The People of the Book
Page 16
V. From Evangelicalism to Zionism
1 See above, p. 119.
2 G. F. A. Best, Shaftesbury (London, 1964), p. 52. On Shaftesbury’s political views, see above, chap. III.
3 Donald M. Lewis, The Origins of Christian Zionism: Lord Shaftesbury and Evangelical Support for a Jewish Homeland (Cambridge, Eng., 2010), pp. 117–18 (diary, July 30, 1826).
4 Text of the agenda in article on the London Society on the Internet.
5 Edwin Hodder, The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury (London, 1888), p. 123 (diary, Sept. 29, 1838).
6 William D. Rubinstein and Hilary L. Rubinstein, Philosemitism: Admiration and Support in the English-Speaking World for Jews (London, 1999), pp. 158–9 (quoting Shaftesbury, “State and Prospects of the Jews,” Quarterly Review, Jan./Mar. 1839); and Hodder, pp. 126–7.
7 Hodder, p. 169 (letter to Palmerston, Sept. 25, 1840).
8 Hodder, p. 167 (diary, Aug. 1, 1840). Shaftesbury repeatedly referred to Jews as “God’s [or “His” or “Thine”] ancient people.” See also Donald Lewis, p. 147 (diary, Oct. 8, 1843); Hodder, 632 (letter to Gladstone, Dec. 22, 1868). The phrase appears in his diary as late as Feb. 2, 1882 (Hodder, p. 732).
9 Donald Lewis, p. 146 (letter to Princess Lieven, Nov. 13, 1840).
10 Barbara W. Tuchman, Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour (New York, 1968), p. 205 (diary, Nov. 12, 1841).
11 Hodder, p. 203 (diary, Nov. 18, 1841).
12 Hodder, p. 270 (diary, Aug. 27, 1843).
13 Hodder, p. 493 (italics in original) (diary, May 17, 1854).
14 Edward W. Said, The Question of Palestine (New York, 1979), p. 9. For a discussion of the dispute over the origin and meaning of this expression, see Adam Garfinkle, “On the Origin, Meaning, Use and Abuse of a Phrase,” Middle Eastern Studies, Oct. 1991; and Diana Muir, “A Land Without a People for a People Without a Land,” Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2008.
15 Donald Lewis, p. 319 (speech to the Palestine Exploration Fund Society, 1875).
16 Quoted by Tuchman, p. 251.
17 Best, p. 126.
18 Hodder, p. 737.
19 Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, tr. Sylvie D’Avigdore (reproduced on the Internet, p. 18). Herzl probably started the book before the Dreyfus affair, but it was surely in his mind as he wrote it. Geoffrey Lewis points out that there is no mention of Dreyfus in Herzl’s diaries. (Balfour and Weizmann: The Zionist, the Zealot and the Emergence of Israel [London, 2009], p. 12).
20 Geoffrey Lewis, p. 37.
21 Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism (New York, 1972), p. 112.
22 Yoram Hazony, The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul (New York, 2000), p. 164.
23 Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1972), IV, 131 (a reproduction of the letter).
24 Jonathan Schneer, The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israel Conflicty (New York, 2010), is a detailed account of the “contradictions, deceptions, misinterpretations, and wishful thinking” that led to the Declaration, which “produced a murderous harvest . . . [that] we go on harvesting even today” (368). The emphasis throughout is on the “deceit,” “intrigue,” and “double-dealing” (xxix) that were, as the sub-title put it, “the origins of the Arab-Israel conflict.” My emphasis is on the ideas and visions (and, yes, contradictions and deceptions) that led to the Declaration, and on the Declaration itself, for all its faults and ambiguities, as the historic origin of the state of Israel.
25 Donald Lewis, p. 333.
26 Blanche E. C. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour (New York, 1937), I, 324.
27 Tuchman, p. 312.
28 Geoffrey Lewis, p. 63.
29 Michael Makovsky, Churchill’s Promised Land: Zionism and Statecraft (New Haven, Conn., 2007), p. 77.
30 A. J. Balfour, Essays Speculative and Political (London, 1920), pp. 259–60.
31 Balfour, Essays, p. 266.
32 Balfour, Essays, pp. 261–2.
33 Balfour, speech in the House of Lords, June 21, 1922. (All the parliamentary speeches cited in this chapter are from Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, reproduced on the Internet.)
