I read part of Belloc’s 1922 book The Jews. He says that anti-Semitism has been on the rise for about twenty years. He says that one of the chief causes of this surge of anti-Semitism is the triumph of Bolshevism in Russia.
Belloc says that Jews play a prominent role in the labor movement, in socialism, and in Russian Bolshevism. Of course, he realizes that not all Jews are socialists, and many are determined opponents of socialism. “The Bolshevist Movement,” Belloc writes, “was a Jewish movement, but not a movement of the Jewish race as a whole.”1
The Nazis viewed Communism as a Jewish movement, and the Nazis aimed to defeat both Communists and Jews. The Nazis knew that Communism aimed at world revolution. The Nazis were nationalistic, while Communism is often international, at least in theory.
In general, socialism can be seen as a reaction to capitalism, a reaction to the excesses of capitalism. Likewise, Zionism can be seen as a reaction to the rise of anti-Semitism. Zionism arose at about the same time (1890-1910) as the surge of anti-Semitism.
Belloc argues that anti-Semitism was a reaction to the rise of Jewish population and prominence. Belloc writes, “The danger of the Jewish nation in the world today may be summed up in this phrase: ‘The Jews are obtaining control and we will not be controlled by them.’”
Belloc says that the prominence of Jews (in business, academia, the press, etc.) is out of proportion to their numbers and their abilities.2 But he doesn’t ascribe this prominence to any deliberate conspiracy. He speaks of “Jewish national consciousness,” Jewish “solidarity.” But if Jews try to help each other, this isn’t a deliberate effort to dominate.
He says, “We who stand outside the Jewish body may mark its cohesion... but its own members complain rather of its lack of cohesion.” He says that Jews are collectively powerful, but as individuals, they struggle with all sorts of challenges, and laugh at the notion that they’re trying to dominate.
For example, “The Jewish lawyer will tell you that he is concerned with the system of law in which he happens to be immersed — the Napoleonic Code, the English Common Law or what not — and that any idea of his personally wanting to control the vast non-Jewish majority among whom he lives is moonshine.” Nonetheless, Belloc says, Jewish power is “a corporate power and, therefore, a semi-organized power.” A corporate power of which individual Jews are often unaware, and often sincerely deny.
While it’s natural for Jews to help each other, it’s equally natural for non-Jews to resent this, and to feel that helping one group is harming another; favoring one group means disfavoring another.
Belloc’s book on the Jews has a serious tone. He understands that anti-Semitism may well end in genocide, though he doesn’t use the word “genocide.” Belloc writes,
| The Anti-Semite has become a strong political figure. It is a great and dangerous error at this moment to think his policy is futile. It is a policy of action, and a policy which may proceed from plan to execution before we know it....
The Anti-Semite can persecute, he can attack. With a sufficient force behind him he can destroy. In much of this destruction he would have, in a present state of feeling and in most countries, the mass of public opinion behind him.... The natural antagonism to the Jewish race, felt by nearly all those who are not of it and among whom it lives, may take an irrational and violent form.... We may be upon the brink of yet one more of those catastrophes, of those tragedies, of those disasters which have marked the history of Israel in the past. |
Belloc says: “The Anti-Semite is a man who wants to get rid of the Jews.”
While Belloc sees the danger, he doesn’t see that it will come from Germany, he seems to think that all European nations are equally likely to take extreme measures against Jews. He says that the recent surge of anti-Semitism started in Germany, then spread to France, and is now “rapidly growing” in England.
Belloc says that anti-Semitism is on the rise in the U.S. In 1896, William Jennings Bryan attacked the gold standard, and there was no mention of the Jewish role in finance. But in 1922, Henry Ford speaks openly about Jewish power.
Belloc says that anti-Semitism could catch fire in the U.S., as Prohibition caught fire, as Women’s Suffrage caught fire. He writes,
| The forces driving men towards the anti-Semitic camp are far stronger than the forces acting upon these old hobbies of women’s suffrage, of prohibition and the rest. They are personal, intimate forces arising from the strongest racial instincts and the most bitter individual memories of financial loss, subjection, national dishonor.3 |
What does Belloc mean by “national dishonor”? He says that, when Germany was defeated in World War I, Jews were blamed for the defeat. Likewise, when France was defeated in its 1870 war with Prussia, there was a tendency to blame the Jews.4 And when Britain struggled in the Boer War, “The position of the Jew was altered. Some dissatisfaction with his power began to stir.”5
Belloc says there’s a pattern in Jewish history: Jews move into a new area in small numbers, and are welcomed. Then, due to “his increasing numbers, he creates (or discovers) a growing animosity.... a growing, half-conscious ill-ease; next a culmination in acute ill-ease; lastly catastrophe and disaster; insult, persecution, even massacre, the exiles flying from the place of persecution into a new district where the Jew is hardly known.” Belloc thinks that this pattern may well be repeated in Europe.
