­ After Alexander's ; death, however, and tion in two families, the Aryan and Semitic. twenty years more of steady warfare, his The Aryan traveled from the cradle of generals divided the empire among them­ humanity, at the basin of the Euphrates selves, in four kingdoms, two of which in­ and Tigris, to India, and from thence via terest us here, viz., the Egyptian and the Egypt and Greece into Europe on the one Syrian. Palestine was first an Egyptian and side, and over the Ural Mountains on the then a Syrian Province up to 165 B.C , when other side. The Semites spread over Wes­ the Maccabean rebellion broke out, which tern Asia and penetrated into Egypt and ended in the independence of Palestine. across the Caucasian Mountains into The Hebrews had been five hundred years Europe. Among these two families of the in perpetual contact with Gentile nations Caucasian race all elements of modern civil­ and governments, and had given birth to ization were conceived and begotten. The the most cosmopolitan orators and writers, ancient Aryan civilization culminated in such as the second Isaiah, the authors of Greece, when the two families were repre­ the Books of Jonah, Ruth and Job, and quite sented by persons and ideas. The ancient a number of Psalms like the 104th; men of Semitic civilization reached its highest point broad, humane and universal principles. among the Hebrews of Palestine. The his­ Previous to the conquest of Persia proper, tory of modern civilization begins where Alexander had conquered Asia Minor, Syria, Greek and Jew met and compared notes, Phoenicia, Palestine and Egypt. In Egypt and that was in Egypt, especially in Alex­ he pointed out the site for a commercial andria. For us Alexandria is the starting metropolis of the world, which was built point. There the Wandering Jew with his and called Alexandria. He and his succes­ skepticism first began to undermine the sor invited to Alexandria merchants and ar­ Greco-Roman idolatry, and the civilization tisans of Greece, Macedon and Palestine, based upon that system. Some innocent and guaranteed equal rights to al l The people imagine the Jews always sold cloth­ Jews had come into Egypt in large numbers, ing, new or old, handled money at low or and manv of them settled down in Alexan­ high rates, ate no pork, and wore long dria and other maritime cities. They flour­ beards. The Jew has a history, and that is ished there wonderfully. In the second the point least, taken into consideration. century B.c . they built the gorgeous Onias The Hebrews' Second Common­ Temple in Egypt, in imitation of the one at wealth. Jerusalem. Their great synagogue at Alexan­ The Hebrews established their second dria Was one of the largest buildings of that commonwealth in Palestine in 536 B.c . The city of palaces. About the same time the Jews little country up to 331 B.c . was a quiet, came in large numbers into Asia Minor from peaceable and loyal nook of the Medo-Persian Mesopotamia, then into Greece and Italy; Empire, where agriculture, monotheism and although both in Greece and Egypt they letters were cultivated, and commerce was must have been quite numerous long before of a secondary consideration. The Book of that period, as the Spartans claimed already Job, written then and there, tells the story then to be cognates and cousins of the Jews. of the nation's culture, enlightenment and The Jews had come among the Western skepticism. In the year 331, Alexander the Gentiles long before the advent of Chris­ Great conquered the Medo-Persian Empire, tianity, as warriors and captives of war, and died in the city of Babylon a confirmed princes and slaves, voluntary and compul­ drunkard. That was before the time of Mr. sory immigrants, agriculturists, mechanics, Murphy's blue ribbons, before our distin­ merchants, soothsayers, beggars, impostors, guished general's temperance lectures were sages and men of letters, all classes and —3-­

Since we burn gas, gasolin, and vulgar coal Apart from all miracles, however, how was oil, we have not burned any witches. Every­ it that those ancient Hebrews were, the thing has changed. Just think of Mr. oracles of kings and nations? It was be­ Beecher's Holy Ghost, Mr. Renan's Jesus, cause the ideas from Sinai and Moriah had and the very accommodating godfather of been carried by those messengers far away our modern sugar-and-molasses theology? from home and accepted by the enlightened and you will rather be inclined to think portions of the Gentiles. It was made skepticism also has lost its horror, and so known that there is a God and a loftier in­ has the Wandering Jew. telligence in Israel, together with law, jus­ tice, freedom, righteousness, virtue and wisdom, of which those heathens of old Old Testament Heroes. had but dim and undefined notions. It was before the idea