34 Dugdale, II, 235, 409.
35 John Maynard Keynes, Essays in Biography (London, 1951 [1st ed., 1933]), pp. 35–6.
36 Rubinstein, p. 167.
37 Martin Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship (New York, 2007), p. 24.
38 Tuchman, p. 336.
39 Tuchman, p. 323.
40 Tuchman, p. 323.
41 Rubinstein, p. 145.
42 Rubinstein, p. 168.
43 Rubinstein, p. 168.
44 Roy Jenkins, Churchill (London, 2001), p. 108. (Not quite “exactly”; the Aliens Act was passed in 1905, the election was in 1906.)
45 Makovsky, p. 62 (quoting the Jewish Chronicle, Feb. 7, 1908) (italics in original).
46 Churchill, “Zionism versus Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People,” Illustrated Sunday Herald, February 8, 1920. The Disraeli quotation early in the article was cited often by Churchill in different contexts and sometimes slightly differently worded. Historians have not found the “well-known occasion” when Disraeli made that pronouncement, although it certainly represents his views.
47 Gilbert, pp. 56–7.
48 Makovsky, p. 235. Churchill took credit for coining this phrase, but it was Herbert Samuel who suggested the concept and drafted the White Paper.
49 Gilbert, p. 85; Makovsky, p. 132.
50 Makovsky, p. 146.
51 Makovsky, p. 150.
52 Churchill, speech in the House of Commons, May 23, 1939.
53 Gilbert, p. 161.
54 Anthony Julius, Trials of the Diaspora: A History of AntiSemitism in England (Oxford, 2010), p. 323 (letter to Lord Cranborne, July 1942).
55 Makovsky, p. 191.
56 Churchill, speech in the House of Commons, Jan. 26, 1949. That “event in world history” echoed his essay about Jews and Bolshevism almost thirty years earlier. See above, pp. 139–140.
57 Gilbert, p. 279.
58 Gilbert, p. 295 (April 16, 1956).
59 Winston Churchill, The Second World War: Closing the Ring (Boston, 1953), V, 533.
60 William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Visions of Glory, 1874–1932 (New York, 1983), p. 177.
61 Gertrude Himmelfarb, The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments (New York, 2004), pp. 38–39 and endnotes 48 and 49, p. 246.
62 Winston Churchill, “Moses: The Leader of a People,” Sunday Chronicle, Nov. 8, 1931, in Churchill, Thoughts and Adventures (New York, 1990), pp. 212–15.
63 Churchill, “Moses,” p. 209.
64 Review by Piers Brendon of Martin Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews, in The Independent, July 13, 2007.
Epilogue
1 See above, p. 109.
2 See above, p. 8.
3 See above, pp. 141–2.
4 See above, pp. 75, 139.
5 Milton Himmelfarb, “What Do I Believe,” Commentary, August 1996, reprinted in Jews and Gentiles, ed. Gertrude Himmelfarb (New York, 2007), p. 163. See also The Politics of Hope (London, 1997) by Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain.
