Part 33 (2/2)
In considering the immense problem of the Jewish Power, perhaps the most important problem with which the modern world is confronted, it is necessary to divest oneself of all prejudices and to enquire in a spirit of scientific detachment whether any definite proof exists that a concerted attempt is being made by Jewry to achieve world-domination and to obliterate the Christian faith.
That such a purpose has existed amongst the Jews in the past has been shown throughout the earlier chapters of this book. The conception of the Jews as the Chosen People who must eventually rule the world forms indeed the basis of Rabbinical Judaism.
It is customary in this country to say that we should respect the Jewish religion, and this would certainly be our duty were the Jewish religion founded, as is popularly supposed, solely on the Old Testament. For although we do not consider ourselves bound to observe the ritual of the Pentateuch, we find no fault with the Jews for carrying out what they conceive to be their religious duties. Moreover, although the Old Testament depicts the Jews as a favoured race--a conception which we believe to have been superseded by the Christian dispensation, whereby all men are declared equal in the sight of G.o.d--nevertheless it does contain a very lofty law of righteousness applicable to all mankind. It is because of their universality that the books of Job and Ecclesiastes, as also many pa.s.sages in the Psalms, in Isaiah, and the minor prophets, have made an undying appeal to the human race. But the Jewish religion now takes its stand on the Talmud rather than on the Bible. ”The modern Jew,” one of its latest Jewish translators observes, ”is the product of the Talmud.”[805] The Talmud itself accords to the Bible only a secondary place. Thus the Talmudic treatise Soferim says: ”The Bible is like water, the Mischna is like wine, and the Gemara is like spiced wine.”
Now, the Talmud is not a law of righteousness for all mankind, but a meticulous code applying to the Jew alone. No human being outside the Jewish race could possibly go to the Talmud for help or comfort. One might look through its pages in vain for any such splendid rule of life as that given by the prophet Micah: ”He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy G.o.d?” In the Talmud, on the contrary, as Drach points out, ”the precepts of justice, of equity, of charity towards one's neighbour, are not only not applicable with regard to the Christian, but const.i.tute a crime in anyone who would act differently.... The Talmud expressly forbids one to save a non-Jew from death, ... to restore lost goods, etc., to him, to have pity on him.”[806]
How far the Talmud has contributed to the anti-social tendencies of modern Judaism is shown by the fact that the Karaites living in the south of Russia, the only body of Jews which takes its stand on the Bible, and not on the Talmud,--of which it only accepts such portions as are in accordance with Bible teaching--have always shown themselves good subjects of the Russian Empire, and have therefore enjoyed equal rights with the Russian people around them. Catherine the Great particularly favoured the Karaites.
Thus even the Jews are not unanimous in supporting the Talmud; indeed, as we have already seen, many Jews have protested against it as a barrier between themselves and the rest of the human race.
But it is in the Cabala, still more than in the Talmud, that the Judaic dream of world-domination recurs with the greatest persistence. The Zohar indeed refers to this as a _fait accompli_, explaining that ”the Feast of Tabernacles is the period when Israel triumphs over the other people of the world; that is why during this feast we seize the Loulab [branches of trees tied together] and carry it as a trophy to show that we have conquered all the other peoples known as 'populace' and that we dominate them.”[807] G.o.d is, however, asked to accord these other peoples a certain share of blessings, ”so that occupied with this share they shall not partic.i.p.ate nor mingle with the joy of Israel when he calls down blessings from on high.” The situation may thus be compared with that of a king who, wis.h.i.+ng to give a feast to his special friends, finds his house invaded by importunate governors demanding admittance.
”What then does the king do? He orders the governors to be served with beef and vegetables, which are common food, and then sits down to table with his friends and has the most delicious dishes served.”[808]
But this is nothing to the feasting that is to take place when the Messianic era arrives. After the return of the Jews from all nations and parts of the world to Palestine, the Messiah, we are told in the Talmud, will entertain them at a gorgeous banquet, where they will be seated at golden tables and regaled with wine from Adam's wine-cellar. The first course is to consist of a roasted ox named Behemoth, so immense that every day it eats up the gra.s.s upon a thousand hills; the second of a monstrous fish Leviathan; the third of a female Leviathan boiled and pickled; the fourth of a gigantic roast fowl known as Barjuchne, of which the egg alone was so enormous that when it fell out of the nest it crushed three hundred tall cedars and the white overflowed threescore villages. This course is to be followed up by ”the most splendid and pompous Dessert” that can be procured, including fruit from the Tree of Life and ”the Pomegranates of Eden which are preserved for the Just.”
At the end of the banquet ”G.o.d will entertain the company at a ball”; He Himself will sit in the midst of them, and everyone will point Him out with his finger, saying: ”Behold, this is our G.o.d: we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.”[809]
The eighteenth-century commentator, whose summary of these pa.s.sages we quote, goes on to observe:
But let us see a little after what manner the Jews are to live in their ancient Country under the Administration of the Messiah. In the First Place, the strange Nations, which they shall suffer to live, shall build them Houses and Cities, till them Ground, and plant them Vineyards; and all this, without so much as looking for any Reward of their Labour. These surviving Nations will likewise voluntarily offer them all their Wealth and Furniture: And Princes and n.o.bles shall attend them; and be ready at their Nod to pay them all Manner of Obedience; while they themselves shall be surrounded with Grandeur and Pleasure, appearing abroad in Apparel glittering with Jewels like Priests of the Unction, consecrated to G.o.d....