that kings and. nations But now to the records of history. I bowed down with reverence, bent their will not dwell long on the Old Testament knees with awe, and looked up with venera­ heroes, who were already Wandering Jews, tion. Was not that new idea in the first in­ carrying far and wide doubt in the veracity stance one of doubt to the Pagan, whose of heathen teachings. The prophets carried belief in his gods Was undermined by the their messages to all nations around Pales­ light from Sinai and Moriah? It was skep­ tine. Elisha appointed a king of Damas­ ticism carried into the Pagan world by the cus. Jonah preached repentance and right­ Jew; it was the Wandering Jew who was eousness in the distant Nineveh, Daniel the terror of heathen orthodoxy. brought two mighty kings down upon their knees before the God of Israel, and made Unjust Critics. proud conquerors worship the God of the It is, perhaps, proper to observe here that conquered people. These ancient prophets modern critics often are as unjust to the were everywhere, it appears, in Persia and ancient Hebrews as Russia and Roumania Ethiopia, Armenia and Egypt, China and are to modern Jews. They always are at the Ionian Islands, and centuries before the work to point out what the ancient Hebrews Christian Era. Yes, it appears the Jews might have learned of Egypt, Phoenicia, As­ were everywhere almost, widely dispersed syria, or Persia, and never tell us what those as early as 700 B.C , with new homes every­ nations must have learned of the Israelites. where, and one of them even in the belly of Centuries before the Ptolemys, the Hebrews a fish. That was strange. You may have were in perpetual and friendly contact with heard of an undigested fish lying for three the Egyptians. Must not the influence days in the stomach of a Jew; but you cer­ have been mutual? It is never taken into tainly never heard of an undigested Jew consideration what Confucius and Zoroaster J lodged for three days in the stomach of a must have learned of the then widely-dis­ fish. That was a hard-boiled fellow. How­ persed and traveling Jews, although the ever, that is a miracle, and miracles, of Jewish elements in both those systems, as course, must be believed, or else in these well as Hebrew words and names, can not anomalous times of returning to the father's be overlooked. We are told what the He­ silver dollar, with a President without a brews have in common with the Hindoos, party and a party without a President, peo­ but we are not told what the Hebrews in ple might go so far as to maintain that Christ ancient times carried into India. I can not did not resurrect, the Pope is not infallible, dwell upon these points, because the march the Westminster catechism and the Apostle's of empires is westward, and that much is creed could not stand criticism, the Jewish certain, that the western nations have de­ Messiah would not come riding on an ass. rived little or no benefit from the ancient You see, miracles must be believed, all of learning of the distant East, notwithstand­ them, although in our particular case they ing all the Chinese culture and wisdom, prove nothing, and we rely on none. long cues and roasted rats, clans. They carried westward the civiliza­ it very fast. Alexandria was the first school­ tion from the Jordan with all its ideas and house. There modern history begins, in the peculiarities, and became among Heathens sciences and criticism, as well as in ethics the spirit of negation, skepticism, the Wan­ and theology; for there met Jew and Greek. dering Jew. The Beginning of Modern History. Greek and Jew. Modem history begins not with the ad­ When Greek and Jew first met they could vent of Christianity, which is itself the not understand one another. Grecian, like product of evolution. It begins with the all Aryan direction of mind, was to the ex­ Greet translation of the Hebrew Bible at terior, to matter, its phenomena, color, Alexandria. Since then all reformations shape, proportion, form, symmetry, har­ have commenced with a new translation of mony or otherwise. Therefore, all Aryan the bible, as under Hieronomus, Saadia, theology is materialistic, and the Greeks be­ Luther and Mendelssohn. It was quite, a, came the master; minds in the plastic arts, natural affair—holy ghosts, angels and such, in the form generally. In their literature, anomalies had nothing to do with it. The also, it is the beauty of form more than the spirit of inquiry and learning advanced in wealth of ideas, which makes it so attractive Egypt. The Jews were a prominent ele­ and instructive. Greek philosophy also, ment of the population, living according to especially with Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, their own laws. The king was eager to Aristotle, and their expounders, is Greek in know those