topic by
i.hanan
(2465 posts)
Ancona,
Italy
8/9/2008 (16:51) |
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People of a higher class, whom Jewish usury does not touch, object to Judaism on higher grounds. They object to it because it is at variance with the unity of the nation and threatens to eat out the core of nationality. Admitting the keenness of Jewish intelligence, they say that intelligence is not always beneficent, nor is submission to it always a matter of duty, especially when its ascendancy is gained by such means as the dexterous appropriation of the circulating medium, and when it is, as they believe, the result not of individual effort in a fair field, but of the collective effort of a united, though scattered race, aided by a press in Jewish hands. They demur to having the high places of their community monopolized, as Mr. Arnold White says they might be in Russia, by unsympathetic aliens turning the rest of the nation into hewers of wood and drawers of water. This feeling, if it is selfish, is natural, and should be charitably viewed by those who are free from the danger.
Some of the opposition to Jewish ascendancy arises from dread of materialism, the triumph of which over the spiritual character and aspirations of Christian communities would, it is apprehended, follow the victory of the Jew, an impersonation of the power of wealth. Among the anti-Semites are Christian Socialists seeking the liberation of the laboring class from the grasp of usury and the money power. [In Germany] Herr [Adolf] Stoecker [1835-1909] belongs, it seems, to this sect, and far from being an enemy of the Jewish people, is a devout believer in the Old Testament. To be opposed on social or patriotic ground to Judaism as a system is not to be a hater of the Jews, any more than to be opposed to Islam or Buddhism as a system is to be a hater of the Mahometan or the Buddhist.
Medieval Myths
The impression prevails that Judaism during the Middle Ages was a civilizing power, in fact the great civilizing power, while its beneficent action was repressed by a barbarous Christendom. The leading shoot of civilization, both material and intellectual, was republican Italy, where the Jews, though they were not persecuted, never played a leading part. You may read through Sismondi's History [of the Italian Republics in the Middle Ages] almost without being made aware of their existence. Intellectually superior in a certain sense no doubt they were; their wealth exempted them from manual labor, and gave them an advantage, as it does now, in the race of intelligence. They were also practically exempted from military service. They preserved Hebrew and Oriental learning, and to them Europe owed the transmission of the works of Aristotle through Arabic translations. But in their medieval roll of celebrated names the great majority are those of Talmudists or Cabalists. The most illustrious is that of Maimonides, whose influence on the progress of humanity surely was not very great, albeit he was let and hindered only by the narrow and jealous orthodoxy of his own people. Jews were in request as physicians, though they seem to have drawn their knowledge from the Arabians. They had much to do with the foundation of the medical school of Montpellier; the origin of that at Salerno was Benedictine. But if they founded a medical science, what became of the medical science which they founded? At the close of the Middle Ages there was none. A Jewish physician, no doubt the most eminent of his class, is called in by Innocent VIII. His treatment is transfusion of blood. He kills three boys in the process and then runs away.
Of the money trade the Jews were generally the masters, though in Italy that, too, was in the hands of native houses, such as the Medici, Bardi, and Peruzzi, while at a later period the Fuggers of Augsburg were the Rothschilds of Germany. But the Jews never were the masters of the grand commerce or of that maritime enterprise in which the Middle Ages gloriously closed. Rosseeuw Saint-Hilaire has observed in his history of Spain that their addiction was to petty trade. Showing abundant sympathy for Jewish wrongs, he finds himself compelled to contrast the 'narrowness and rapacity' of their commerce with the boldness and grandeur of Arab enterprise (Histoire d'Espagne, Vol. III, p. 147). The slave trade, which in the early Middle Ages was in Jewish hands, was not then the reproach that it is now, yet it never was a noble or a beneficent trade.
Spain is supposed to have owed her fall to the expulsion of the Jews, but the acme of her greatness came after their expulsion; and her fall was due to despotism, civil and religious, to her false commercial system, to the diversion of her energy from industry to gold-seeking and conquest, and not least to the overgrown and heterogeneous empire which was the supposed foundation of her grandeur. England, in the period between the expulsion of the Jews under Edward I [in 1290] and their readmission under Cromwell [in 1656], became a commercial nation and a famous naval power; and the greatness thus achieved was English, not Gibeonite, as it would have been under Jewish ascendancy; it was part of the fullness of national life, and was prolific not only of Whittingtons and Drakes, but of Shakespeares and Bacons. As financiers it is likely that the Jews were useful in advancing money for great works; they also furnished money for enterprises such as Strongbow's expedition to Ireland. But the assertion, often repeated, that they provided the means for building the churches, abbeys, and colleges of England must be qualified in face of the fact that the greater part of the edifices is of dates subsequent to the expulsion of the Jews. Salisbury Cathedral was built before the expulsion. But we happen to know that the 40,000 marks which it cost were supplied by contributions from the Prebendaries, collections from different dioceses, and grants from Alicia de Bruere and other benefactors. (See Murray's Handbook of the Cathedrals of England, Southern Div., Part I, p. 94).
No financial or material advantage at all events could have made up to a nation for the ascendancy of a tribe of alien usurers.
Judaism is now the great financial power of Europe, that is, it is the greatest power of all. It is no longer necessary, out of pity for it, to falsify history, and traduce Christendom.
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