[34] Mount Moriah (of appearance), afterwards the site of Solomon’s Temple. Certain modern writers, especially Mr. Mills (Nablous and the Samaritans), would identify Mount Gerizím of Shechem with Moriah; but the most superficial consideration of the distance to be marched and the time required proves the theory to be absurd.
[35] This institution has even distinguished the Jew from the other civilized nations of antiquity, the Egyptians and Assyrians, the Hindus and Guebres, the Greeks and Romans, who ignored it. By this part of his cosmogony Moses evidently intended to inculcate the dignity of labour and the hygienic necessity of rest. But the Rabbis and Doctors exaggerate all things, and they have still, like the vulgar Hebrew, to learn that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The Targum of Onkelos (Dr. Etheridge’s Translation. London: Longmans, 1862) makes the Creator rest and be refreshed in all points like a wearied human being. Dr. McCaul and a host of writers have enlarged upon the vexatious, barbarous, and inhuman Sabbatical ordinances engrafted by the Talmudists upon the Mosaic Law.
[36] Usually the Sabbatical journey is reckoned at one Mil (mile); but it varies according to circumstances, the permitted extremes varying between seven furlongs and two miles. Probably the ancient Jews had a longer and a shorter measure, in the latter the pace being half of what it was in the former; the longer mile, equal to 2,000 paces, = 5,000 feet = 1,666 yards, or 98[78] yards shorter than the English statute measure, whilst the Roman was 142 yards less than ours.
[37] The Sabbath services throughout the world are four—namely, (1) Prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings in the synagogue on Friday after sunset; (2) Saturday morning prayers, rather later than usual that men may take a longer rest; (3) Ha-phatorah, the conclusion after the morning prayer, reading sections of the Law and the Prophets; and (4) Ha-musaph, or the additional prayers, consisting of portions of the Pentateuch referring to the sacrifices of the Mosaic Dispensation which are now no longer lawful. The style of cantillation is complicated as the reading of the Koran, and would be called a “neuma”[79] in the mediæval music of the Christian Church. And the chant annotation, which is shown in every Old Testament, offers a host of difficulties. As a rule the services are the reverse of impressive. They are in a dead language “not understanded of the people”; they are hurried over with unseemly haste; and, as in most ceremonial faiths, the profuse outward observances contrast strangely with the apparent absence of religious feeling.
[38] “A Gentile who employs himself in the Law is guilty of death. He is not to employ himself except in the seven commandments that belong to the Gentiles. And thus a Gentile who keeps a Sabbath—though it be on one of the weekdays—if he make it to himself as a Sabbath, he is guilty of death.” And the measure of difference between Gentile and Jew is that, whilst the former has seven commandments, the latter has six hundred and thirteen.
[39] Thus the Rabbinical saying is: “Every one is bound to divide the time of his study into three—one-third to be devoted to the Written Law, one-third to Mishnah, and one-third to Gemara.” Thus he gives one-half to the Old Testament, whilst double study is assigned to the Oral Law. The latter, which has some tangible points of resemblance with the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church and the Sunnat of the Muhammadans, is the unwritten code received by Moses on Mount Sinai and transmitted inviolate by word of mouth from generation to generation. Until after the last destruction of Jerusalem it was never committed to writing (see A Manual of Judaism, by Joshua Van Oven, Esq., M.R.C.S.L. London, 1835). It is held uninspired by all save the Jews, and one of its bitterest enemies was the Founder of Christianity, who, when attacking tradition, never failed to uphold the Law. One might smile at so prodigious an assumption as this legendary system in the total absence of historic proof. But only a few years ago a French Grand Rabbi published a learned work to prove that the facts can be accounted for only supernaturally. Also Dr. Adler, Orthodox Chief Rabbi of England, declared, in a sermon preached but a few years ago, the Written and the Oral Laws to be equally divine, and compared the reformers with the false mother in the judgment of Solomon. These things make us regret the total disappearance of the Sadducee or Rationalistic School.
[40] [The fourth, omitted by Burton, is, “Tu non ruberai” according to the Hakhám.]
