Palestine, the rebirth of an ancient people

Front matter

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Preface

Of all the numberless names to be found in the gazetteers, there is none that excites so widespread and so intense an interest as that of Palestine. There is no one in whom the name of his own country, especially when found amid alien surroundings, fails to arouse a thrill. Some there are who have personal interests or relationships in foreign lands, which endow the names of those regions with a special personality and life, lacking in the description of regions which, so far as the reader is concerned, belong to the book and to the book alone. To many the names of Greece and of Italy have a special call; to yet others Egypt or Assyria have an attraction of which those for whom archaeology has no charm can have no consciousness. Yet all these votaries of their own and of other lands, taken in the aggregate, do not exceed in number those in whom the name of that small and geographically unimportant region whose shore is lapped by the eastern waters of the Mediterranean arouses a vivid interest. Britain, France, Germany, and Russia, hold the first place in the minds and affections of most of the inhabitants of those countries. Few of them, if any, have the second place unoccupied, and among the overwhelming number that place is filled by Palestine, a land sacred to Christian, Jew, and Moslem alike.

The number of books on Palestine is legion, yet it is remarkable how very little is known of the land. It viii Preface

would almost seem that, at any rate so far as the Westem lands are concerned, every visitor on his return from the Holy Land considers it his duty to narrate for the benefit of the public his impressions and experiences. Thus the literature of modern Palestiae seems without end. Yet, despite its extent, there is a sameness about its content that renders it depressingly monotonous. All travellers seem to have followed the same paths, to have visited the same shrines and the same sites, to have followed religiously in the footsteps of their predecessors, to have undergone much the same experiences, and to have recounted the same story, even though in different words. Seldom is it that a traveller or writer steps off the well-worn high road. He goes to Palestine, not as a man of the world, but either as a pilgrim, sometimes a cynic, or an archaeologist. While there he has the eyes only of a pilgrim or of an archaeologist, and after he has returned to Europe or America, probably until his dying day, he assumes this attitude whenever the Holy Land recurs to his mind. To him Palestine is either the cradle of his faith or a land of archaeological interest. In either event it belongs entirely to the past. It may have a future, but it certainly has no present.

This book is of a different description. It has no concern with Palestine either as a religious or an archaeological centre. The past is of no consequence except in so far as it serves as an introduction to the present. These pages deal with the present and the future, but not the spiritual future. The future to which the writer looks forward is one of material prosperity, which must not be considered in any degree opposed to spiritual development ; of a land once again flowing with milk and honey, inhabited by a happy people — a people who, seated in

Preface ix

the same land millennia ago, made mankind its eternal debtor by the blessings it conferred upon it, and who, once agaia restored to those surroundings from which it has been divorced for two thousand years and more, will resume its interrupted history and make Zion again the spiritual centre of the world, and themselves a nation of priests devoted to the service of humanity. The writer looks forward to the regeneration of the land of Palestine, which has been so neglected for centuries that a country which once was among the most fertile of known lands, proverbial for the exuberance of its productions, now appears to the superficial observer as a desert incapable of cultivation and unable to keep its small and scattered population above the level of beggary. The revival of Palestine has been in motion for the space of but one generation. The story of that generation is narrated in the following pages. In the lifetime of a nation forty years are but as a day in the lifetime of an individual. In the most favourable circumstances, relatively little could be expected after a lapse of so brief a period ; but the circumstances around the colonization of Palestine have not been too favourable. The Jewish settlers in Palestine have, however, had one advantage over other pioneers ia all other climes. These latter, no matter how determined to succeed, how devoted to their enterprise, know, consciously and unconsciously, that they are going into exile. But the Jews, who breathe a new life into the dead bones of the Holy Land, do not go into exile. They return home, and the home from which by force and by violence they have been excluded for centuries. The hunted victims who are taking refuge in Palestine leave the land of exile behind them. They come out of the darkness into the light and the inspiration of their

