India and Israel Against Islamic Terror

63
ands of Jews lost their lives and tens of thousands converted
Christianity. In comparison Germany and Austria seemed to
a distant paradise. While the ferocity of the Christian zealots
n be understood, what was more baffling was even the greater
rirnes perpetrated by the converted Jews, a leading light of
whom was Paul, a brilliant Talmudic scholar, freshly converted to
Christianity. This is again reminiscent of similar action by converted
Hindus perpetrated on their own Hindu brethren during the
Moslem period. Paul’s zeal to bring the jews to Christian
fellowship was unrivalled He wrote, debated, exploited and
persuaded non-Christians to turn to the purity of his new creed.
He led his hooligans into the synagogues, to spread his gospels
of love and brotherhood. Cross in one hand and the Torah in
the other, he told the Jews to convert and achieve salvation. This
led to a large exodus from Judaism to Christianity in which
35,000 Jewish souls were rescued and the people of the book,
forced beyond endurance, lost all self-respect.
Contrary to the prevalent theory that persecution and

hardship steel a people and bring forth vitality and a tensile

strength hitherto unknown, the same did not happen to the

jews. During the medieval ages already referred to above, the

Jews just managed to survive without exhibiting excellence in

any field of human endeavour. This phenomenon has a striking

similarity with the utter degradation of the Hindu society under

perpetual foreign invasions starting from 1000 A.D. down to the

entire span of the British Empire. With a few happy exceptions,

such as showing the gems of Bible to the humanists amongst the

gentiles, and serving as a bridge between Christian and Semitic

culture, little can be attributed to Jews. They lost their vigour,

resilience of mind and power of judgement. In such a spiritual

darkness imposters and charlatans took over promising a way

°ut; some even claiming to be the Messiah sent by Cod, to

usher a new world order.
Mysticism has always been a permanent feature of the Jewish

Philosophical and religious thought. This continued during the

dark medieval ages. The search to define God without limiting

^im, as it is with the Sanatan Dharma of Hindus, reinforced
t
V
64 INDIA AND ISRAEL CHAPTER 2
through their unhappy temporal experiences brought out the

Cabalists who tried to reinvigorate the Jewish religion. The Book

of Creation written in Hebrew language is one such effort which

had a great influence in the development of the Jewish mind

during these harsh times. Thus continued the inexorable march

of time till we reach the age of Baruch Spinoza, whom Renan

described as the greatest Jew of modern times. Born in

Amsterdam in 1632, of parents exiled from Portugal, he along

with his basic Jewish education had a keen interest in every type

of human learning. Delving deep into the works of Ibn Ezra,

Hasdai Crescas, Maimonides, and other Jewish philosophers, he

was greatly influenced by the mellow wisdom of Van den Ende,

martyred for his radical thoughts. Devoted alike to the natural

sciences and the logic of Descartes, he also imbibed the thoughts

of philosopher Bruno and his defiance of the Church. On his

rationalism, he rose above superstition and gradually became a

non-conformist to Talmudic Judaism. His radical views challenging

the tenets of Bible, the notions about Cod and denial of

immortality alarmed the Jews and the Christians alike. Fearing

the spread of such blasphemies the Jews pleaded with Spinoza

to be more discreet, and even threatened him with excommunication.

One thing led to another and ultimately Spinoza

was exiled. Happy in his isolation, he was offered a post in the

University of Heidelberg with a total freedom to think and write.

His efforts were not recognised in his lifetime by the hardcore

jews, but ultimately, they resulted in enriching and liberalising

Jewish religion and philosophy. He died in 1677, forty-four of

age, a frail frustrated man but he contributed in the largest

measure to the Jewish culture and thought, which was resurrected

by later generations. A monument was raised in his memory at

The Hague in 1882.
The three centuries following the Jewish expulsion from Spain,

are marked by a constant decline in the spiritual and mental

fibre of the Jewish race. A people groping in the dark believing

in fanatics and imposters, who masqueraded as Messiahs, they

narrowed their spiritual horizon and cocooned themselves in

the rigidities of their code. Much to the glee of the persecuting
CHAPTER 2
HISTORY OF ISRAEL 65
Christians the 18th century Jewery was a bent, broken,