[41] Arubím, or mixtures, were forbidden by the Mosaic Law (Lev. xix. 19), and were greatly extended by the Oral Law, such as grafting, sowing different kinds of seeds in the same soil, wearing a garment of wool and linen mixed, and so forth. The subject is copiously treated in the nine chapters of Kilaim (Heterogeneous, or Things not to be Mixed), the fourth tract of the first order, Seder Zeraaim (the Order of Seeds).
[42] The subject of proselytizing amongst the ancient Jews is full of difficulties, and the object seems mostly to have been the discouragement of converts, with a fair scheme on paper. The Proselytes of the Gate, generally called Gerim, or strangers (“the stranger that is within thy gates”) and properly Noachidæ (sons of Noah), were only half Israelites. The Proselytes of the Covenant or of Righteousness were perfect Israelites. They are still admitted under protest—men by circumcision and immersion in water, and women by the latter rite only. It is a question how far baptism was used in ante-Christian times, and possibly John the Baptist merely adopted the old rite for a new purpose.
[43] This again is Scriptural. “The doctrine of Moses is not that obedience to one command will compensate for disobedience to another, but that disobedience to one command will make obedience to others of none effect.”
[44] [Sic Burton. The Hebrew scribe is supposed to be speaking.]
[45] Here the scribe does not explain himself. What he refers to is the supposed system of reducing the blood to ashes.
[46] “Heretics and informers and Epicureans, who have denied the Law or the resurrection of the dead, ... all such go down to hell, and are judged for ever” (Rosh ha-Shanah, or Head of the Year, eighth tract of the second order).
[47] There are three forms of excommunication—(1) the Nachri, or simple expulsion from the synagogue; (2) expulsion accompanied with Anathema; and (3) the same with Maranatha. The latter is composed of two Syriac words meaning “the Lord will come,” i.e. in judgment.
[48] Hence, it may be added, the exceeding care of the Jews to propitiate all those having authority.
[49] A tenet which in the hands of the Arab has become a very poetical vision. The Muhammadan’s good deeds in this life, his works in fact, will meet him under the form of a beautiful woman, and will lead him over the terrible bridge El Sirat to the Gates of Paradise.
[50] Dr. McCaul (Old Paths, No. 5) remarks upon these and other precautions which are numerous in the Hilchoth Rotsíh: “What an affecting picture does this present of the Jews under heathen domination!” We should rather ask: “What conduct on the part of the Jews must have led to this habitual treatment by those whom they branded with the name of idolaters?”
[51] “It is unlawful to bake or to cook on a holy day, in order to feed Gentiles or dogs; for it is said (Exod. xii. 16), ‘That only may be done for you.’ ‘For you,’ and not for Gentiles; ‘for you,’ and not for dogs” (Hilchoth Yom Tov., c. i. 10). Some Rabbis go so far as to make the Am ha-erits (son of earth, i.e. people of the land like the Seven Tribes), or unlearned Jew, an abomination, a beast, whose nostrils may be split, but who is too worthless to be slain (see Dr. McCaul, The Old Paths, pp. 6, 7).
[52] Nothing is more striking to the Hebraist, or to one who has lived long among the Hebrews, than to hear unlearned Christians perpetually using the word (Sabbath) which can mean only Saturday to signify Sunday.
[53] The Targum of Palestine says (chap. xxv.): “He had worshipped with strange worship, he had shed innocent blood, he had gone into a betrothed damsel, he had denied the life of the world to come (nowhere taught in the Law), and he had despised his birthright.”
[54] The system of the Beth-din (house of judgment) is kept up even in the British Islands. The Chief Rabbi is called Rab or Ab Beth-din, and he nominates his two Dayaním, or associates. Its jurisdiction is civil, social, and religious; but its powers extend only to levying fines and to excommunicating recusants. In Damascus the jurisdiction is much more extended. The building is in the street of the Scribe called by courtesy Rabbi Yakúb Perez, and half the intrigues in the city are here hatched. The well-known Khagal of the Russian Jews is a similar institution, not recognized by the Government, but exerting immense and injurious power over the people.
[55] Our modern versions which use the word “ox” in such places lead to error. The Hebrews did not castrate their cattle, and similarly their mules and their eunuchs were imported from Egypt and elsewhere. Nothing of this is hinted at about the bull in the most popular modern books; so, for instance, the article “Ox” in Smith’s Concise Dictionary of the Bible. And here it may be noted that if a bull killed a slave the owner of the former paid a fine of thirty shekels to the owner (Josephus, Ant. Jud., IV. viii. 36); hence possibly the sum offered to and accepted by Judas as the value of a bought servant.