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labours lies not only in the hope of creating a home for their weary bodies, a refuge for themselves and also for their children, where they will be secured against the agonies which they and their fathers have suffered in the lands of exile. That alone is a sufficient incentive to ceaseless toil and determination to overcome the insuperable. But in Palestine, which is still the Promised Land to the Jew of the Pale of Settlement, lies another hope, equal to, nay, greater in intensity than, that of the release of the individual from bondage. In Palestine the Jew of Eastern Europe dreams that freedom will be found not only for Jewry, but also for Judaism — freedom to develop on its own lines, unshadowed by the mighty systems that surround it in Europe ; at liberty to follow its own course. Given that liberty, the Jew never doubts that Judaism will be well able to justify itself, and that once again, as of yore, "out of Zion shall go forth the Law and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem. ' '

I am indebted to several friends for assistance in the preparation of this volume. In particular I wish to thank Mr. Leon Simon and Mr. S. Tolkowsky, himself a settler in Palestine, for having read the complete volume in proof, and for having given me the benefit of their much appreciated criticisms and suggestions. Miss Annie Landau, the Head Mistress of the Evelina School of Jerusalem, and Mr. Herbert Bentwich, prominent in the councils, first of the Choveve Zion and afterwards of the Zionist movement in England, have read the chapters which relate more especially to the organizations with which they have been connected and to the phases of the subject which come closest to them, and by their advice I have been enabled to escape many pitfalls into

Preface xi

which I should otherwise have fallen. The question of illustration was a difficult one. Palestinian photographs are obtainable by the thousand, but those illustrative of the new life in Palestine exist only in units. Even of the few that have been taken, the War has rendered many temporarily unavailable. The same cause has made it impossible at present to supplement the existing meagre supply. But in this matter also friends have come to my assistance. The majority of the illustrations, none of which have been published previously, are from photographs taken by Mr. Murray Eosenberg. Others Sir Edward Stein has kindly permitted me to reproduce. To both of these gentlemen I desire to express my thanks. The few remaining photographs were taken by myself. The map of Palestine is reproduced from "Zionism and the Jewish Future," by permission of the editor, Mr. H. Saeher, and the publisher, Mr. John Murray, C.V.O., of that work, to whom also I desire to express my thanks.

Contents

PEErACE, vii Contents, xiii Illustrations, xv

CHAPTEE

I Palestine Under the Komans, 1 II Under the Byzantines and the Moslems, 12

Chapter I Palestine Undee The Romans

The year 70 of the present era marks the end of the Jewish State and the opening of the last and most widespread of the exiles. The day on which the victorious legions of Titus spread fire and sword through the city of Jerusalem, and after having plundered and massacred the wretched remnant of the inhabitants, razed to the ground almost every stone of the city, was the death-day of Jewish self-government. The 9th of Ab, already a fatal day in Jewish annals, was not the death-day of the Jewish people; but it marked the end of the Jewish nation. Henceforth the history of the Jews — a story of inconceivable misery and suffering, yet one of almost marvellous triumph over circumstances — ^lies in the Diaspora, in every part of the world except in Palestine. The Holy Land alone of all the lands of the Old World, except on very rare occasions, lies outside the orbit of Jewish history. The sack of Jerusalem and the massacre of its inhabitants did not, however, utterly destroy the Palestinian Jews. The losses the Jewish people suffered in the course of the war, in battle, by massacre, and from starvation, are computed at more than a million. Almost an equal number taken captive were sold into slavery or suffered frightful deaths for the amusement of the populace on some Roman festival. Nevertheless, Palestine was not denuded of its Jewish inhabitants, and despite vicissitudes and agonies which make the history of the Jews of Palestine a miniature history of the Jews in the Diaspora, the country during the succeeding eighteen centuries has never been entirely devoid of Jews or of Jewish communities.

The terrible consequences of the unsuccessful revolt against the Romans rendered impossible any political action on the part of the few survivors who were tolerated in the land, and who for the most part clung to the coast. Those of them who had formerly had means, had been reduced by confiscations to poverty. The others who had never possessed wealth were sunk in even direr distress. The recent terrible events had utterly crushed out of them all national feeling. Broken in spirit, their only thought was to find sufficient food to keep themselves and their families in existence until the end of their appointed time. With one exception the events of the world were no longer of interest or consequence to them. But this exception was the one that had inspired the most heroic defence that history either before or since their day has ever seen. It was the preservation of their spiritual ideal, of the pure creed of Judaism, of the morality on which the whole of the moral system of modern civilization takes its stand. Henceforth the mission of Israel was to keep alive and transmit from generation to generation the religious teachings which directly or indirectly have, from that day to this, been the light of the world.