laws, and they had to be trans­ form and Jewish in substance, as ancient lated into Greek. It was the Palistinian writers well maintained, so that an immedi­ Jews, who laid down the outlines of their ate disciple of Aristotle said of his master philosophy in that translation, now called speaking of a Jew met on one of his journeys. the Septuagint, which soon after comprised: "And we learned more of the Jew than he the whole Bible. From and after that time could learn of us." The Greek lived and the Wandering Jew appeared in the com­ worked in the exterior of nature, so did his pany of the Muses and in the society of gods; therefore he became the high priest Minerva. An entirely new literature in the of the beautiful, the apostle of the fine arts. Greek language was produced. Al l species The Hebrew mind had the opposite di­ of poetry, lyric, epic and dramatic, were rection. Caring little about the form he called into requisition to produce Jewish, looked into the interior, the spirit, the cause, ideas in the Grecian form, going as far as to the soul, the metaphysics of nature and na­ interpolate Homer and Orpheus in magnifi­ ture's objects, which he penetrated to the cent hexameters, to make Gentiles believe eternal Jehovah, while he looked into the that the ancient poets already had taught human being to the eternal breath of life. the doctrines of monotheism and heralded The substance of all philosophy is Hebrew, the praise of the Hebrew ancestors and its last watchword is Jehovah; the form is legislators. Jews and Gentiles were engaged Greek. The Greek grasped the present mo­ in writing Jewish history in Greek, finally ments, momentum and memento, and be­ culminating in the master works of Jo­ came, THE artist; the Jew looked by the sephus Flavins. Jewish philosophy, amal­ timeless spirit into future evolutions and be­ gamating with the teachings of Plato, came a prophet. Both were great, each in Aristotle, or also Zeno and Epicure, was his own way. The Greek was a gay and produced in pompous Greek, towering up beautiful boy, the Hebrew a grave and ear­ at last in the works of Philo, the Alexan­ nest man. The Greeks were men of the drian Jew. Living in the hopes of the world, the Hebrews a kingdom of priests. future, as the Jew always does, the proph­ Therefore when first they met they could etess also had to be called into requisition, not understand one another. Still repre­ and there were produced the Sibyline books, senting the highest intelligence they were apparently written by prophesying women, obliged to learn of one another, and they did to whom all future glory of Israel naturally appeared to concentrate in a gentleman, and other Roman Writers were astonished whom they called a Messiah or Christos. As that the Romans and especially the women regards the Messiah, it is evident the women believed so largely in the Jewish God, ob­ have done it all, anyhow. So the Wander­ served the Sabbath and Jewish ceremonies; ing Jew threw the burning torch of skepti­ and scorned' in bitter satires. -Paul,, the cism, of new ideas, into the Greek literature, actual author of Gentile Christianity, on and the Greek was then and for many cen­ his journeys met everywhere devout Gen­ turies after the language of culture. So the tiles, who believed in; the Jewish Bible as Hebrew ideas, views, opinions, doctrines, final authority; hence they must have been truth and error, wisdom and folly, religion proselytes in fact, if not in form. and superstition reached the European na­ Origin of Christianity. tions in all forms of literature. So the Wandering Jew with a large Greco- Propagation of Judaism. Jewish literature arid a host of camp-fol­ About the same time the Jews came in lowers, traversed the Roman empire, and large numbers to Greece and Italy, espe­ reached the heathen temples and altars. cially to Rome, most likely also to Spain, He spread skepticism among the pagans, France and Belgium, as the successors of doubts, grave and alarming, in the reality the ancient Phoenicians and Carthagenians of the gods worshiped, the efficiency of the in the world's commerce. In Rome, for in­ sacerdotal observances, the truth of doc­ stance, they had become so numerous that trines accepted, and the veracity of priests thousands of them wept at the urn of and priestesses, until the altars were shaken Caesar when that great captain had been to their very foundation. So the soil had slain and cremated; for he was the friend been prepared by the Jew's skepticism, and and patron of the Jews. In the time of a new tree of knowledge had been planted Augustus, when Herod's will was read in in the irrigated ground, when by the fall of Rome. 8,000 Roman Jews protested against Jerusalem the Jew was disabled, and the its main stipulations. The Emperor Tiber­ first teachers of