[56] For the other great centres of learning, see Jerusalem and Tiberias; Sora and Cordova: A Survey of the Religious and Scholastic Learning of the Jews. Designed as an Introduction to the Study of Hebrew Literature. By J. W. Longmans, M.A. (London: Longmans). It is curious to see how neglected has been the Safed School, which is most erroneously included in that of Tiberias.
[57] Most of these remarks are taken from the Introduction to the Traité des Berakhoth (Benedictions) du Talmud de Jérusalem et du Talmud de Babylone, traduit pour la première fois en Français par Moïse Schwab, attaché à la Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, mdccclxxi.).
[58] The word clearly shows the immense effect of the Hellenic Conquest. There were two forms of Sanhedrin—the Greater, numbering seventy-one souls; and the Lesser, consisting of twenty-three. Both were composed of the three orders Priests, Levites, and common Israelites. The Greater Council claimed, and would again claim, supreme jurisdiction over the king, the high priest, the prophets, and the people, and “strangulation was the mode of execution for any learned man who rebelled against their words” (Hilchoth Mamrun, i. 2). Anti-Talmudic writers strongly object to this upstart aristocracy, when Moses (Deut. xvii.) ordained a supreme council consisting of the “Priests the Levites” (not the Priests and the Levites), together with the judge, or chief civil governor; the ecclesiastical element remaining in the family of Aaron, whilst the magistracy fell to the lot of Joshua. But when they assert, “It is quite absurd, and if the subject were not so grave it would be ludicrous, to hear the Rabbinists exclaiming that the Law of Moses is unchangeable, when they themselves have changed all its main provisions and made an entirely new religion,” the Jew may fairly retort that the Pauline modifications extending to radical changes had the same effect upon Christianity.
[59] According to the system of Sir William Jones, this name would be written Saffúriyeh, but not, as travellers generally do, Saffúreh or Saffuriyyeh.
[60] The sun has often stood still in history; but how often did the historian understand what the sun standing still really means? As Spinoza remarked, “Not even in their dreams had they ever thought of parhelia”; and one of his editors quotes the French drummer-boy in Switzerland, “Nous sommes ici au bout du monde! Ici on touche le soleil de la main!” In the twelfth century Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela found the grave of Rabenu Hakkadosh (R. Yahúda) near “Suffurieh, the Tsippori of antiquity,” and evidently never heard the legend, “They are buried in the mountain, which also contains numerous other sepulchres.” In his day Tiberias contained only fifty Jews.
[61] See Cérnach David, Editio princeps (Prague, 1592), fol. 43.
[62] Similarly the Mormons “pointedly condemn those who make the contents of the Bible typical, metaphysical, or symbolical, ‘as if God were not honest when He speaks with man, or uses words in any other than their true acceptation,’ or could ‘palter in a double sense.’” This return to Hebrew lines of thought is not a little curious, and it may be remarked that every fresh branch put forth by the tree of “Protestantism,” as it is called, invariably reverts more and more to the old type. Indeed, whenever in these days we hear of a new “religion” having been born into the world, we may determine, à priori, that it is more Jewish than its predecessors. And traces of the same operation may be found amongst the Hindu Sikhs and the Muslim Babees.
[63] Hagadah, from Hagah, to declare or describe, to invent or imagine, is applied to any illustration, historical or fabulous. Halakah, from Halak, to walk, is a rule of conduct, anything prescriptive of the peculiarities of Jewish life.
[64] See the Mishnah, fifth part, tract Edonyoth, i., §§ 5 et seq. This is a fair answer to the host of contradictions and the general charge of inconsistency levelled by anti-Talmud writers against the Oral Law, and it enables the modern Rabbi to make almost any assertion that he pleases concerning disputed points. Thus one will find in the Talmud that Christians should be put to death, the other that they should be treated like brothers. This is certainly very convenient.
