By the third quarter of the century, the familiar kind of literary antisemitism was much abated. The stereotypes and prejudices remained, in society and in the culture, but they were less virulent and less intrusive. As the political aspect of the Jewish question was amicably resolved, so, too, the cultural and social aspects were, not resolved, to be sure, but much alleviated. When Daniel Deronda was published, the year after The Way We Live Now, the reader would not be surprised to encounter a Jewish hero who was also, as his mother said, an “English gentleman.” What was surprising, and what made the book so controversial, was not so much the philosemitism that accompanied this social acceptance as the philo-Zionism that seemed to flow from the philosemitism. It was not only individual Jews who were judged and accepted as individuals, in society as in the polity, but Jews as a “separate” people deemed worthy of their own homeland in the place of their historic origin—all this before either “philosemitism” or “Zionism” entered the vocabulary.
A footnote to this Victorian saga brings it into the following century with a notable example of literary antisemitism transmuted into philosemitism. The most quoted passage in John Buchan’s most popular novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps (written early in World War I), describes Jewish anarchists conspiring with Jewish capitalists to bring Russia and Germany to a war that would involve Britain and devastate all of Europe.
“For three hundred years they [the Jews] have been persecuted, and this is the return match for pogroms. The Jew is everywhere, but you have to go far down the backstairs to find him. . . . But if you’re on the biggest kind of job and are bound to get to the real boss, ten to one you are brought up against a little white-faced Jew in a bath-chair with an eye like a rattlesnake. Yes, sir, he is the man who is ruling the world just now . . .”67
This portrait of the villain appears on the fifth page of the novel and haunts much of the rest of it. The hero and narrator, Richard Hannay, looking out for that rattlesnaked-eye Jew and his accomplices, tries to outwit them in a series of breathtaking adventures. But the passage is deceptive, for it is not Richard Hannay, who describes that Jew so vividly. It is a Mr. Scud-der, an American (from Kentucky), who warns Hannay of that nefarious character and his conspiracy. And it is Hannay who soon discovers that the whole story is “a pack of lies.”68 There is a conspiracy, to be sure, but it is led by German spies, not by Jewish anarchists or capitalists. For the rest of the book, Germans are the villains while Jews disappear from the scene. Even the word is absent, except for the explanation that Scud-der “had a lot of odd biases.... Jews, for example, made him see red. Jews and the high finance.”69
This is not to acquit Buchan of the charge of antisemitism. There are Jewish capitalists and financiers, communists and anarchists, in his novels, along with the familiar antisemitic and pejorative gibes. But there are also non-Jewish capitalists and financiers who are villainous, and Jewish capitalists and financiers who are honorable, even heroic. Hannay himself (who features in other of Buchan’s novels) is something of a capitalist—a South African mining engineer who boasts of having “got my pile—not one of the big ones, but good enough for me.”70am Even the Jewish villains are not the nastiest of villains; in Mr. Standfast (1919), he is the most decent of the lot. The Three Hostages (1924), the last of the Hannay quintet, introduces Julius Victor, an American banker who had been financially helpful to Britain during the war, and who is “one of the richest men in the world” (a few pages later he is “the richest man in the world”). He is also, incidentally, a Jew. Hannay recalls being told by a friend “who didn’t like his race,” that he was “the whitest Jew since the apostle Paul.”72 In the novel he is a very white Jew, not the perpetrator but the victim of another conspiracy precisely because his mission is to secure peace in the world. Moreover, his beautiful daughter, a Jewess, is the fiancée of the Marquis de la Tour du Pin, one of Hannay’s oldest and noblest friends, and, of course, a Christian.