I’m curious to know what Belloc thought about the rise of Hitler. When was he first aware of Hitler? Did he predict genocide when Hitler reached power in 1933? Belloc died in 1953, at the age of 82. He had a stroke in 1941, and wrote little in the last twelve years of his life.
In his 1940 book The Catholic and the War, Belloc wrote, “The Third Reich has treated its Jewish subjects with a contempt for Justice.... Cruelty to a Jew is as odious as cruelty to any human being, whether that cruelty be moral in the form of insult, or physical.”
Belloc notes that the novelist Charles Kingsley had a Jewish mother. But if a book-reviewer mentioned that, it would be considered inappropriate, perhaps even anti-Semitic; “the mention of that lineage is treated as though it were a sort of insult.” Belloc speaks of, “this wretched habit of secrecy.”
Because of this lack of transparency, wild anti-Semitic theories spread; Belloc says, “men ascribe a Jewish character to anything they dislike.... A universal suspicion is engendered and spreads.” One of Belloc’s main purposes is to advocate transparency and candid discussion; he thinks that candor is vital if genocide is to be averted.
Belloc says that the mainstream press avoids discussing Jewish issues. Belloc speaks of, “that Liberal fiction which had ruled for more than a generation, according to which it was indecent even to mention the word Jew, or to suggest that there was any difference between the Jew and those who harbored him.”
The mainstream press, Belloc says, doesn’t accurately reflect what’s happening. “The Anti-Semite is very much more numerous and very much more powerful than might be imagined from the reading of the daily press.... The great movements of our time have never originated in the press of the great cities.” The mainstream press, Belloc says, doesn’t understand the growing power of anti-Semitism.
| The modern press of our great cities [Belloc writes] differs very greatly from the press of a lifetime ago. [That earlier press] was not always owned by educated men, but it was conducted by highly educated men, who were given a free hand. It therefore concerned itself with problems of real importance and it debated upon either side real contrasts of opinion upon those matters. This modern press of ours does none of these things. |
I’m reminded of Coleridge, who often wrote for the daily press, and who was certainly “highly educated.”
Belloc can’t seem to fully explain Jewish prominence/success. Ability is certainly a factor, but perhaps a more important factor is history, and the character developed over the course of history — concentration, studiousness, a feeling that life is a serious matter, a feeling that inter-personal relations must be taken seriously, and that one must be careful with one’s language. If Jews are stronger, perhaps their history of suffering is the reason; as Nietzsche said, What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Jews seem to have benefited from a closer communal bond, and a closer family bond.
Kipling wrote a story called “The Jews of Shushan,” about a small group of Jews in northern India. Kipling spent time in northern India, and this story may be based on his own observation.
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a book about his travels in the American West; it’s called The Silverado Squatters. Stevenson discusses a Jewish shopkeeper. Like the protagonist of Kipling’s story, Stevenson’s Jewish shopkeeper specializes in collecting debts. This job requires being firm and serious, without being offensive; this job requires being careful with one’s language. Kipling describes his debt-collector thus: “Very slow and deliberate was his speech, and carefully guarded to give offence to no one.”
I don’t think I had ever read Belloc before. He writes excellent prose — better than Chesterton, in my view. If I can use a baseball metaphor, Belloc gives you hard fastballs, while Chesterton is overly fond of curve balls.
Chesterton and D. H. Lawrence depict Jews in a negative way, while earlier English writers — George Eliot, Charles Reade, Walter Scott — depicted Jews in a positive way. As Belloc says, the Jew appeared “in English fiction as an exalted character, quite specially removed to his advantage from the mass of mankind.” This changed around 1900.
It could be objected that, in Oliver Twist (1838), Dickens depicts a Jewish character, Fagin, in a negative way. Later, however, Dickens created a positive Jewish character (Riah) in Our Mutual Friend. On the whole, it seems that the surge of anti-Semitism around 1900 is reflected in English literature.
Links
Did Nietzsche Foresee the Holocaust?