Index
Act of Toleration (1689)
Addison, Joseph
Agudath Israel
Alexander, Michael Solomon
Aliens Act (1793)
Aliens Bill (1905)
Anglicans
Antisemitism, history of
Aristotle
Arnold, Matthew; Culture and Anarchy
Arnold, Thomas
Ashley, Lord; see also Shaftesbury, Seventh Earl of
Asquith, Herbert
Atheists
Attlee, Clement
Bacon, Francis, New Atlantis
Baldwin, Stanley
Balfour, Arthur
Balfour Declaration
Baron, Salo
Battersea, Lady Constance
Ben Israel,
Menasseh; The Hope of Israel
Bentinck, George
Berkeley, Bishop
Bevin, Ernest
Birnbaum, Nathan
Blake, William
Blood libel
Brougham, Lord
Buchan, John; A Lodge in the Wilderness; Mr. Standfast; The Thirty-Nine Steps; The Three Hostages
Burke, Edmund; Reflections on the Revolution in France
Calvinism
Carlyle, Thomas
Cartwright, Joanna and Ebenezer
Catherine of Aragon
Catholic Emancipation Act (1829)
Catholics
Chamberlain, Joseph
Charles II
Chaucer, Geoffrey
Churchill, Randolph
Churchill, Winston; History of the English-Speaking Peoples
Clarendon, Lord
Cobbett, William
Coke, Lord
Conservatives
Cotton, John
Cranborne, Lord
Cromwell, Oliver
Damascus Affair
Davis, Eliza
Deutsch, Emanuel
Dickens, Charles; Oliver Twist; Our Mutual Friend
Disraeli, Benjamin; Coningsby; Endymion; Sybil; Tancred; The Wondrous Tale of Alroy
Dissenters
Dreyfus Affair
Dryden, John
Dugdale, Blanche
Edgeworth, Maria, Harrington
Edinburgh Review
Edward I
Eisenhower, Dwight
Eliot, George; Daniel Deronda; Impressions of Theophrastus Such; Middlemarch
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Judaica
Endelman, Todd
English Zionist Federation
Episcopalians
Erastians
Evangelicals passim
Evelyn, John
Expulsion of the Jews
Fackenheim, Emil
Feuerbach, Ludwig
Finch, Sir Henry, The World’s Resurrection
Fox, George
Froude, James
Gaunse, Joachim
Gibbon, Edward
Gilbert, Martin, Churchill and the Jews
Gladstone, William; The State in its relations with the Church
Godwin, William, History of the Commonwealth
Goethe, Johann; Iphege-nia
Goldsmid, Abraham
Goldsmid, Isaac
Goldsmid, Francis
Gordon, Lord George
Graetz, Heinrich
Grant, Robert
Green, John Richard
Halevy, Jehuda
Hardwicke, Lord
Harrington, James, Commonwealth of Oceana
Hazlitt, William
Hebraism
Hebrew University
Hegel, Wilhelm
Heine, Heinrich; Hebrew Melodies
Henry VIII
Herzl, Theodor; Der Judenstaat
Himmelfarb, Milton
Hindus
Hitler, Adolf
Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan
Holocaust
Hume, David
Inglis, Robert
Jaeger, Werner, The Ideals of Greek Culture
James I
James II
James, Henry
Jew Naturalization Bill (introduced 1753)
Jewish Board of Deputies
Jewish Chronicle
Jewish Disabilities Bill (1847)
Jewish Disabilities Removal Act (1845)
Jewish Federation
Jewish National Fund
John
Jowett, Benjamin
Julius, Anthony
Kabbalah
Katz, David
Keynes, John Maynard
Kook, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda
Koran
League of Antisemites
League of British Jews
Leavis, F. R., Gwendolen Harleth
Levellers
Lewes, George
Liberals
Lloyd George, David
Locke, John; A Letter Concerning Toleration; Two Treatises of Government
Lockhart, John
London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews
London Stock Exchange
Lopez, Rodrigo
Lowman, Moses, Dissertation on the Civil Government of the Hebrews
Lump, Moses
Lutherans
Luzzatto, Simone, Discorso circa il stato de gl’Hebrei
Macaulay, Thomas Babington
Macaulay, Zachary
Mackintosh, Sir James
Maimonides, Moses
Mandate
Marr, Wilhelm, Der Weg zum Siege des Germantums uber des Judentums
Marranos
Marx, Karl
Maryland Toleration Acts
Melbourne, Lord
Menorah Journal
Mill, John Stuart; Considerations on Representative Government
Millenarians
Milton, John; Areopagitica; Paradise Lost
Mirabeau, comte de
Mohammed
Montagu, Edwin
Montefiore, Moses
More, Thomas, Utopia
Morgan, Thomas, The Moral Philosopher
Mosaic Republic
Muslims
Napoleon
Negroes
New Christians, see Marranos
Newton, Isaac
Nicholas, Edward, “An Apology for the Honorable Nation of the Jews,”
Overton, Richard, “The Arraignment of Mr. Persecution,”