Judaism is, and always has been, much more than a system of religion or a theology. It is in the fullest sense a civilization, with a literature, a point of view, and an intellect of its own, which need fear no comparison, especially when the oppressive restrictions from which it has at most times and in most countries suffered are considered, with the civilizations of other peoples, European or Asiatic. In its narrowest sense, as a religion, Judaism is dependent entirely on scholarship and learning. This is illustrated by the aphorism that an ignorant man cannot be a Jew. Consequently if the fall of Jerusalem had carried with it the destruction of the Jewish schools, Judaism would have disappeared with its capital. As a matter of fact, another Jewish centre of learning arose in Palestine even before the last hour of the city had struck. The College at Jamnia, near the coast at Jaffa (or Joppa), was founded by Jochanan ben Zakkai, who is traditionally believed to have escaped from Jerusalem during the Siege concealed in a coffin. Jochanan had been a member of the Synhedrin in Jerusalem, and by him that body, which became the legislative body of the Jewish Church, was reconstituted in his new home, but henceforth it had no political powers. Farther north in Galilee, Agrippa and his sister, Berenice, the last of the family of Herod, used the considerable influence which they had with Titus for the benefit of their people. Consequently the recovery from the disastrous war was more rapid in that part of the country, and Tiberias and Sepphoris, which had escaped the destruction prevalent farther south, gained greater importance as Jewish centres.

In the meanwhile the attitude of the Romans towards the Jewish remnant quite incapable, apparently, of any harm, had become less harsh. Jewish communities began to come again into existence in the depopulated centres ; the seats of learning flourished more and more ; and there is even evidence that there were individual Jews owning land and slaves. Nevertheless, the Jews of Palestine were little more than helots or outlaws.

In the year 116 Palestine was convulsed by the echoes of the great Jewish revolt throughout the Roman world. The victorious rebels marched from Gyrene across Egypt into Palestine, where they were met by the newly appointed governor, Lucius Quietus, who had recently destroyed the Jews of Babylon. In the course of the succeeding operations the Jews of Palestine suffered terribly. The College and Synhedrin at Jamnia were suppressed. Quietus was, however, recalled by the Emperor Hadrian, and the remnant of Jews in Palestine breathed again. Hadrian seemed at first not unsympathetic towards his Palestinian Jewish subjects, and it is even said that he gave them permission to rebuild the Temple. Such encouragement restored the spirit of the people, which showed itself when Hadrian's acts fell short of his promises and there were some threats of rebellion, which were quieted by Joshua the Prince and the Synhedrin, now removed to Usha, of which he was the head. The subsidence of the movement was, however, but temporary. Hadrian visited Judaea in 130 and, satisfied of the subservience of the Jews in all things, determined to rebuild Jerusalem — ^but as a heathen city ; and in furtherance of his plan of Romanization proscribed certain of the essential observances of Judaism. Thus once again was Judaism in danger of forcible extinction, and once again the whole of the Jewish people rose to defend their most treasured possession.