He “didn’t like his race”—this was the familiar, almost reflexive antisemitism of the time, in fiction as in reality. So long as the world itself was normal, this kind of antisemitism was disagreeable but not perilous. It was when the conspiracies of the adventure tales became the realities of German politics that Buchan, acutely sensitive to the precarious nature of civilization, realized that what was permissible under civilized conditions was not permissible with civilization in extremis. This atonement (if it can be called that) manifested itself in his personal life as well as his novels. As early as 1930, before most Englishmen had become conscious of the nature of Nazism, Buchan, as a Member of Parliament (and an acquaintance of Chaim Weizmann), took up the cause of Zionism. In an article, “Ourselves and the Jews,” he defended the Balfour Declaration as “a categorical promise” binding upon the government. Two years later he was elected chairman of the Parliamentary Pro-Palestine (that is, pro-Zionist) Committee, and two years after that he spoke at a mass demonstration organized by the Jewish National Fund: “When I think of Zionism I think of it in the first place as a great act of justice. It is reparation for the centuries of cruelty and wrong which have stained the record of nearly every Gentile people.”73
It may seem ironic that the man associated with the fictional Jewish-capitalist-communist conspiracy should have had his name inscribed, in solemn ceremony, in the Golden Book of the Jewish National Fund. Buchan himself would have found nothing ironic about this. His speech acknowledging this honor took as its theme the racial similarities of Scotsmen (like himself) and Jews, with particular reference to their high regard for learning. A participant in the ceremony, sharing the platform with Buchan, recalled his behavior during the address following his, when Buchan leaned forward and watched, with unconcealed delight and fascination, the ample gestures and bodily movements of a Yiddish-speaking rabbi.74 One wonders what Buchan the novelist, the sometime antisemite, would have done with that scene.an
Buchan had come a long way from that memorable rattlesnaked-eye Jew in The Thirty-Nine Steps—as had the literary canon itself, the myths and counter-myths of fiction ranging from unabashed antisemitism to enthusiastic philosemitism. So too, philosemitism, in reality as well as in fiction, was to come a long way from the philo-Zionist sentiments of religious thinkers and preachers to the Zionist proclamations of politicians and statesmen.
V.
From Evangelicalism to Zionism
“An Evangelical among Evangelicals”
“Looking towards a land and a polity”—that was the animating spirit of Judaism according to George Eliot (by way of Mordecai and Deronda) in 1876, and in Eliot’s own voice somewhat later.1 Half a century earlier, British Evangelicals had initiated a movement for the “Restoration of Jews” to Palestine, primarily as a land rather than as a polity.ao Like Eliot, they looked to Palestine not as a refuge from persecution but as a fulfillment of religious aspirations—millenarianism for themselves, the return to their “holy land” for the Jews.
Lord Ashley was one of the initiators and leaders of this movement—“an Evangelical of the Evangelicals,” as he described himself.2 Although a Tory Member of Parliament, he had the closest relations (literally, relations) with the reigning Whig aristocracy. His wife’s stepfather (her biological father, it was rumored) was Lord Palmerston, and his mother-in-law was the sister of Lord Melbourne. During the years when two of Ashley’s objectives were carried out (a consulship and a bishopric in Jerusalem), his uncle was the Prime Minister and his wife’s stepfather was the Foreign Secretary. He was also distinguished in his own right as a zealous social reformer and a no less zealous missionary to and for the Jews. In 1826, he noted in his diary: “Who will be the Cyrus of Modern Times, the second Chosen to restore the God’s people?”3 (Cyrus, the king of Persia, had issued a decree permitting the exiled Jews to return to Palestine.) A new member of Parliament, Ashley was all of twenty-five when he wrote that. A decade later he became a patron of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews (the Jews’ Society, as it was kn
own), which counted among its founding members another notable Evangelical, William Wilberforce. The original agenda of the Society read:Declaring the Messiahship of Jesus to the Jew first and also to the non-Jew.
Endeavouring to teach the Church its Jewish roots.
Encouraging the physical restoration of the Jewish people to Eretz Israel—the Land of Israel.
Encouraging the Hebrew Christian/Messianic Jewish movement.4
The Society was not very successful in achieving its primary purpose, the conversion of the Jews; in its first thirty years it reported a total of only two-hundred-odd converts. But it undertook other missions on behalf of Jews, such as protests against the antisemitic decrees in Russia. By the time Ashley became active in it, much of its public focus was on the third item in its agenda, the Restoration of Jews—not merely to Palestine but to “Eretz Israel.”
