PART THREE
THE GREAT CHANCE: THE EASTERN
QUESTION
I. LORD SHAFTESBURY AND THE HEYDAY OF THE MOVEMENT
IN the thirties of the nineteenth century the international crisis, known as the "Eastern Question" to which the gradual decline of the Ottoman Empire and Bonaparte's Oriental Expedition had given rise, entered an acute stage. The fight of the Greeks for their independence (1820-25) was the dramatic prelude to violent convulsions in the Middle East. Mehemet Ali's struggle with Sultan Mahmud II, from whom he had broken away in 1831, temporarily brought the Holy Land under the former's rule. It was then that Europe's statesmen became aware of the political importance of the Holy Land and began to discuss its future.
No European country took so lively a concern in the matter as England. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, consistently sought to exploit the situation in the Middle East with the aim of strengthening British influence. One of the most significant steps in that direction was the establishment, in 1838, of a British Consulate in Jerusalem, the first diplomatic appointment in the Land of Israel.
With British policy focused on Palestine it looked at last as though the British Restoration Movement were about to become a serious political factor. The new restorationists were equally concerned with the development of the Doctrine and with its application to political realities. Typical of them was Edward Bickersteth, a prominent Evangelical and a friend of Lewis Way who, in 1836, published The Restoration of the Jews to their own land, in connection with their future conversion and the final blessedness of our earth. Bickersteth visualised a great migration to Palestine, and considered the conversion of the Jews an event subsequent to their return, thus clearly dissociating himself from the believers in the simultaneous realisation of the two processes. Another member of the "London Society", Alexander McCaul, in his New Testament evidence that the Jews are to be restored to the
Land of Israel (1835), stated as an "article of faith" that "Israel still remains a peculiar people, and are to be restored to their own land".
General interest in the Restoration of the Jews increased from year to year, and attracted many people who had had little connection with the tradition of the Movement. Prominent among them was Michael Russell, author of Palestine or the Holy Land from the earliest period to the present time (1832). Russell, subsequently Bishop of Glasgow and Galloway, refused to believe in prophecy but saw promise in the continued existence of the Jewish people, in its numerical growth and in the inviolability of the Messianic faith. Similar views were expressed by Lord Alexander William Lindsay, Earl of Crawford, in his Letters on Egypt, Edom and the Holy Land (1838).
In January 1839 a collective memorandum was sent "on behalf of many who wait for the redemption of Israel" to all "Protestant Powers of North of Europe and America". The author is generally supposed to have been Henry Innes, Secretary of the Admiralty. The document quoted numerous passages from the Scriptures and pleaded with the sovereigns to allow the spirit of Cyrus to awaken in their hearts and to fulfill God's will. The document thus marks clearly the transition from pious anticipation to active intervention.
A truly epoch-making advance in this direction was made by Lord Antony Ashley Cooper,
seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, who had a genius for philanthropy and had established himself as the champion of the
poor and oppressed. Filled with boundless reverence for the Bible, he loved "God's ancient people",
its land and its language: Through his friendship with Alexander McCaul -"Rabbi McCaul",
as Shaftesbury nicknamed him and with Edward Bickersteth, he became thoroughly
familiar with the principles of
the Restoration Doctrine. Convinced that the upheavals in the Middle
East had precipitated the religious and
national Restoration of the Jews, he took the lead in combining the religious
trend with planned political activity. It was he who, in 1838, had taken the initiative
in opening the British Consulate in Jerusalem and upon whose suggestion Lord Palmerston,
in his instructions to the newly appointed Vice-Consul, W. T. Young, declared it to be part of his consular duty "to afford protection to the Jews generally".
The policy consistently followed by the office throughout the 76 years of its existence not only helped to promote the welfare of the Jewish population in Palestine but also created a personal link between Britain and the Jewish people at large.
On September 29, 1838, Shaftesbury wrote in his diary,
"The ancient city of the people of God is about to resume a place among the nations,
and England is the first of the Gentile kingdoms that ceases `to tread her down'."
Inspired by Lord Lindsay's travel book (see p. 58) he wrote a thirty-page article, State and Prospects of the Jews,
which was published in the Quarterly Review of January-March 1839.