Chesterton and Belloc
Chesterton’s remarks on Jews
D. H. Lawrence’s remarks on Jews
I’d like to continue my summary of Jewish history. Here’s what I’ve discussed so far:
- Abraham to David
- David and Solomon
- The Northern Kingdom (Israel/Samaria)
- The Southern Kingdom (Judah)
- The Babylonian Exile
- The Prophets
- Return From Exile
- The Hellenistic Period
- The Jewish Revolt Against the Greeks
- A Jewish Civil War
In our previous discussion of Jewish history, I said that Jewish Palestine was ruled by the Hasmon dynasty, and that one of the Hasmons, Alexander Jannai, ruled from 103 BC to 76 BC. One of the sons of Alexander Jannai, Hyrcanus II, had a “wily advisor” named Antipater. Antipater persuaded Hyrcanus II to remain loyal to Rome, the chief power in Palestine; during the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, Antipater managed to stay on the winning side. Hyrcanus II was the High Priest, but his power was “purely nominal. The Romans were the overlords of the country; Antipater was the force behind the throne.”6 When Antipater died in 43 BC, he was succeeded by his son, Herod, sometimes called Herod the Great.
Herod managed to ingratiate himself with Mark Antony. Herod and his brother (Phezahel) were put in charge of Jewish Palestine, and were given the title “Tetrarch.”
But the last of the Hasmons, Antigonus, caused problems for the new Tetrarchs. Antigonus persuaded the Parthians to attack the Roman dominions (the Parthians, based in northern Iran, were “the only important power of the Middle East which held out against Rome”). When the Parthians took Jerusalem, Phezahel (Herod’s brother) committed suicide, and Antigonus was made king. Then the Romans drove out the Parthians, but Antigonus kept his throne, “thanks to skillful diplomacy and the payment of a high tribute.”
So Herod went to Rome, and managed to win the support of the Roman rulers, Antony and Octavian. Herod persuaded the Romans to send an army to Palestine; this army took Jerusalem after a 5-month siege. “Antigonus, the last Hasmonean sovereign, was put to death.”
Herod married a Hasmon, Miriam, granddaughter of Hyrcanus II. “Thus the usurper [i.e., Herod] was able to attract some of the popular sympathy which still lingered about the name of the Maccabees [i.e., the Hasmons], and to begin his long reign, which was to last a third of a century, with a semblance of legitimate right.”
Roth says that Herod was “supremely able and energetic,” but “cold, calculating, and cruel.” Herod knew that he was unpopular, he knew that the people had a place in their heart for the Hasmons, so he executed many people who could threaten his position, especially members of the Hasmon family. He even executed his wife, Miriam, who was a Hasmon. In 7 BC, Herod executed his two sons by Miriam.
Roth says that, despite these crimes, Herod was an able ruler, expanded the Jewish realm, maintained peace, built “magnificent royal palaces,” and renovated the Temple so that it became “one of the wonders of the Mediterranean world.” Herod was unpopular with Jews in Palestine, but outside Palestine, Jews regarded him as their leader, and he was “always ready” to help them. Herod admired Greco-Roman culture, and “surrounded himself with Greek savants, poets, and historians.”
Herod died in 4 BC. At first, his sons took over his realm, but before long, the Romans dismissed his sons, and took direct control of Palestine, which they called Judaea. The Romans ruled through officials whom they called Procurators or Prefects; these officials reported to higher officials, who were called Legates.
The most famous of these officials is Pontius Pilate, who ruled from 26 AD to 36 AD. In 33 AD, Pilate presided over the trial and execution of Jesus.
Roman rule was a heavy burden for the Jews. “Ample garrisons were stationed throughout the country. The taxation, more crushing than ever before, was farmed out to private contractors, or ‘publicans.’”
The Jewish people complained, and sometimes rebelled. “Judaea had the name of being the most inflammable and difficult of all Roman provinces.” It was especially inflammable at holidays like Passover, when Jewish pilgrims crowded into Jerusalem. Jesus was arrested at Passover. Perhaps he was regarded as a dangerous reformer with a large following — the sort of person who could start trouble.
According to Roth, the upper classes (in the Jewish community) wanted peace, and said that “deliverance would come from Heaven.” But the lower classes were restive, perhaps because they had nothing to lose, perhaps because they remembered the Maccabee revolt. Galilee, in northeastern Palestine, was especially restive. On the map below, Galilee appears outside the Roman province, since Galilee was nominally autonomous.
The Galilee rebels were known as Zealots. The Zealots fought, not only Romans, but also moderate Jews; “they cut down without scruple any person who appeared too friendly towards the Roman oppressor.” Jesus was from Galilee, he claimed descent from David, and he was a “social reformer,” hence he made Pilate “nervous.” Roth says that Jesus also “claimed to be the promised Messiah, who was to deliver his people from foreign bondage”; to Pilate, this might sound revolutionary. (Roth is unaware of the Jesus we discussed earlier, the Jesus who was a “healer and exorcist,” one of the “Jewish charismatic healers.”)