Because of his family connections, Ashley played a major role in encouraging Britain’s involvement in Palestine. It was he who convinced Palmerston, in 1838, to include in a commercial treaty a provision for the appointment of a British consul to Jerusalem, one of whose functions was to protect the lives and property of Jewish settlers. It was a vice-consul, not a consul, who was appointed, but Britain was the first power to have a consul of any rank in Jerusalem. Ashley was exultant. For him (although not Palmerston) this was the first step in the ultimate goal, the Restoration of Jews.
What a wonderful event it is! The ancient city of the people of God is about to resume a place among the nations, and England is the first of the Gentile Kingdoms that “ceases to trod her down”. . . . I shall always remember that God put it into my heart to conceive the plan for His honor, gave me influence to prevail with Palmerston and provided a man for the situation, who can remake Jerusalem in his mirth.5
A few months later, reviewing a book on the Near East, Ashley spoke of the growing interest in Palestine on the part of Christians who revered the “Hebrew people” and respected their desire to return to the holy land. “We must learn to behold this nation with the eyes of reverence and affection; we must honor in them the remnant of a people which produced poets like Isaiah and Joel; kings like David and Josiah; and ministers like Joseph, Daniel and Nehemiah; but above all, as that chosen race of men, of whom the Savior of the world came according to the flesh.”6
In 1840, emboldened by the success of the consulship and provoked by yet another episode in the perennial “Eastern Question,” Ashley drew up a document to be presented to Palmerston making the case for the Restoration in practical terms that would appeal to the Foreign Secretary. At the moment, he pointed out, the vast area between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean was nearly desolate, its produce was minimal, and as a source of revenue it was almost worthless. To acquire the labor and capital required to revive the economy, immigrants and settlers had to be assured that life and property would be secure. To that end, he proposed that the European powers join with Syria to create an authority that would bring peace and order to the area. The ideal immigrants would be Jews, who had the required industrial virtues as well as the spiritual longing to return to the land of their fathers.
There are many reasons why more is to be anticipated from them [the Jews] than from any others who might settle there. They have ancient reminscences and deep affection for the land; it is connected in their hearts with all that is bright in their past, and with all that is right in those which are to come; their industry and perseverance are prodigious; they subsist, and cheerfully, on the smallest pittance.... Long ages of suffering have trained their people to habits of endurance and self-denial; they would joyfully exhibit them in the settlement and service of their ancient country.7
There is no record of any official response to this document. Ashley himself had no illusions about Palmerston’s enthusiasm for this or any other religious cause, which is why he appealed to Britain’s interest in the security and stability of the area. Palmerston, Ashley wrote in his diary, was “chosen by God to be an instrument of good to His ancient people, to do homage as it were to their inheritance, and to recognize their rights”—“without,” he added, “believing their destiny.”8 Lady Palmerston evidently shared her husband’s indifference. To her friend, the widow of the Russian ambassador to Britain, she explained: “We [the Whigs] have on our side the fanatical and religious elements, and you know what a following they have in this country. They are absolutely determined that Jerusalem and the whole of Palestine shall be reserved for the Jews to return to—this is their only longing.”9
Another event the following year brought Palestine again to the attention of Ashley. The initiative this time came from an unlikely source, the King of Prussia. Provoked by a treaty recognizing the sovereignty of Turkey in Palestine, the King proposed the creation in Jerusalem of a Protestant bishopric under the joint sponsorship of Anglicans and Lutherans. Ashley and the London Society enthusiastically took up the cause. Over the strong objections of Gladstone and other Anglicans, who disliked any association with Lutherans, Ashley prevailed upon the new Prime Minister, Robert Peel, to support the bill creating the bishopric. The first bishop to be appointed to that post was Michael Solomon Alexander, a converted Jew, the son of a rabbi and himself a former rabbi. Ashley, who had been involved in that choice, was delighted. He found it “overwhelming,” as he confided to his diary, “to see a native Hebrew appointed by the Church of England to carry back to the Holy City the truths and blessings which Gentiles had received from it.”10ap A few days later, after attending the first sermon delivered by the bishop, he reported: “I can rejoice in Zion for a capital, in Jerusalem for a church, and in a Hebrew for a king.”11 For the rest of his life, Ashley wore the ring the bishop had given him before leaving for Jerusalem. It was inscribed with a quotation from the Psalms: “Oh, pray for the peace of Jerusalem; they shall prosper that love thee.”12
The next crisis in the Near East was the occasion for yet another attempt by Lord Shaftesbury (as he then was) to pursue the cause of the Restoration of Jews. In 1853, on the eve of the Crimean War and again the following year, he urged Lord Clarendon, the Foreign Minister, to try to persuade Turkey to cede some land to the Jews. In his diary, again citing the decree of Cyrus, he argued that this was the time for an “analogous” action.
