The Jew, The Gypsy and El Islam. Sir Richard Francis Burton

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      FOOTNOTES:

      [25] In consequence of the accident which occurred to Jacob (Gen. xxxii.) his descendants still abstain from the hind-quarters of the few beasts left to them by Leviticus xv.

[26] Gaon means a learned man: had he not some other name?

[27] [Rabbenu Tam was the most distinguished disciple of the renowned R. Rashi (1040–1105 a.d.).]

[28] The formula, however, is still perpetually repeated. On the Sabbaths preceding the new moons Jehovah is adjured to “gather the dispersed, the united people of Israel from the four corners of the earth.” The sunset devotions, the Yom ha-Kippur, or Great Day of Atonement, concludes with, “Next year we shall be in Jerusalem.” At the Passover feast before the fourth cup the Lord is blessed, and all say, as they have been saying during the last eighteen centuries, “The year that approaches we shall be in Jerusalem.” The burden of the Musaph concluding the Sabbath services is that God may be pleased to return His people from their dispersions, and restore them to the possession of Jerusalem and the Temple.

[29] Not to be confounded with Hellenes. These Greeks are Syrian and Christian peasants (felláhín), without a drop of Greek blood in their veins, but belonging to the so-called Greek Church.

[30] In 1873 the population of the Holy City is generally laid down as:

      [Owing to the recent immigration especially of Russian Jews, and to the opening of the railway to the coast of Jaffa, these figures have been more than quadrupled. In 1896 the whole population was estimated at over 80,000, of whom nearly 40,000 were Jews, 25,000 Christians of all denominations, and 15,000 Muhammadans, chiefly Turks and Arabs.]

[31] It has been well remarked that no Hebrew citizen was ever condemned to exile. If guilty, he was punished, but not made an outcast and infamous, forced to sin by dwelling beyond the holy soil of their own land in the impure and accursed rest of earth.

[32] It is interesting to read what the inspired Jew Spinoza wrote upon the Jews: “The rite of circumcision, I am fain to persuade myself, is of such moment in this matter (i.e. of isolating nations) that it alone, methinks, were enough to preserve this people distinct for ever; indeed, unless the fundamentals of their religion bring upon them effeminacy of mind and character, I am inclined to believe that, with the opportunity afforded, since human affairs are notoriously changeable, they may again recover their empire, and God elect them to Himself anew. … To conclude, were any one disposed to maintain that the Jews, for the cause assigned, or for any other cause whatsoever, had been especially chosen by God to all eternity, I should not gainsay him, provided he allowed that this choice was most in respect of nothing but empire and personal advantages (in which only one nation can be distinguished from another), for as regards understanding and true virtue no nation is more remarkable than another, and so cannot on such grounds be looked on as elected by God” (Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, chap. iii.).

It is instructive to compare with the sage’s text two commentaries of his editions. One of them assures us that, no longer persecuted by Pope and Kaiser or Christian community, “with no mark of civic distinction denied the Jews, they will soon become absorbed into the larger Christian communities, surrounded by whom they now dwell in all the countries of Europe; they will finally disappear, and leave only historical records of their existence.” At present, however, Judaism bids fair to rise above and to survive Christianity. In B. Auerbach’s Leben Spinozas we are told that the immediate cause which to Spinoza suggested this “curious persuasion” (the restoration of the Jews) may have been this, that a certain Sabbathai Zewi,[33] who had lately appeared in Greece, caused such a commotion amongst his co-religionists as at one time to make their regeneration and reconstitution into a sovereignty appear not impossible.

[33] [Better known under the popular form Cevi.]