In a word, the felicity of this Holy Nation, in the Times of the Messiah, will be such, that the exalted Condition of it cannot enter into the Conception of Man; much less can it be couched in human Expression. This is what the Rabbis say of it. But the intelligent reader will doubtless p.r.o.nounce it the Paradise of Fools.[810]
It is interesting to notice that this conception of the manner in which the return to Palestine is to be carried out has descended to certain of the modern colonists. Sir George Adam Smith, after watching Zionism at work in 1918, wrote:
On visiting a recently established Jewish colony in the north-east of the land, round which a high wall had been built by the munificent patron, I found the colonists sitting in its shade gambling away the morning, while groups of _fellahin_ at a poor wage did the cultivation for them. I said that this was surely not the intention of their patron in helping them to settle on land of their own. A Jew replied to me in German: ”Is it not written: The sons of the alien shall be your ploughmen and vinedressers?” I know that such delinquencies have become the exception in Jewish colonization of Palestine, but they are symptomatic of dangers which will have to be guarded against.[811]
The fellahin may, however, consider themselves lucky to be allowed to live at all, for, according to several pa.s.sages in the Cabala, all the _goyim_ are to be swept off the face of the earth when Israel comes into its own. Thus the Zohar relates that the Messiah will declare war on the whole world and all the kings of the world will end by declaring war on the Messiah. But ”the Holy One, blessed be He, will display His force and exterminate them from the world.”[812] Then:
Happy will be the lot of Israel, whom the Holy One, blessed be He, has chosen from amongst the _goyim_ of whom the Scriptures say: ”Their work is but vanity, it is an illusion at which we must laugh; they will all perish when G.o.d visits them in His wrath.” At the moment when the Holy One, blessed be He, will exterminate all the _goyim_ of the world, Israel alone will subsist, even as it is written: ”The Lord alone will appear great on that day.”[813]
The hope of world-domination is therefore not an idea attributed to the Jews by ”anti-Semites,” but a very real and essential part of their traditions. What then of their att.i.tude to Christianity in the past? We have already seen that hatred of the person and teaching of Christ did not end at Golgotha, but was kept alive by the Rabbis and perpetuated in the Talmud and the Toledot Yeshu. The Cabala also contains pa.s.sages referring both to Christ and to Mohammed so unspeakably foul that it would be impossible to quote them here.
But it will be urged: the Jews of Western Europe to-day know nothing of the Cabala. This may be so, yet imperceptibly the Cabala has moulded the mind of the Jew. As a modern Jewish writer has declared:
[Kabbalism] has contributed to the formation of modern Judaism, for, without the influence of the Kabbala, Judaism to-day might have been one-sided, lacking in warmth and imagination. Indeed, so deeply has it penetrated into the body of the faith that many ideas and prayers are now immovably rooted in the general body of orthodox doctrine and practice. This element has not only become incorporated, but it has fixed its hold on the affections of the Jews and cannot be eradicated.[814]
It is thus not in the law of Moses thundered from Sinai, not in the dry ritual of the Talmud, but in the stupendous imaginings of the Cabala, that the real dreams and aspirations of Jewry have been transmitted through the ages. Belief in the coming Messiah may burn low, but faith in the final triumph of Israel over the other nations of the world still glows in the hearts of a race nurtured on this hope from time immemorial. Even the free-thinking Jew must unconsciously react to the promptings of this vast and ancient ambition. As a modern French writer has expressed it:
a.s.suredly sectarian Freethinkers swarm, who flatter themselves on having borrowed nothing from the synagogue and on hating equally Jehovah and Jesus. But the modern Jewish world is itself also detached from any supernatural belief, and the Messianic tradition, of which it preserves the cult, reduces itself to considering the Jewish race as the veritable Messiah[815].
Some colour is lent to this statement by an article which recently appeared in the Jewish press, in which it is explained that, according to the teaching of the ”Liberal Jewish Synagogue,” the beautiful pa.s.sages in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah concerning ”the Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief,” usually supposed by Christians to relate to the promised Messiah, are interpreted to modern Jewish youth as relating to Israel and signifying that Israel's ”sufferings were caused by the sins of other nations,” who thus ”escaped the suffering they deserved.” Consequently ”Israel has suffered for the sake of the whole world[816].” How this amazing pretension can be maintained in view of the perpetual denunciations of the Israelites throughout the whole of the Old Testament is difficult to imagine. On their entry into Canaan they were distinctly told by Moses that the Lord their G.o.d had not given them ”this good land” on account of their righteousness or the uprightness of their hearts[817]; long afterwards Daniel declared that all Israel had transgressed the law of G.o.d[818]; Nehemiah showed that on account of their rebellion and disobedience they had been delivered into the hands of their enemies[819]. Isaiah spoke of the iniquities of Judah in burning words:
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