The Romans were careful not to offend Jewish sensibilities, especially with respect to graven images. “The current interpretation of the Ten Commandments precluded any ‘graven image’ whatsoever. Accordingly, taught by bitter experience, the Roman legions went so far as to discard their Eagles and the effigies of the Emperor before entering Jerusalem.”
But Caligula, who became emperor in 37 AD, had little respect for Jewish customs, and demanded that his effigy be set up in synagogues, and in the Temple at Jerusalem. Egyptian Jews sent the Jewish philosopher Philo to plead their case to Caligula at Rome. Philo was unsuccessful, but the assassination of Caligula in 41 AD defused the tension.
Both Caligula and his successor, Claudius, were friendly toward Herod Agrippa, grandson of Herod the Great. They made Herod Agrippa King of Palestine, giving him a realm almost as large as that of King David. But Herod Agrippa died after a short reign, and his son, Herod Agrippa II, was given a small realm in the northeast, while most of Palestine reverted to Roman rule. Herod Agrippa II was the last of the Herodian Dynasty, and the last king of Jewish Palestine.
Roman rule was harsh. The Jewish Zealots expanded from Galilee into Judaea, and a more extreme party — known as Assassins or Sicarii (knife-men) — killed Roman officials and moderate Jews. “Marriage with a Gentile was sometimes sufficient to cost a man his life.”
In the seacoast town of Caesarea, “a state of semi-overt warfare existed perpetually between the Jewish and the Gentile population.” Around 65 AD, “A patriotic contingent seized the fortress of Masada, on the banks of the Dead Sea, putting the garrison to death — an overt act of warfare.” Roman troops were attacked in Jerusalem, and took refuge in Herod’s palace. “They agreed to lay down their arms; but, as they left their stronghold, they were attacked and butchered to a man.”
Not all Jews supported the Zealots; moderate Jews sided with the Romans, or tried to remain neutral. The Roman-Jewish conflict divided the Jewish community; it can be viewed as a civil war.
Wherever Jews were in a minority, they were massacred. Wherever they were in a majority, they returned the favor. “Racial riots swept through the whole of Syria.”
The Roman legate in Syria decided he had to act, he had to suppress the Jewish uprising. In 66 AD, he marched an army to Jerusalem, but it wasn’t large enough for a complete siege, so he began retreating. The Roman army was ambushed in the gorge of Beth Horon, then fled for their lives.
The Romans lost 6,000 men. “A victory so unexpected and so overwhelming encouraged the insurgents to dream of complete triumph, and made the war party supreme; while the Romans could not lay down their arms until they had wiped out the affront. Henceforth all possibility of conciliation was at an end.”
Judaea was ruled by a popular assembly, as it prepared for the expected Roman invasion. Still the country was divided into various factions; still the knife men assassinated moderates. The Jewish king, Herod Agrippa II, sided with the Romans, and contributed troops to the Roman army.
The Roman army was based at Antioch in Syria, and was commanded by Vespasian, who had fought in Rome’s successful invasion of Britain. Vespasian was assisted by his son, Titus. Vespasian’s army consisted of Roman legions, and auxiliaries, i.e., troops contributed by “friendly local rulers.”
Josephus, who wrote a history of this war, led Jewish troops in Galilee. When these troops were defeated by the Romans, Josephus “went over brazenly to the Romans.”
In 67 AD, Jewish towns in northern Palestine were overcome by the advancing Roman army. The extremists in Jerusalem seized power, and turned against moderates and aristocrats; Roth compares these extremists to the Jacobins in the French Revolution. “The aristocrats of Jerusalem were scandalized to see an uncouth stone-mason elevated to [High Priest].”
The aristocratic party fought back, driving the Zealots into the Temple. The Zealots appealed for help to the southern kingdom of Idumaea. Below is a map showing the southern kingdom of Idumaea/Edom.
When the Idumaean forces arrived, the extremists took control again. “A veritable reign of terror set in.... Moderate leaders were butchered. The prisons were filled with suspects.” Some of the extremists proclaimed equality, and freed slaves. There was more civil strife, “the streets again flowed with blood.”
Of course, all these divisions among the Jews made the job of the Romans easier. With food supplies running short in Jerusalem, one faction “fired the granaries, whether to keep them from their rivals or to show their implicit confidence in Divine succor. Thus utter famine was hastened, followed by horrors which are depicted for all time in the graphic pages of Josephus.”7
When the Emperor Nero died in 68 AD, Vespasian went to Rome to stake a claim to the throne, and left the army in charge of his son, Titus. In 70 AD, the Romans breached the walls of Jerusalem, but the city’s Jewish defenders held out in the Upper City, and the Temple Mount.
