History of the Jews

by Paul Johnson

  32. Quoted in Ben Sasson, op. cit., 391.

  33. Quoted in Encyclopaedia Judaica, xii 244-56.

  34. Deuteronomy 7:13.

  35. Deuteronomy 15:6.

  36. Psalms 34:10.

  37. Quoted in Werner Sombart, The Jews and Modern Capitalism (trans., London 1913), 36.

  38. Ben Sasson, op. cit., 670-9.

  39. Israel, op. cit., 27-30.

  40. Erhard Oestreich, Neostoicism and the Early Modern State (Cambridge 1982), 45-56; Israel, op. cit., 38.

  41. Roth, Venice, 305-6; Benjamin Ravid, Economics and Toleration in Seventeenth Century Venice (Jerusalem 1978), 30-3; Israel, op. cit., 47-8.

  42. H. I. Bloom, The Economic Activities of the Jews of Amsterdam in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London 1937).

  43. O. Muneles, The Prague Ghetto in the Renaissance Period (London 1965).

  44. Israel, op. cit., 96; 88-90; 102ff.; 117.

  45. S. Stern, Court Jew (London 1950).

  46. For Oppenheimer see Israel, op. cit., 123ff.; Stern, op. cit.; M. Grunwald, Samuel Oppenheimer und sein Kreis (Frankfurt 1913); Encyclopaedia Judaica, xii 1431-3.

  47. Quoted in Encyclopaedia Judaica, iii 402-5.

  48. Israel, op. cit., 121.

  49. B. D. Weinryb, The Jews of Poland: A Social and Economic History of the Jewish Community in Poland from 1100 to 1880 (Philadelphia 1972), 192-9; Encyclopaedia Judaica, v 480-4.

  50. See Gerhard Scholem, ‘Zohar: Manuscripts and Editions’, Encyclopaedia Judaica, xvi 211-12.

  51. For Luria see Gerhard Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York 1965), 244-86, 405-15; and Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah 1626-76 (trans., London 1973), 28-44.

  52. Quoted in Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, 18.

  53. For Reubeni and Molcho, see Roth, Venice, 72ff.

  54. R. J. Z. Werblowski, Joseph Caro, Lawyer and Mystic (Oxford 1962).

  55. Quoted in H. H. Ben Sasson, ‘Messianic Movements’, Encyclopaedia Judaica, xi 1426.

  56. Isaiah 28:15-18; 34:14; Habakkuk 3:5; Chronicles 21:1; Leviticus 16:8. J. Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews (Philadelphia 1943).

  57. J. Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition (New York 1939).

  58. Psalms 139:14-16.

  59. Roth, Personalities and Events, 78ff.

  60. Quoted by Ben Sasson, Encyclopaedia Judaica, xi 1425-6.

  61. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, 3ff.

  62. Quoted in ibid.

  63. Quoted in Scholem, Encyclopaedia Judaica, xiv 1235.

  64. Cecil Roth, Essays and Portraits in Anglo-Jewish History (London 1962), 139-64; Encyclopaedia Judaica vi 1159-60.

  65. For his life see Cecil Roth, Life of Manasseh ben Israel (London 1934).

  66. ‘Jewish Physicians in Medieval England’, in Roth, Essays and Portraits, 46-51; Lucien Wolf, The Middle Ages of Anglo-Jewish History 1290-1656 (London 1888).

  67. P. M. Handover, The Second Cecil (London 1959), ch. xiii, ‘The Vile Jew’.

  68. Cecil Roth, ‘Philosemitism in England’, in Essays and Portraits, 10-21.

  69. For this episode see Cecil Roth, ‘The Mystery of the Resettlement’, in Essays and Portraits, 86-107.

  70. Joseph J. Blau and S. W. Baron, The Jews in the United States 1790-1840: A Documentary History, 3 vols (New York 1963), i, Introduction, xviiiff.

  71. Quoted in ibid., xxi.

  72. Ibid., xxixff.

  73. Quoted in Israel, op. cit., 134.

  74. Ibid., 129.

  75. Quoted in ibid.

  76. Ibid., 130; O. K. Rabinowicz, Sir Solomon de Medina (London 1974).

  77. For the Salvadors, J. Picciotto, Sketches of Anglo-Jewish History (London 1956), 109-15, 153-6; for Gideon, A. M. Hyamson, Sephardim of England (London 1951), 128-33.