superstitious and ignorant mass.
At the dawn of modern history in the eighteenth century,

the Jews were dispersed to almost all corners of the globe. Of

the three million Jews at that time of history who survived the

epidemics and the harsh economic restrictions of the medieval

times a large portion remained static, confined to limited areas

and specific occupations, forced by the societies. A large portion

of this population driven by the atrocities of the crusades in

Western Europe, moved to East, of which Poland alone accounted

for more than one and a half million. After the partition of

Poland, the hapless Jews came under the despoiling powers of

Russia, Prussia and Austria. A few remained in Romania and

some under the Turkish rule, amounting to about 100,000,

mainly in Constantinople. A few refugees from Spain also moved

out to Egypt, carrying with them their Sephardic way of life. The

centre of Jewish repression, however, remained the heart of

Western Europe around German Austria. Here the Jewish

population was confined to the largest cities of Berlin, Hamburg,

Frankfurt and Main, squeezed between the two grinding wheels

of the Catholics and the Protestants. Smaller communities of

these also existed in England, France, Italy and Holland. The

twenty-two thousand Jews living in Amsterdam took up the

diamond and precious stones industries and did reasonably well

as importers and exporters. The Jewish population in America

was negligible and the Marranos in the Spanish colonies could

not evade the inquisition. A few jews also were scattered in

Africa and inner Asia. Those settled in Abyssinia called Falashas,

an ancient community living by pure Mosaism, were proud to

trace their descent from the Menelek, the son of Queen of

Sheba and King Solomon. The Jewish dispersion extended even

to the Great Wall of China.
A unique feature of the Middle Ages is the development of

the ghetto and its consequences. Shunned by the societies in

general, cut off from political, social and intellectual life, deprived

of citizenship, the Jews were forced to live in isolated societies

away from the gentiles. The papal bulls handed out punishments
66 INDIA AND ISRAEL CHAPTER 2
to those who dared put the Jews in positions of trust. The

Municipal councils also insisted that the Jews wear a distinguishing

badge, while the Church barely tolerated them, keeping them

away from the Christians to keep their faith pure. But for some

exceptions, such as the friendship between the Hebrew poet

Immanuel of Rome and the great Dante and the influence that

the Jewish writings had on some famous Christians such as on

Albertus Magnus from Maimonides’s thoughts, the divide between

the Christians and the Jews was complete. Even Albertus with all

his respect for Maimonides did not raise a finger at the burning

of the Talmud, and Pico saw no harm in the Jews being driven

away from Spain.
Ghetto was a clearly marked area in a city beyond which

the Jews were not to venture. While this completely alienated

the Jews from the society at large, it had some advantages too,

such as collective living, the feeling of security and a spirit of

solidarity within the helpless victims enclosed in these cages.

Sixteenth century may well be called the Ghetto age. These

enclosed communities festered with illness, and unhygienic

conditions, devastated by fires, congested and swelling to

capacities, full of graveyards, in different stages of degradation

showed every facet of Jewish declension almost amounting to

struggle for death. The Ghetto was a symbol of the worst in

papal bigotry. Some ghettos in Frankfurt and Main and Prague

set the typical examples, though the latter was less fouling and

more liberated, forming a township of its own for the Jews. No

medieval institution led to a greater degeneration of Jews, divorcing

them from nature, society and aesthetics. This encysting of the

Jews led to more prejudice among the Christians against them,

magnifying the horrors of their rituals in fusty places hidden

from public eyes. Being thus insulated, the Jews were hardly

expected to develop a sense of patriotism to the country they

lived in. Left to their own devices, the Jews developed their own

languages, such as Yiddish, a cross between Hebrew and other

East European languages, while in the Sephardic communities a

language called the Ladino, a corrupted Spanish-Hebrew was

the spoken dialect. The worst part of the Ghetto psyche was the
CHAPTER 2
HISTORY OF ISRAEL 67
loss of self-respect among the Jews. This segregation finally led

the spirit of the” worthless worm that never dies”. There

emerged in the community an esprit de corps, defying death.