All the East is stirred; the Turkish Empire is in rapid decay; every nation is restless; all hearts expect some great thing.... Syria “is wasted without an inhabitant”; these vast and fertile regions will soon be without a ruler, without a known and acknowledged power to obtain dominion. The territory must be assigned to some one or other; can it be given to any European potentate? to any American colony? to any Asiatic sovereign or tribe? . . . No, no, no! There is a country without a nation; and God now, in His wisdom and mercy, directs us to a nation without a country. His own once loved, nay, still loved people, the sons of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.13
Those phrases—“country without a nation” and “nation without a country”—have since become memorable, echoed in the famous Zionist slogan: “A land without a people for a people without a land.” That slogan has become a subject of much controversy. Attributed by Edward Said to Israel Zangwill in 1901, it is the source of Said’s charge that Zionists wilfully propagated the idea that there were no “people” in Palestine.14 In fact, the phrase had been coined by an Evangelical clergyman in 1843, who was well aware that the country was populated because he had traveled there. By “people,” he, like later Zionists, meant a unified people recognizable as a nation.
Shaftesbury’s later interventions on this subject were more modest but in the same spirit. The Palestine Exploration Fund he helped establish in 1865 continued the focus on Palestine. By sending out agents to explore and survey every corner of the land, he explained in his presidential speech to the society, they were preparing it for “the return of its ancient possessors, for I must believe that the time cannot be far off before that great event will come to pass.” Echoing his diary comments twenty years e
arlier, he observed that the land was “almost without an inhabitant—a country without a people, and look! Scattered over the world, a people without a country.” He also recalled the inscribed ring that had been given him almost a quarter-and-a-century earlier, which he was still wearing that day.15 The following year, in an article in the Quarterly Review, he appealed to a wider audience.
The country wants capital and population. The Jew can give it both. And has not England a special interest in promoting such a restoration? . . . The nationality of the Jews exists; the spirit is there and has been for three thousand years, but the external form, the crowning bond of union, is still wanting. A nation must have a country. The old land, the old people. This is not an artificial experiment; it is nature, it is history.16
This is Shaftesbury, the most ardent of philosemites, respectful to Jews personally (he bowed to them when he passed them in Germany, to their astonishment), and reverential to them as a people and a nation—although not, as the parliamentary debates show, willing to admit them to Parliament. In other respects, as his contemporaries and biographers have testified, he was a difficult and troubled man, depressed, suspicious, temperamental, severely judgmental of himself and even more harshly of others. There was nothing saintly in the personal character of this most “Evangelical of the Evangelicals.” But there was an abundance of good works to his credit, reflecting his genuine concern for the poor and his untiring efforts on their behalf. One biographer concludes that, for all his personal faults, he was “one of the greatest Victorians, and, in however curious a manner, one of the best.”17 So one might also say that he was, if not one of the greatest or best philosemitic Victorians—George Eliot might rival him for that title—surely one of the most exuberantly philosemitic ones.aq
The People of the Book Page 11