[65] It is still a disputed point whether the two Targums (versions or translations of the Pentateuch) on the Pentateuch, attributed to the proselyte Onkelos, or Ankelos, and to the Jew Jonathan bin Uzzul, were written by contemporary students in the Rabbinical Schools of Jerusalem within the half-century before Christ, or were worked out like the Septuagint by the Babylonian Maturgemanin (interpreters) of the fourth century. The later the date the better in order to account for such Græcisms and Latinisms as Ardiphene (Rhodaphne, oleander), Polimarkin ([Greek: Πολεμαρχος: Polemarchos]), Sapuklatoría (Speculators), and Oktaraia (Octariones, præfecti militares). In the Targum of Jerusalem we read “a band of Saracens.”
[66] Vie de Hillel, par M. le Grand Rabbin Trínel (1867).
[67] [The Novellæ or Novel Constitutions were so called because they were posterior in time to the Institutes and other digests of the Roman Emperors, especially Justinian.]
[68] Rabbi Gamaliel the Elder flourished about the end of the first century. Some suppose that he added a nineteenth prayer to the Shamunah Ashara, the “eighteen” composed by Ezra and the men of the Great Congregation, and which is still used by the British and other Jews. Others attribute it to Rabbi Samuel the Lesser, a disciple of Gamaliel, whilst others make it of even more modern date.
[69] The derided myth has been amply vindicated by the Rev. John Mills (The British Jews, p. 409) and by N. M. Schwab (Introduction, p. xxviii). The latter writer would be valuable, if he could only be impartial. Unfortunately he writes with all the animus of a Hebrew (pp. xxxviii and xxxix), and not a few of the prejudices of a Frenchman (p. xxvii). This is the more regrettable, as the reading public will be wholly in his hands and he can make the Talmud say what he pleases.
[70] [It is the [Greek: ζυθος: zythos] or Egyptian beer mentioned by Herodotus, ii. 77. Later the term was extended to the cerevisia and other beers of European nations; hence the obsolete word zythepsary ([Greek: ζυθος: zythos], and [Greek: εψω: epsô], to boil), a brewery.]
[71] Here, however, we can hardly find the Talmud alone guilty. Its anthropopathisms are merely exaggerations of what is found in the books of Moses when the Creator is subject to wrath, sorrow, repentance, jealousy, and other human passions of the baser kind. In fact, it would be difficult to detect in the Rabbinical ordinances anything which is not built upon the Mosaic text; they have greatly added to the Law, which, methinks, is their great sin in the eyes of Christians, and they have in many cases carried it out to absurdity—corruptio optimi fit passima.
[72] This Pope in a.d. 1286 wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury directing him to have a care lest any one read a book from which all evils flow. Pope Pius IV., when authorizing a new edition, expressly stipulated that it should be published without the title of Talmud, which appears to have been a kind of Shibboleth, “Si tamen prodierit sine nomine Talmud, tolerari deberet.” Such was the terror which it inspired in the ecclesiastical mind.
[73] An ad captandum vulgus verdict. It is thus modified by the next sentence: “All the latter Gavním [luminaries of the Jewish Law] agree that Christians are reckoned as our own brethren, and are not included in the term Nakhrím [strangers].”
[74] Dr. Robinson, Biblical Researches in Palestine, iii. 331.
[75] After the second expulsion of the Templars, Sultan Bibars repeopled Safed with a colony from Damascus, and local tradition asserts that of these many were Kurds.
[76] [The Empress of Constantinople.]
[77] The treatment of the Jewish sick, even in these degenerate days, is very scrupulous. When the patient is evidently moribund, not a drop of medicine or even a drink of water must be given to him unless he ask for it himself, lest such act hasten dissolution, and make the giver guilty of having caused the death of a brother Hebrew.
[78] [Sic Burton, but should be 94.]
[79] [The neumes, properly pneumes (Gr. [Greek: πνευμα: pneuma]), i.e. the musical notations prevalent from the eighth to the twelfth century, are supposed by some to represent the ancient Nota Romana, though others hold them to be of Oriental origin.]
