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BRITISH JEWISH PREACHERS IN TIME OF WAR (1800–1918)

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 4; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14725880500298245

1472-5894

Marc Saperstein,

Religion, Gender, and Enlightenment

Abstract Beginning in the eighteenth century, occasions related to war became a significant new venue for Jewish preaching. The declaration of war or its conclusion, a government‐proclaimed Day of National Fasting and Prayer or of Thanksgiving, a major victory or defeat of the nation’s armed forces – all generated sermons by Jewish preachers, who not infrequently publicized what they said beyond the synagogue walls. These sermons reflect the patriotic identification of Jews with the nation where they resided, the desire to demonstrate this loyalty to the larger society, the homiletical application of classical texts and historical precedents to new situations, the challenge presented by war to assumptions about human progress, the theological conundrum of enemy nations praying for victory to the same God, the poignant agony of Jews fighting against other Jews. This article reviews Jewish sermons delivered by British preachers mobilizing the rhetorical resources of Jewish and general literatures to express absolute identification with the Crown, the Government and the Empire, as well as sermons that express deep discouragement about the devastating cost of war in material, cultural, psychological and religious terms. Notes 1. Marc Saperstein, Jewish Preaching 1200–1800. New Haven: Yale University Press, Citation1989. 347–58; reference to Jewish service only through prayer: 351–53. 2. I plan to publish the full texts of some of the sermons to be discussed, with introduction and annotation, in a study of American‐ and Anglo‐Jewish Preaching in time of war during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 3. Roth, Magna Bibliotheca, p. 325, no. 28. This pamphlet is not in the British Library collection; I used the copy at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Luria also published a sermon delivered on Shabbat Zakhor, 13 Adar 5544 (8 March 1784); Roth, ibid., no. 27. Whether this Isaac Luria was a gilgul of the more famous, sixteenth‐century Isaac Luria I have not been able to determine. 4. Word of the stunning victory of Napoleon’s forces over the Russian and Austrian armies at Austerlitz on 2 December had not yet reached Britain, but it would undoubtedly have added to the shock of the occasion. Even before that victory, on 24 October 1805, David Sinzheim delivered a celebratory sermon in Strasbourg, published in French translation in pamphlet form, with the most enthusiastic praise for Napoleon: “Il est donc indubitable, que c’est lui qui est l’Élu du Seigneur, et que le Seigneur protège sans cesse les actions du juste.” Sermon prononcé dans la grande Synagogue à Strasbourg, le 2 Brumaire an 14, pour célébrer les glorieuses victoires de sa Majesté l’Empéreur des Français, Roi d’Italie”, par David Sinzheim, Rabbin. I discovered this sermon through Ronald Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715–1815. Berkeley: University of California Press, Citation2003. 211; Prof. Schechter was kind enough to provide me with a copy of the text. 5. For a review of the Christian sermons delivered, see Deryck Lovegrove, “English Dissent and the European Conflict.” The Church and War. Ed. W. J. Sheils. Oxford: Blackwell, Citation1983. 263–76. These sermons also focused on the moral decay of British society, including sexual immorality and the slave trade, as a reason for the divine visitation of war (pp. 272–75). 6. The sermon delivered by Hirschell on 7 July 1814, the Day of General Thanksgiving for the Restoration of Peace, following the occupation of Paris by the Allies and the abdication of Napoleon, is apparently not extant. See Richard D. Barnett, “Haham Meldola and Hazan de Sola, TJHSE 21 (1968), Plate 1 (facing p. 6), p. 14 [1–38]. For the sermon given in the synagogue of Prague on that day, see Saperstein, “War and Patriotism”, 12–13. 7. Reference is undoubtedly to the reformist Khatt‐i Sherif or “Noble Rescript” of 3 November 1839, bestowing civil equality to non‐Muslims (“These Imperial concessions shall extend to all our subjects of whatever Religion or sect they may be: they shall enjoy them without exceptions”). See Wayne S. Vucinich, The Ottoman Empire: Its Record and Legacy. Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Company, Citation1965. 160–61. 8. Revd M. B. Levy in the Western Synagogue, St Albans Place, reported in the Jewish Chronicle 10:32 (12 May Citation1854): 273. 9. This association between the three major regions of Russia with the three terms was not uncommon in nineteenth‐century eschatological speculation: Rosh was understood to refer to “Rus”, or “Russia Proper” (the European part), Meshech to “Muscovy” (the Eastern part), Tubal to “Tobolsky” (the northern part). The accepted view was that these three originally independent states united under the common name of Russia. Wilhelm Gesenius identified Rosh in Ezekiel 38:2–3 and 33:1 with Russia in his Lexicon first published in German in 1810–12; it was published in English translation in 1836 and 1850. Christian millennialist thinkers predicted the defeat of Russia in the Crimean War based on this passage in Ezekiel: see Boyer, Paul. When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 84–86, 154–55, 382 n. 11. Similarly in the controversial Jewish preacher Benjamin Cohen Carillon, who served in various communities of the Caribbean and whom Mendes replaced as Minister of Montego Bay, Jamaica in 1847: “Rosh is Russia, Meshech Muscovy, and Tubal Tobolsky” (http://users.aol.com/bible2007/gogmagog, htm); on Carillon in St Thomas, see Coen, Judah M. Through the Sands of Time. Hanover: University Press of New England, Citation2004. 66–79. 10. Jewish Chronicle 10:31, 5 May Citation1854: 261–62. Mendes did not include this sermon in his volume published at London the following year (Sermons, London: John Chapman, 1855). The following year, another “National Day of Humiliation” was proclaimed by the Crown, and in Canada Abraham de Sola joined other ministers to pray for the speedy victory of the British (Jewish Chronicle, 8 June Citation1855, citing the Montreal Gazette, of 21 April 1855). I am grateful for this reference to Richard Menkis, who also reports that two years later de Sola spoke to his congregants on the public fast day to commemorate the English killed in the riots in India (Occident 15. 