  78. The book is translated as The Jews and Modern Capitalism (London 1913).

  79. Alexander Marx, Studies in Jewish History and Booklore (New York 1969), ‘Some Jewish Book Collectors’, 198-237.

  80. Commentary to Mishnah Sanhedrin, x 1, quoted in Kochan, op. cit., 20.

  81. Ibid., 55-7; M. A. Meyer (ed.), Ideas of Jewish History (New York 1974), 117ff.; S. W. Baron, ‘Azariah dei Rossi’s Historical Method’, History and Jewish Historians (Philadelphia 1964), 205-39.

  82. Byron L. Sherwin, Mystical Theology and Social Dissent: The Life and Works of Judah Loew of Prague (New York 1983).

  83. For the biography, see R. Kayser, Spinoza: Portrait of a Spiritual Hero (New York 1968); R. Willies (ed.), Benedict de Spinoza: Life, Correspondence and Ethics (London 1870).

  84. Text from Willies, op. cit., 34-5, and Encyclopaedia Judaica, xv 275-84.

  85. Willies, op. cit., 35.

  86. Quoted in ibid., 72.

  87. L. Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion (trans., New York 1965).

  88. For documents, see Chronicon Spinozanum, 3 vols (Leiden 1921-3), i 278-82.

  89. Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics (Cambridge 1984), 32ff.

  90. Quoted in ibid., 34.

  91. For an appreciation of Spinoza’s thought see Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (London 1946), book iii, part 1, ch. 10.

  92. Deuteronomy 21:18-20; Sanhedrin 8, 5; 71a; Yebamoth 12, 1-2; quoted by Samuel Belkin, In His Image: The Jewish Philosophy of Man as Expressed in the Rabbinical Tradition (London 1961).

  93. J. R. Mintz, In Praise of Ba’al Shem Tov (New York 1970); Encyclopaedia Judaica, ix 1049ff.; Martin Buber, Origins and Meaning of Hasidism (London 1960).

  94. R. Schatz, ‘Contemplative Prayers in Hasidism’, in Studies in Mysticism and Religion Presented to Gershom G. Scholem (Jerusalem 1967), 209ff.

  95. Quoted in ibid., 213.

  96. Ibid., 216.

  97. L. Ginzburg, The Gaon, Rabbi Elijah (London 1920).

  98. Quoted in Encyclopaedia Judaica, vi 653.

  99. Arthur A. Cohen, The Natural and Supernatural Jew (London 1967), 20ff.

  100. Quoted in ibid., 24.

  101. Isaac Eisenstein Barzilay, ‘The Background of the Berlin Haskalah’, in Joseph L. Blaud et al. (eds): Essays on Jewish Life and Thought (New York 1959).

  102. Quoted in Cohen, op. cit.

  103. Alexander Altmann, Essays in Jewish Intellectual History (Brandeis 1981), and Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (University of Alabama 1973).

  104. Quoted in Altmann, Essays.

  105. Cohen, op. cit., 27-9.

  106. Quoted in Encylopaedia Judaica, vi 153.

  107. Blau and Baron, op. cit., xxii-xxiii.

  108. Roth, Personalities and Events, 256-70.

  109. See B. C. Kaganoff, A Dictionary of Jewish Names and their History (London 1977).

  110. A. Herzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews (New York 1968).

  111. Z. Sjakowlski, Jews and the French Revolutions of 1789, 1830 and 1848 (New York 1970).

  112. Quoted in Cecil Roth, ‘Lord George Gordon’s Conversion to Judaism’, in Essays and Portraits, 193-4.

  113. Quoted in ibid., 205.

  114. Cecil Roth, A History of the Great Synagogue (London 1950), 214ff.

  115. Quoted in Encyclopaedia Judaica, viii 1390-1432.

  116. Quoted in Ben Sasson, History of the Jewish People, 745; see Herzberg, op. cit.

  117. Quoted in Ben Sasson, History of the Jewish People.

  118. See R. Anchel, Napoléon et les Juifs (Paris 1928).

  119. F. Pietri, Napoléon et les Israélites (Paris 1965), 84-115.

  PART FIVE: EMANCIPATION

  1. Quoted in M. C. N. Salbstein, The Emancipation of the Jews in Britain (New Jersey 1982), 98.

  2. Quoted in W. F. Moneypenny, Life of Benjamin Disraeli, 6 vols (London 1910), i 22.

  3. Fritz J. Raddatz, Karl Marx: A Political Biography (London 1979), ch. 1; for Marx’s family background, see Heinz Monz, Karl Marx: Grundlagen der Entwicklung zu Leben und Werk (Trier 1973).