Finally the Romans burned the Temple, which had stood since the return from Exile around 530 BC. The Roman re-conquest of Judaea was completed in 73 AD, with the fall of Masada. Titus celebrated a triumph in Rome, and later the Arch of Titus was constructed. Below is the Arch of Titus as it appears today.
photo by ThePhotografer
Below is a detail from the Arch of Titus, showing Romans carrying off a menorah from the Temple of Jerusalem (this is a 7-branched menorah, or “Temple Menorah,” as opposed to the 9-branched Hannukah Menorah).
photo by Paolo Villa
The suppression of the Jewish revolt didn’t mean the elimination of Jews from Palestine, just as the exile of Jews to Babylonia didn’t mean that all Jews left Palestine. Many Jews sided with the Romans during the war/revolt, and were opposed to the radicals and Zealots and Knife Men. Roman anger wasn’t aimed at Jews in general, only at those who were revolting. Roth says that the victory of Titus and the destruction of the Second Temple was an “episode” in Jewish history, not “the close of an epoch.” The population of Palestine “remained preponderantly Jewish.”
There were, however, some minor legal changes. “The voluntary tax of half a shekel, which had hitherto been collected annually throughout the Diaspora on behalf of the Temple at Jerusalem, was made compulsory, and assigned to a department of the Imperial treasury at Rome, the Fiscus Judaicus.” This “Jewish tax” was revived in the Middle Ages.
In the Roman Empire, the “Jewish tax” could become blackmail: “Charges of following Judaism were easily made, but difficult to disprove... As a result, many people chose to settle with the accusers out of court rather than risk the uncertainties of judicial hearings.”
Who was Jewish and who wasn’t? One way to answer this question was to see who was circumcised. The Roman historian Suetonius writes, “I recall being present in my youth when the body of a man ninety years old was examined before the procurator and a very crowded court, to see whether he was circumcised.” Roth says that, on the whole, Jews weren’t oppressed in the Roman Empire, they were treated better than they were treated in Christian Europe. Only in the 19th century were Jews treated as well as they were treated in the Roman Empire.
Let’s return to the suppression of the Jewish revolt by Titus, and the consequences of that suppression. According to the Bible, animal sacrifice could only take place at the Temple in Jerusalem. Since that Temple was destroyed by Titus, Judaism became a religion without “sacrificial worship”; it was “the first of the world’s great religions” to exist without sacrificial worship. Judaism emphasized the rabbi praying in the synagogue, rather than the priest sacrificing in the Temple.
After the suppression of the revolt, both King and High Priest lost their prominence. An assembly called the Sanhedrin became prominent. The Sanhedrin usually had 71 members, and its leader was called the Nasi or Patriarch; the Patriarch spoke for the Jewish people.
The Sanhedrin lasted until 425 AD, and the office of Patriarch was passed from father to son for about ten generations. The Sanhedrin can be thought of as an assembly of scholars, and the Patriarchs may have been descended from the revered rabbi Hillel. “It was a phenomenon uniquely Jewish — a family raised to the dominant position in national affairs by virtue, not of physical prowess, or material wealth, or some mysterious supernatural force, but simply intellectual pre-eminence.”
Under the influence of the Sanhedrin, “The educational system was developed, until it attained a perfection unrealized in Europe until the nineteenth century was far advanced.”
There was another Jewish revolt in 115 AD, about 45 years after the previous revolt. It’s called the Kitos War, it was inspired by “a vague Messianic hope,” and it stretched from Mesopotamia in the east, to Libya (Cyrene) in the west; it took place largely outside Palestine. “It was put down, with an excess of cruelty, only after much blood had been shed on either side.”
The ancient historian Cassius Dio says that at least 460,000 non-Jews were slaughtered by Jews in Cyrene and Cyprus alone. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, “Libya was depopulated to such an extent that a few years later new colonies had to be established there.” Jewish communities were also depopulated, by massacre or expulsion.
The Kitos War started under the emperor Trajan; the Jewish rebels took advantage of Trajan’s preoccupation with a war in Parthia. Below is a map of the Roman Empire under Trajan; Roman lands are in red, Roman clients in pink, Parthia is in the east.
Yet another Jewish revolt occurred in 132 AD, under the emperor Hadrian. This revolt was led by Bar Kokhba, “a leader of gigantic strength and rare fascination of character.” Bar Kokhba was supported by the leading scholar of the time, Rabbi Akiva (also known as Akiba). Akiva thought that Bar Kokhba was the Messiah, the fulfillment of the Biblical prophecy, “There shall come a Star out of Jacob.” The name “Bar Kokhba” means “Son of a Star.” Below is a coin made by Bar Kokhba’s rebels — the Temple and a rising star.