The home with its high moral values became a fortress against

time and adversity. Folk-life and folk-ways developed within the

lewish consciousness an unconquerable spirit, so virile that these

people separated from their land and denied a place under the

sun, stood stead-fast for centuries to come.
The Jews were treated as a separate and inferior class, in all

countries. In Germany there were special state legislations for

the Jews. This, however, did not cow them down and they

developed their own organisations, educational systems, a code

of laws, and law courts and even separate prisons. The distinctive

locations of the ghettos made it easy for the state to collect taxes

from the Jews, such as poll-tax, communal tax, special tax and

protection tax. In Spain there was even a hearth tax and a tax

for the king’s dinner, while in France there was a coronation tax

too, and in England heavy tax was levied on the renewal of

charters. There were also taxes to build and to demolish, taxes

for self-conduct, participation in fairs, tax for even acquiring the

ground to bury the dead and to top it all, the tax for the burial.

Thus there were taxes for ail things in heaven, earth and the

waters of the sea. In England, before their expulsion, the taxes

from the Jews amounted to one twelfth of the national income.

In other countries, the proportion was even higher.
Thus hemmed in from all sides, the jews met in synods to

discuss their affairs while each community usually had its ”Bet

Din”, a court presided over by a rabbi. To keep the fold together

this court had jurisdiction in all cases involving the Jews and even

meted out physical punishments; some times even

excommunication, whose milder form was the ’niddiu’.

Montesquieu, one of the outstanding political philosophers of

the eighteenth century, blasted Christianity in Europe for its

hatred of the Jews in the following words: ”If any of our

descendants should ever venture to say that the nations of Europe

were cultured, your example will’be adduced to prove that they

Were barbarians.” Another shining example of a fighter for the
68 INDIA AND ISRAEL CHAPTER 2
•f j ’:’. Jewish rights was Mirabeau, the most powerful statesman and
K | 1 orator of France on the eve of the Revolution. A friend to
B i : ]!|’ several Jews of intellect he was particularly fond of Mendelssohn,
| , and a frequent visitor to the Jewish salons. His booming eloquence
It i forced the Revolutionary National Assembly to advocate the
K ’ complete political equality for the Jews. However, such events
mj I were merely a flicker of light in the all pervading darkness of
• j; Christian Europe. The prejudices against the Jews were high. The
I ’ Christian children were brought up from their birth, in the belief
H ll that the Jews were moral lepers, outcasts and deemed to
8 I damnation due to their unforgiveable crime at the crucifixion of
m Jesus 2000 years ago. Egged on relentlessly by the fanatical
1 priests the Christian laity had no inclination to abandon this
belief. In England, the situation brightened a little due to the
liberalist Walpoie who noticed that the jews were naturalised in
| the American colonies and advocated a policy of” let sleeping
Ji dogs lie”. Consequently in 1753 Prime Minister Pelham introduced
: a Naturalization law which was passed by both the Houses of
j: ’ j! Parliament. However, the stiff resistance and mob fury by the
Hjjj Christians forced Pelham to withdraw this legislation in 1754.
Things were no different in Central Europe where mob hysteria
, : against the Jews overtook the town of Alsace where fourth-fifths
| i! of the French Jewish population lived. In Prussia anti-Jewish
j ! literature appeared and further fanned the misgivings about Jews,
| I spreading the canard that ”in order to limit their increase, the
f second male child of each Jew should be castrated.”
”’I Even Frederick the Great of Prussia, known for his liberal
^ [ views and tolerance of the Jews, followed this pattern of Jew
/« | bashing. His General Privilege written in 1750 echoed the
medieval spirit of intolerance. The king with all his virtues swam
t with the anti-Jew tide. Even a more astonishing example is that
JB of Voltaire, a man of great learning, a crusader against the
i prevalent abuses and superstitions, the defender of the weak,
, t , ,’ who while denouncing the bigots, reserved his biting pen and
’ tongue, to pillory the Jews as a greedy and selfish race, whose

only ideals were more money and more children. It was a
v~ hopeless situation. Even the great Goethe with all his profound
OJAPTER2 HISTORY OF ISRAEL