V.

THE POSITION OF THE JEWS IN AMERICA. '

FIRST ARTICLE.

"Perhaps the most remarkable fact, in the history of modern Judaism, is the extension of the Jews in the United States."-(Milman.)

It is wellnigh 2,500 years since the prophet Jeremiah sent an epistle to his captive brethren in Babylon, advising them concerning the course of life they should pursue. In that epistle he exhorts them to "build houses and dwell in them; plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them; take wives, and give their children in marriage, that they may be increased and not diminished; to seek the peace of the city, and pray unto the Lord for it; for in the peace thereof shall they have peace!"* No word better deserved to be called prophetic than this, for it anticipated the needs of dispersed Israel for thousands of years; nor do we know of any utterance which more strikingly reveals the freedom of prophetic thought. Hebrew patriotism had the power and depth of a religious passion. The possession of the land of promise was proof of the continuance, its loss of the forfeiture of Heaven's favor. To be separated from its hallowed associations was like banishment from the face of God. In repentance lay the only hope of the captives of returning to their beloved home, and it appeared a necessary part of their penance, to refuse the proffered hospitality of the conqueror. The over-zealous among them fed that morbid feeling by predictions of a speedy termination of the captivity. Jeremiah read the signs of the times with greater accuracy, and saw that they did not warrant that expectation. But, whenever that longed-for event might happen, it was clear to him that it should not be allowed to interfere with any present duty, or the attainment of present happiness.

Jeremiah xxix. 5-7. + Psalms xlii., xliii., lxiii.; 1 Samuel xxvi. 10.

It is worthy of note that the counsel of Jeremiah embodied the three chief elements of strength in the Hebrew race, industry, home-life, and prayer. Philipsohn does not perhaps overrate the importance of this message, when he characterizes it as the first attempt "to separate the religious from the civil interests of the people, foreshadowing a change which was to be accomplished in much later times, and after many national vicissitudes.” *

What the priest-prophet did for his banished brethren during the first captivity, a rabbi, also of priestly stock, accomplished in a still bolder manner during the second, eight hundred years later. During these centuries, Palestine had risen to independence and power, but had also fallen again to the old ruin, and her children dwelt as before in the land of the stranger. The grave problem was once more presented, How far shall allegiance to the national cause extend? This time, however, it was not the land, but the law, in which the love of the Israelite centred. The law had become his true home, the consecrated ground on which he stood, as in the presence of the Most Holy. It overshadowed the golden gates and fretted domes of the temple. Its study more than compensated for the silenced songs of the Levites, and the lost sacrifices of the priests. The academies, both in Palestine and Babylonia, where the flower of Hebrew youths sat at the feet of renowned masters; the synagogues, thronged daily with devout worshipers, who "drank in with thirst" the words of those who "preached Moses and the prophets," threw into the background the vanished glories of Zion. Generations of learned men had expanded the demands of the Mosaic law to such vast proportions that they completely covered the life of the faithful from the cradle to the grave. Collisions with the civil institutions were inevitable the moment they stepped beyond the limits of Palestine. Many changes had also passed over the scene where the first exiles received Jeremiah's message; they had led up to the restoration of the Persian throne; and its occupant, from the year c. E. 238. Shabur I. was not less friendly toward the Jews than his predecessor Cyrus had been. But the jurisdiction claimed by the rabbis in civil and penal, as well as in purely religious matters, resulted in a self-imposed exclusion from the benefits of a just government, which could not fail to "Bibelwerk," in loco.

be in the end disastrous. Mar Samuel,* the most eminent civil jurist of a time rich in legal erudition, and renowned as a physician and astronomer, resembled Jeremiah in the clear perception of what the hour demanded. In the very teeth of all tradition he enunciated the guiding principle, that "in all civil matters what is law for the land of his sojourn shall also be, henceforth, law for the Jew. The authority of a Gentile government was thus formally recognized, and submission to its decrees invested with the sanction of religion. Samuel's example gave force to his teaching; his intercourse with learned Magians was intimate, and his influence at court so great that he was surnamed "the Jewish King Shabur."