In it Shaftesbury vigorously opposed the attempts of various sovereigns to amalgamate the Jews with the bulk of their
subjects. The wrong done to the Jews by the nations, he concluded, could be expiated only by their Restoration, and England
was destined, and getting ready, to bring about such a solution.
The publication of this article was a literary and political event. For the first time a distinguished magazine had treated the problem of Restoration in all its aspects -religious, political, historical, philosophical. The Restoration Movement, led by one of the nation's most respected and influential men, had gained public recognition.
In the same year of 1839, new happenings in the Middle East greatly heightened the general interest in the Movement. Viceroy Mehemet Ali's threat to withdraw what remained of his allegiance to the Sultan caused a renewed outbreak of war. On June 24, 1839, the European Powers intervened. As a result of the London Conference on the "Eastern Question" an agreement with Turkey was signed by England, Russia, Austria and Prussia on July 15, 1840, aiming at the pacification of the Levant. When Mehemet Ali refused to abide by it, the allied forces entered Damascus in February 1841 and Egyptian rule over Syria of which the Holy Land formed part came to an end.
These stormy events, which made the Land of Israel a battlefield, coincided with a grave crisis involving the Jewish people. In February 1840 a number of respected Jewish residents of Damascus were accused of the "ritual murder" of a Capuchin monk. Mehemet Ali's governor had the
completely innocent prisoners subjected to torture. A delegation consisting of Sir Moses Montefiore, Adolphe Cremieux, the Orientalist Solomon Munk and Dr. Louis Loewe, Montefiore's secretary, went to Alexandria. In September, with the aid of the signatories of the London Pact they secured the liberation of the prisoners and their tacit rehabilitation.
The events of 1840 impelled the Restoration Movement towards a climax. A new edition of Bickersteth's book advised the readers to study Restoration literature, offering a useful bibliography, and Joseph Elisha Freeman anticipated the fulfillment of the millennial hope in an essay Israel's Return; or Palestine Regained. The return of the Jews became a subject for widespread public and press comment. On March 9, 1840, for example, The Times reprinted the memorandum to the Protestant Sovereigns which, though submitted a year earlier, had suddenly acquired topical
interest.
At this juncture, Lord Shaftesbury came to the fore again as the dynamic spirit of the Movement. "Anxious about the hopes and prospects of the Jewish people" he entered in his diary in July 1840, "Everything seems ripe for their return to Palestine; `the way of the kings of the Orient is prepared'." Shaftesbury then considered the possibility of inducing the five Powers "to guarantee the security of life and possession to the Hebrew race". Palmerston's inclination to accept Shaftesbury's proposals is illustrated by an article which appeared in The Globe, the semi-official organ of the Foreign Office, on August 14 under the title A Regard for the Jews. It discussed the return of the Jews to Palestine and England's mission to imitate the deed of Cyrus.
Three days later (August 17), an article in The Times headed
Syria -The Restoration of the Jews, stated:
The proposition to plant the Jewish people in the land of their fathers, under the protection of the five Powers, is no longer a mere matter of speculation, but of serious political consideration. . .
There followed a five-point questionnaire about the attitude of the Jews to the project -the first attempt at establishing direct contact between the Restoration Movement and Jewry with a view to practical co-operation.
Public discussion of the Jewish return continued to spread.
In a letter of August 26 to The Times, "An English Clergy-man", pointing to the persecutions suffered by the Jews, demanded that Britain should acquire Palestine for the Jews. "The newspapers teem with documents about the Jews," Shaftesbury noted on August 29. On August 11, Palmerston had addressed a letter to Lord Ponsonby, British Ambassador to Turkey, in which, after a preamble dealing with the prospective return of the Jews to Palestine, he instructed Ponsonby "strongly to recommend [to the Turkish Government] to hold out every just encouragement to the Jews to return to Palestine". This was the first official British document to take cognisance of the idea of Restoration.
"This is a prelude to the Antitype of the decree of Cyrus", Shaftesbury, referring to Palmerston's letter, entered in his diary on August 24.
