In surveying the history of the Jewish people we find a strange blending of nationalism and cosmopolitism illustrated in their actions and beliefs. They proudly styled themselves the elect people of God, they looked down with a certain contempt upon the Gentile nations, yet they conceived themselves chosen, not on their own account, but for the world's sake, in order to spread the knowledge of the true God among men. They repudiated heathenism, and regarded Trinitarianism as an aberration. In contradistinction to these their mission was to protect the purity of the monotheistic religion until in the millennial age all nations would gather about their "holy Mount." They considered their own continued existence as a people foreordained in the Divine scheme,* because they believed themselves divinely commissioned to bring about the eternal happiness of the human race. The centripetal and centrifugal forces of character were thus evenly balanced, and this circumstance contributed not a little to enliven their courage in the face of long-continued adversity. When the independence of Greece was lost, the Greeks ceased to exist as a nation. But the loss of the Temple and the fatherland gave barely more than a passing shock to the national consciousness of the Jews. Easily they acclimatized themselves in every quarter of the globe. The fact of their dispersion was cited by Christianity as a sign of their rejection by God. They themselves regarded it as a part of their mission to be scattered as seed over the whole earth. That they should suffer was necessary, they being the Messianic people! Their prayers were filled with lamentations and the recital of their cruel woes. But they invariably ended with words of promise and confidence in the ultimate fulfillment of Israel's hope. Thus in the very depths of their degradation they were supported by a sense of the grandeur of their destinies, and by the proud consciousness that their sufferings were the price paid for the world's spiritual redemption.

In the earlier half of the Middle Ages the Jews were still permitted to enjoy a certain measure of liberty. In Spain, France and Germany they lived on amicable terms with their neighbors, they engaged in trade and manufacture, and were allowed to possess landed property. In the tenth and eleventh centuries a great part of the city of Paris was owned by Jews. But at the time of the Crusades a terrible change in the aspect of their affairs took place. The principles embodied in the canonical law had by this time entered into the practice of the European nations. Fanaticism was rampant. The banks of the Rhine and the Moselle became the theatre of the most pitiless persecution. Among the Crusaders the cry was raised, "We go to Palestine to slay the unbelievers; why not begin with the infidel Jews in our own midst?" Worms, Spires, Mayence, Strassburg, Basle, Regens-burg, Breslau, witnessed the slaughter of their Jewish inhabitants. Toward the close of the thirteenth century one hundred thousand Jews perished at the hands of Rindfleisch, and the murderous hordes of whom he was the leader. To add fuel to the passions of the populace the most absurd accusations were brought forward against them, and their religion was made odious by connecting it with charges of grave moral obliquity. Jewish physicians being in great request, especially at the court of kings, it was given out that with fiendish malice they were wont to procure the death of their Christian patients.* They were accused of killing Christian children, and using the blood of Christians in celebrating the Passover festival, and this monstrous falsehood was repeated until no one doubted its substantial truth. Let it be remembered that this charge was originally preferred, in a somewhat different shape, against the Christians themselves. It floated down, as such rumors will, from age to age, until, its authorship being forgotten, it was finally used as a convenient handle against the hated Jews. In this manner the Easter-tide which was to announce the triumph of a religion of love became to the Jews a season of terror and mortal agony, and the Easter dawn was often reddened with the flames that rose from Jewish homes.

It is impossible to calculate the number of lives that have been lost in consequence of this single accusation. It has lived on even into the present century.* In the fourteenth century the Black Death devastated the Continent of Europe. Soon the opinion gained ground that the Jews were responsible for the ravages of the plague. It was claimed that the Rabbi of Toledo had sent out a venomous mixture concocted of consecrated wafers and the blood of Christian hearts to the various congregations, with orders to poison the wells. The Pope himself undertook to plead for their innocency, but even papal bulls were powerless to stay the popular madness. In Dekkendorf a church was built in honor of the massacre of the Jews of that town, and the spot thus consecrated has remained a favorite resort of pilgrims down to modern times. The preaching friars of the Franciscan and Dominican orders were particularly active in fanning the embers of bigotry whenever they threatened to die down. In England, France and Spain the horrors enacted in Germany were repeated on a scale of similar magnitude. The tragic fate of the Jews of York, the fury of the Pastoureaux, the miserable scenes that accompanied the exodus of the Jews from Spain are familiar facts of history. In Poland, in the seventeenth century, the uprising of the Cossacks under the chieftainship of Chmielnicki became once more the signal of destruction. It is estimated that in ten years (1648-1658) upwards of two hundred and fifty thousand Jews perished.** Even when the lives of the Jews were spared, their condition was so extremely wretched that death might often have seemed the preferable alternative.

The theory propounded by the Church and acted out by the temporal rulers of the Middle Ages is expressed in the words of Innocent III., "Quos propria culpa submisit perpetuae servituti, quum Dominum crucifixerint—pietas Christiana receptet et sus-tineat cohabitationem illorum."*

By the crucifixion of Jesus the Jews had forfeited for themselves and their posterity the right to exist in Christian states. They lived on sufferance merely. In the feudal system there was no room for them. They were aliens, were regarded as the property of the Emperor, and he was free to deal with them as suited his convenience. Hence the name servi camera—servants of the imperial chamber—was applied to them. They could be sold, purchased, given away at pleasure. Charles IV. presented "the persons and property of his Jews" to the city of Worms. In a schedule of toll-dues dating from the year 1398 we read: "a horse pays two shillings, a Jew six shillings, an ox two heller."** They were compelled to wear a badge of shame upon their garments;*** were confined to narrow and filthy quarters,—-ghetto, juderia,—debarred from all honorable employments. The schools and universities were closed against them. The guilds shut them out from the various trades. To gain the means of subsistence nothing remained for them but to engage in the petty traffic of the peddler or the disreputable business of the money-lender. They had absolutely no choice in the matter. The laws of Moses certainly discountenance the lending of money at interest. The authorities of the Talmud severely condemn the practice of usury, and refuse to admit the testimony of usurers in courts of law.****

But all scruples on the part of the Jews had now to be set aside. Gold they must have, and in abundance. It was the only means of buying their peace. The taxes levied by the imperial chamber were enormous.* The cities, the baronial lords, in whose territory they took refuge, constantly imposed new burdens as the price of toleration. The Jews have often been held up to contempt for their avarice and rapacity. The reproach is unjust. It reminds one of the ancient Philistines, who, having shorn the Hebrew of his strength and blinded him, called him with jeers from his prison-house to exhibit him to the popular gaze and to make sport of his infirmity.

