The story of the Jew for young people

Front matter

For Young People

BY

Elma Ehrlich Levinger

Contents

PAGE Cuapter 1. THE WANDERING JEW~ 222 en CHAPTER II. THE JEWS IN BIBLE DAYS....ccccccsscsssssescsncessssmnnee 25

. The Three Great Divisions in Jewish History.

. How the World Phase of Jewish History Began. . The Hebrews Come to Palestine.

Preface

This work is an attempt to summarize the great events of Jewish history for young people of confirmation and post-confirmation age. Obviously, the Story of the Jew is too long and contains too many difficult problems for any high school student to grasp it in its entirety; but it is vital that the young Jew shall have some sense of this great living drama of which he himself is a part.

Considering the complexity of its subject, this book is written with the utmost simplicity. There are also the usual aids to study, adapted from histories used in junior and senior high schools, so that this may constitute a practical text book for the pupil, while the teacher may read further along the lines of problems involved. Class projects are suggested from time to time on which a further year of work may be based, or which may lend greater interest to the study itself.

The attempt is made here to view the long, colorful career of the Jewish people in a realistic, many-sided manner; not exclusively from the national or the religious angle. In fact, if there is any thesis at all in this book, it is rather that of the four major tendencies of Jewish life as defined by Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver— prophecy, legalism, mysticism and nationalism, the woven strand of these four composing Jewish history.

In proportion, this book has followed a sound psychological method, giving least space to the biblical period, which is furthest removed and which the child has already studied in the lower grades of the religious school; more and more attention is given to each period as it comes nearer the present and grows more interesting and more important to the American student of the twentieth century.

F L. J. L.

Columbus, Ohio, 5688-1928.

Preface To The Second Edition

The first edition of this book was exhausted within a month. It was introduced in many schools throughout the country. The new edition contains additional matter: index, maps, charts and illustrations. Ee

: January, 1929.

IX r bi by ce tory of the Jew

I, THE WANDERING JEW

If you were to begin a journey around the world today, there is no land in which you would not find at least a few of the wandering Children of Israel. In Palestine, the ancient home-land, you would find Jews from every corner of the globe: brown Jews from Tunis and Algeria, Jews from the shattered ghettos of Russia and Poland, Jews from free America. In Abyssinia you would meet the Falashas, black Jews who have almost forgotten their Judaism, who in every way but a few religious rites resemble the dark-skinned, thick-lipped natives among whom they have lived so long. In China, you might visit the deserted synagogue of the handful of Chinese Jews, who have long called that far-off empire their home.

You would find Jews in every European country: Germany, France, England. You might see them on many a ship ploughing its way through the waters which separate the persecuted sons of Jacob from the freedom of Brazil and Argentine. While here in America you would discover Jews scattered from ocean to ocean; in factories and upon their farms; a mere handful in some little Western village; in New York a mighty company, more Jews than ever lived in Jerusalem when Solomon reigned there in all his golden - glory. For the Jew has wandered to every spot upon the earth in his age-long search for safety and a home.

Whence and how did these Jews travel to the lands where we find them today? What has been the history of the fifteen millions of Jews, today far-flung from pole to pole?

——— ee Pe eee RAOLSi,j] HeiMap ao Saivq Lwaay

Why is it that four million—one fourth of all the Jewish population of the world—live in the United States?. What adventures have beset the path of the Wandering Jew as his weary feet carried him from land to land, from the almost ~ forgotten journey through the Wilderness of Sinai to our own time?