So long as Hadrian remained in Syria the preparations for the coming revolt were kept secret, but on his withdrawal the whole of the country burst into flame. The inspiration came from the world-renowned Rabbi Akibah, who on the death of Joshua had become the spirtiual head of the people. The leader of the army that sprang into existence spontaneously was Bar Cochba, who in consequence of his phenomenal success had Messianic powers attributed to him by his admirers and followers. Immediately on the outbreak of the rebellion the provinces of Judaea, Samaria, and Galilee were evacuated by the Romans. Their attempts after the receipt of reinforcements to recapture the country availed nothing against the rebels, whose army is said to have numbered over half a million. Julius Severus, the greatest soldier of his age, was summoned from Britain to restore prestige to the Roman arms, but even he could not prevail against Bar Cochba. The latter 's army attracted recruits from the Jewries of all countries. Those who could not serve in person sent of their treasure. Even non-Jews joined the rebel forces. The Judaso-Christians alone kept apart, and from this time may be dated the final breach between the Jews who kept to the old paths and their kinsmen who adopted the teachings of the disciples of Jesus. Jerusalem was made the capital of the rebel State. Bar Cochba was proclaimed King, and ruled the kingdom which he had won by his arms. It was, however, impossible permanently to withstand the pressure of the armies of Severus. From defeat they gradually proceeded to victory and to yet further victory, Jerusalem was taken by the Romans, and other strongholds shared its fate. At length Bither remained the only fortress in the possession of Bar Cochba. On the 9th of Ab — a thrice fatal anniversary — 134, Bither was betrayed by some of its inhabitants. The Romans entered the fortress, and after a stubborn battle in which both sides suffered very heavily, defeated their adversaries and put the surrivors to death. Bar Cochba was either slain in battle or murdered by a renegade. AMbah was taken prisoner and died under torture. Of the Jews — ^men, women, and children — ^who were caught in all parts of the land, most were massacred: the remainder were sold into slavery. In the fall of Either alone half a million Jews — including fugitives from the other cities — are said to have lost their lives. Those who surrendered were put to death equally with those who were taken in the open. Most of the survivors fled into Arabia, where they gave rise to the Jewish tribes which in a later century contested with Mohammed the hegemony of the country, and whose descendants stiU form one of the most valuable elements in the population of the Yemen and of the Aden Hinterland.

With the suppression of the revolt Hadrian was more determined than ever to suppress nonconformity to the ofiBcial Eoman religion. The new pagan city .^Ua Capitolina therefore arose on the site of Jerusalem, and not only was a heathen temple erected where the Temple of the Jews once stood, but the Holy Places of the Christians at Bethlehem, and of the Samaritans on Mount Gerizim, were similarly defiled. Jews were entirely excluded from the precincts of the new city, and almost two centuries had to pass before they were again allowed to live on the soil of what had once been Jerusalem. The oppression by Turnus Rufus, the new governor of the province, was so severe that the few Jews who remained in the land were not even permitted to bury their dead. The corpses had to remain above ground as warnings to the survivors. Fortunately Hadrian died in 137, and his successor, Antoninus Pius, proved more humane towards his Palestinian Jewish subjects. As a consequence the religious leaders began to return from exile. A religious capital was again established at Usha, and afterwards transferred to Galilee, which district, and especially the city of Tiberias, remained for long the principal Jewish centre. The considerable ruins of synagogues, dating from this period, which are still to be found in this region, attest the importance of the Jewish population of Galilee during the second and later centuries of the present era. More enduring monuments of the Jewish activity of these times in Galilee are the Mishnah, or code of oral tradition, and the Palestinian or "Jerusalem" Talmud.

The most favourable of the conditions under which the Jews of Palestine lived ia the first centuries of the present era was one of oppression, and it is therefore not surprising that their sympathies were with the Parthians in the revolt against Eome in 161. In the resultant campaign Lucius Verus, one of the joint Emperors, came to Syria, where he withdrew the few rights which the Jews stUl enjoyed and suppressed the Synhedrin of Usha. It was at this time that the spiritual centre was removed to Galilee. Verus' colleague, Marcus Aurelius, dealt more gently with the Jews, and among other concessions permitted them to visit Jerusalem for prayer. During the following century and a half there is little to record of Palestinian history. Jews and Christians were almost equally oppressed. Only the Samaritans obtained relative favour v?ith the Komans. Eabbi Judah the Holy, who was for a long period Patriarch of the Jews, ruled them wisely and well, but he was unable to contend against the extreme poverty into which they were for the most part sunk, poverty due to a large extent to the heavy taxation which the Romans laid upon them.

Henceforward Palestinian history may be said to have been dormant until the era of Constantine and the consequent powerful Christian revival.

