[Studies in Judaism: First Series]

XIV. The Earliest Jewish Community in Europe

Roman Judaism has disappeared from our guide-books. Civilisation has levelled down the walls of the Ghetto, and its former inhabitants are not any longer “a people that dwell alone.” But with this well-deserved destruction a good deal of the interest was also destroyed which the traveller used to attach to “the peculiar people” enclosed in that terrible slum of Rome.

Still, if there is anything eternal in the “eternal city,” which was neither reconstructed by the Cæsars, nor improved upon by the Popes, it is the little Jewish community at Rome. It has survived the former; it has suffered for many centuries under the latter, and, partaking in the general revival which has come upon the Italian nation, it may still be destined for a great future. Indeed, the history of the relation of Israel to Rome is so old that it is not lacking even in legendary elements. On the day on which King Solomon married the daughter of Pharaoh, the Rabbis narrate, there came down the angel Gabriel. He put a reed into the sea, which, by means of the slime that adhered to it, formed itself, in the course of time, into a large island, on which the city of Rome was built—an event with which the troubles of Israel began. These were the evil consequences of the first mésalliance. Even more unfortunate for Israel (and it is not impossible that this is the meaning of the legend) were the results of that spiritual mixed marriage between Judaism and paganism which took place at a much later period, whereat a blunt soldier, who sympathised with neither, and “who dealt in salvation as he dealt in provinces,” acted as best man. As a fact, the parties concerned never understood each other properly. The declaration of love, and the final proposal, were made in an Alexandrine jargon, strange to both, the obscurities of which only grew with the commentaries each successive generation added to them. Under such circumstances, a happy union was not to be expected, and the family quarrel which fills the annals of civilised Europe soon broke out. Judaism, more particularly Roman Judaism, witnessed this struggle from the beginning, and its fortunes were greatly dependent on the chance which of these two elements, the Jewish or the pagan, won the ascendency.

However, I am theologising too much, whilst I am deviating from the subject of these lines. Nor could I think of giving here, even in outline, the history of the oldest Jewish community in Europe. This has been already admirably done by Dr. A. Berliner, who has made the history of the Jews of Rome the subject of his studies for nearly a quarter of a century. I intend only to reproduce here, in a stray fashion, some of those impressions and reflections which, I am certain, must occur to every Jewish traveller in Italy.

Now I do not think for a moment that we Jews should have a point of view of our own for looking at things and men in this paradise of Europe. It would be as silly to have a Jewish Baedeker as to think of orthodox mathematics or an ecclesiastical logic or a racial morality—though unfortunately there exist such things. But on the other hand, if we have not, like the fox in the fable, left our heart at home, let us not do violence to our feelings by passing over everything Jewish, over sights which might remind us of our history, with a certain indifference which would be affected on our part. We are not all little Goethes, nor even little Ruskins, and our artistic enjoyment is hardly so intense as to shut our hearts against impressions which force themselves upon us either by the way of remembrance of the past, or even as a living contrast in the present.

It so happened that my first visit to the Vatican was on a Friday. After doing my work in the Vatican Library, which is open till noon, I went into the adjoining Church of St. Peter.