Then confining himself exclusively to political and economic arguments Shaftesbury drew up in the form of a letter to Lord Palmerston a far-reaching yet completely realistic and statesmanlike project. He based his demand that Palestine be handed over to the Jews for resettlement on arguments which must have been fully acceptable to them; the close bond of the Jews with their ancient homeland, their indestructible Messianic hope, their "prodigious industry and perseverance". " Long ages of suffering", he declared prophetically, "have trained their people to habits of endurance and self-denial; they would joyfully exhibit them in the settlement of their ancient country".
There is good reason to believe that Palmerston was favourably disposed to Shaftesbury's scheme. The Globe, commenting on the plan of Alphonse de Lamartine for the establishment of a Christian state in Palestine, wrote caustically:
M. de Lamartine intends to form a Christian kingdom at the sources of the Jordan and at the foot of Mount Lebanon. . . But what is odd in the whole affair is that Lord Palmerston has chosen the same spot. Where the celebrated Deputy dreams of a Christian state, Lord Palmerston projects a Jewish Republic.
Yet diplomatic records leave no doubt that nothing was further from the intentions of Britain's co-signatories of the London Treaty than the establishment of a Jewish Palestine.
Meanwhile Edward Bickersteth, in the second edition of his book, with reference to the London Treaty, pleaded for the creation of "a neutral Jewish state between the Sultan and the Pasha". The Church of Scotland addressed an appeal to Palmerston which, while dealing only with the protection of the Jews and of missionary activities, at the same time revealed a clearly pro-restorationist tendency. At the beginning of 1841, the Irish city of Carlow presented a Humble Memorial of the Undersigned Inhabitants of Carlow and its Vicinity, dated March 2, 1841, in which Biblical teaching and realistic prospects are impressively blended. The Memorandum culminated in a passionate plea that Great Britain should emulate the blessed work of "Cyrus the Great King of Persia" and should remember "the irreversible decree of Heaven that `the Nation or Kingdom that will not serve Israel shall perish'." _
The petition of the citizens of Carlow was sent to Palmerston with a covering letter (March 2, 1841), from which it appears that the 320 signatories represented a cross-section of all political parties and religious denominations.
Almost at the same time as the people gathered at Carlow to rejoice in the liberation of Palestine and to raise their voices in favour of the Restoration of the Jews, a brilliant party was held in Damascus on March 1, 1841, at the palatial home of R. Farhi, the head of the Jewish community, in honour of the victorious army. Among those present was Charles Henry Churchill; eldest son of Lord Charles Spencer Churchill and grandson of the fifth Duke of Marlborough, who had entered the Syrian capital with the victorious troops and had received from Sir Moses Montefiore the edict of the young Sultan Abdul Hedjid which assured equality of rights with the rest of the population to Jews resident in Turkey's Asiatic provinces. At the end of the party, Churchill, now British Resident at Damascus, addressed the distinguished gathering in the following terms:
May this happy occasion stand as a pledge of [England's] friendship and an augury for a bond and a union between the English and the Jewish nation, equally honourable and beneficial for both. Yes, friends, there has existed a Jewish people, renowned for learning and glorious in war. May the hour of Israel's liberation draw nigh! May the approach of western civilisation bring to this magnificent land the dawn of its reconstruction and its political revival. May the Jewish nation regain its rank and position among the nations of the world. The descendants of the Maccabeans will prove
themselves worthy of their renowned forbears.
Enthusiastically acclaimed by his audience, Churchill decided to make a direct approach to western Jewry. On June 14, 1841, he addressed a letter to Sir Moses Montefiore which stated concisely: "It is for the Jews to make a commencement". Submitting no cut-and-dried project, Churchill suggested that the Jews should, "simultaneously throughout Europe" launch an intensive campaign for Restoration. The result he foresaw was that the Jews "would conjure up a new element in Eastern diplomacy".
"Syria and Palestine," Churchill wrote, " . . must be taken under European protection and governed in the sense and according to the spirit of European administration.
While Shaftesbury relied on direct negotiations with the Government, contact with Jewry being but a secondary concern, Churchill attached the utmost importance to the initiative of the Jews themselves. Indeed, never before had the Restoration Movement come so close to a Zionist point of view.