There is an old, old legend of the Wandering Jew, a tragic figure bowed beneath a curse, forced to flee from land to land without ever finding lasting shelter, miraculously doomed to eternal life. He is a true picture of his people, a race of wanderers, who, during the ages, have journeyed through every country, tossed upon every sea: slaves in Egypt and princes in Spain, beggars in Russia and banker kings in Germany, dreamy scholars in Poland and practical statesmen in England and America. He has suffered under every tyrant from Pharaoh of old to the Czar of Russia. He has seen the destruction and punishment of his persecutors from Rome to Austria. He has witnessed the growth of the Thirteen Colonies from a weak, disunited people into a mighty nation, these United States of America. In our own day his hands have ploughed the fields and dug the trenches and broken the roads of the New Palestine. A traveller in every land, a toiler in every vineyard, a soldier on every battlefield, the Wandering Jew carries in his heart the most varied and richest history that has ever blest a nation!

In the pages that follow we will trace the steps of the Eternal Wanderer from the beginning of his many jour- -neys, the trek of a shepherd folk across a desert country, when Abraham, the Father of the Jewish people, called his family together before his tent of black goats’ hair and bade them follow him into a new place where they might worship the One God. We will see the persecuted Hebrews in Egypt, toiling under the shadows of the pyramids, setting out under the guidance of that God-sent Shepherd, Moses, to find the Promised Land. We will hear the Ten Words which laid upon the world new commandments of righteousness, and the thundering of the prophets, whose words still are a golden heritage, not only to the Jew but to all the civilized nations of the earth.

We will watch the wandering people as they set out on the first of their many exiles; but even under the willows of far-off Babylon they will cherish the dream of the Return, until at last Ezra and Nehemiah will guide the homesick exiles back to Jerusalem. Again walls will rise about Jerusalem; but once more we will behold the exiles driven along the roads that lead to Rome, while upon the desolate hill of Zion the flames from Roman torches leave of the Temple only a blackened Western Wall, destined to be hal- — lowed by countless prayers and tears.

But though an exile from his home-land and his Temple, the Wanderer remained in heart a citizen of Jerusalem, to which his eyes ever turned in prayer. The homeless race, a people without a land, became the People of the Book, a keeper of the holy Torah. In the little village of Jabneh, and later in the prison-house of Rabbi Akiba, the rabbis carried on the work of the priests, who had served in the Temple, and of the prophets, who had defied the ungodly kings of Israel and of Judah. First in Palestine, later amid the dim, rich glories of Babylon, the rabbis compiled their Talmud; exiled and persecuted, the scholars of Judah forged a chain of learning which was to bind the Jew forever to his glorious past. The People had created the Book; now the Book re-created the People. . . . A man with dreamy eyes bending over an open Book is our picture of Israel in his exile.

Now we will follow the bleeding feet of the Wanderer to the goodly land of Spain, where for a while it seemed that the lot of the hunted people had fallen in pleasant places. In those golden days in Spain poets like Judah Halevi sang their songs, often songs which a true son of Spain might have written, yet sometimes tinged with a longing for the Holy City, Jerusalem, which they could not forget. To this same period belongs Maimonides, master of Jewish law, philosopher, and physician to the Sultan of Egypt. Here the slaves of Rome became free men again and moved proudly among the statesmen and scholars of Moorish Spain.

But the pleasant land of Spain was, after all, only a frail Succah, a temporary dwelling in the Wilderness. The sunrise glories of the Wanderer’s sojourn in Spain slowly dimmed to darkness; in later days, those who had considered it their true home died at the stake as martyrs or were driven into exile. No Jew remained in Spain save those who, for the sake of their lives and possessions promised to accept Christianity. They became Marranos (Secret Jews), who never really forsook the faith of their fathers, but continued to practise the forbidden rites of Israel in secret places, although they knew that such observances, if discovered, would mean imprisonment or death by torture. It was a group of these Marranos who offered the bigoted sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, enough gold to fit out three ships for an obscure Italian adventurer, Christopher Columbus, that he might find a new and shorter route to India. On the day that he set sail upon the Sea of Darkness, never dreaming that he would find a new land, nor that it would some day prove a place of refuge for the Jew and other persecuted ones of the earth, thousands of Jews left Spain, exiles driven out into a world that had little welcome or pity for the wretched sons of Israel.