Under these circumstances the conservatism of the Jews in matters of religion can no longer astonish us. Rejected by the world, they lived in a world of their own. They had inherited from their ancestors an extended code of ceremonial observances, dietary laws, and minute and manifold directions for the conduct of life. In these they beheld the bulwark of their religion, the common bond that united the scattered members of their race. The Jew of Persia or Palestine could come among his German brethren, and hear the same prayers expressed in the same language, and recognize the same customs as were current among his co-religionists in the East. The passwords of the faith were everywhere understood. To preserve complete unanimity with respect to religious usage was a measure dictated by the commanding instinct of self-preservation. The Jews of all countries were furthermore united by the common yearnings with which they looked back to the past, and their common hope of ultimate restoration to the heritage of the promised land.**

However prolonged their abode in the land of the stranger might be, they never regarded it otherwise than in the light of a temporary sojourn, and Palestine remained their true fatherland, "If I forget thee, Jerusalem, wither my right hand," was sung as plaintively on the banks of the Danube and the Rhine as it had resounded of old by Babel's streams. The Jewish people walked through history as in a dream, their eyes fixed on Zion's vanished glories. Empires fell; wars devastated the earth; new manners, new modes of life, arose around them. What was all this toil and turmoil of the nations to them! They were not admitted to the fellowship of mankind, they preserved their iron stability, they alone remained changeless. So long as the world maintained its hostile attitude toward them, there was little likelihood that they would abandon their time-honored traditions. But toward the close of the last century the first tokens of political, social, and spiritual regeneration began to appear among the despondent people of the Hebrews. The spirit of the Reformation, which had slumbered so long, awoke to new vitality. The voice of love rebuked the selfishness of creeds; Philosophy in the person of Kant emphasized the duties of man to man; Poetry sent its warm breath through the German land, and with its sweet strains instilled broad, humanitarian doctrine into the hearts of men. Lessing celebrated the virtues of his friend, Moses Mendelssohn, in "Nathan the Wise," and in the parable of the rings showed how the true religion is to be sought and found. The Royal Academy at Berlin nominated the same Mendelssohn for membership in its body. Jewish scholars were received with distinction in the Austrian and Prussian capitals. Eminent statesmen and writers began to exert themselves to remove the foul blot that had so long stained the conduct of the Christian states in their dealings with the Jews. In France the great Revolution was rapidly sweeping away the accumulated wrongs of centuries. When the emancipation of the Jews came up for discussion in the Convention, the ablest speakers rose in their behalf. The Abbe Gregoire exclaimed: "A new century is about to open. May its portals be wreathed with the palm of humanity!" Mirabeau lent his mighty eloquence to their cause. "I will not speak of tolerance," he said; "the freedom of conscience is a right so sacred that even the name of tolerance involves a species of tyranny."*

On the 28th September, 1791, the National Convention decreed the equality of the Israelites of France with their Christian fellow-citizens. The waves of the Revolution, however, overflowed the borders of France, and the agitation they caused was quickly communicated to all Germany. Wherever the armies of the Republic penetrated, the gates of the ghettos were thrown open, and in the name of Fraternity, Liberty and Equality were announced to their inhabitants. When Napoleonic misrule at last exasperated Germany into resistance, the seeds which French influence had sown had already taken firm root in the German soil. On the 11th March, 1812, Frederick William III. issued his famous edict, removing the main disabilities from which the Jews of his dominions had suffered, granting them the rights and imposing upon them the honorable duties of citizenship. They were no longer to be classed as foreigners. The state claimed them as its children, and exacted of them the same sacrifices as all its sons were called upon to bring in the troublous times that soon followed. With what eager alacrity the Jews responded to the king's call the records of the German wars for independence amply testify. On the battlefields of Leipzig and Waterloo they stood side by side with their Christian brethren. Many sons and fathers of Jewish households yielded their lives in the country's defence. In the blood of the fallen the new covenant of equal justice was sealed for all time to come. However prejudice might still dog their footsteps, however shamefully the government might violate its solemn pledges to the Jewish soldiers on their return from the wars, the Jews of Germany had now gained what they could no more lose. They felt that the land for which they had adventured their all, in whose behalf they had lost so much, was indeed their fatherland. For the first time, after many, many centuries, the fugitives had gained a home, a country. They awoke as from a long sleep. They found the world greatly changed around them; vast problems engaging the attention of thinkers, science and philosophy everywhere shedding new light upon the path of mankind. They were eager to approve themselves worthy and loyal citizens, eager to join in the general work of progress. They dwelt no more with anxious preference on the past. The present and the future demanded their exertions, and the motives that had so long compelled their exclusion from the fellowship of the Gentiles were gradually disappearing. As their religion was mainly retrospective in character and exclusive in tendency, great changes were needed to bring it into harmony with the altered condition of affairs. These changes were accordingly attempted, and their history is the history of Jewish Reform.