One should be, like the angel of death in the legend, full of eyes, properly to see all the wonders of art and marvels of architecture at which human genius and piety laboured busily through centuries, in adorning the grandest of sacred buildings in the world. But there is Baedeker or Murray serving at least as a pair of good spectacles to the layman, and it was by their aid that I made my round in St. Peter. But lo, whilst you are observing the celebrated Pietà by Michael Angelo, and, according to the instruction of your guides, admiring both the grief of the Mother and the death of the Son, you notice in its vicinity a little column, surrounded by rails to which the pilgrims approach with a certain awe; for “Tradition affirms it to have been brought from Jerusalem.” Naturally, one is instantly reminded of the report, given by the famous traveller of Tudela, of the curiosities of Rome, which among other things records, “That there are also to be seen in St. Giovanni in Porta Latina (probably meant for Lateran) the two brazen pillars, constructed by King Solomon of blessed memory, whose name, Solomon, the son of David, is engraved upon each; of which he was also told that every year about the 9th of Ab (the anniversary of the destruction of Jerusalem), these pillars sweat so much that water runs down from them.” So far Benjamin of Tudela in the twelfth century. In our days pillars weep no longer, and even of men it is considered a special sign of good breeding to behave pillar-like; but a sigh is still permissible at the sight of this temple-column, which in its captivity symbolises, not less than the Pietà, the grief of a whole people. Of course, not possessing on the spot either the Itinerary or even Urlick, one is unable to establish the connection between these two traditions and their claim to authenticity. Perhaps one may even comfort oneself on the same ground on which the famous curé tried to appease his flock who were sobbing bitterly at his telling them the Passion story. He exclaimed: “My children, do not weep so much; it happened long ago, and even perhaps is not quite true.”

However, the Vatican is the last place in the world to exercise your critical faculties; you are so deeply absorbed in seeing, that you have no time to think. So on I went, from aisle to aisle, from niche to niche, from chapel to chapel, looking, staring, and admiring, till of a sudden my eyes were struck by a large statue, on which the words, “Thou shalt have no other God before me,” are engraved. There I stood before a question of exegesis, where one is permitted to use his right senses without any regard to the æsthetic side. Yet not all the manifold expositions of the Decalogue, nor all the talk about the subjective-objective, the absolute and the real, with which metaphysicians have tried to confuse the notion of the Unity of God, will reconcile one to the meaning which Mediæval Art has impressed upon the Ten Commandments. The truth has to be sought elsewhere, and thus my thoughts were turned to the synagogue, and thither I went.

The day was already drawing to its close, and, by a marvellous coincidence, I arrived at the synagogue just as the congregation was intoning the words: “The Lord is one, and His name is one to His renown and glory.” Here was sound, simple exegesis, though sadly lacking in the illustrative matter in which the Vatican is so rich. But what need was there of any real or artificial “aid to the believer,” in the presence of such a living faith, as enabled this little community to maintain its protesting position in the teeth of the mistress of the world! And this even at a time, when it only required a hint from the successors of the old Roman Emperors to make the whole world renounce its right of thinking and judging, and, were we to believe Herr Janssen, even to feel perfectly happy in this torpor.

But, by the way, are our own times much better? As I write these lines (October 1893) I hear that a Bill has been brought into the German Diet, asking that the Talmud should be submitted to a Commission (which en passant, has been sitting in unbroken session in that country since the days of Pfefferkorn in the fifteenth century) with the purpose of examining its contents, while in the Vatican the very pupils of Loyola are offering every convenience and comfort to the student who should care to devote his time to Rabbinic literature. Does not the work of a great number of our poets, historians, theologians, and so-called seers in this blessed century of ours, in many respects prove but a strained effort to destroy the few humanitarian principles which were established a few generations ago, as well as to deify every brutal warrior who was successful in his day? Again, is the national idea so much sublimer, so much grander, than that of a universal religion, that we would willingly permit the former to employ the means which have been denied to the latter as inhuman and barbarous? Every age has its own idolatry, and the eternal wandering Jew will always be the chosen victim of the Moloch in fashion.