Christianity stepped in ias took 4,000 Roman Jews and sent them with their policy of conciliation and accom­ as soldiers to the Island of Sardinia. With modation and, by natural evolution from the Jew Judaism also went to Rome. He Judaism and paganism, -Christianity came had no apostles and no evangelists, hired no to the surface. Whatever, merits there may missionaries, paid no bounties for souls en­ be in primitive Christianity, it came into listed, had no professorships and no govern­ existence by the revolutions in the Gentile ment offices to bestow on proselytes, and mind, started and prompted by the skepti­ made of them neither saints nor priests, cism and instruction carried by the Jew into nor even colporteurs or holy book-peddlers, the Aryan mind. It was the first great work and yet he made numerous proselytes. In of the Wandering Jew, the first result of his the East, Queen Helen, her husband and westward tour. He was condemned, ridi­ two sons tell the tale, how far Judaism had culed, cursed and hated by the ancient progressed. Its progress in Rome and the Greco-Roman orthodoxy, because he had provinces was still more rapid. It reached spread the pestilence of, skepticism, and un­ all classes up to the palace of the Caesars, so dermined the old State religion; but done that the Emperor Damitiian, in protection it was, it had to be done. The work was of the State religion, enacted stringent laws done by the Jew, and Christianity earned against Roman proselytes to Judaism. One the fruits and the honor; This is the first of them, Aquila, made a new Greek transla­ act in the great drama of the Wandering Jew. tion of the Pentateuch, and another, Clem­ ens, was of consular dignity, and his wife a near kin of the Caesars. The Jews added to Jews in Western Europe. their daily prayers one for the righteous And now the scenes must be shifted, a proselytes Tacitus, Juvenal catastrophe, terrible and bloody, closed the first act. Democratic Palestine after a heroic the Danube. Up to this day the largest struggle of two hundred years was van­ number of Jews is Germanic in language quished by Caesarian Rome with her mon­ or jargon, names and inclinations; because strous emperors. Jerusalem was laid in they came first to Germany, in largest num­ ruins, its temple and palaces were destroyed, bers, became there a governing class, until and after a heroic resistance Bethar also they were persecuted and many of them fell, and the Jew was crucified and buried driven into Hungary, Poland, Russia, down under the ruins of his country. There to the Black Sea and the Balkan Mountains. was left a land of smoking debris crim­ Germany, as Caesar and Strabo described it, soned with the blood of its champions. The was an unbroken forest, thinly inhabited land once flowing with milk and honey be­ by barbarous tribes. The Jew came with came a howling waste. The sycamore his ancient culture, and impressed his civil­ groves, which once reechoed the somber ization on the aborigines, the Anglo-Saxons melodies from the mysterious harp of Ju­ included. Therefore you find in the ancient dah, resounded now the whining and hissing Germanic dialects as many and more He­ of jackals and serpents. The lonely cedar, brew than Latin roots. Therefore the laws shaken by the storm, sighed upon the hill­ of those tribes, partly embodied in the com­ top. Hermon sent down bloody tears, and mon law, are so much akin to the Jewish Jordan rolled on with mournful accents laws, although the Roman Empire was into the abyss of the Dead Sea. The woe- originally between these two nationalities. stricken Jew, who outlived the catastrophe, The Jews were the merchants, mechanics, went forth a slave or a fugitive to the lands doctors and largest agriculturists among the of his captivity and tormenting sorrows. He ancient Teutons. They were their teachers left behind all that is dear and near to the and benefactors, and lived with them in human heart. The flower of his youth, the perfect peace and harmony up to the close golden fruits of his manhood laid there, of the sixth century, and in tolerable cir­ slain, bleeding, dead. There were the an­ cumstances to the beginning of the Cru­ cient graves of his sires, his kings, prophets, sades, when the devil opened the flood heroes and inspired singers; there rested gates of hell and sent forth his myriads of the bones of his dear and beloved ones. destructive furies. There were the monuments of his glory, the Origin of Western Christianity. illustrious reminiscences of 1,500 years of most wonderful history, and every spot of The pagans on the Rhine and the Danube the land told a tale of sublime deeds. He learned also the Jew's religion, which was left there his independence, his freedom, so intimately interwoven with his laws and his human rights, his happiness, and