It was the Ninth of Ab, the day on which the Temple at Jerusalem had been twice destroyed; the exiles wept over the grief that had come to Israel more than fourteen centuries earlier as they mourned their own fate. How could they know that the year 1492 was a shield with two sides, one of mourning and one of joy, a year that was to mark their exile from Spain and the discovery of a new and friendly land!

Those who survived the horrors of that exile passed from the sunny groves of Spain to the penned-in Ghettos of Italy and Germany. If we picture the Wanderer through those years that began in the darkness of the Spanish expulsion and ended in the sunrise of the French Revolution, we think of him as a weary old man, a frightened look in his eyes, a staff in one hand, a holy book clasped to his breast. For the Ghetto taught the Jew fear and the bitterness of slavery. It did more than pen him within crowded, narrow streets, behind great gates which were locked at night; even when those gates were open the Jew feit cut off and isolated from the Gentile world. He wore the yellow cap of shame; he — was spat upon and mocked; often without warning the mob would storm the gates of the Ghetto and break into his. home, sparing in its intolerant hate neither the old scholar nor the helpless child. No wonder that his eyes always held a look of fear, that his back always cringed, that he was glad to forget the miseries and the hatred of the world outside the Ghetto in the home festivals of his people, in the study of his hély Torah.

Try to think of the Jew of thatyday as an exile and wanderer, hounded now from France, now from England; an exile even in the lands which granted him a home, for everywhere he was made to feel that he was the son of a peculiar people. No wonder that in spite of the difficulties and the dangers of the journey, more than one Jewish pilgtim sought Palestine, little more than a barren spot in the wilderness, but the one place on earth which he might truly call his home.

In the course of time the Wanderer came to Poland also, that wild and barbarous country where even at this day he is considered an unwanted alien. Even more than in the - Ghetto of Germany, the Jew of Poland and Russia sought refuge in himself, finding in his own religion and in his own learning the little happiness and peace which his neighbors could not destroy. Here in Eastern Europe arose the conflict between the Talmudists and the mystic group of Chassidim, a sect that embraced a great portion of East European Jewry. Such men as Elijah Gaon, teacher of the Law, and the Baal Shem Tov (the dreamy Master of the Name), are as truly voices of this period as Judah Halevi and Maimonides were of theirs.

At last the Wanderer passes into the World Period of his varied history, that portion of his journey in which the sons of Jacob were scattered as never before. Consider that Salonica has a larger percentage of Jews than any other city in the world. Think for a moment of the many Jewish citizens not only in England, but in all its dependencies, Canada, Australia, and even India, where a Jew, Rufus Isaacs (Lord Reading) ruled as viceroy. Picture to yourself the former Pale, that broad belt of land stretching across Eastern Europe, in which at least eight million Jews lived before the World War, beginning in Lithuania, passing through Poland, the Ukraine, Galicia and Roumania down to Constantinople. A people, who, according to the old promise given to Abraham, were to be as widely scattered as the sand upon the shores of the sea!

The beginning of this World Period for Jewry dawned with the Declaration of Independence in 1776, when the North American colonies proclaimed their doctrine of perfect equality and freedom for every citizen, no matter of what race and religion. Freedom for the European Jew began with the French Revolution, a few years later; then came the political emancipation under Napoleon, the spiritual emancipation through Moses Mendelssohn. Himself the product of the German Ghetto, this hunch-backed little scholar brought the light of learning to his people; while his friend, Lessing, a leader in German thought and literature, pleaded for tolerance for all men.

But while later champions of the Jew, like Riesser of Germany and Macaulay of England, fought for the political emancipation of the Jew, a new form of an old evil arose throughout Europe, anti-Semitism. Formerly the Jew had, been hated and persecuted because of his religion; now in Germany, and later in France, prejudice against the Jewish people was based upon the teachings of the scholars who declared that the Semites were a lower and degraded race, and that the Jew should always be considered an alien among peoples with a European heritage and culture. Now — the legal persecution gave way to social discrimination; Jews were not allowed to hold full professorships in German universities nor any rank in the German army. This hatred grew until at the end of the nineteenth century it culminated in the Dreyfus case in France.

