CAN JEWS BE PATRIOTS

Der Gedanke ist mächtig genug, ohne Anmassung und Unrecht, über die Anmassung und das Unrecht zu siegen.'—Zunz.

In the month of February last appeared an article by Professor Goldwin Smith, entitled England's Abandonment of the Protectorate of Turkey. With the political portion of that article I do not propose to deal. I am one of those ministers of religion who, rightly or wrongly, think it preferable not to add to the strife of tongues which political questions are apt to evoke. But the writer has thought fit towards the end of his paper to level a most violent diatribe against Jews and Judaism, and to revive charges which, it was imagined, had for ever been relegated to the limbo of mediavalism. I feel myself bound, as one professing that ancient religious faith which has been attacked, not to allow those statements to pass unchallenged.

The time was when, on being reproached and reviled, we had no alternative but to muffle our faces in our gaberdines and meekly to hold our peace. Those times, it is to be hoped, have gone for ever. We need no longer speak

With bated breath and whispered humbleness. The interests of truth, the sacred cause of civil and religious freedom, demand that we should repel with indignation charges against our faith and our race-charges which I cannot characterise otherwise than as cruel and gratuitous calumnies.

The gist of the indictment brought against us is that we are no patriots. They (the Jews] have now been everywhere made voters; to make them patriots while they remain genuine Jews is beyond the legislator's power. I shall anon test the truth of this astounding proposition by the teachings of Judaism and the history of the Jews. But, before doing so, I shall examine the arguments whereby Mr. Goldwin Smith seeks to make his statement good. He says that the monotheism of the Jew, like that of Islam, is unreal. The Jewish

• God, though single, is not the Father of all, but the Deity of His chosen race. One could almost imagine that he who could pen such words had never taken the Bible in his hand, for the very first pages VOL. III.-No. 14.

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of Holy Writ contradict the assertion. The Hebrew Scripture brings before us the Lord as Creator of heaven and earth. It tells us that all the families of the earth have one common origin, have sprung from one and the same stock. Not as a mere poetical fancy, but with the sober logic of fact, this venerable Document makes the whole world kin,' and teaches, in the genealogical table of nations written in the tenth chapter of Genesis, that the Semite, the Aryan and Turanian, Slav, Kelt, and Teuton are descended from one common ancestor. It is true we read in Exodus (xix. 5), • Now, therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people. And from this text it has often been erroneously represented that this selection by the Lord implied a partiality, as though He loved the descendants of Jacob only, whilst the fate of the rest of mankind was a matter of indifference to Him. The chosen people! How often has that expression been repeated with ill-disguised contempt, as though the assumption of this term were due to our self-satisfied righteousness, as though it were an outcome of pride and haughtiness, as though it breathed an exclusive spirit which caused us to regard ourselves as the sole objects of Divine care and providence! Accordingly Lessing, in his noble plea for universal tolerance, Nathan der Weise, puts these words into the mouth of the Templar, the representative of Christianity:

Doch kennt Ihr auch das Volk
Das diese Menschenmäkelei zuerst
Getrieben? Wiszt Ihr, Nathan, welches Volk
Zuerst das auserwählte Volk sich nannte ?
Wie? wenn ich dieses Volk nun, zwar nicht hasste,
Doch
wegen

seines Stolzes zu verachten
Mich nicht entbrechen könnte? Seines Stolzes
Den es auf Christ und Muselmann vererbte

Nur sein Gott sei der rechte Gott! But surely the words which immediately follow the above Biblical text would suffice to disprove the charge. “For the whole earth is mine.' The words spoken by the Lord when He called Abraham, • In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed,'' equally proclaim the Divine concern in the welfare of the entire human family, and indicate the relation intended to subsist between the chosen race and the rest of the world. And in that same spirit of catholicity does Moses, the representative man of this exclusive race, address his • tribal God' as the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh,'a the God alike of Jew and Gentile. All human beings form part of His universal family, all are alike created in His image, all are alike sustained, loved, and redeemed by Him, the eternal, merciful Father of the human race.'3 1 Gen. xii. 3.

? Numb. xxvii. 16. 3 Cf. Pirke Aboth, ch. iii. § 14. “Man' (not the Israelite) the object of divine love, inasmuch as he has been created in the image of the Lord.'

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Nor do the teachings of the prophets disprove the Professor's assertion less distinctly. Adonai,' in whose name the inspired seers speak, is not the tutelary Deity of the Israelites, is not the God of one people only, whose territory is bounded by the Lebanon and the Jordan. We hear their glowing admonitions addressed to all the great empires of the East-to Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia no less than to the kingdom of Judæa. Obadiah and Jonah, indeed, were

. sent exclusively to preach repentance to pagan Edom and pagan Nineveh. Nor do the interpreters of the Divine will announce their messages with cold insensibility. Their hearts overflow with pity while they declare Heaven's stern decree. “My compassion yearneth for Moab as a harp,Isaiah exclaims. · Raise the lamentation over the king of Tyre, over Pharaoh,' are the words of Ezekiel. Nor are these kingdoms any the less objects of Divine mercy than is Israel himself. • Blessed be Egypt, my people, and Assyria, the work of mine hands, and Israel, mine inheritance.'