went civilization. Although many a German was forth a slave, fugitive or exile to the land of by faith a Jew and the communities were the strangers, a lonely pilgrim in the cheer­ permeated by Jewish ideas and doctrines, less desert. The Jew was crucified and yet Judaism at that stage of its history buried. Did he resurrect ? Let us see. could not triumph over paganism. The Jew pointed back to the distant Jerusalem as the Prom and after the time of Pompey's con­ center of all religion and earthly hopes of quest of Jerusalem, the Hebrews, especially man. None could feel his yearning after his of the over-populated Galilee, migrated in country, his love of home and his respect large numbers westward, and came in large for the history of his ancestors. The Jew colonies with the Romans to the Rhine and spoke of a sacrificial polity and the Aaronic the Danube. Thither came also many of priesthood, the glory of Mount Moriah, the the fugitives after the fall of Jerusalem and pomp and grandeur of Zion, the hopes of Bethar. The Jew carried the ancient civil­ mankind as one great family, and he spoke ization from the Jordan, with its agriculture, in the accents of Oriental poetry, in the language, law and religion, to the semi-bar­ language of liquid fire, which Northern barous tribes at the banks of the Rhine and hearts, could not feel—it was unintelligible 8 — to the sons of the forest. He praised a God numerous instances, they brought out the too sublime and spoke of ethics too humane myth of the Wandering Jew, the inde­ for the worshipers of Thor and Wodan. structible personification of the skepticism, Therefore, although largely Judaized, the which the Jew, by his very existence and Germanic and Celtic tribes did not fully consistency, spreads as a pestilence against embrace Judaism. all orthodoxy in all lands and ages. The When thus heathenism was undermined, Wandering Jew spreads misery and death, thus the soil prepared toward the close of they cried; down with the Jew 1 The Wan­ the sixth century, the Christian missionary, dering: Jew with his indomitable skepticism backed by the power and wealth of Rome, brings life, progression, reformation, intel­ the Christian missionary from Ireland, lectual advancement; he brought your stepped in and built on that very soil the Christianity East and West; without him Church of Western Christianity. The Jew you would stagnate or be petrified in a dead had done the work and the Christian reaped letter dogmatism, said the genius of history; the benefit. Christianity was planted upon and, lo and behold! the Jew, crucified a Jewish soil, Jewish culture and Jewish thousand times and buried out of sight, sentiment. Therefore the people, though always resurrected again, and became Bet Christians, continued to live in peace with Ewige Jude, the "eternal," indestructible the Jews, kept the Jewish Sabbath, ob­ and invincible Jew, the immortal principle served Jewish ceremonies, Jews and Chris­ of progress by the switches of skepticism, tians intermarried and were still one people, and all demons and furies can not change until the priests saw that the Jew's belief it. This is the second act of the long and was the very skepticism, which undermines spectacular drama, enacted during the time all their religious dogmas. Then came the of man's crazy flights before the foot-lamps councils and prohibited Christians from ob­ of ignorance and fanaticism. serving the Jewish Sabbath, and practicing Jewish observances. They repeatedly inter­ Origin of the Islam. dicted intermarriage of Jews and Christians, Shift the scenes, turn on the light, bring and it took years of cruel consistency to up Oriental gardens, palms, caravans, bright carry out the measures of the church, al­ colors, let us look up another act of the though enforced by the arm of worldly drama. While myriads of the exiled Jews power. Then came princes and mobs and went westward, other myriads of the same disinherited the Jew of his landed property, people went eastward to their brethren on robbed his treasures, made him poor and the Euphrates and Tigris, on the Indus and miserable, and forced him to become the Ganges, also into Arabia and Parthia. There broker, trader, merchant and doctor of the between the Caspian Sea, the Indus and Christian. But, all these measures proving Western Arabia, were the ancient Hebrew fruitless in the main, the people after all colonies since the days of Salmenasor, with inclining more to Jewish doctrines and their center of gravity oh the southern end practices than to those ordained in Rome, of the Euphrates. For nearly a thousand the mad cry was raised at the heel of the years they had formed there a State within Jew: "He crucified Jesus." The priests of the States under a chief of the house of Da­ the Occident had learned