Constantine adopted Christianity about the year 324. He had previously, in pursuance of his policy of religious toleration, placed Judaism formally on a level with the other religions of the Empire, and its Patriarchs and other ofScers were recognized as ranking equally with the officers of other faiths. The Patriarch of Judaea was, in fact, officially regarded as the spiritual head of all the Jews of the Empire. This was, however, previous to the Emperor's conversion to Christianity. With his new religion he imbibed all the intense hatred which his new co-religionists felt towards the people from whom their own faith had been derived. An era of state persecution of the Jews throughout the Empire commenced, and a regular campaign was initiated for the compulsion of Jews to adopt Christianity. Finally, at the Council of Nice, the last thread that connected Christianity with Judaism — the dependence of the Christian on the Jewish calendar — was broken. "Whatever chance the numerically insignificant Jewish population of Palestine had of escaping from the rigour of the new persecution from which their brethren elsewhere were suffering, was destroyed by the interest aroused in the Holy Land by Helena, the mother of the Emperor, who visited Palestine in 326 in order to discover the Holy Places, and thus inaugurated the long line of Christian pilgrims. The Law of Hadrian which forbade Jews to live in Jerusalem, but had been falling into desuetude, was thereupon re-enacted. The Jews, however, were formally permitted to mourn there, on payment, on the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple. At the same time other oppressive laws were introduced, while the Christians were given facilities for the erection of churches throughout Galilee, which was at the time then practically a Jewish land. The persecution reached its height under Constantino's successor, Constantius, by whom a deliberate and long-sustained attempt was made to crush out the teaching of Judaism, and by this and other means to cause the ultimate disappearance of the faith. The oppression by Constantius led to a considerable emigration from Palestine towards the East, and the spiritual hegemony of Jewry permanently left the country. For many years those who remained suffered the direct persecution at the hands of the predominant power. The system of taxation, for instance, seemed deliberately intended for the destruction of the Jewish people. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Jews of Galilee were ultimately goaded to revolt, but the rebellion was suppressed without much trouble, the rebels with their families being put to the sword, and their towns razed. As on the occasion of previous insurrections, many of those who escaped were able to do so only by living for long periods in the catacombs. At this period a change of Emperors meant nothing for the Jews : the intensity of the persecution was in no degree relaxed. This state of things continued until the advent of Julian.

The new Emperor had been an involuntary convert to Christianity, for which religion he had no liking. On his accession to the purple, therefore, he had no hesitation in throwing off his Christian cloak, and henceforth he devoted himself to the furtherance of his ideal of religious toleration. His accession in 361 was a welcome respite for the Jews of Palestine, who were almost at their last gasp. Not only did he remove the immense burden of anti-Jewish legislation, but having through his Christian education and his study of the Bible learnt somewhat of Jewish history and of Judaism, his sympathies were aroused in favour of the Jewish people and the Jewish character. He was probably also influenced by his dislike of the Christians and his desire to mortify them by the favour shown to their former victims. Julian took many means of showing his favour to the Jews: the most important of them all was his letter to the Jewish communities of the Empire announcing his intention of rebuilding the Temple. This was not an empty promise. The Emperor placed funds aside for the work, collected building material, and set an army of workmen to clearing the site of the debris with which it had been encumbered for centuries. The Jews of Palestine had, however, been so thoroughly crushed by their successive misfortunes, that they had not the heart to participate in the undertaking, and could only occupy the role of spectators. All hope of the restoration of the Jewish State had by now been driven out of their hearts : they could no longer take any step towards freedom except at the bidding of the Messiah, whose coming they eagerly awaited. Julian, no matter how friendly he might be to the Jews, was obviously not the Messiah. The abstention of the Jews from participation in the work, coupled with several mysterious fires, probably due to the ignition of forgotten stores of oil formerly kept in the vaults under the Temple, discouraged the workers, whose ardour slackened. All possibility of the restoration was, however, destroyed by the fatal arrow which struck Julian down in battle against the Persians within two years of his accession to the Imperial throne. His successors were Christians, but more tolerant than his predecessors had been, and Palestine may again be said to have been without a history, apart from ecclesiastical disputes, until in the division of the Empire in 395 it fell to Byzantium. But in the interval monasteries, nunneries, and hermitages had been planted by the hundred throughout the land.