Whilst the ancient classical poets taught that the golden age of the world was a thing of the past, the prophets of Israel announce that it must be looked for in future time. And what is the picture they unroll before us ? Not Israel, the triumphant, enthroned in majesty on Zion as the conqueror of the earth, but all the nations of the globe beatified by the possession of truth and the acknowledgment of the Divine unity. “For then will I turn to the nations a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord to serve Him with one consent.'7 And Malachi, the last of the prophets acknowledged by Judaism, sums up these teachings in the touching words: Have we not all one Father, hath not one God created us?'8 - a quotation heard many a time and oft from Christian as well as Jewish pulpits. How can the learned Professor assert, in the face of it, that the Jews regarded God as the Deity of His chosen race, and not as the Father of all ?

Mr. Goldwin Smith next states that the morality embodied in the Mosaic Law was in its day a nearer approach to humanity than any other known law. But he adds the damaging qualification that both the morality and the law were distinctly • tribal.' It sanctioned a difference of principle between the rule of dealing with a Hebrew and that of dealing with a stranger, which the civilised conscience, now condemns. A strange misconception! Amid the great divergence of opinions in the theological world, there is one point on which'unanimity prevails—that the Decalogue taught on Sinai contains the germs of all the duties which man owes his Creator and his fellow-creatures. The Professor may look upon the opinion of a Jewishi Rabbi as warped by partiality. Will he reject with like disdain the authoritative teaching of the Dean of Westminster ? Chap. xvi. 11. 5 Chap. xxviii, 12, xxxii. 2,

6 Isaiah xix, 25. ? Zephaniah iii, 9.

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The Ten Commandments delivered on Mount Sinai have become embedded in the heart of the religion which has succeeded. . . . They represent to us both in fact and in idea the granite foundation, the immovable mountain, on which the world is built up, without which all theories of religion are but as shifting and fleeting clouds; they give us the two homely fundamental laws, which all subsequent religion has but confirmed and sanctioned—the law of our duty towards God and the law of our duty towards our neighbour.'

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When Israel was about to be redeemed from Egypt, when the first precept was given him, the Divine order was issued, “One law shall be to him that is homeborn and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you.' Again in Leviticus," where the penalty of the homicide is declared, the monition is added : “Ye sball have one manner of law as well for the stranger as for one of your own country, for I am the Lord your God.' It was first commanded by the Hebrev Scriptures, · Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord.”2 There is no justification whatever for interpreting this command as applicable solely to the Israelite. The veriest tyro in the knowledge of Hebrew could prove satisfactorily by many a quotation that the word reá is also applied to a non-Israelite.13 Again and again we are told not to vex “the stranger, but the stranger that dwelleth with you

shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself.' 14 In his sublime prayer of dedication, Solomon implores the Lord: “Moreover, concerning a stranger that is not of thy people Israel, but cometh from a far-off country ... when he shall come and pray toward this house, hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place, and do according to all that the stranger calleth to thee for. 15 What grand, all-embracing brotherhood do these words breathe!

I am aware that here and there in the Pentateuch some enactments may be found, which, at the first blush, would seem to bear out the Professor's assertion, and with these I shall now very briefly deal. The statement has been made that according to the Mosaic Law it was only forbidden to lend the Israelite at a usurious rate, but that no prohibition of this nature existed with respect to the nonIsraelite. This opinion is sought to be supported by a verse in Deuteronomy 16 which is translated in the Authorised Version, Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury, but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury.' The error is, that neshech is supposed to be synonymous with usury in the present acceptation of the term. The word, like usury in old English, simply means interest any compensation whatever paid for the use of money. Accordingly the passage should be rendered— Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon

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interest, but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon interest.' With respect to the Israelite it was prohibited both to take and to give any interest whatever, for it was clearly the design of the Mosaic legislation to prevent the few growing rich at the expense of the many, and to maintain the simple primitive conditions of self-reliant, self-contained industrial support by agriculture and handicrafts, credit being regarded as an evil and a humiliation to the borrower. “Thou shalt lend to many nations, but shalt not borrow," "7 is a blessing which sufficiently indicates the advantage of an internal commerce free from internal credit and indebtedness. Had the Israelites been allowed to lend to one another at interest, their lands would have been encumbered, and their energies as agriculturists would have been crippled. This happened in Athens and in Rome, where all the landed property gradually fell into the hands of the rich, and where the poor were so oppressed by the debts they owed the landowners that a social revolution ensued. The like condition of things even now exists in India. But this danger could not arise from lending to the foreigner. It was found necessary since the earliest times of the Hebrew commonwealth to carry on some commerce with neighbouring countries, in order to exchange the surplus of their own produce for the commodities of other lands. Solomon sent to Hiram, King of Tyre, to purchase sandalwood and sycamore for the construction of the Temple. Thus, also, if an Israelite possessed any capital or produce which he could not utilise in his own country, he had a right to demand from a member of a foreign state some compensation for the use of the money or produce lent to him, and if the foreigner applied that capital to commercial enterprise no Mosaic principle was infringed by charging him interest. This permission, however, only applied to sums borrowed for mercantile

purposes. When the Gentile needed the loan of money, not for commerce, but for his subsistence, the Mosaic Law made no difference between him and the Hebrew. . And if thy brother be waxen poor, and his hand faileth with thee, then thou shalt relieve him; yea, though he be a stranger and sojourner; that he may live with thee. Take thou no usury of him or increase; but fear thy God.'18 Yes, this “tribal' law, which we are told sanctioned a difference of principle between the rule of dealing with a Hebrew and that of dealing with a stranger,' did not allow the Jew to make any distinction between the Israelite and the Gentile in the exercise of philanthropy. He was bidden to visit the sick among the non-Israelites, to relieve their poor, and to bury their dead, even as those of his own people ; for he was bound to walk in the ways of his Lord, who is good to all, whose tender mercies are over all His works.' 19