Oxford English Dictionary
Palestine
Palestine Exploration Fund
Palmerston, Lady
Palmerston, Lord
Papists, see Catholics
Peel, Sir Robert
Pelham, Henry
Pepys, Samuel
Philo-Judaean Society
Philosemitism, history of
Positivists, in England
Presbyterians
Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Prynne, William, A Short Demurrer
Puritans
Quakers
Quarterly Review
Raleigh, Sir Walter
Reform Bill (1832)
Robles, Antonio
Rossini, Giacomo
Roth, Cecil
Rothschild, Lionel de
Rothschild, Nathan
Rothschild, Walter (2d Baron)
Rothschild family
Russell, John
Said, Edward
Samuel, Herbert
Sanhedrin
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Réflexions sur la question juive
Saxon Chronicle
Scott, Sir Walter, Ivanhoe
Seditious Meetings Bill (1795)
Selbstemanzipation
Selden, John, On Natural Law
Seven Years War
Shaftesbury, First Earl of
Shaftesbury, Seventh Earl of; see also Ashley, Lord
Shakespeare, William
Smith, Adam; Lectures on Jurisprudence; Wealth of Nations
Socrates
Sokolow, Nahum
Spectator
Spinoza, Baruch
Strauss, David
Stürmer, Der
Suez crisis
Talmud
Tatler
Test and Corporation Acts
Thackeray, William, Codlingsby; Rebecca and Rowena
Theophrastus
Times
Tocqueville, Alexis de
Toland, John, Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews
Tories
Treitschke, Heinrich von
Trilling, Lionel
Trollope, Anthony, Barchester Towers; Phineas Finn; The Way We Live Now
Uganda
Unitarians
University of London
Versailles Conference
Victoria
Walpole, Horace
Weizmann, Chaim
Whigs; interpretation of history
Wilberforce, William
William and Mary
Williams, Roger, “The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution,”
Young Hegelians
Zangwill, Israel
Zionism
Zionist Congress
Zunz, Leopold, Die Synagogale Poesie des Mitteralters
a I speak of “England,” rather than “Britain,” partly because a good deal of this story is about England before it became Britain, but also because that is the term contemporaries generally used even for the later period, as many of the quotations in the following chapters and the titles of books on the subject testify.
b It is a moot question whether this idea of recognition originated with Goethe or Hegel, who were good friends. Hegel often quoted from Goethe, his Iphigenia especially, and was much taken with the idea of Sittlichkeit (morality) expressed in that play.
c Leviathan was published in 1651, at the very time the readmission of the Jews began to be discussed. Although Hobbes returned to England shortly afterwards (he had been living in France), he played no part in the subsequent debate.
d The Bloudy Tenent is commonly referred to as a “tract,” but the word does not quite do justice to the five-hundred-page book, including the reply by his arch-critic John Cotton and Williams’s counter-reply, both of which are densely theological. That it should have had the audience and influence it did is itself, quite apart from its message, a tribute to the prevailing Hebraist culture, in America as well as England.
e The medieval commentators, mistaking the etymology of the French word Angleterre, “Land of the Angles,” translated it as ketzei ha-aretz, the “extremity of the earth,” suggesting that England was the final place of dispersion that would lead to the millennium. 14
f Bacon’s utopia, New Atlantis, published posthumously in 1627, features one Jew (a “circumcized” Jew, it is specified) who instructs the narrator in the laws and customs of the country regarding marriage and family (all very chaste and virtuous, unlike, Bacon observes, another Utopia—Thomas More’s, obviously—where the couple are permitted to see each other naked before marriage). That Jew was “a wise man and learned, and of great policy.”28 Later scholars have identified his prototype as a Bohemian (Czech) engineer, Joachim Gaunse, then living in England, who in 1584 was sent by Sir Walter Raleigh to America to develop its mining resources, and who thus became the first Jew to set foot on English soil in North America.29