It is not known whether Colonel Churchill's letter was ever answered by Sir Moses Montefiore. During his second visit to the Holy Land (1839), Sir Moses had discussed vast schemes with Mehemet All, who was willing to grant the land needed for the planned Jewish colony and even to appoint a Resident to such a settlement. After discussing the promotion of this plan with Palmerston, Montefiore launched "The Fund for the cultivation of the land in Palestine by the Jews". Back from his journey in connection with the Damascus Affair (February 24, 1841), Montefiore was, however, faced with a new situation. Mehemet Ali's power was broken and negotiations for the return of Syria to Turkey were in progress.
In any case it would have been too late to change the march of time even by such an initiative. By the time Churchill's letter reached Montefiore, Palestine's fate was being decided for a long time to come. The London "Treaty for the Pacification of the Levant"
sounded the death-knell of Lord Shaftesbury's bold projects and similar proposals by other Restorationists, inspired by the crisis of 1840-41. The heyday of the Restoration Movement was over.
II. AFTERMATH
The manner in which the Restorationists reacted to the failure of their
relentless efforts was symbolic of the vitality of the Restoration idea. For
Lord Shaftesbury and his friends of the London Society the collapse of their
political expectations seemed offset by the realisation of at least some of
their religious objectives, namely the establishment of a Protestant Bishopric
in Jerusalem, and the appointment as Bishop of a British citizen of Jewish
origin. He was Michael Solomon Alexander, who, after having served as reader and
shochetin Plymouth, accepted baptism and became a zealous member of the
London Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews. The irony of an event
which could have only a deterrent effect on any devout Jew was far from being
realised by the Restorationists. On the contrary: the fact that a Jew was called
to become the first Evangelical Bishop in Jerusalem appealed to them strongly as
a symbol of promise.
The learned divines of the Church of England were not alone in persevering in
their efforts to hasten Restoration at a time when the prospects of a practical
success had suffered a depressing setback. Colonel Churchill again got in touch
with Montefiore and confided to him his new plans. On August 15, 1842, he sent
to Montefiore a letter with an attached address translated into German
which he asked him to forward to Montefiore's friends in the German States. The
address was based on the assumption that every effort would be made by the Jews
"to accomplish the means of living amidst those scenes rendered sacred by
ancient recollections, and which they regard with filial affection, and that
only the dread of the insecurity of life and property which had rested so long
upon the soil of Judea has hitherto been a bar to the accomplishment of their
natural desire". Churchill proposed that "the Jews of England conjointly with
their brethren on the Continent of Europe should make an application to the
British Government through the Earl of Aberdeen, the Foreign Secretary [since
August 1841], to accredit and send out a fit and proper person to reside in
Syria for the sole and express purpose of superintending and watching over the
interests of the Jews residing in that country". The document closed with a
personal confession "God has put into my heart the desire to serve His ancient
people".
Montefiore submitted the memorandum together with the covering letter and the
previous letter to the Board of Deputies, of which he was president. The resolution passed at the meeting of the
Board on November 7, 1842, reads:
That the President be requested to reply
to Colonel Churchill to the effect that this Board, being appointed for the
fulfilment
of special duties and deriving its pecuniary resources from the contributions to
the several congregations it represents, is precluded from originating any
measures for carrying out the benevolent views of Colonel Churchill respecting
the Jews of Syria; that this Board is fully convinced that much good would arise
from the realisation
of Colonel Churchill's intentions, but is of opinion that any measures in
reference to this subject should emanate from the general body of the Jews
throughout Europe; and that this Board doubts not that if the Jews of other
countries entertain the propositions those of Great Britain would be ready and
desirous to contribute towards it their most zealous support.
The Board even refused, at least by implication, to forward the
proposition to the Jews of the Continent, pleading lack of authority.
Churchill's proposition was treated as applying only to the Jews of Syria, and
not one word revealed that the representatives of British Jewry shared the "natural desire" supposed by
Churchill to be a general feeling of the Jewish people.