Chapter II Under The Byzantines And The Moslems

So far as Palestine was concerned, the division of the Empire had little if any immediate effect. It had since the time of Constantino been under the government of Constantinople, and the change made no alteration in the seat of government nor in the system of goverment. The succeeding two hundred years formed a period of relative quietude, during which the country had no external history. It was nominally Christian, but the people showed little if any variation from the type of those who lived there when the government of the country rested with the heathens. The only noticeable change was the increasing number of Christian pilgrims who visited the Holy Land in order to worship at the Holy Places, which themselves at the same time increased in number, and the ever-growing army of priests who ministered to them there. Throughout these centuries the Jews led an uneventful life, varied by an occasional outbreak of persecution, but subject always to the extremely oppressive laws which one Emperor after the other enforced against them. Jerusalem had ceased to exist as a Jewish centre. Tiberias was still the religious capital. The bulk of the Jews of the Holy Land were to be found in Galilee, where they followed agriculture as had their fathers before them. Nazareth was probably the only city, the majority of whose inhabitants were

Under Byzantines and Moslems 13

Jews. Until the time of Justinian the oppression of the Jews of Palestine was entirely political and economic. That Emperor, however, who left his mark on Jerusalem in several stately Christian buildings, brought the Jewish religion within the orbit of his oppressive legislation. But pitiful as was the position of the Jews, that of the Samaritans was even worse. In the courts their evidence was not accepted even in cases in which Samaritans alone were the litigants, and they had not the right to dispose of their property at death. So far as the Jews were concerned, Justinian even forbade them to read Isaiah, lest in their abject misery they might derive comfort from the exhortations and promises of the prophet. The Samaritans, less patient than the Jews in their sufferings, repeatedly revolted, but the rebellions were easily suppressed. On one occasion in 556 the Samaritans, assisted by Jews, succeeded in seizing Caesa,rea and the neighbouring country, but their success was short-lived, and the punishment of the rebels was ferocious.

In the year 611 a ray of hope shone on the persecuted inhabitants of Palestine. The usurpation of the Emperor Phocas had induced the Persian King, Chosroes II., to invade the Asiatic dominions of the Empire. A Persian army entered Syria from the north, and to the Jews they came as deliverers. All the Jews of Galilee who were capable of bearing arms joined the invading forces, eager to give vent to their enmity against Eome and Christendom, which had been pent up in them for centuries. The Christians of Galilee suffered severely both in person and property. The Persians, reinforced by the Jews, and aided by a band of Saracens, swept through Palestine. Jerusalem was taken by storm in July, 614, its Christian inhabitants put to the sword, and its churches and sanctuaries destroyed. It seemed as if Rome and Christendom had been finally driven out of Palestine. For fourteen years Palestine remained in the hands of Persia. The Jews dreamt that they would be allowed to establish a republic in their ancient home, but their hopes were not realized. Religiously they prospered, and made many voluntary converts from Christianity, but their Persian allies retained control of the country. On the other hand, they inflicted heavy taxation on the Jews, and when differences arose between the latter and the Persians many of the influential leaders of the Jews were banished to Persia. Thus a coolness arose between the allies, and when, about 627, the Emperor Heraclius approached the Jews with promises of tolerance, the latter were not unwilling to favour their ancient oppressor. Chosroes' blindness and age, coupled with dissensions among the Persians, gave Heraclius the opportunity which he seized. Palestine was once again the object of contest among the nations, and when peace was concluded in 628 the country reverted to Byzantium. The Emperor visited Jerusalem the following year, and was pressed by the monks who received him there to exterminate all the Jews. He based his refusal to do so on the treaty into which he had entered with them, but he was assured by the monks that no treaty could hold with the infidel, and that it was his Christian duty to destroy the Jews young and old. As a further incentive they offered to take on their shoulders the responsibility for any sin which their policy might involve. The Emperor yielded, and the only survivors of the Jews of Judaea were those who hid underground or fled into Egypt.