I went yesterday evening to the Synagogue. Never did I see a place of worship in which there was so little appearance of devotion. The women were in a gallery by themselves, the men sate below, keeping their hats on, as they would have done in the street. During the service they took from behind their altar, if that word may be thus applied without profanation, certain silver—utensils they cannot be called, as they appeared to be of no possible use,—silver ornaments rather, hung with small rattle bells, and these they jingled as they carried them round the room, then replaced them in the receptacle. This was the only ceremony. It is impossible to describe the strange and uncouth tone in which the priest sung out a portion of the Pentateuch from a long roll. The language was so intolerably harsh, and the manner in which it was chaunted so abominably discordant, that they suited each other to a miracle; and the larynx of the Rabbi seemed to have been made expressly to give both their full effect.
In former times the toleration of the Jews gave occasion to the same disturbances here as in the rest of Europe. They cheated the people, and the people in return took advantage of every tumult to plunder them. The famous King John, who offered to turn Mohammedan if the Miramamolin would assist him against his rebellious subjects, extorted a large sum from a Jew of Bristol by a new and ingenious kind of torture: he condemned him to have a tooth drawn every day till he consented to lend the money; and the Jew parted with six grinders before he submitted. After the schism, as the Heretics began first to persecute the Catholics, and then one another, the misbelievers were forgotten. Cromwell even favoured them; in one respect he differed from all his contemporary fanatics, for he willingly allowed to other sects the toleration which he claimed for his own. Under his protection Manasses Ben Israel printed three editions of the Bible in Hebrew. This Rabbi is generally supposed to have been a Spaniard, but the Portugueze claim him, and I think we shall not be disposed to contend with them for the honour,—especially as most persons would decide in their favour, without examination.
During the last reign an attempt was made to naturalize them, in a body; and the measure would have been effected had it not been for the indignant outcry of the people, who very properly regarded it as an act of defiance, or at least of opposition, to the express language of prophecy. But this feeling has abated, and were the attempt to be renewed it would meet with little opposition. In Catholic countries our pictures and crucifixes perpetually set before the Christian's eyes the sufferings of his Redeemer, and there is no possibility of his forgetting the history of his religion. Even the most trifling ceremony is of use. At one of the public schools here, the boys on Easter Sunday rush out of the chapel after prayers, singing
He is risen, he is risen,
All the Jews must go to prison.
This custom is certainly very old, though I cannot learn that it was ever usual to imprison this wretched people upon this festival. Some of these boys cut the straps of a Jew's box one day, and all his gingerbread-nuts fell into the street. Complaint was made to the master; and when he questioned the culprits what they could say in their defence, one of them stepped forward and said, "Why, sir, did not they crucify our Lord!" Without admitting the plea in excuse, it may be remarked that if the boy had not remembered his Easter rhymes, he would have been as indifferent to the crime of the Jews as the rest of his countrymen.
Some years ago one of the best living dramatists wrote a comedy for the purpose of representing the Jewish character in a favourable light. The play was very successful, and the Jews were so well pleased that they presented the author with a handsome gratuity[15]. A farce was brought forward at another time called the Jew Boy; and the fraternity knowing that it was impossible to represent this class favourably, assembled in great numbers, and actually damned the piece. This single fact is sufficient to prove that the liberty which they enjoy is unbounded. It is not merely the open exercise of their religion which is permitted them, they are even suffered to write and publish against Christianity. If the permission of blasphemy were no sin, there would be little evil in this licence, so little are they able to make proselytes. The only apostate whom they have made within the memory of man is the very person who occasioned the insurrection against the Catholics in 1780, and who afterwards lost his senses, renounced his faith, and, though of noble family, died in a public prison, a lamentable instance of divine vengeance.
In Rome these misbelievers are obliged to hear a sermon once a-week; here a sermon attracts them as a novelty. One of the Methodist itinerants, some few years ago, fancying that, like St Vicente Ferrer, he had a special gift for converting this stiff-necked generation, undertook to confute their errors, and invited them to attend his preaching. The place appointed was the great Methodist Chapel in Tottenham Court Road; and they assembled in such crowds as to fill the chapel and the court in which it is built. One of the windows was taken out, and the orator taking his stand in the opening, addressed the congregation both within and without at the same time. There can be no reason to suppose that they came with hearts more accessible to conviction than usual; but, had it been the case, the method which this fanatic took was little likely to be successful; for he began by telling them that he was not yet twenty years old, that he had no human learning whatever, and that for all he was about to say to them he trusted to the immediate impulse of the Lord. The rest of his discourse was in character with the beginning, and the Jews returned, the greater number ridiculing his folly, the more thoughtful remembering their own law against him who presumes to speak in the name of the Lord, what the Lord hath not commanded him to speak. Yet from the readiness with which they assembled to hear him, it does not appear impossible, that if some true Christian, inspired with the zeal of our St Vicente, were to collect them together, their curiosity might be made use of to the triumph of the faith and the salvation of souls.