The rebels held out for three years, but were finally crushed by an army commanded by Hadrian himself. “The Bar Kokhba Revolt had catastrophic consequences for the Jewish population in Judaea, with profound loss of life, extensive forced displacements, and widespread enslavement. The scale of suffering surpassed even the aftermath of the First Jewish-Roman War, leaving central Judaea in a state of desolation.”8
Jerusalem was demolished, and “a harrow was drawn over the site.” Jerusalem was replaced by a new city called Aelia Capitolina, “into which no Jew was allowed to set foot save once a year.” Jews became a minority in Palestine, though there were some Jewish communities in the north, in Galilee.
Hadrian tried to prevent further Jewish revolts by banning Judaism itself — banning circumcision, the teaching of Jewish Law, etc. When Hadrian died in 138 AD, his successor, Antoninus Pius, abandoned this repressive policy. But Antoninus Pius limited circumcision to Jews, non-Jews couldn’t be circumcised, and couldn’t be converted to Judaism. “From this enactment may be dated the close of the missionary activities of Judaism on a large scale.”
In Galilee, the Sanhedrin continued to function, and the office of Patriarch “reached its fullest development.” Around 200 AD, the Patriarch Judah organized “the great codification of the traditional jurisprudence, known as the Mishnah.” Jews outside Palestine (i.e., Diaspora Jews) contributed to the upkeep of the Patriarch in Galilee, as they had once contributed to the upkeep of the Temple in Jerusalem.
After about 200 AD, the Jewish community in Palestine/Galilee dwindled. “There is evidence of a progressive desiccation, or diminution of rainfall, which was robbing the whole of the Arabian Peninsula and the adjacent lands of their fertility.” Later, Roth says that this desiccation was a factor in the explosion of the Arabs out of the Arabian Peninsula around 650 AD, and their conquest of foreign lands.9 (It could also be argued that, in a nation that’s fertile and over-populated, there’s a tendency to expand. So nations try to take land from their neighbors if their own land is very fertile or very infertile.)
Another factor in the decline of Palestinian Jewry was “crushingly heavy taxation.” When the Jews became defiant in 351 AD, their main towns in Galilee were “stormed and destroyed, and the schools established in them never recovered from the blow.”
Around 360 AD, Palestinian Jewry found a friend in the emperor Julian, better known as Julian the Apostate for his rejection of Christianity. Julian promised to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem, but he died fighting the Persians, and his promise was unfulfilled.
As the Roman Empire was Christianized, Palestinian Jews were often persecuted, and synagogues were often burned. In 425 AD, the Byzantine Emperor abolished the institution of the Patriarch. “The Jew was divorced in the fullest sense of the word from his land.” The focus shifted to the Diaspora.
While Palestinian Jewry was declining, Babylonian Jewry was having its “heyday,” first under Persian rule, then under Parthian rule. This heyday lasted from about 275 AD to 450 AD. Babylonian Jews spoke Aramaic, “a language closely akin to Hebrew.” Many Palestinian Jews emigrated to Babylonia, especially after the defeat of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 AD. The leader of the Babylonian Jews was called the “Exilarch.”
Babylonian Jews weren’t free from persecution. From time to time, “synagogues were destroyed and burial-places desecrated.” After 450 AD, the persecution became intense. At the Persian capital of Ispahan,
| one-half of the Jewish population was slaughtered, and the children seized to be brought up in the dominant faith. The wave of brutality soon spread to Babylonia. The Exilarch [was] put to death; synagogues were destroyed; children were kidnapped; assemblies for the study of the Law were prohibited; teachers lost their lives; and the Rabbis regarded this year, 468, as that of the destruction of their world. It is probable that the foundation of the very ancient Jewish communities which still survive on the Malabar coast in India is due to refugees who fled eastwards from Mesopotamia at this period of crisis.10 |
Before the Babylonian Exile (i.e., before 586 BC), the Prophets played an important role in Jewish history, and the Bible was created. After the Babylonian Exile, Rabbis played an important role, and the Talmud was created. The Bible contained the history of the Jewish people, moral teachings, and laws. The function of the Rabbi was to teach the Bible, and decide legal cases.
Learning was respected, but it wasn’t viewed as a livelihood. Roth writes,
| A man was indeed advised to regard study as a fixed obligation, and earning a livelihood as incidental. But, at the same time, the Torah was not to be considered as a “spade wherewith to dig.” The Rabbi, therefore, was expected to have another occupation, and the more lowly it was, the more he was esteemed. |
The Talmud arose because the Bible was sometimes ambiguous, and the Bible sometimes didn’t resolve a specific dispute. For example, the Bible said you shouldn’t carry a burden on the Sabbath. “What, however, constituted a ‘burden’? and what precisely is ‘carrying’?” Jewish scholars developed rules for interpreting the Bible. Scholars debated whether, at meals, one should bless the day first and then the wine, or the wine first and then the day.11 Jewish law went beyond the typical system of law; “it was a code of life rather than one of law.”