Thus the "benevolent views of Colonel Churchill" were filed away in the archives
of the Board of Deputies. His own warm and dignified reply, dated January 8,
1943, has also been preserved. The hope expressed in this letter of a direct
understanding between British and Continental Jews on the subject of Palestine
was to remain unfulfilled. Disappointment over Jewish inaction may explain the
fact that, although Churchill continued to promote the welfare of the Jews in
Syria, we hear no more about pro-Zionist activities during the rest of his life,
which ended after an eventful military career in 1877. But in his three-volume
work Mount Lebanon, published in 1853, Churchill predicted: that should
"Mount Lebanon cease to be Turkish, it must either become English, or else form
part of a new independent State which, without the incentive to territorial
aggrandisement, or the means of military aggression, shall yet be able to
maintain its own honour and dignity and unite the hitherto divergent races of
mankind in the humanising relations of fraternity and peace. . . ." Even
though Churchill omitted to make explicit reference to the Jews in this
forecast, it clearly re-echoes the prophecies of his youth.
But new fighters for the Restoration idea soon appeared who were not willing to
acquiesce in the settlement of the Eastern question as provided by the London
Treaty. In 1843, Alexander Keith published an unusual travel book, The Land of Israel according to the Covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and
with Jacob. The book was one of the first to produce masterly daguerreotypes of scenes from the Holy Land. The chief
object of these pictures and of a full description of the country was clearly to
underline the contrast between its former glory and its then state of desolate
neglect, "which for previous centuries no man enquired after." Keith pointed to
the shameful discrepancy between the Abrahamic covenant and the worldly
agreements just concluded between the Powers: He regarded them as null and void
and put forward his solution : "Greece was given to the Greeks; and in seeking
any government for Syria, may not a confederacy of kings, for the sake of the
peace of the world, be shut up by the course of giving it -if they think it
theirs to give -Judaea to the Jews? "
In 1884 two clergymen, Samuel Bradshaw and Thomas Tully Crybbace, independently
of each other, called for political action of a sort. Bradshaw's Tract for
the Times, being a plea for the Jews warned the Gentiles against making the
Jews abandon "their ancient right to Palestine", and declared it "their duty to aid the liberation of God's ancient people from the
present depressed and scattered condition by promoting to the utmost their
return to the land of their fathers". He suggested that a fund of five million
pounds should be raised to this end, four-fifths of it by the Government with
the consent of Parliament, the balance to be made up by the Church. While
Bradshaw was content to publish his proposal, T. T. Crybbace worked from the
outset to organise a popular movement to avert the threat to the return of the
Jews. He suggested that England should ask the Sultan to hand over the whole
area of Palestine and to accept appropriate compensation. In April 1844,
Crybbace voiced this demand at a meeting convened "in favour of a British and
Foreign Society for promoting the restoration of the Jewish nation to
Palestine". Seeing the Restoration as a way of liberating the Jewish people, he
asked that Britain should urge the Czar and other oppressors to free them, and
should then constitute herself the protector of the Jews in Palestine. This
address, dedicated to the Queen, Parliament and the People of England, appeared
in print shortly afterwards. At a later meeting, Crybbace was attacked by Jews
in the audience who, bewildered by the appointment of Bishop Alexander, alleged
that conversion was behind the scheme to be promoted by the new Society. Only
the prospectus of the Society remains as a record of the first attempt made in
England to create an organisation "to excite interest in the British Isles, and
throughout the world in the restoration of the Jews".
III. JEWS JOIN THE MOVEMENT
The increased political activity during the period of the Eastern Question was
accompanied by the intensification of contacts between the Restoration Movement
and the Jews themselves.
The initiative was taken by the Restorationists. For the favourable situation
caused by the momentous events in the Near East coincided with a period when
increasing emancipation was beginning to dim the Messianic dreams of large
sections of the Jewish people. As we have seen, the "wealthy and influential
members of Jewish society", whom Colonel Churchill had expected to take the lead
in the reconstruction of Palestine, cold-shouldered his scheme. Though Sir Moses
Montefiore had in view a large-scale colonisation action which would bring
thousands of Jews to the Land of Israel, he, too, was not in favour of political
action for the resettlement of the Jewish people in Palestine and he
consistently dissociated himself from the bold projects of the English
Restorationists.