The English church has no zeal for souls. At the beginning of the last century the daughter of a rich Jew, by name Jacob Mendes de Breta, was at her own instance publicly baptized. The father ran into the church like a madman, charged the officiating clergyman to desist, and, when he perceived that this was in vain, cursed his child with the bitterest imprecations, and prayed to his God that the church might fall in, and crush all who were concerned in the ceremony. After this he utterly disowned her:—the law had made no provision for such cases, and the parish were obliged to support her; which, to their honour, they did in a manner suitable to her former situation in life. At their petition, however, a bill was enacted compelling the Jews to provide decently for their converted children. This much was done upon the emergency of the case, and nothing more. Not the slightest effort is made for their conversion, nor the slightest impediment opposed to the public celebration of ceremonies, which the Gospel has expressly abrogated. The Jews have nothing to complain of, except that they pay tithes to the clergy, and that they are liable to the trouble of parish offices—the law even allowing them to be made churchwardens. Any person may be excused from serving this office if he chooses to pay a fine amounting to about ten pieces of eight: it is not long since a parish in London nominated a Jew for the sake of getting this money; he, however, was determined to disappoint them by taking the situation;—the profanation was theirs, not his:—and accordingly the church affairs for the year were actually managed by this son of the Synagogue.
It may well be supposed that when Bonaparte was in Syria his movements were anxiously watched by the Jews. There was a great stir among them, and it is probable that if he had invited them by proclamation, and promised to give them Palestine, armies would have been raised to take and keep possession of that Holy Land, to which they look, individually and collectively, as their destined gathering place. Individually, I say, because it is taught by many Rabbis, that the children of Israel, wherever buried, can rise again at the coming of the Messiah, nowhere except in the Promised Land; and they, therefore, who are interred in any other part of the world, will have to make their way there through the caverns of the earth; a long and painful journey, the difficulty and fatigue of which are equivalent to purgatory. I know not whether this is believed by the English Rabbis; but that the English Jews attach as devout a reverence to the very soil of Jerusalem as we do to the Holy Sepulchre itself, is certain. One of the wealthiest among them, in late times, made a pilgrimage there; and brought back with him boxes full of the earth to line his grave. Unhappy people! whose error is the more inveterate because it is mingled with the noblest feelings, and whose obstinate hope and heroic perseverance we must condemn while we admire.
No particular dress is enjoined them by law, nor indeed is any such mark of distinction necessary: they are sufficiently distinguished by a cast of complexion and features, which, with leave of our neighbours,[16] I will call a Portugueze look.—Some of the lowest order let their beards grow, and wear a sort of black tunic with a girdle; the chief ostensible trade of this class is in old clothes, but they deal also in stolen goods, and not unfrequently in coining. A race of Hebrew lads who infest you in the streets with oranges and red slippers, or tempt school-boys to dip in a bag for gingerbread nuts, are the great agents in uttering base silver; when it is worn too bare to circulate any longer they buy it up at a low price, whiten the brass again, and again send it abroad. You meet Jew pedlars every where, travelling with boxes of haberdashery at their backs, cuckoo clocks, sealing-wax, quills, weather-glasses, green spectacles, clumsy figures in plaister of Paris, which you see over the chimney of an alehouse parlour in the country, or miserable prints of the king and queen, the four seasons, the cardinal virtues, the last naval victory, the prodigal son, and such like subjects, even the Nativity and the Crucifixion; but when they meet with a likely chapman, they produce others of the most obscene and mischievous kind. Any thing for money, in contempt of their own law us well as of the law of the country:—the pork-butchers are commonly Jews. All these low classes have a shibboleth of their own, as remarkable as their physiognomy; and in some parts of the city they are so numerous, that when I strayed into their precincts one day, and saw so many Hebrew inscriptions in the shop windows, and so many long beards in the streets, I began to fancy that I had discovered the ten tribes.
Some few of the wealthiest merchants are of this persuasion; you meet with none among the middle order of tradesmen, except sometimes a silversmith, or watchmaker; ordinary profits do not content them. Hence they are great stock-jobbers, and the business of stock-broking is very much in their hands. One of these Jew brokers was in a coffee-house during the time of the mutiny in the fleet, when tidings arrived that the sailors had seized Admiral Colpoys, and had actually hanged him. The news (which afterwards proved to be false) thunderstruck all present. If it were true, and so it was believed to be, all hopes of accommodation were at an end; the mutineers could only be supprest by force, and what force would be able to suppress them? While they were silent in such reflections, the Jew was calculating his own loss from the effect it would produce upon the funds, and he broke the silence by exclaiming, in Hebrew-English, My Gott! de stokes! articulated with a deep sigh, and accompanied with a shrug of shoulders, and an elevation of eyebrows, as emphatic as the exclamation.
England has been called the hell of horses, the purgatory of servants, and the paradise of women: it may be added that it is the heaven of the Jews,—alas, they have no other heaven to expect!