  4. Emile Marmorstein, Heaven at Bay: The Jewish Kulturkampf in the Holy Land (Oxford 1969), 32.


  5. Quoted in H. H. Ben Sasson (ed.), A History of the Jewish People (trans., Harvard 1976), 826.

  6. Erstlingswerk (Leipzig 1894), 233; quoted in Marmorstein, op. cit.

  7. The best is Bertrand Gille, Histoire de la Maison Rothschild, 2 vols (Geneva 1965-7).

  8. Quoted in Miriam Rothschild, Dear Lord Rothschild: Birds, Butterflies and History (London and Philadelphia 1983), 295-6.

  9. Ibid., 301.

  10. David Landes, Bankers and Pashas (London 1958), ch. 1.

  11. Harold Pollins, Economic History of the Jews in England (East Brunswick 1982), 95-6.

  12. S. D. Chapman, The Foundation of the English Rothschilds, 1793-1811 (London 1977), 20ff.

  13. See Edward Herries, Memoirs of the Public Life of John S. Herries (London 1880); Gille, op. cit., i 45ff.; F. Crouzet, L’Économie Britannique et le blocus continental 1806-13 (Paris 1958), 842.

  14. Gille, op. cit., i 458.

  15. Pollins, op. cit.; K. Helleiner, The Imperial Loans (Oxford 1965).

  16. Gille, op. cit., ii 571; see Pollins, op. cit., 245, table 5.

  17. G. Storey, Reuters (London 1951); F. Giles, Prince of Journalists (London 1962); Ronald Palin, Rothschild Relish (London 1970), quoted in Pollins, op. cit.

  18. Miriam Rothschild, op. cit., 9.

  19. Cecil Roth, The Magnificent Rothschilds (London 1939), 21.

  20. L. H. Jenks, The Migration of British Capital to 1875 (London 1963).

  21. Salbstein, op. cit.

  22. Quoted in ibid., 165.

  23. Gille, op. cit., ii 591-616.

  24. Richard Davis, The English Rothschilds (London 1983).

  25. For details, see Roth, op. cit.

  26. Miriam Rothschild, op. cit., 298.

  27. Ibid., 33.

  28. For an account of 1st Lord Rothschild, see ibid., 30-50.

  29. Ibid., 40.

  30. Quoted in Roth, op. cit.

  31. Quoted in Salbstein, op. cit., 44.

  32. Cecil Roth, Essays and Portraits in Anglo-Jewish History (London 1962), 18-20.

  33. Geoffrey Finlayson, The Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury (London 1981), 112-16, 154-9 etc.

  34. Quoted in Ronald Sanders, op. cit., 5.

  35. L. Loewe, The Damascus Affair (New York 1940).

  36. For Montefiore, see Lucien Wolf, Sir Moses Montefiore (London 1885).

  37. Roth, Essays and Portraits, 19-20.

  38. Robert Blake, Disraeli’s Grand Tour: Benjamin Disraeli and the Holy Land, 1830-1 (London 1982), 107ff.

  39. Daien Schwarz, Disraeli’s Fiction (London 1979), 99-100.

  40. ‘Benjamin Disraeli, Marrano Englishman’, in Salbstein, op. cit., 97-114.

  41. This was the view of Judah Halevi; see H. J. Zimmels, Ashkenazim and Sephardim (New York 1959).

  42. Quoted in Blake, op. cit., 126.

  43. Quoted in Salbstein, op. cit.

  44. M. A. Meyer, The Origins of the Modern Jew (New York 1968); Wolf’s article ‘On the Concept of a Science of Judaism’ (1822) is in Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook II (London 1957).