And yet the hopes of the Restorationists of co-operation with the Jews were not
entirely unfounded. As early as 1836, Zevi Hirsch Kalischer, Rabbi of Thorn, had
written to Anselm Meyer Rothschild of Frankfurt "that the beginning of the
redemption will be in a natural way, by the desire of the Jews to settle in
Palestine and the willingness of the nations to help them in this work". Roughly
at the same time, Rabbi Yehuda Hai Alkalay, driven by the urge to prepare the
return of Israel to its ancient homeland, travelled all the way from Semlin in
Slovenia to England and laid before the heads of the London Sephardi community a
scheme for the establishment of a society the object of which was to set the
great work in motion. The weekly journal Der Orient, founded in 1840 by
the Jewish scholar Dr. Julius Furst, regularly carried detailed reports of the
English Restoration Movement from its London correspondent, A. de Sola. On June
27, 1840, Der Orient published what was editorially described as a
"strange appeal" signed D.V.H. to the "People of Jehovah, to arise from your
age-old slumber and to take possession of the land of the fathers ".
This anonymous manifesto had an electrifying effect on large sections of Jewish
youth and promptly reached the English press. A full translation appeared in
The Times on December 24, 1840. The Restorationists gladly hailed it as an
expression of a widespread sentiment. On June 24, 1841, Der Orient
carried a long letter from Palestine in which the writer advocated the
resettlement of Palestine and the appointment of a Jewish administration under
the protection and guarantee of several of the Great Powers. He quite openly
referred to the dominant role to be played by Great Britain and to the
incalculable advantages which she would derive from such an arrangement. He
argued that by establishing a Jewish state between the Nile, the Euphrates and
the Taurus, England would restore the threatened balance in the Near and Middle
East.
In Prague a Jewish students' group proposed to found a Society for the
re-establishment of the Jewish state. Abraham Benisch, the most energetic member
of the group who settled in London in 1841 argued that England, by introducing
Protestantism into Palestine would antagonise sections of Christendom and the
fanatical Moslem populations, thus causing fresh embarrassment to the Porte. He
suggested, "the establishment of a colony in some well situated part of
Palestine. . . . The colony to be under Turkish Government and protection, and
England to guarantee the maintenance of the conditions under which the colony
shall be formed".
Although obviously opposed to the missionary trends of the Restoration Movement,
Benisch's scheme tried to harmonise Jewish with English and Christian interests,
and to induce the British Government to take the initiative. But Benisch's
endeavours received little support from British Jewry.
The opposite extreme to the attitude of leading British Jews towards the
question of Restoration was once again provided by the indefatigable Mordecai
Manuel Noah on the other side of the Atlantic. No longer concerned with a
provisional refuge for the Jews on American soil, his Discourse on the
Restoration of the Jews, published in 1845, was the first attempt since
Menasseh ben Israel's Hope of Israel to bring the Restoration Doctrine
into accord with Jewish concepts. Noah declared the United States to be destined
to "present to the Lord his chosen and downtrodden people, and pave the way for
the restoration to Zion".
Shunning all violence of expression, he tried to outline a peaceful solution in
the nature of a compromise.
Combining, like the Christian Restorationists, religious and political
arguments, he concluded a survey of the political history of the Levant in the
preceding quarter-century with the words: " . . . With the consent of the Christian Powers, and with their aid and agency,
the land of Israel passes once more into the possession of the descendants of
Abraham. Christian and Jew will together, on Mount Zion, raise their voices in
praise of Him whose covenant with Abraham was to endure for ever, and in whose
seed all the nations of the earth are to be blessed. .."
The book soon found its way to England, where a new edition appeared under the
title The Jews, Judaea and Christianity.
But Noah's efforts to mobilise the United States were as abortive as his
attempts in 1825 to induce the Jews of Europe to settle in his City of Refuge.
Instead, his Discourse provoked a series of violent attacks
on the author by both English and American Jews. The London Voice of
Jacob branded his conduct as "anti-Judaic"; writing in Occident,
Noah's friend, Dr. Isaac Leeser, America's leading Rabbi, declared that
Noah's attitude to Restoration was incompatible with the principles of Judaism.
