style="font-size:15px;"> In the spiritual history of the Jew, also, France has played an illustrious part. In the middle ages there was no country where there was so large a number of brilliant and erudite scholars, and so energetic an activity, as in the numerous Jewish communities of France. North and South rivaled each other. Some of the most influential Jewish teachers of all times came from these French schools.
Think, for instance, of R. Gershom, called the Light of the Exile, in the eleventh century, who, though he founded a school at Mayence, came from Metz, and continued to draw disciples from many parts of France. He was one of the chief organizers of medieval Jewish life. He was the first to prohibit polygamy among Western Jews.
Then think of Rashi – the greatest of biblical exegetes and commentators.
At Vitry, on the Marne, was produced the most important work on the Jewish liturgy, known as Mahzor Vitry. R. Moses of Coucy compiled the most popular work on religious ordinances, the Sepher Mitzwoth ha-gadol.
Thus, we might go on and name the illustrious talmudists, and commentators, and philosophers of the Jews in France. Though each possessed his own characteristics and merits, we may justly say that the rabbis of France as a class were distinguished for that clarity of thought, directness of expression, and simple piety which we associate with France.
The Provence, too, was the centre of the great translators, who turned the classics of Arabic Jewish learning into Hebrew, and thus made them accessible to those parts of Europe unfamiliar with Arabic. Indeed, to this day, thanks to these achievements, the spiritual life of Israel the world over is, consciously or no, under the influence of France.
When we think of this record, we shall not wonder that the Jews of France are devoted to their country and prominent in its affairs. It was this very prominence of the Jews that led some base people to embrace anti-Semitism, and resulted in the Dreyfus scandal some years ago. But nothing shows the character of France so clearly as her readiness to right a wrong. In the Dreyfus case, too, she made amende honorable, and today Captain Dreyfus, the martyr of Devils Island, Major Dreyfus, as he is now, is actively working for the salvation of his country.
One good result of the War has been the cessation of anti-Semitism in France. This is demonstrated by such a book as M. Maurice Barrès's Les diverses familles spirituelles la France. Formerly, M. Barrès, president of the League of Patriots, as well as one of the most brilliant writers of France, was an anti-Semite. But now that is all over. One of his most sympathetic chapters is on the Jews – on their loyalty and devotion, and he dwells with admiration on the famous incident of Rabbi Bloch of Lyons, who, in the early days of the War, died on the battlefield while offering a crucifix to a dying Catholic soldier, being struck by an enemy's shell. "Here," he says, "fraternity finds its perfect expression. The aged rabbi offering to the dying soldier the immortal sign of Christ on the cross, this is a picture which will not perish." Nor will it perish!
A long history – full of heroism and honor – links the Jew with France. Let us hope that the future may add to this splendor, and that France will ever remain the exemplar of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and that she will continue to play an important part in the spiritual as well as the secular life of Israel!
II
ENGLAND AND THE JEWS
Among the allied countries none is more influential than England. It is perfectly natural, therefore, that the name of England should be on everybody's lips, and that as Jews we should be particularly interested in the relation that has existed between England and the Jews.
For years there has been no country in the world whose Jewish population had enjoyed a position of such great power and prosperity, and such perfect recognition, as Great Britain. Ever since the middle of the nineteenth century has this been the case. The Jews of England have occupied positions of honor in their own country and its colonies, and time and again their influence has made it possible for them to come to the rescue of their fellow-Jews in other parts of the world, as happened, for instance, at the time of the blood accusation in Damascus, in 1840, when Moses Montefiore, with the support of the English government, saved not only the Jewish community of that far-off city, but also the honor of Israel the world over.
For over half a century the Jews have enjoyed such a condition of confidence and happiness in England. Only the other day I ran across in a German-Jewish journal of the year 1866 – Samson Raphael Hirsch's Jeshurun– a glowing account of the induction of a Jew into the office of Lord Mayor of London. It referred to Benjamin Philips, who was the second Jew to attain that honor. The writer was greatly impressed with the marvelous pomp and grandeur of the occasion, but what struck him above all was this: that though the newspapers for days had discussed the event, not one of them singled out the fact that the new Lord Mayor was a Jew. Such perfect naturalization of the Jew obtained already in the year 1865, though it was only five years after the complete removal of Jewish disabilities in England. So much more a surprise might it be to learn by what a slow and laborious process the Jew won his recognition in England, how many centuries the struggle for his emancipation consumed, and that there was a time when the Jews of England suffered humiliation and persecution unsurpassed in any other part of the world.
As we take a bird's eye view of Israel's history in England, we see at once that it falls into three distinct periods.
There is the first period, lasting from the arrival of the first Jewish settlers who followed William the Conqueror from the Continent, to the expulsion. Who would believe today that there was a time when England expelled all her Jews? Yet, this is what happened in the year 1290. Moreover, when it did happen it came as a release and a blessing, seeing that for more than a century before the expulsion the life of the Jew in England was one drawn-out story of persecution and every form of misery. It was a century during which the Jews of England suffered the worst consequences of feudalism, when they formed the prey and the sport of kings and priests alike, and when they added to history some of the most tragic chapters of martyrdom for the sake of faith. It was a century which began, after a period of comparative security and happiness, with the attack upon the Jews of London and the provinces, at the time of the Coronation of Richard I, because the archbishop took umbrage at the temerity of some Jewish delegates to the ceremony who ventured within the purlieus of the cathedral or the palace; and with the self-immolation, in the year 1190, of the whole community of York in the tower of that city – one of the most heroic incidents in all history. The expulsion thus closed mercifully the first period of Jewish history in England.
Then follows the period of the re-admission, in the middle of the seventeenth century, under the leadership of Cromwell and Menasseh ben Israel, though one is not to believe that in the interval there were no Jews in England, for there surely were, as recent research has shown.
Finally, we have the third period, which began with the gradual removal of Jewish disabilities in the nineteenth century. During this period we witness the Jews of England taking full part in the life of their country and reaching that present-day position which opportunity and complete recognition and integration in the national life have put within their power.
If today the Jews of England form so integral a part of their country, and if they are so whole-heartedly and single-mindedly devoted to its welfare, it is not merely because they feel that they have wrought and fought enough for their patrimony, but also because they are conscious of their long association with England and her civilization, and of the fact that their beginnings on English soil go back to earliest times, to the very time that the Normans came to their shores and William the Conqueror invited the Jew to follow him to his new domain.
Yet it would be an error to suppose that the emancipation and the attainments of the Jews in England were due to mere accident. Rather have they been due to certain characteristics of the English people, and to those tendencies and qualities of English civilization which have made it so distinguished