  45. Quoted in Lionel Kocham, The Jew and his History (London 1977), 66.

  46. Arthur A. Cohen, The Natural and Supernatural Jew (London 1967), 46.

  47. Quoted in Kocham, op. cit., 66.

  48. Babylon Talmud, Berakhoth 3a, quoted in ibid.

  49. For Hirsch’s writings see I. Grunfeld (ed.), Judaism Eternal, 2 vols (London 1956).

  50. Ibid., i 133-5, quoted in Kocham, op. cit.

  51. Kochan, op. cit., 79-80; Cohen, op. cit., 34; N. Rotenstreich, Jewish Philosophy in Modern Times (New York 1968), 136-48.

  52. The English translation, by P. Bloch, is in 6 vols (London 1892-8) and 5 vols (London 1919).

  53. Quoted in Kochan, op. cit.

  54. H. Graetz, Historic Parallels in Jewish History (London 1887).

  55. Alexander Altmann, ‘The New Style of Preaching in Nineteenth Century German Jewry’, in Essays in Jewish Intellectual History (Brandeis 1981).

  56. W. D. Plaut, Rise of Reform Judaism (London 1963); D. Philipson, Reform Movement in Judaism (New York 1967).

  57. M. Weiner (ed.), Abraham Geiger and Liberal Judaism (New York 1962).

  58. Quoted by Marmorstein, op. cit., 36.

  59. English translation by M. M. Kaplan (2nd edn, London 1964).

  60. S. Ginzburg, The Life and Works of M. H. Luzzatto (London 1931).

  61. Quoted in Marmorstein, op. cit., who gives a summary of Luzzatto’s teaching, 5-11.

  62. See Leo Rosen, The Joys of Yiddish (Harmondsworth 1971), xviff.

  63. The Renaissance of Hebrew Literature, 1743-1885 (New York 1909), quoted in Marmorstein, op. cit.

  64. Laura Hofrichter, Heinrich Heine (trans., Oxford 1963), 1-2.

  65. Jeffrey L. Sammons, Heinrich Heine: A Modern Biography (Princeton 1979), 40.

  66. Ibid., 171.

  67. The most important is S. S. Prawer, Heine’s Jewish Comedy: A Study of his Portraits of Jews and Judaism (Oxford 1983).

  68. Heine to Moses Moser, 23 August 1823; quoted in Sammons, op. cit.

  69. Heine to Immanuel Wohlwill, 1 April 1823; quoted in ibid.

  70. Heine to Ferdinand Lassalle, 11 February 1846, quoted in ibid.

  71. Heine to Moser, 14 December 1825, quoted in Hofrichter, op. cit., 44.

  72. Ernst Elster (ed.), Heines samtliche Werke, 7 vols (Leipzig and Vienna 1887-90), vii 407.

  73. Sammons, op. cit., 249-50.

  74. Ibid., 288.

  75. Ibid., 25-6.

  76. Ibid., 166.

  77. Ibid., 308.

  78. For their relations see Raddatz, op. cit., 42-3; Sammons, op. cit., 260ff.

  79. Paul Nerrlich (ed.), Arnold Ruges Briefwechsel und Tagebuchblatter aus der Jahren 1825-1880 (Berlin 1886), ii 346.

  80. Robert S. Wistrich, Revolutionary Jews from Marx to Trotsky (London 1976), 40, shows that an article by Marx on Jerusalem, printed in the New York Daily Tribune in April 1854, sometimes quoted to disprove this assertion, in fact confirms it.

  81. To Engels, 11 April 1868, Karl Marx-Friedrich Engels Werke (East Berlin 1956-68), xxxii 58.

  82. Karl Jaspers, ‘Marx und Freud’, Der Monat, xxvi (1950), quoted in Raddatz, op. cit.

  83. See Raddatz, op. cit., 143 for references.

  84. François Marie Charles Fourier, Théorie des quatres mouvements (Paris 1808); for Fourier see L. Poliakov, History of Anti-semitism (trans., London 1970—).

  85. Carnets (Paris 1961), ii 23, 337.

  86. Wistrich, op. cit., 6ff.

  87. For Borne see Orlando Figes, ‘Ludwig Borne and the Formation of a Radical Critique of Judaism’, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book (London 1984).