of their predeces­ vid, with the title of Resh Golutha, "Prince of sors of the Orient this patent remedy against the Captivity," being governed by their own all humane and generous feeling, and they laws and officers from their own communi­ raised the bloody and barbarous outcry, ties. When Palestine was no longer the The Jew has crucified Jesus. They knew it home of the Jew there were established in was a falsehood, but they also knew it would the region between Arabia and Persia those do the work of making the Jew odious, it seats of Jewish learning, the celebrated would rend asunder Jew and Christian in schools of Sura, Nehardea, Pum-Badita and two hostile factions. When, however, also Machusa. There were the chief justices of this barbarous war-cry proved a failure in the Eastern Hebrews and their head teach­ ers. There the national material of learn­ The Middle Ages, ing was enlarged and systernatized as now But here it ends not, there is another act before us in the Talmud Babli, In this in the marvelous drama, perhaps as wonder­ region of Asia, the Jew was orientalized, ful as the former. Progression and reforma­ and a considerable portion of Oriental tion, like evolution and thought, can not heathens were Judaized. The mutual in­ stop; therefore, the Wandering Jew must fluence was perhaps most conspicuous be­ proceed on his endless tour, and I must in­ tween Hebrews and Arabs, as is evident vite you, ladies and gentlemen, to follow from the ancient religion and literature of him just a little longer. the latter. They worshiped Abraham and The followers of Mohammed and the Sarah and Moses, besides Adam and Eve, Koran first appeared on the stage of history gave currency to many Jewish tales and as fierce and irresistible warriors and con­ traditions and adopted Jewish laws; while querors, forcing upon the nations the re­ the Hebrews have embodied many Arabic ligion of the Arabian apostle, the poetical views, tales and terms in the Babylonian son of a poetical people, wild with com­ Talmud and Midrash, and preserved many bativeness, thirsty after conquest and glory, legends concerning Jews in Arabia devout inspired by the force of truth, and fanati­ Arabs and Arabian prophets. cised by the alloy of fiction and falsehood. Here, and especially from the second to The Orient yielded to the crescent, which the end of the sixth centuries, we see the was carried in triumph into Constantinople, Wandering Jew performing a wonderful closing the Byzantine Empire, and into Spain task. The crucified and buried Jew resur­ to the very doors of Prance, where the rects again as the civilizing agent, the carrier Pyrennes and the French army stopped its of ideas and principles from Horeb and progress. Moriah. The thunders of Sinai re-echo in When the fury of warfare had spent its Arabia,the heathen temples are shaken, their rage, the Arabs settled down to civilized altars are overthrown, the Wandering Jew life and cultivated the arts of peace. Grad­ has sown the seed of skepticism and culti­ ually they rose in the scale of culture to a vated the tender plants of progression and civilizing factor. They sought again the reformation. Again a revolution by evolu­ Greek classics and studied them carefully, tion, a new world grows out of the fragments translated and imitated them. Through the of the old, imperceptible first, self-evident portals of poetry they reached the halls of then, and at the surface thereof its last science and philosophy, and here again they architect appears, who in this case was Mo­ translated and transcribed, till they became hammed with his Koran, the source and independent and Original thinkers, philoso­ beginning of the Islam, now the religion phers and scientists, especially in medicine, and fundamental principle of government mathematics, astronomy and physics, and and ethics of a hundred millions of human their schools became famous, and beneficial beings. As little, indeed, as you can imagine to humanity. the New Testament without the Old', you The Hebrews, who, like the Christians, at can think of the Koran without the Jewish the start of the Islam suffered largely by its lore, as represented in the Talmud. The barbarous fierceness, gradually became an one like the other is an offspring of Jewish integral part of the Mohammedan kingdoms mind in connection with inherited heathen in Asia, Africa and Europe, and were well ideas. The Wandering Jew is at the bottom treated. With some interruptions, they en­ of both. He has sown the seed and others joyed all the privileges of the man and have reaped the harvest. He has fought citizen among the Mohammedans during the battles and others earned the laurels. the dark periods of the Middle Ages. The He has done the deed and left the credit to consequence was that the Jews also became his competitors. He has earned ingratitude hard-working students, prominent poets, and scorn where he had spent blessing philosophers, scientists, statesmen, finan­ with munificent hands. ciers and merchants of great enterprise. —10 —