It seemed that the Jews focused on private life because they had no public life, no political life. “The everyday deeds of men living their mundane lives constitute the last realm over which the Israelite ruled, lacking now a government, a Temple, an administration of his own.... Here at home, through patterned language and a life of infinite structure, he would find his way to a world above history and beyond time.”12
At first, the Talmud was a body of oral teaching. Around 200 AD, the Patriarch Judah had these teachings organized and written down in Hebrew; they were called Mishnah or Teaching, and the scholars who worked on it were called Tannaim or Teachers.
We can think of the Mishnah as Part One of the Talmud. Part Two is the Gemara. The Mishnah was created in Galilee around 200 AD by the Tannaim, while the Gemara was created in Babylonia around 500 AD by Amoraim (Interpreters). The Mishnah was written in Hebrew, while the Gemara was written chiefly in Aramaic, partly in Hebrew.
The main Jewish academies in Babylonia were Sura and Pumbeditha; they were founded around 200 AD. Roth compares them to Oxford and Cambridge, and he says they lasted about 800 years. Wikipedia says that Sura had “a faculty of 1,200.” Roth suggests that these academies were more important in Jewish society than medieval universities, because these academies “received all the deference” paid to religion, as well as the deference paid to learning.
At these academies, people didn’t seek positions and paychecks. Roth writes,
| There was no professional class, who studied in order to qualify for some appointment. To absorb himself in the law of God was regarded as the privilege and the duty of every man, from the highest to the lowest.... An artisan or peasant would attend the school each day after the morning and evening services, working in his shop or fields in the interval. During the day, eager students would be unflagging in their attendance on some famous Rabbi, listening to his verdict in cases which were brought him for decision and mentally noting not only his arguments and precedents but also his small-talk, his conduct, his most trivial habits. In the spring and autumn, when agricultural work was suspended, students would flock to the academies from every part of the country, and for a whole month instruction was continuous. |
The academies dealt with both Law (Halakha) and Legend (Aggadah). Everything that wasn’t Law was Aggadah: “history, folk-lore, medicine, biology, biography, ethical teaching, astronomy, science, logic, personal reminiscence of the great teachers of the past, and above all, a vast amount of downright legend.”
The Talmud included both Halakha and Aggadah. The Talmud is often a commentary on the Law, with accounts of debates, historical asides, and anecdotes about famous scholars. “And so the reader is drawn on, through sharp dialectic, richly embroidered legend, strange scraps of scientific knowledge or fantastic folk-lore, until he is abruptly stirred by some immortal aphorism:
‘The world is poised on the breath of the schoolchildren.’
‘The altar itself weeps when a man is reft of the wife of his youth.’”
The Talmud was a kind of Owner’s Manual for life and civilization, a guide for Jews in every corner of the world. “It gave them the characteristic imprint which distinguished them from others, as well as their remarkable power of resistance and cohesion. Its dialectic sharpened their wits, and conferred upon them a preternatural mental acuteness.”
Some of the first Jews in Europe were slaves. “In all the Roman campaigns in Asia Minor... numerous Jews had been captured and enslaved.” After the Jewish revolts against the Romans, “the captives were reckoned by hundreds of thousands.” Captives were sold as slaves, and “distributed throughout the [Roman] Empire,” many ending up in Italy.
Roth says that the Jew was a “bad servant” because of his “independent temperament,” his dietary rules, his refusal to work on the Sabbath, etc. Free Jews felt obliged to try to liberate Jews who were enslaved. “The intense solidarity which the Jews felt more than any other people... prompted them to help one another to freedom whenever the opportunity presented itself.”
Jews also came to Europe for business. There was a large Jewish community in Alexandria, “the greatest commercial center of the Mediterranean.” Jews from Alexandria sometimes settled in Rome “probably in connection with the grain trade in which Egypt played so important a part.”
Jews outside Palestine often contributed to the maintenance of the Temple in Jerusalem. Funds for the Temple were often stolen by non-Jews. In 59 BC, Cicero acted as lawyer for a Roman official named Flaccus, who was accused of stealing money collected in Asia Minor for Temple-maintenance.
Cicero “tried to make out that the court was overawed by the crowd of Jews who had flocked to be present at the hearing. A petition to depose the tyrant Herod was said to have been supported by no less than 8,000 persons in the capital alone.” These anecdotes show the size of Rome’s Jewish community, and its solidarity.