Obviously such cruel and vindictive teaching as that recounted in the previous chapter must bear fruit in crime and atrocities. The occurrence of such deeds explains much of what appears to have been the mere results of superstition and greed of gain amongst semi-barbarous peoples. From the earliest ages to these modern days, and not in one place, but all the world over, the hatred of the Jew against the non-Jew has been of the fiercest. Those who are so ready to admit and deplore the mighty provocations which roused a spirit of retaliation in the Rabbinical mind should equally make allowance for the natural feelings of the unfortunate Gentiles and heathens when the “People of the Synagogue” had their wicked will. In the fifth century the Hebrew colony, which, flying from Syria and Palestine after the wars of Titus and Hadrian, settled near Yathrib (Medina), was powerful enough to murder the Viceroy of the Tobbaa, or Himyarite King, and to convert to Judaism, Du-nawás (a.d. 480), one of the last of that dynasty. He acquired the title “Lord of the Fiery Pit,” by burning alive, in a trench filled with combustibles, thousands of the Christians of Nejerán at the instigation of the Jews. In later times the “People of the Synagogue” brought upon themselves a war of extermination by insulting an Arab woman, and after the siege of Kheibar they attempted to poison Muhammad. In a.d. 614 the Hebrews of Galilee, according to Eutychius, joining the Persian army under Chosroes II., caused a great slaughter of the Nazarenes. When the Holy City was captured, they bought at a cheap rate those taken by the Persians, especially from the Greek monastery of Mar Saba, for the sole purpose of butchering them. Even in Abyssinia, when the Falashas, or black proselytes, established a powerful kingdom, this quasi-Jewish race, under their King Gideon and their Queen Judith, was a scourge to all the nations around. These are but a few instances of the many which would fill a volume. It is absurd to suppose with the “liberal” writers of the nineteenth century that whole colonies have been expelled, driven away half naked, from England and France, from Germany, Spain, Portugal, and other Christian kingdoms; that communities were imprisoned in Ghettos, and subjected to tumultuous and wholesale massacres; and that thousands of individual Jews and Jewesses, old men and children, were roasted with dogs over slow fires, were skinned alive, tortured, dismembered, and slain like savage beasts for the mere frenzy and the ignorance of superstition, for simply diabolical barbarity, and for clipping coin or for claiming more than two shillings per week as interest on a loan of twenty shillings.
We must seek for a solid cause underlying these horrible acts of vengeance; we find ample motive in the fact that the Jew’s hand was ever, like Ishmael’s, against every man but those belonging to the Synagogue. His fierce passions and fiendish cunning, combined with abnormal powers of intellect, with intense vitality, and with a persistency of purpose which the world has rarely seen, and whetted moreover by a keen thirst for blood engendered by defeat and subjection, combined to make him the deadly enemy of all mankind, whilst his unsocial and iniquitous Oral Law contributed to inflame his wild lust of pelf, and to justify the crimes suggested by spite and superstition. Because under the present enlightened Governments of the West the Jews have lost much of their ancient rancour, and no longer perpetrate the atrocities of the Dark Ages, Europe is determined to believe that the race is, and ever has been, incapable of such atrocities. The conclusion is by no means logical. We have seen them even now repeated in the Holy Land, and presently we shall see that they are still not unknown to Western Europe, Asia Minor, and Persia.