Titer produced a galaxy of ones, between the scientific tourist who carried books, in­ the tenth and fifteenth centuries, marked in formation and learning from land to land, the horizon of history as stars of the first magnitudefro, benefactorm the Oriens of humanityt to the . Occident and vice

However, while half of the horizon It was an anomalous state of society. The was thus illuminated by Mohammedan and civilized world was cut into two hostile fac­ Jewish learning, research and culture, the tions held apart by relentless and implacable other half assumed a midnight darkness by hatred, Christendom on the one side and the retrogressions triumphant ignorance., Mohammedanism on the other. In Christen­ bottomless fanaticism and intolerance in dom darkness, ignorance, slavery and op­ Christendom after the death of Charle­ pression advanced from century to century, magne, idling from the ninth to the six­ and none was permitted to think a free or teenth century without modification of any new thought. The science and learning of consequence to suffering humanity, with its the Mohammedans were useless to the thick clouds hanging over the sixteenth, Christian, for none dared to read the books seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and of the infidels and hounds, none would ven­ the terrible debris of its destructive fury ture to know the language of the enemies of deposited in this nineteenth century. espe-. the cross. It appeared as though the night cially in Russia and her allies, in the claims could never end; no morning would ever of priests, feudal knights, princes by nativ­ dawn upon the downtrodden portion of the ity, the fanaticism, ignorance and hatred of human family. the masses In the factions and fractions of modern society. Origin of the Reformation. The dark, centuries presented the anoma­ It was again the Wandering Jew who lous prospect that the Wandering Jew, being stepped between the hostile factions and the persecuted, burned, outraged and out­ brought progression and reformation. The lawed beast of burden in Christendom, the Jew rendered in Latin what had been writ­ dog of priests, princes and mobs, was at the ten in the Semitic. He brought in Latin same time the prince of commerce, the lord and in Hebrew the new ideas from the other of the finances, the people's merchant, the camp into Christendom. He brought to princes' counsellor, the physician of popes Christians the new philosophy, the new and emperors, the apostle of science, and criticism, the science, learning, letters, arts the exponent of the ancient and modern and industries of other countries. Christians treasures of human intelligence. The Jew began to study Hebrew, read and inhaled was the only human being in Christendom, new ideas in a new atmosphere, The Wan­ whose intelligence was not under the control dering Jew had sown again the seed of skep­ of Pope and Council, and was not benighted ticism, the tender plants of progression and by a stupendous dogmatism and scholastic reformation began to show in the Humani­ quibbles. The Jew, except by, persecution, tarian school. The soil was prepared, the had no Middle Ages. While he was robbed seed was sown, and upon that soil there and persecuted in the one place, there sat at rose Martin Luther and the Christian Re­ another place the prominent Christian doc­ formation. As little, indeed, as the New tors. Albert the Great, Thomas of Aquina, Testament or the Koran could have come and other great lights of the church, and into existence without the long and consist­ studied carefully what the Jew Avicebron ent labors of the Wandering Jew, so little (Soloman Ibn Gabirol) or E. Moses, of Egypt, the Reformation could have possibly evolved (Moses Maimonides) had written, to quote, from the Christian soil without the labor of expound and imitate them for the benefit of the same Wandering Jew, the works of Ibn the church. Popes and potentates had their Gabirol, Maimonides, Ibn Ezra, Kimchi, Jewish translators engaged to reproduce in Gersonides and ever so many other Jewish Latin what Jews had written in Hebrew or th inkers with their free and untrammeled re­ Arabic. The Jew was the merchant and earch, their wide range of philosophical thought, their ingenious conciliation of sweat of their brows to keep up the little, faith and reason by making faith philosoph­ narrow universe with the small local god of ical and philosophy religious. If it had not the Middle Ages in support of the lords and been for those Jewish thinkers and the rulers, on earth and their hosts of hirelings, Wandering