Like all reforms, this one met with strenuous opposition. The hope of restoration was yet vivid in the minds of the Jews. An heroic race is not easily reconciled to permanent defeat, and Mar Samuel's concession seemed to admit it. With the glorious deeds of the unfortunate defenders of their country fresh on their memory, it is not surprising to find the Jews, during the first centuries after the Roman conquest, joining in insurrectionary movements that promised to restore their lost independence. As time wore on, however, the expectation waned; the veneration for the Holy Land assumed more and more the character of a religious hope, and became an article of creed, rather than an incentive to warlike action. Generations arose, in whom community of language, custom, and practical interests, produced an affinity with the nations among whom they lived, against which the old traditions were powerless. Time and circumstances thus paved the way for the general adoption of the principle of the Babylonian master. By it the Jews have ever since been governed in their relations with the Gentile world; and, wherever governments accepted it in good faith, the Jews proved a source of strength, wealth, and intellectual activity; at certain periods these "blind men" have been the torch-bearers of science and philosophy. The greatest rulers known in history, Cyrus, Alexander the Great, Cæsar, Charlemagne, Abdul-Rahman of Mohammedan and Alfonso of Christian Spain; Frederick II., the Ho

D. Hoffmann; Mar Samuel, "Lebensbild eines talmudischen Weisen." Leipsig, Leiner, 1873. Grätz, "Geschichte der Juden," vol. iv., p. 231.

henstaufen; Cromwell, Joseph II., and Napoleon I., have fully acknowledged their services.

These names are, however, but isolated stars in the long night through which the Jews have passed. Their offer to submit to the laws of the state was scorned, and the world's motto became, "What is law for everybody is none for the Jew." That which bore the name of law was but a contrivance for his destruction. Society declared war against him, and he had no alternative but to fight for his life as best he could. One by one the avenues to the learned professions, and even to the ordinary handicrafts, were closed against him. His favorite occupation, agriculture, certain branches of which he at one time monopolized, was forcibly taken from him, and he was thus driven to his last citadel -trade. From it the cruelest legislation could not drive him, for he could not be robbed of the superior skill which he gradually acquired. The trading proclivities have ceased to be a reproach to the Hebrew, and not only because they were the natural result of the treatment he received, but because the civilizing power of trade is better understood.

The Hebrew that followed the blood-stained footsteps of the Roman legions into Spain, through Gaul, and along the Rhine,* reclaimed the devastated fields, helped to establish colonies, and, by buying and selling the captive men and women, saved them from the sword to which, otherwise, they would have been put. In the middle ages, when the strength of Christendom was consumed in the crusades, and in hereditary feuds, the presence of a class devoted to the arts of peace was a benefit; it saved society from sinking deeper into the barbarism into which the vaunted age of chivalry threw the nations of Europe. † Historians express surprise that, despite the most stringent laws of exclusion, and the frequent spoliations, the Jews of the middle ages remained

* Jewish settlements in those regions of Europe date back to the pre-Christian period.

"The loss of gold and silver which disappeared with the Jews from Spain would have been replaced before long by the influx of the precious metals from America; but the loss of industry was irreparable in a country where pride and indolence proscribed all such pursuits as base and sordid, and where the richest body, the Church, contributed nothing, either directly, or by the improvement of the land, to the support of the state. With the Moors and the Jews vanished all the rich cultivation of the soil, and all internal and external commerce" (Milman).

the masters of the marts, and the controllers of the finances of the world. There is, however, nothing wonderful in all this. If all the world was hostile to the Jew, Nature, at least, was not so. To his versatility, his experience, his knowledge of the languages and wants of the different countries, he was solely indebted for his dominion over the market and the exchange. His money could, of course, be taken from him by violence, but he knew the potent charm of luring it back. His crude and superstitious enemies ascribed it to the devil, but to us it is no more miraculous or wicked than the attraction of the magnet. All the laws which prohibited the Jews from holding fiscal offices were null and void practically, since he was the only financier that could fill the empty coffers of the state; in like manner the thunders of the Church were as nothing when they pretended to banish the Hebrew physician from the sick-chamber of the Christian. Life and health are dear to pope and king as well as to other mortals, and, if Hebrew skill can save the body, the Church must condone the sin of accepting the help of a heretic. Europe, in forcing the Jew into trade, created him, to a certain extent, master of the situation. He was compelled, it is true, to hide his weapon under the rags of apparent poverty, and to assume the air of humility; nor can it be wondered at that trading and money-lending, if practised among a population taught to look upon cheating the Jew as lawful before man, and meritorious before God, should produce certain demoralizing effects. What is remarkable, however, is this: that a race, whose life was one continuous struggle, who were chased from land to land, who bore a load of obloquy which might well unman the stoutest hearts, should have continued their intellectual and literary pursuits without an interruption. Is it not amazing that, among a people thus conditioned, should be found at all times men of commanding intellect, who gathered around them throngs of eager disciples: poets, who sung their sorrows and their hopes in the lofty strains of David and Isaiah, teachers of a morality, which needs shun no comparison with that of any religion; thinkers, who pondered over the last problems of metaphysics; mystics, who soared aloft on the wings of speculative imagination; jurists, who expounded and elaborated the legal codes of the Babylonian academies; historians, who chronicled the sufferings of their tribe, and the shame of their mur