Let us, however, return to the synagogue, which withstood many a cruelty, both ancient and modern. The place where the synagogue stands is near the Ghetto, now called Piazza di Scuola. It is, besides a few other communal houses, the only building left there,—all those narrow, dirty, and typhoid-breeding streets which formed the old Ghetto having been demolished by a sage and humane government, which by this action wiped out the last stain from its history. There, on this vast blank is the synagogue, a comparatively small, insignificant building, laden with heavy age and looking down on her children whom she has been nursing, consoling, and protecting for centuries, but who, now grown old, have forsaken her and scattered to all the ends of the city. Of all her former acquaintances there appears to be left only father Tiber, who would seem to be murmuring to her many an old tale of the times before she was called into existence. And if he listened to the special prayers recited within her walls by the deputies of the Jewish communities, when preparing themselves to go to the court of the Pope, the Tiber heard many a sigh and cry, wrung out from the heart of a Jewish captive who, preferring death to slavery even under the masters of the world, found his last repose in its waters. But insignificant as this synagogue appears, she proved the spiritual bulwark against all the attacks of the time, and you admire her brave resistance all the more when you look at that multitude of churches and cloisters in the closest vicinity of the Ghetto, impressing you as so many intrenchments, all directing their missiles and weapons against this humble, defenceless building, threatening it with death and destruction. One of these churches, probably founded by some Jewish convert, who gained in it both salvation and a good living, bears on its gates in Hebrew letters the inscription: “I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in the way that was not good, after their own thoughts. A people that provoketh me to anger continually to my face” (Isaiah lxv. 2, 3). Menace is followed by persuasion, the cited verses being accompanied by the Latin words: “Indulgentia plenaria quotodiana perpetua pro vivis et defunctis.” Theologians who like to quarrel most about things they can know least, have for ages discussed the question, whether prayers for the dead are of any use; here the matter is decided by a simple advertisement. It is not to be denied that one would enjoy the fortunes accumulated by one’s late sinner of an uncle all the better for being sure that a few pennyworths of prayer enable the legatee to make one’s benefactor in Hades comfortable and happy.

The thought is very consoling indeed, and it is not to be wondered at that the Roman synagogue could not entirely withstand its temptations, and introduced into the offering-blessing after one is called up to the Torah, the words: “To the advancing of the soul of the departed.” Of course much of this tendency may be attributed to the Ford Jabbok,²⁶⁶ which was and is still very popular in that country; but the fact that the author of this Jewish “Book of the Dead” was an Italian (from Modena), shows clearly that there was some Catholic influence at work, from which even the fellow-countrymen of Azariah de Rossi and Judah Messer Leon could not entirely emancipate themselves.

I ought to have spoken of Roman synagogues, since the building in the Ghetto to which I have been constantly alluding comprises four prayer-houses devoted to Spanish and Italian rites. It says much for Roman Judaism, that they did not consider ritual differences of such importance as to prevent them from forming one community for all charitable and congregational purposes. In Verona and in Modena some congregations even retained the German rite, which their ancestors who immigrated from the Rhine provinces brought with them, whilst they accepted the Spanish pronunciation. I wish that the Anglo-Jewish community could see their way to imitate their example. Not that I think for a moment that the Spanish pronunciation is more correct than the German. Each system has its own mistakes and corruptions; and it is more than probable that the prophet Isaiah, or even the author of Ecclesiastes, would be as little able to follow the prayers in Bevis Marks as in Duke’s Place. But since the non-Jewish scientific world has, though only by pure accident, accepted the Spanish way of reading the Hebrew, I should like to see this trifling difference of Baruch over Buruch at last disappear, by pronouncing the camets-vowel a instead of o, and accepting similar little changes, which are of no real importance to us.

The inside of these synagogues is even more simple than their outside. I was told that the synagogue which was burned down last winter, and which also formed a part of this building, could boast of many fine decorations and carvings, etc., but I could observe nothing of the kind in the synagogues I had occasion to frequent. Nor is there much of natural decorum in them, and they reconcile one perfectly to the worst of the Small Synagogues elsewhere. I venture to think that in this respect, too, we have to recognise Catholic influence. It was, I think, one of the leaders in the Oxford Movement who expressed his delight at seeing in Italy a woman poorly-dressed coming into the church, who, after putting down the basket from her back, kneels before one of the many altars and says her prayers. A good deal of this familiarity in the place of worship may also be noticed in the Roman synagogues, where I have seen a woman come into the partition for men, notwithstanding their having a separate gallery, without bonnet or hat on her head, and with an infant in her arms, and listen there to the prayers, till she walked home with her husband. The other people were also very restless, coming and going often, whilst, as soon as the reading of the Law was over, the greater part of the worshippers left the synagogue. It was not a very delightful sight. A minus of decorum does not always mean a plus of devotion; just as little as a maximum of respectability and stiffness are to be taken as signs of true piety.