  88. See Prawer, op. cit.; Nigel Reeves, ‘Heine and the Young Marx’, Oxford German Studies viii (1972-3).

  89. Herr Vogt (London 1860), 143-4; quoted in Wistrich, op. cit.

  90. Karl Marx, Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 29 April 1849.

  91. Marx-Engels Works, ii III (Berlin 1930), 122.

  92. Marx-Engels Werke, xxx 165.

  93. Ibid., 259.

  94. See Figes, op. cit.

  95. Bruno Bauer, Die Judenfrage (Brunswick 1843).

  96. I have used T. B. Bottomore (ed. and trans.), Karl Marx: Early Writings (London 1963). Also in Karl Marx-Engels Collected Works (London 1975ff.), iii 146-74.

  97. Bottomore, op. cit., 34.

  98. Ibid., 37.

  99. Ibid., 35-6.

  100. Ibid., 34-5.

  101. Capital, i II, ch. 4.

  102. Capital, ii VII, ch. 22.

  103. Karl Marx, ‘The Russian Loan’, New York Daily Tribune, 4 January 1856.

  104. Quoted by S. W. Baron, ‘Population’, Encyclopaedia Judaica, xiii 866-903.

  105. Quoted in Ben Sasson, op. cit.

  106. Paul Lindau (ed.), Ferdinand Lassalles Tagebuch (Breslau 1891), 160-1; quoted in Wistrich, op. cit.

  107. A. F. Day, The Mortara Mystery (London 1930).

  108. For Jews
under the Tsars see J. Frumkin et al. (eds), Russian Jewry 1860-1917 (London 1966); S. W. Baron, The Russian Jew under Tsars and Soviets (New York 1964).

  109. See Alexis Goldenweiser, ‘Legal Status of Jews in Russia’, in Frumkin, op. cit.

  110. Lucien Wolf (ed.), Legal Sufferings of the Jews in Russia (London 1912).

  111. Ibid., 41.

  112. Ibid. 44-6, 71-6.

  113. Ibid., 2-6.

  114. Ibid., 9.

  115. I. M. Dijur, ‘Jews in the Russian Economy’, in Frumkin, op. cit., 120-43.

  116. Quoted in Amos Elon, Herzl (London 1976).

  117. Quoted in Ben Sasson, op. cit.

  118. Joseph L. Blau and S. W. Baron, The Jews in the United States 1790-1840: A Documentary History, 3 vols (New York 1963), ii 576.

  119. Ibid., iii 809.

  120. Ibid., ii 327.

  121. A. B. Makover, Mordecai M. Noah (New York 1917); I. Goldberg, Major Noah: American Jewish Pioneer (New York 1937); text of his proclamation in Blau and Baron, op. cit., iii 898-9.

  122. Ibid., 176-81.

  123. For Leeser, see Murray Friedman, Jewish Life in Philadelphia 1830-1940 (Philadelphia 1984).

  124. Text in full in Encyclopaedia Judaica, xiii 570-1.

  125. H. E. Jacobs, The World of Emma Lazarus (New York 1949); E. Merriam, Emma Lazarus: Woman with a Torch (New York 1956).

  126. Encyclopaedia Judaica, xii 1092.

  127. Richard Siegel and Carl Rheins (eds), The Jewish Almanack (New York 1980), 509.

  128. Psalms 137:1.

  129. Moses Hess, Rome and Jerusalem (trans., New York 1918).

  130. Cohen, op. cit., 57-9; for Hess, see also Isaiah Berlin, The Life and Opinions of Moses Hess (Cambridge 1959).

  131. J. R. Vincent (ed.), Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative Party: The Political Journals of Lord Stanley (London 1978), 32-3.

  132. J. A. Gere and John Sparrow (eds), Geoffrey Madan’s Notebooks (Oxford 1984).

  133. J. J. Tobias, The Prince of Fences: The Life and Crimes of Ikey Solomons (London 1974).

  134. L. Hyman, The Jews of Ireland, London and Jerusalem (London 1972), 103-4.

  135. Emily Strangford, Literary Remains of the Late Emanuel Deutsch (New York 1974).

  136. Gordon S. Haight, George Eliot (Oxford 1968), 487.

  137. Encyclopaedia Britannica (London 1911), xxviii 987.

  138. For the influence of George Eliot, see Ronald Sanders, The High Walls of Jerusalem: A History of the Balfour Declaration and the Birth of the British Mandate for Palestine (New York 1984), 14ff.