Many believed that the World War, during which Jewish soldiers bled and died upon every battlefield of Europe, would bring an era of peace and goodwill to all mankind. But in the months that followed the Treaty of Versailles, occurred some of the most terrible massacres in Jewish history. Many communities in Russia and Poland which had survived the horrors of famine and of invasion were swept away. The hate which war always engenders took a terrible toll of the martyred nation whose ancient daily salutation is “Peace” (Shalom).

Again a shield of two faces, one of darkness, one of light, confronts us. Such centers of Jewish learning and culture as Wolozhin and Vilna have been sadly crippled by the World War; as yet no community in war-broken Europe has been able to take their place. Will a few Jewish scholars in America, with its unlimited resources of wealth and opportunity, take up the torch dropped from the hand of the European rabbis and scholars?

We see a picture of doubt and uncertainty. But there is joy in the heart of the Wanderer as he turns to the spot which he has never forgotten, the little land of long-ago, the little land of Palestine. The Western Wall, blackened by time and wet with tears of many exiles, still remains; but those who pause within its shadows need no longer weep. In the schools of Palestine little children from all parts of the world recite their lessons in Hebrew, the language of our prophets, now revived as a living tongue after these many years. In the colonies of Palestine, devoted young men and women from every corner of the earth teach the long-barren fields to blossom afresh. To these pioneers the journey of the Wandering Jew is over at last.

Meanwhile, in every land beneath the sun, the Jewish people are living and working out their own destiny as part of the history of the world. What their future history will be no one dares prophesy; we can only hope that it will be no less heroic than the history of the past which we will now trace together as we read the “Story of the Jew.”

BOOKS FOR FURTHER STUDY

As Jewish history is such an immense subject for study, there are many other books to which we can refer for further knowledge of the different matters treated in this book. After every chapter we shall refer to some of these, the simpler ones for the pupils, the more difficult for the teachers; every school library should contain these works,

For pupils there are especially:

J. Reizenstein: Biblical History.

Jack Meyers: The Story of the Jewish People, 3 volumes. M. H. Harris: The People of the Book, 3 volumes. Thousand Years of Jewish History.

History of the Medieval Jews.

Modern Jewish History.

For older pupils:

Adele Bildersee: Jewish Post-biblical History through Great Personalities.

For Younger pupils:

Max Weis: Great Men in Israel.

Elma Ehrlich Levinger: Great Jews Since Bible Times.

For teachers there is greater variety. The Jewish Encyclopedia (12 vols.) has hundreds of interesting articles on every nation, period and person mentioned in this book. The Encyclopedia for Jewish Home and School is a one-volume work of similar scope.

There are also:

The Holy Scriptures (Jewish Publication Society).

H, Graetz: History of the Jews, 6 volumes.

S. M. Dubnow: An.Outline of Jewish History, 3 volumes.

Margolis and Marx: A History of the Jewish People; this is in one big volume, and is the latest and most concise of these great works.

I. Elbogen: History of the Jews after the Fall of the Jewish State.

Special works will be referred to in different chapters. But every teacher should read S. M. Dubnow: Jewish History, a little book which gives a general view of every period by one who knows the facts. Fine extracts from the various original writers will be found in:

J. H. Hertz: A Book of Jewish Thoughts.

B. Halper: Post Biblical Hebrew Literature. P. Raskin: Anthology of Modern Jewish Poetry.

For the modern period, there are two excellent studies:

A. L. Sachar: Factors in Modern Jewish History, a syllabus. Max Raisin: History of the Jews in Modern Times.

In addition, the teacher of Jewish history should study for background some brief history of the world, including all the various ages and lands in which the Jew has lived, such as:

H. G. Wells: Outline of History.

Hendrick W. Van Loon: Story of Mankind.