And what can we expect from a system which teaches men to believe and to act as follows?[80] “A tradition of the Talmud says (Talmud, Book Baba Kama, Chapter Haggozel) if an Israelite and a Gentile come before thee to judgment, if thou canst absolve the Israelite according to the Jewish Law, absolve him, and say, ‘This is our way of judging.’ But if thou canst absolve him by Gentile Law, absolve him, and say, ‘This is your way of judging.’ But if not, then they are to come upon him with cunning frauds. R. Samuel says the error of a Gentile is also lawful. For, behold, Samuel bought a piece of gold for four small coins, and added one more (that he might go away the sooner, and not perceive the fraud). Chahana bought a hundred and twenty casks of wine for the price of a hundred; he said, ‘My trust is in thee.’ So far the Talmud. From these and similar passages Jews infer that they may and ought to deceive Christians and others who are not Jews. Thus also from other passages they infer that they may and ought to kill Christians, of which the following example is found in the book Mechilta: Exod. xiv. 7, And he took six hundred chosen chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt. From whom did he take them? If you say from the Egyptians, is it not said already, Exod. ix. 6, And all the cattle of Egypt died? If you say Pharaoh, then there is a difficulty; for it is said already, ix. 3, Behold, the hand of the Lord shall be upon thy cattle. But if you say they were from the Israelites, it is said already, x. 26, Our cattle shall go with us. From whom then were they? It is plain that they must have been from those who feared the word of the Lord. Hence we learn that those of the servants of Pharaoh who feared the word of the Lord were a stumbling-block to Israel, and hence R. Simeon ben Jochai says, ‘Slay thou the best amongst the Gentiles, and of the best of serpents bruise the head.’[81] Thus far the Talmud; and by this they mean to say, that as of serpents he especially is to be killed that is the greatest and best of its kind, so Christians are to be dealt with in the same way. For killing Christians and throwing their children into pits, and even for killing them when they can do it secretly, they derive an argument from that which is said in the book Abodah Zarah, Chapter En Maamidin: ‘As to Gentiles and robbers, and those that tend small cattle, they are neither to be helped out of a well nor to be thrown into it. But heretics and informers and apostates are to be thrown in, but not to be helped out.’ The commentary of Rashi says: ‘Heretics mean the priests of idols; informers mean calumniators who betray the wealth of their brethren into the hands of the Gentiles.’ R. Shesheth says: ‘If there be a step in the pit, let him find an excuse, and say, Lest an evil beast descend upon him.’ Rabba and R. Joseph both say: ‘If there be a stone upon the mouth of the well, he is to cover it, and say, I do it that the beasts may pass over it.’ R. Nachman says: ‘If there be a ladder in the well, he is to take it away, and say, I wish to get down my son from the roof.’ Thus far the Talmud. Thy prudence, O reader, may perceive that the Talmud, which so perniciously teaches them to lie and to kill Christians, is not the law of God, but the figment of the devil.”
We can hardly be surprised, after reading such atrocious doctrines, at what history tells us concerning the Jews, their crimes, and their condemnations. For instance:
In a.d. 419, according to Socrates (Eccles. Hist., Lib. VII., chap, xvi.), some Jews of Inmestar, between Chalcis and Antioch, as a drunken frolic, tied a Christian child[82] upon a cross and mocked it, and that, hurried on in their wickedness, they afterwards scourged it until it died.
In a.d. 560 a Jew was stoned for carrying away and profaning an image of the Saviour. The same happened at Odessa in a.d. 1871, where the Hebrews were charged with stealing the image of the “miraculous Madonna of Kutperova.”
About a.d. 787 the Jews of Beyrut repeated the offence. The result was the conversion of almost all their number, and the consecration of their synagogue by the bishop.
a.d. 1010. Massacre of the Jews in France.
a.d. 1017. Certain Jews beheaded by order of Pope Benedict at Rome.
a.d. 1135. The Jews crucified a boy at Norwich. According to the general report, they hired a Christian lad aged twelve as a leather-sewer, and converted him into a Paschal offering; they placed a bit in his mouth, and after a thousand outrages they crucified him, and pierced his side in order to mock the Redeemer’s death. The corpse was borne in a sack to be burned outside the town gates; but a surprise caused the murderers to fly, leaving the remains hanging upon a tree.
a.d. 1166. The Jews at Ponthosa crucified a lad aged twelve.
a.d. 1185. For similar outrage upon a girl and others, King Philip Augustus confiscated the goods of the Jews, and banished them from his realms in the April of the following year.
a.d. 1189. The Jews were massacred at London and in other parts of England.
a.d. 1190. The Jews were massacred at York.
a.d. 1250. The Jews of Saragossa nailed a child named Dominic to the wall in the form of a cross, and then pierced his side with a spear. During the same century those of Toledo also killed a Christian youth. According to the Cronica Serafica (della Vita di S. Francesco d’Assisi, Opera del Padre Damiano Cornejo, 1721, Lib. I., chap, i.), the Jews superstitiously used the blood of Christians in child-birth, and sent it in a dried state to China and other places, where they had synagogues, but where worshippers of Christ[83] are not to be found. Hence the Jews were eventually expelled from Spain and Portugal.
a.d. 1255. “Jappen,” one of the chief Jews of Lincoln, and others of his faith, kidnapped a lad eleven years old (August 27), beat him with rods, cut off his nose and upper lip, broke some of his teeth, and pierced his side. King Henry III. and his Parliament at Reading condemned the murderers to be dragged to death at horses’ heels, and gibbeted their carcases.