It is not uninteresting to notice that the Roman synagogue, in spite of its old traditions, did not entirely shut itself against modern reforms. Among them there is that of “calling up the people to the Torah” by the simple formula, “Let the Priest” (or “the Levite”) “step forth,”²⁶⁷ and so on, not mentioning either names or titles, which I should like to recommend most strongly to our congregations. I hope that no man will suspect me of such heresy as that of questioning the wisdom of the Synagogue Regulations. But I am inclined to think that the business of conferring the degrees of Rabbi, “Associate” or “Master,” does not exactly fall within the sphere of activity of the Wardens. The matter could only be decided by a proper Board of examination. As the Council is not provided with such a Board, nor is every aspirant to this honour prepared to undergo the examination required, the wisest course would be to give up titles altogether, calling up all people alike in the way indicated.

The robes the ministers wear (somewhat similar to those of the Greek clergy), are probably also an innovation of modern date,—the old orthodox Rabbis looking at any special vestment for the Preacher or Reader with the same feeling of disgust which the old Puritans entertained for surplice or mitre. But the principle of “The Beauty of Holiness” proved too strong for resistance, and it was only a pardonable vanity when the reformers applied it to their own persons; “Vanity of vanities,” saith the preacher, so often, that he gets rather to like it. This vanity is greatly redeemed by the fact that the preacher does not grudge his uniform to his humbler brother, the beadle, who is in most cases to be distinguished from the officiating ministry only by the brass-plate on his breast, on which the word “Servant” is engraved. Considering the great confusion arising from the meaningless “Reverend” and the universal white neck-tie, such a label, indicating the proper office of the bearer, might, perhaps, prove as useful among the English Jews as it is among the Jews of Rome.

It was with a pupil of the Rabbinical College, in company with his friends, that I took my first walk through ancient Rome. I felt attracted to him by his striking face of that peculiar fine Jewish type, which is more common among the Jews in the East than among us. And when he was reading the lesson from the Prophets in the synagogue, where I made his acquaintance, he reminded me of that Jewish boy with bright eyes, black curls, and features strikingly beautiful walking as a captive from Jerusalem through the streets of Rome some seventeen centuries ago, whose proficiency in the words of Isaiah caused his redemption. It would be an exaggeration to say that my companion’s remarks were very instructive from an artistic point of view. Being born and bred in Rome, he passed with utter indifference many objects which we are bidden to admire, whilst at others he actually shouted out “Image,” or made some other prosaic remark. But in a country where one is determined to play the heathen for so many weeks, to worship superannuated deities, to get into raptures at every reminiscence of superseded and vanishing religions, and to be delighted at the sights of “greasy saints and martyrs hairy,” there can be no great harm in being called back to one’s true nature.