There are other one-volume Jewish histories, to which we are not referring in this book because they do not present any greatly differing material from the history as written here.

In addition, there is some excellent fiction and poetry, both for children and adults, which will give reality and color to many of the periods of Jewish history. These will be mentioned in connection with the different chapters, as also some biographies and other historical works on special topics. “Apples and Honey,” a collection of such material, is a general work that should be in every religious school library,

1, Where do Jews live today? Where did they originate?

2. In what lands have Jews had great centers in the past?

3. Why did they leave these places?

4. What is the special nature of the modern period for the Jew? 5. What is the problem of the Jews at the present time?

1. How many Jews are there in the world? Where do they live? You will find your facts in the American Jewish Yearbook.

2. Are the Jews a race? You can debate this subject, or study the facts on both sides for a class discussion.

3. How Jewish history differs from that of other nations, such as the American. Its length, its spread to many countries, the loyalty of the Jews without a land or government, their resistance to persecution, and other points which you will be able to work out and prove. - i

4. Asa class project to study the historical background of our own lives, trace the family history of the members of the class for three generations, seeing where they all came from and how they gathered together in one city; or the history of the Jews of your own city, to find out where the earliest settlers came from, the later comers down to the present, how many of the present day Jews came from various countries, how many were born in your city, and so on. This last will be largely estimated, but will teach you much about that history which is a real part of our own lives.

II

1. The Three Great Divisions in Jewish History. The history of the world is usually divided into three great periods; ancient history, ending with the fall of Rome in the year 486; medieval history from 486 to the discovery of America in 1492; and modern history, extending from the discovery of the New World to our own day.

The history of the Jews is the only one of all the peoples in Europe and America which falls within all three divisions, ancient, medieval and modern. But the divisions of Jewish history are different from those of world history. The ancient history of the Jews as a separate nation is that long period extending from their earliest beginnings to the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in the year 70 C. E. (Common Era). Medieval history for the Jews is the painful story of their scattering into many lands and their persecutions in various countries; it began when they were driven forth from Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70; it ended with the French Revolution of 1789. The modern period of Jewish history begins with the freedom brought by the French Revolution, and continues through our own times,

As we study the Story of the Jew we must remember that his long and varied history has been made during many centuries and in many lands all over the world. But first we must realize that for two thousand years, half of their recorded history, the Jewish people existed as a nation in ees ene ASOLSIiPy HSIMapP rrr E AdoLsipl AWM

THE JEWS IN BIBLE DAYS a7 and near Palestine. The next seventeen hundred years were spent in exile among the nations of Europe and Asia. The last one hundred and fifty years have seen the Jew accepted as an equal citizen in all the leading nations of the earth, the growth of a Jewish center in America, and the beginning of a triumphant return to Palestine.

2. How the World Phase of Jewish History Began. When we studied Bible history in the lower grades of our ‘Religious School, many of us did not realize the importance of this long residence in the homeland. We did not see Palestine as the stage of the Jew’s national life for almost half of his history. We did not understand how deeply the lessons learned in Palestine had sunk into the Jewish soul, or how powerfully the laws worked out there would some day govern his life and his thought in the faraway lands of exile. For in these two thousand years, ending in the fall of the Temple at Jerusalem before the Roman legions, the Jew on his home soil developed for himself the two great ideas, which have made him different from all the other nations, These two ideas are monotheism and the pro-

_ phetic ideals.