Jew to carry their ideas and all sustained artificially by the scholastic thoughts into Christendom, theology would philosophy of the dark ages. have remained the divine comedy for the Where is the Wandering Jew, the horrid men in power, and a fabric of oppression harbinger of skepticism? Is he hunted for two-thirds of the human family, an in­ down by persecution, or intimidated by the genious contrivance of words to terrify the new Christian love? Yes, he was hunted masses and to satisfy despotic rulers. And down in Germany, France, Poland and else as is the theology of a people so are its polity where, and slept. But he woke up so much and policy, so are its social institutions and more powerful in Holland, in Amsterdam, a, conceptions. lean tall, hook-nosed Jew, and his name You have heard them say that the Jew was Baruch Spinoza, the most terrible of all is revengeful, and it is so. For all the horrible infidels, the most formidable of all wrongs benighted barbarians have done enemies of the old and outworn dogmatism him, he did not claim a pound of flesh—that and mental slavery. Orthodoxy whined is a poet's fiction who, perhaps, had never under his lashes, and went in sackcloth and seen a Jew, and turned against him an ashes. He upset the whole host of local­ Italian anecdote. The Jew's revenge, was ized gods, as Copernicus had destroyed their of a different character. He destroyed the palaces on high. He broke through the small and the big gods of his persecutors. tine scholastic spider-webs of artificial the­ He dispersed the illusions, exposed super­ ology, made room for science and new phil­ stition, battled against pious ignorance, pro­ osophy, claimed freedom of research and tested against slavery, claimed freedom of word, and became the apostle of modern belief, thought and speedy, and raised philosophy all over the civilized world. He his voice powerfully against all kinds was the necessary consequence of the past, of folly, prejudice and oppression. He the last link in the chain of Jewish reason­ carried skepticism and learning from land to ers from the Euphrates to the North Sea, land, was persecuted and cursed for it, gave beginning with Saadia in the tenth century, the impulses to the world's main progressions and ending—where?—yes, where? Echo says, and reformations, and stood watchfully at nowhere. All Christian philosophy turns the cradle of every new born idea of light about Spinoza, pro and con. Two-thirds of and freedom. That was the Jew's revenge. all modern philosophers and scientists have Modern Philosophy. become wandering Jews with a burden of skepticism which threatens suffocation to Shift the scenes once more, turn on the all dogmatism, all mental slavery. Our lights, let modern actors appear on the stage, Christian neighbors have become wandering let come in Copernicus, Galileo, and Kep­ Jews themselves, in name and practice. ler, Guttenberg, Faust, and Christopher The Puritans and Presbyterians are the Columbus, Lord Bacon, Descartes and Leib­ Pharisees of old. The Episcopalians are nitz; let rise the spring sun of modern civil­ the aristocratic Saducees of days gone by. ization, raise the May tree of freedom, and Our Quakers are the Essenes from time of let the musicians play the Marseilles and yore. They call themselves Abraham, Hail Columbia. Do not forget, however, to Moses, David, Habakuk, Obadiah and Zach­ call in also the men in the long black gowns, ariah, or Sarah, Rachel, Abigial, Miriam, the professors, with powdered wigs and cues. Hannah, or any other Jewish name. They For the custodians of the Reformation soon sing Jewish psalms and read the Jewish after the first start fell into a new-fangled Bible for the sake of salvation, eat, drink, do mysticism and fatalism. Hand in hand business, and get rich as a Jew, and take as with priest and soldier they worked in the high a rate of interest as they can get. They are Judaizing and do hot know it. Little is high priest, and Jehovah the only God; till left for the Wandering Jew to do. Still light and truth shall have dominion over all, he has no rest. He must reappear and do his every land shall be a home of the free, work; until there shall be no more supersti­ every government the beacon light of liberty, tion, no ignorance and no intolerance, no and mankind shall be one family of equal hatred, no self-delusion and no darkness rights and privileges. Then the curtain among sects. will drop on the grand drama of the Wan­ He must reappear and wander on to the dering Jew. Then a kind good-morning to end of all woe and misery in society, till the all nations and tongues; but now to this re­ habitable earth shall be one holy land, spected audience: Good night! good night, every city a Jerusalem, every house a all! temple, every table an altar, every parent a