Noah attempted to defend himself in an article which Occident published
in 1845. Denying "anti-Judaism", he had no hesitation in advocating "a more
candid union between Jews and Christians". Danger, he said, threatened not from
the Gentiles but from apathy, from indifference, from a want of nationality
-from ourselves". It sounded like an echo of Charles Henry Churchill's appeal to
the English Jews when Noah declared:
Nothing in my opinion will save the
nation from sinking into oblivion but agitating this subject of the Restoration.
We should pass the word around the world -"Restoration of the Jews", "Justice
to Israel", "The Rights and Independence of the Hebrews", "Restore them to
their country", "Redeem them from captivity". Christians and
Musulmans
should be invoked to aid them in the good cause.
More than any other of his utterances this statement has the ring of Mordecai
Manuel Noah's political testament, though his death occurred only six years
later.
IV. THE EPIC AND THE EPILOGUE: "JUDAH'S LION" AND "TANCRED"
The epic of the period during which the Restoration of the Jews became a
nation-wide issue was written by a woman, Charlotte Elizabeth Browne. An
Evangelical and philanthropist like Shaftesbury and, like him, moved by the love
and admiration for "God's ancient people", she wrote under the name of Charlotte
Elizabeth. The book which stamps Charlotte Elizabeth as the mouthpiece of the
Restoration Movement was Judah's Lion, published in 1843.
From the literary point of view the book was a product of the
romantic-sentimental school. But Judah's Lion was lifted above the usual
level of such works by a sincerity which gives it the character of a personal
confession. Charlotte Elizabeth wove into the plot not only her unshakeable
faith in the indestructibility of Israel and in its Restoration, but also her
theory of a "Church of Circumcision" which would reconcile Christianity with
Judaism. The action is laid in 1840. The hero, a young English Jew, Nathan
Alexander Cohen -nicknamed Alick in order to "Gentilise" him -who
"deemed it his chief glory to be an Englishman", undergoes a deep spiritual
transformation on a voyage to the Near East. Under the influence of Gentile
fellow-passengers all of them strong believers in the Restoration of the Jews
Cohen becomes conscious of his Jewishness and of his mission to blend Judaism
and Christianity so as to clear the way for the Restoration of the Jewish people
with the help of England. Da Costa, a young Sephardi, symbolises the early
Zionists. He has settled in Palestine, speaks a "choice Hebrew", and his strong
attachment to Judaism renders him more impervious to missionary persuasion than
his friend Alick. Cohen is eventually converted and even Da Costa, on the verge
of death, is almost brought to believe in the Messiahship of Jesus. The story
ends with these words of Cohen:
May it be England's privilege to
labour
in our cause, that she may rejoice in our joy, when our tribes shall assemble
and our cities be built, and the land of Israel rest in unbroken peace, under
the shadow of Judah's Almighty Lion.. .
The historical significance of the novel is by no means diminished by its odd
theories and proselytising tendency. In shedding light on certain features of
the Movement which other sources do not record, Charlotte Elizabeth performed an
important service. We are made to realise that it had become customary for
Gentiles to debate with Jews problems of Jewish Restoration and events in
Palestine; that the fate of the Jewish people was of common interest; that
Byron's and Moore's Hebrew melodies moved all hearts; and that the belief in
England's mission to become the instrument of the Restoration was shared by many
at all levels of society.
While Charlotte Elizabeth dreamt of her christianised Jewish national hero who
would forge an everlasting bond between England's Israel, a great living
neo-Christian, Benjamin Disraeli, also looked for the integration of Jewish and
Christian tenets. With his conception of race as the very source of human values
and with an almost fanatical conviction of the Jews' superiority, he combined a
desire that they may cease to "persist in believing in only one part of their
religion" and a passionate expectation of a Jewish revival. The literary
expression of all these tendencies is to be found in Disraeli's novel Tancred
or The New Crusade (1847).