The Roman historian Tacitus said of the Jews,
| Among themselves they are inflexibly honest and ever ready to show compassion, though they regard the rest of mankind with all the hatred of enemies. They sit apart at meals, they sleep apart... they abstain from intercourse with foreign women.... Circumcision was adopted by them as a mark of difference from other men.13 |
Tacitus says that the Arabs “hated the Jews with the usual hatred of neighbors [solito inter accolas odio].”14
Roth says that the Roman Empire wasn’t a bad place for Jews; they were treated much the same as other subject peoples. In some respects, they were “privileged.” Judaism was the only “legally recognized” religion besides the official religion. It was incumbent on all peoples in the Empire to worship the emperor, but “an exception was made only in favor of that strange people [i.e., the Jews] whose religion was different from all other religions; who admitted no image into their places of worship; and who had been prepared to rise in revolt rather than set up Caligula’s statue in their Temple.”15
Romans were interested in Judaism; its customs were “studied sympathetically.” Many Romans adopted Jewish customs, such as “refraining from idol-worship,” resting on the Sabbath, and abstaining from certain foods. Judaism “seems to have become positively fashionable, especially among women; and we read of adherents in the highest ranks of society — sometimes in the sphere of the Imperial Court itself.”
The condition of Jews in the Roman Empire was quite good, especially when compared to their condition in Christian Europe. Roth writes,
| In consequence of the famous Edict of the Emperor Caracalla of 212 AD, all free inhabitants of the Empire without distinction were created Roman citizens. This, in point of fact, was dictated by financial considerations, being intended to make all alike liable to taxation. But as a matter of course, they shared the advantages of citizenship as well as its burdens. The Jews of the Empire were henceforth Roman citizens in every respect, distinguished from the rest perhaps by one or two privileges, but not by any disability, other than the obligation to pay a special tax. It was a condition of affairs which was not to prevail again in Europe until the nineteenth century. |
© L. James Hammond 2024
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| Footnotes | |
| 1. | Ch. 3, p. 55. The edition that I read is probably the 1922 edition; the book was re-issued in 1928 and 1937.
For more on the link between Bolshevism and anti-Semitism, see this 1920 article by Churchill. back |
| 2. | Ch. 9, p. 199. In the Book of Genesis, we find an example of Jewish success provoking anti-Semitism. Isaac “had possession of flocks, and possession of herds, and great store of servants: and the Philistines envied him.... And [the Philistine king] said unto Isaac, Go from us; for thou art much mightier than we.”(26:14) back |
| 3. | Ch. 7, p. 157 back |
| 4. | Ch. 3, p. 48 back |
| 5. | Ch. 10, p. 227 back |
| 6. | Cecil Roth, A Short History of the Jewish People (1948), Ch. 9, #1, p. 91 back |
| 7. | Roth 1948, Ch. 9, #6, p. 107. Tacitus says that the Jews fought among themselves, and “a great quantity of corn was burned [magna vis frumenti ambusta].”(Tacitus, Histories, V, 12) back |
| 8. | Wikipedia back |
| 9. | Roth says that, after about 900 AD, the Jewish community in Mesopotamia declined, as the Jewish community in Palestine had declined earlier. “The Arabian Peninsula, and the countries bordering upon it, were slowly becoming less fertile and less able to support their population. In consequence, the inhabitants were gradually driven to seek their livelihood elsewhere. It was this, to a large extent, which had stimulated the Arabs to burst out of their former home on their career of conquest. The same factors were operative also with the Jews. Family after family was leaving the region in which its ancestors had been settled from time immemorial, and going to seek its fortune in fresh fields of opportunity.”(Roth 1948, Ch. 15, #3, p. 156) One wonders if this process of desiccation is continuing. Has it been ameliorated by irrigation? Or exacerbated by climate change? back |
| 10. | Roth (1948), Ch. 11, #3, p. 122 back |
| 11. | See The Jewish World, edited by Elie Kedourie, Ch. 4, “The Talmud,” by Jacob Neusner back |
| 12. | The Jewish World, edited by Elie Kedourie, Ch. 4, “The Talmud,” by Jacob Neusner back |
| 13. | Tacitus, Histories, Book V, Ch. 5. Roth doesn’t mention Tacitus, probably because Tacitus is very critical of the Jews, calling them “this vilest of peoples [taeterrimam gentem],” with customs that are “perverse and disgusting [sinistra foeda].” Tacitus says that Jews were the most despised of the subject peoples [despectissima pars servientium] in the Persian and Assyrian Empires.(Histories, V, 8) Tacitus mentions Jesus and Christianity in his Annals. back |
| 14. | Histories, Book V, Ch. 1 back |
| 15. | Roth 1948, Ch. 13, #3, p. 140 back |