Monotheism is the Jew’s passionate belief in one God; even to this day it forms the keynote of his religion. At first, like all great ideas, this conception of one God grew very slowly. In the beginning of their tribal history, the

_ Jews, like all primitive peoples worshipped a national God, _ the God of Israel. But little by little they came to believe _ ina God who was not only national but universal, not only _ the God of Israel but the Father of all mankind. The two ¥ daughter religions of Israel, Christianity and Mohammedan- _ ism, accepted this teaching. Through them the idea of one _ God, first expressed by a conquered and despised little

Prophecy, the second peculiar gift of the Jewish people, also took root and flourished in Palestine. In the next chapter we shall study the growth of prophecy from its simplest beginnings to its final and lofty triumph. We need only record here that prophecy which was born in Palestine influenced the religion and morals not only of the Jewish people but of all the foremost nations of our own day.

3. The Hebrews Come to Palestine. Jewish history begins to assume a definite shape about the year 1200 B. C. E., (Before Common Era) when we discover scattered Hebrew tribes already living in Palestine. But as early as 2000 B. C. E. we have the stories of the fathers of the Jewish people, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Then comes the tale of the sons of Jacob and their adventures in the court of Pharaoh, where Joseph, once a slave, now ruled as lord over Egypt. Monuments of that hazy, far-off time repeat the story of Moses, the shepherd leader, and the Exodus from Egypt, although it is not certain whether all of the tribes, which were later to constitute the Jewish nation, ever suffered under the shadows of the pyramids.

According to the Book of Judges the conquest of the land, promised to Moses and the slave multitude which he had led from Egypt, was extremely slow and painful, Equally slow and painful was the growth of that purer faith which these invaders from the desert of Sinai brought into Canaan. The religion of the Canaanites consisted largely of the worship of the forces of nature; this worship was accompanied by many disgusting practises to influence the gods of fertility on whom these primitive farmers depended for their daily bread. Again and again many of the Hebrews turned from the God they had worshipped in the austere desert to serve the gods of the fertile fields of Canaan. But by the time Samuel, the last of the Judges, ruled at the Sanctuary at Shiloh, the Lord of the Hebrews had come to be the all powerful God of the Israelites.

4. The Tribes Become a Nation. It was Samuel who called Saul, first of the kings of Israel, from his work upon his father’s farm, to sit upon the throne and rule, the scattered tribes of Israel for twelve troubled years. Saul was harried by the Philistine invaders on the borders of his kingdom; later by the followers of his son-in-law, David, eager to place their outlawed leader upon the throne. The short and tragic history of the family of Saul ended on Mount Gilboa, where the first king of Israel and his son, Jonathan, fell in battle before the spears of the victorious Philistines. The elegy of the house of Saul, “How are the mighty failen!” is the most beautiful of the few early Hebrew songs which have come down to us. It was sung by David, Jonathan’s rival, but still his dearest friend.

This brilliant young warrior, who succeeded Saul, managed, through his long and. successful reign, not only to expel the last of the Philistines from the land, but to weld the loosely organized tribes within the borders of Israel into a strong and united nation. The seat of his government and the national religion was at Jerusalem, a naturally fortified city which he captured from the Jebusites. But _ David was even greater as poet than as warrior. Not only to the Jew, but to the Christian, his chief claim to fame is in being the “sweet singer of Israel,” the author of many of the Psalms. It is not surprising that this most beloved of kings has become enshrined in the Jewish heart. Nor can we wonder that even in our own day many Jews believe that from the House of David will come the Messiah, the anointed and all-powerful ruler who will lead Israel from exile back to its olden glory. ~

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David died in the year 973 B. C. E. after a reign of thirty-three brilliant years. At first it seemed that Solomon, the son whom he had appointed to rule after him, would carry on the prosperity the Shepherd King had brought to Israel ; for the period of Solomon was one of expansion. His alliances with the daughters of foreign kings extended the boundaries and the power of his kingdom. It was a time for encouraging the fine arts which the Israelites were just beginning to learn from their more highly cultured allies, Phoenicia and Egypt. On Mount Moriah arose the Temple, dreamed of by David, dedicated with hitherto unimagined pomp by his son. Solomon is also credited with the elaborate Temple ritual, which began about that time, and the authorship of several books of the Bible.