The feelings crowding upon one, when entering that part of the ancient city which probably was in the mind of the Rabbis when they spoke of “Guilty Rome,” are of a conflicting nature. Every stone and every brick there saw the humiliation of Israel, in every theatre and every circus the Jew served as a comic figure, and was held up to ridicule, whilst there was, perhaps, hardly a single lane or gate through which those who resented the yoke of the “anti-Semites of Antiquity” did not pass, in order to “be butchered to make a Roman holiday.” What concerns a Jew most in this perished world of ruins, and at the same time causes him the deepest grief, is the triumphal arch of Titus, “commemorating the defeat of the Jews, and dedicated to him by his successor, Domitian.” Enough has been said and written about it both by antiquarians and theologians, the former admiring the workmanship of the reliefs, the latter perceiving in it a proof of the fulfilment of the well-known passages in the New Testament about the destruction of the Temple, which came to pass in spite of the efforts made by Titus to save it. Those who have read Bernay’s essay on the “Chronik des Sulpicius Severus” know that the behaviour of “the delight of the human species” on that occasion is rather open to doubt, and it is more probable that, instead of trying to rescue it, he commanded that it should be set on fire. Josephus, who witnessed the shame of his compatriots and co-religionists, has left us a full account of the triumphal procession. Only a flunkey like Josephus could maintain that calm indifference with which he describes the events of the “bitter day,” the perusal of which makes one’s blood boil. His description fairly agrees with the famous relief on the arch, showing that part of the procession in which the table with the shewbread, the candlestick with the seven lamps, and the golden trumpets figure as the chief objects. The only thing which we miss is the “Law of the Jews,” which, according to Josephus, was carried in the triumph as “the last of all the spoils.” Was it only an oversight of the artist, or had he no place for it, or is it Josephus who committed the error, mistaking some other object for the Scroll of the Law? I dearly hope that this last was the case, and that Heine was under the impulse of a true and real and poetic inspiration when he wrote (speaking of the Holy Scripture to which he owed his conversion): “The Jews, who appreciate the value of precious things, knew right well what they did when, at the burning of the second temple they left to their fate the golden and silver implements of sacrifice, the candlesticks and lamps, even the breastplate of the High Priest adorned with great jewels, but saved the Bible. This was the real treasure of the temple, and, thanks be to God! it was not left a prey to the flames, nor to the fury of Titus Vespasian, the wretch, who, as the Rabbi tells us, met with so dreadful a death.”

However, there were others who brought the glad tidings of the Old Testament to Rome long before there existed a New one. And this is, on the other side, what makes Rome a sort of Terra Sancta even to the Jew. It is true that we have not to look for the footprints of the prophets, for whom even tradition never claimed “the gift of missionary-travelling.” But might not the ground there have received a sort of consecration by the fact that it was traversed by the ambassadors of Judas Maccabæus (about 161 b.c.) “to make a league of amity and confederacy” with the Roman Senate? Of the embassy of Simon the Maccabee (about 140 b.c.) there is actual historical evidence that they began to propagate in Rome the Jewish religion. Some seventy or eighty years later the Jews had already their own quarter in Rome, with their own synagogues, which they were in the habit of visiting, “most especially on the sacred Sabbath days, when they publicly cultivate their national philosophy.” That many of the oldest teachers of Israel, the Tannaim, went to Rome as deputies, and that one of them (R. Mathia ben Chares) founded a school there early in the second century, is also an authenticated fact. One would like to know what they taught, and in what way they expounded their national philosophy. Most of all one would like to know what were the spiritual means they employed in their proselytising work, in which they were, according to the testimony of history, so successful. Did they preach in the streets? Or did they hold public controversies? Or did they even send out Epistles which, in form at least, served as a model to apostles of another creed? How many a problem would be solved; how many a miracle would disappear; how many a book would become superfluous, if we could obtain certainty about these points! The Talmud tells us little, almost nothing, about these important things, whilst we get from the Roman writers only sneers and raillery. To these respectable Romans the Jews were only a mob of unlettered atheists. Indeed, to a good orthodox heathen, a religion without images and statues, with a God without a pedigree and without a theogony, was an impossible thing. Those poor metaphysicians!

However, why dwell so long on a past world? A famous Rabbi once exclaimed: “If a man would ask thee, ‘Where is thy God?’ answer him: ‘In the great city of Rome.’ ” The underlying idea was the mystical notion that wherever Israel had to migrate, they were accompanied by the Divine presence. And Rome was, in the times of the Rabbis, the point to which the streams of Jewish migration from the Holy Land chiefly converged. But now, instead of to Rome, might we not point to London and New York as centres of Jewish migrations?