Fourteen years earlier (1833) he had published
The Wondrous Tale of Alroy, the story of the adventurous "Prince of
Captivity", David Alroy, who attempted to re-establish the Jewish realm by force
of arms in the twelfth century. The book was the fruit of a journey to the
Levant in 1831. The week he spent, in Jerusalem left the deepest impression on
his soul. There, in the words of his biographers, Monypenny and Buckle, "the
thought may have passed through his mind that the true aim of his political
ambition which was beginning to shape itself within him should be to win back
the Holy Land for the chosen people and restore the sceptre to Judah". Cecil
Roth, Disraeli's most recent biographer, points to even a much earlier possible
source of this "ideal ambition" by presuming that "the matter had perhaps been
discussed at home with his father, who had touched upon it sceptically in 1787
in his Vaurien". If such reminiscences had a share in the origin of
Benjamin Disraeli's ideals, the most vehement protest against his father's
deprecation of the Messianic hope may be found in the glowing words with which
the High Priest Jabaster in Alroy discloses the author's own longing:
You ask me what I wish: my answer is, a
national existence, which we have not. You ask me what I wish: my answer is, the
Land of Promise. You ask me what I wish: my answer is the Temple, all we have
forfeited, all we have yearned after, all for which we have fought, our
beauteous country, our holy creed, our simple manners, and our ancient customs.
Alroy forms, as it were, the prologue to the Fastern Question, while
Tancred may well be said to be the epilogue to the political drama that
unfolded itself in those fateful years.
If Alroy was a story of the past, Tancred reflected political,
religious and spiritual ferment of the present. Well-known motifs were
transformed and presented with it, irony and a generous dash of scepticism. This
was no story with a moral like the Evangelical Charlotte Elizabeth's novel. With
Tancred the renaissance of the Jewish people and of Palestine made its
entry into modem fiction.
Tancred in some respects strangely resembles Judah's Lion. It,
too, is a story of a journey to Palestine, and its central character forms an
interesting counterpart to the Jewish hero of Charlotte Elizabeth's novel.
Alexander Cohen dreamt of a renewal of Judaism through acceptance of the belief
in Christ; the young Lord Montecute, son of the Duke of Bellamont, who from his
crusading ancestor Tancred inherited a longing for the Holy Land, has visions of
a blending of East and West. That Tancred's restoration plans are only hinted at
is in conformity with the subtle technique of the novel, but in conversations
between the characters, Disraeli sets forth his views of the chances offered to
a Restoration of the Jews during the Eastern Question period.
Tancred openly confesses his belief in Restoration. He asks why there is no
Jewish government in Palestine, and his interlocutor says: "That might have been
in '39 -but why speak of a subject which can little interest you?" This
provokes Tancred to the exclamation
"Can little interest me!... What other
subject should interest me? More than six centuries ago the government of that
land interested my ancestor, and he came here to achieve it."
In this answer the true meaning of the "New Crusade" is clearly revealed. But
the plot itself stops short of the deed which is replaced by a symbol: Lord
Montecute seals his alliance with Israel by loving Eva Besso, a Jewess proud of
her race. The new crusader's belief in theocracy, his determination to stay in
the Holy Land, Eva's ardent allegiance to the Hebrew race all these point
unmistakably towards the Messianic hope of the Jews.
The effect of the book on the contemporary public can scarcely be overstated.
The popularity of Tancred induced even those who had formerly ignored the
problem of Restoration to take sides one way or the other. An article in the
Edinburgh Review (July 1847) is of particular interest. The reviewer drew a
surprising parallel between Disraeli and Sir Henry Finch:
James I said, on the publication of Sir
Henry Finch's Calling of the
Jews, that he was "so old
that he could not tell how to do his homage at Jerusalem"; and now the
intellectual world is indeed too old to do so at Mr.
d'Israeli's
bidding but we can do what James never thought of doing -we can obliterate the
political distinction between Jew and Gentile and raise the one without
humiliating the other.
It would have been difficult to state the novel's kinship with the
centuries-old Restoration Movement more succinctly. Like many another statement
elicited by Tancred, this review ushered in a discussion, which never
ceased thence, about Jewish revival, Restoration and emancipation, and about
their interplay. Doubts about the compatibility of Jewish national revival and
Restoration with emancipation, were dispelled by events. The Restoration
Movement kept pace with emancipation but was not halted by its completion.
Part Two