a.d. 1271. The Jews of Pforzheim murdered a girl seven years old.
a.d. 1287. The Jews of Wesel murdered a boy named Werner.
a.d. 1288. The Jews of Pacherat [?] (Würtzburg) murdered a Christian, and extracted his blood “as it were with a winepress, and which they are said to use as a medicine.” About the same time the Jews of Munich murdered a Christian child.
a.d. 1290. A Jew was burnt in Paris for insulting a consecrated wafer. In the same year, during the reign of Edward I., fifteen to sixteen thousand Jews were banished from England; nor were they allowed to return till the days of Cromwell, the first Liberal (a.d. 1660).
a.d. 1299. Many Jews were put to death for insulting a consecrated wafer at Roettingen of Franconia.
a.d. 1303. The Jews of Thüringen murdered a child, and were slain in numbers.
a.d. 1306. King Philip of France was induced by a multitude of accusations, involving magic, sacrilege, and murder, to expel the Jews from his country, to confiscate all their goods except what was wanted for the journey, and to forbid their return under pain of death—all were arrested on the same day, July 22.
a.d. 1330. The Jews of Gustow in Vandalia [Pomerania] insulted a Host.
a.d. 1348-1350. The Jews were accused of poisoning the wells and rivers, and of causing the plague which then devastated Europe. Many were slain and thousands were driven away from Germany, where the cry of “Hep” was first raised. At length the Papal power was compelled to defend their lives by threats of excommunicating their destroyers.
a.d. 1379. The Jews of Belgium insulted a consecrated Host.
a.d. 1399. The same was done by the Jews of Poland.
a.d. 1468. The Jews of Toledo in Spain crucified a Christian boy.
a.d. 1475. The Jews again insulted the Host, and were expelled the territories of the Bishop of Passau.
a.d. 1492-1498. The Jews were expelled from Spain, in consequence of popular clamour, by Isabel the Catholic. Many retired to Portugal, where asylum was granted to them under the conditions, first, that each should pay a certain sum of gold for admission, and, secondly, that if found in Portugal after a certain day, they should either consent to be baptized or be sold for slaves. At the expiration of the appointed time many remained. “The King therefore gave orders to take away all their children under fourteen years of age, to distribute them amongst Christians, to send them to the newly discovered islands, and thus to pluck up Judaism by the roots.” This expulsion, which has been strongly commented upon by modern historians, is still fresh in the memory of the Jews, and an Eastern Rabbi can hardly conceal the hatred with which even in these days he regards a Spanish official.
a.d. 1495. The Jews of Trent, by means of one of their number, a physician, decoyed to his house, whilst the Christians were at church, it being Maunday Thursday, a boy two years and a half old, by name Simeon, the son of a tanner. Before the Paschal festival commenced, the principal Jews collected in a room near their synagogue. The child, gagged with a kerchief, was extended in the form of a cross, and was held down by his murderers. The blood, pouring from heavy gashes, was collected in a basin, and when death drew near the victim was placed upon his legs by the two men, and the others pierced his body with sharp instruments, all vying in brutality and enjoying the torture. The corpse having been found in the Etsch river, which flows through the city, led to the detection of the crime; the murderers were put to death, the synagogue was razed to the ground, and a church was built over the place where the horrid deed was done. A sculpture was put on the Bridge Tower in Frankfort-on-the-Maine, and a picture of a “Christian Infant murdered by the Jews” was placed in one of the galleries in the Hôtel de Ville. Of late years it has been removed, in deference to the feelings of the Hebrew community, which, of late years, has formed a large and important section of the commercial population. This murder has been abundantly commented upon. Dr. John Matthias Tiberinus, in Trent at the time, and Jacobus Philippus Bergamensis, of the Order of the Hermits of St. Augustine, who was then living at the neighbouring town of Bergamo, gave accounts of it; whilst an engraving was produced in the Chronicles of John Louis Gottfried, edited by Matthæus Merianus. On the other hand, Pietro Mocenigo, the Doge of Venice, and his Senate asserted: “Credimus certe rumorem ipsum de puero necato commentum esse et artem; ad quem finem, viderint et interpretentur alii.”
a.d. 1518. The Jews ill-treated consecrated Hosts and murdered Christian children in the Electorate of Brandenburg.
a.d. 1669 (September 25). A child was barbarously slaughtered by one Raphael Levi, and the cause was publicly tried at Metz. The Nuremburg Chronicle produces, in the same year, three other cases of kidnapping—one in England and two at Fiesole. Baronio (Raccolta delle Cause Celebri, p. 288, etc.) supplies many similar instances of child stealing and murder.
M. Tustet, a Lazarist priest, used to relate what he had heard when living at Turin from the lady who nearly fell a victim to Jewish superstition, even in the early part of the present century. A certain Signor Antonio Gervalon, born at Castiglione d’Osta, and settled in business at Turin, happened, when walking with his wife Giulietta Bonnier, to enter the Jewish quarter. This Ghetto used to be closed at night, as in Hamburg and Frankfort. Whilst he was talking business with one of his Hebrew acquaintances, Madame Gervalon left him, and strolled on a short way. Suddenly she was mobbed by a crowd of Jews, who hustled her forwards, and at last forcibly thrust her into a souterrain closed by a trap-door. She was stripped to the waist, and presently visited by two Rabbis, who, after reading their books for about half an hour, retired, saying, Voi dovete morire. The husband, after the conversation ended, followed his wife, whom all the Ghetto folk denied having seen; and thinking that perhaps she had gone home, he returned there to seek her, but in vain. Thence he went to various houses, till a relative said to him in jest, “Have a care! You know how the Jews treat us Christians.” The words struck him. He hurriedly collected a party of policemen, and whilst these searched the Ghetto he went about shouting, “La mia moglie! La mia moglie” (My wife! my wife!). Though half dead with fear, the lady at length screamed a reply, and was saved. The affair was hushed up with money, which made the Jews as powerful at Turin as they are at Aleppo and Damascus; but the tale was long told by the children of Madame Gervalon. In this section of the nineteenth century the subject has passed into the domain of politics, and is no longer submitted to reason and judgment. The Italian Liberal denies and derides the charges, whilst the Conservatives or Retrogrades are almost ashamed to support them.
a.d. 1811. A Christian woman disappeared in the Jewish quarter of Aleppo.[84]
a.d. 1821. The Jews sacrificed a man at Beyrut.
a.d. 1824. The Jews of Beyrut made away with Fatallah Sayegh, an Aleppine Muhammadan.
a.d. 1829. The Jews of Hamah murdered a Muhammadan girl, and were expelled the city.
a.d. 1834. The Jews of Tripoli were accused of murdering an Aleppine Christian.
a.d. 1838. The Jews of Jerusalem attempted to murder a Muhammadan.
a.d. 1839. A flask of blood passed through the Custom-house of Beyrut.
a.d. 1840. The Jews murdered Padre Tomaso and Ibrahím Amárah at Damascus. In the same year they made away with a Greek boy at Rhodes, a Greek boy disappeared from Corfu, and an attempt was made to murder a Muhammadan.
a.d. 1847. The Jews crucified a Christian boy in Mount Lebanon.
a.d. 1853. The Jews of Caiffa murdered the wife of an Algerine Jew.
a.d. 1865. The Jews of Safed put to death a Spanish Jewess.
Do not these things remind us of that “generation of vipers,” certain of the Jews, who banded together and bound themselves by a curse, saying that they would neither eat nor drink till they had killed Paul? And was not the Apostle justified in asserting, “They please not God, and are contrary to all men”?
How vain it is, in presence of all these horrors, to quote the testimony of Grotius, who, speaking of the Jews since the Dispersion, says: “Et tamen tanto tempore Judæi, nec ad falsorum deorum cultus defluxerunt, nec de adulteriis accusantur”; and, “Apud Batavos Judæi suspecti talium facinorum non sunt.” Yet these men excommunicated Spinoza and attempted his life because he wrote the truth that was in him. Granting, however, that the Jews of Holland were like the mild and unoffending Karaïtes of the Crimea and Aden, it does not follow that all the widely parted families of the house of Israel deserve an equally favourable verdict. At any rate, sufficient has been advanced in these pages to open the eyes of the student and the ethnographer; it will stand on record “until Elijah.”