1857–1858: 503 and especially 513–17, also reported in the Jewish Chronicle, 25 December Citation1857). 11. Among the Cambridge University Library sermon pamphlets, the purported compromise with idolatry and the failure to promote Christianity is emphasized frequently and with considerable force. Only one of the preachers, Edmund Kell, takes what he knows will be the unpopular position that there is “something cancerous in the nature of our connexion with India, which with a determined hand we should eradicate”, and that “we have no moral right to reign over India, if we can only do so at the expense of her people’s blood”, p. 4). 12. “Until that [messianic] period arrives – a period of which no account is taken by Israelites in any of their relations as citizens – the political Jerusalem of every Jew is the land of his birth, the land where he is a citizen amongst citizens, in fine, his native land, whose welfare and prosperity are identified with the dearest affections of his soul”. Sermons Preached on Various Occasions, pp. 159–60. In this he echoes the position famously taken by Moses Mendelssohn in his reply to Johann David Michaelis; The Jew in the Modern World. Ed. Paul Mendes‐Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Citation1995. 48. 13. In the version of the sermon summarized by the Examiner, this statement is followed by the following words, which were omitted in the version Marks published several years later: “We may rest satisfied, that the nation will not abnegate its right to demand a searching inquiry into the circumstances that have placed in peril an empire, and cause the most precious blood of the land to be poured out like water. But this is not the time to enter on such an inquiry.” One might surmise that in the absence of the appropriately “searching inquiry” following the war, he did not wish to call attention to his assurance. 14. The quotation is from James Spence, cited by Stanley, p. 283. Cf. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, in a sermon on “India’s Ills and England’s Sorrows” delivered at the Surrey Gardens Music Hall two months earlier: “The government of India has been a cruel government; it has much for which to appear before the bar of God. Its tortures – if the best evidence is to be believed – have been of the most inhuman kind; God forgive the men who have committed such crimes in the British name.” The New Park Street Pulpit, vol. 3 (1857), p. 342. And in his Fast‐Day sermon: “The sins of the government of India have been black and deep. He who has heard the shrieks of tormented natives, who has heard the well‐provoked cursing of dethroned princes, might have prophesied that it would not be long before God would unsheath his sword to avenge the oppressed. With regard to India itself, I am no apologist for our dominion there” (ibid., p. 382). 15. For a full review of Anglo‐Jewish preaching in this war period, against the background of public questioning of Jewish patriotism and accusations of Jewish culpability for the outbreak of war, see Schnitzer, Shira. “‘No Conflict Of Principle’: The Patriotic Rhetoric of Anglo‐Jewish Sermons During The Boer War.” JMJS 3:3 (Citation2004): 289–307. 16. The statement, usually with “God” instead of “Providence”, is generally attributed to Napoleon, though Voltaire cites it as a common witticism. “it is said that…” (Letter to M. le Riche, 6 February 1770). This need to reply to the cynical dismissal of prayer and of divine power seems to strike a new note, which will become more pronounced in sermons of the Great War. 17. Four and a half years later, Adler spoke at the unveiling of the Memorial to the 114 Jewish soldiers who fell in the South African War: “The members of the House of Israel have always faithfully served the country of their birth. But surely England deserves that we, her Jewish children, should gladly live and die for her: since here … we are spared that most distressful sight, the revival of odious religious prejudices and pernicious racial antipathies.” The function of the Memorial Roll is therefore “to impress upon our youths the imperative obligation of qualifying themselves for military service”. Adler, Hermann. Anglo‐Jewish Memories. London: George Routledge and Sons, Citation1909. 143–44. 18. Geoffrey Alderman describes Adler as “a pillar of the establishment and a staunch Conservative”, whose defence of the Salisbury Government’s policy in this sermon meant taking a strong stand on what was very much a political issue. The Jewish Community in British Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, Citation1983. 43–44. 19. This was announced at the end of the text of the sermon published in the edition of the Jewish Chronicle appearing immediately after the sermon was delivered: 10 November 1899: 13. Yet 10 years later, in an otherwise glowing review of Adler’s Jubilee volume Anglo‐Jewish Memories, the reviewer suggests that the present sermon “is perhaps unwisely admitted into the volume…. Who, looking calmly back now on the Boer War, will maintain that the pulpits of England honoured themselves by justifying that struggle?” Jewish Chronicle, 11 June Citation1909. 20. The Jewish Chronicle of 9 September Citation1870 (p. 7), wrote an editorial on “The Emperor Napoleon”, stating: “The great event which in the last few days has astounded Europe is the fall of the most celebrated personage of the age – the Emperor of the French…. But we need, as Jews, consider with deep regret that a Sovereign who throughout his reign has, with one exception [his failure to intervene with the Pope in the Mortara case], proved himself not only impartially favourable, but heartily friendly, towards the Jews, has fallen from his high estate.” 21. In a 19 March 1864 sermon at Philadelphia, the German‐born American preacher David Einhorn referred to Prussian Jews fighting against Danish Jews in the war that began in February 1864 (see Einhorn, “War With Amalek.” American Sermons. Ed. Michael Warner. New York: Library of America, Citation1999. 670), and of course as Einhorn spoke, Union Jews were fighting Confederate Jews in the American Civil War. In July 1866, Prussian Jews had fought Austrian Jews in the decisive battle of Königgrätz. The issue of the Jewish Chronicle cited in the previous note reported that “There are no less than thirty thousand Jews in the North German Army. There are great numbers of Jews in the French Army”. An earlier issue (29 July 1870) reported that, “There is a Jewish family at Strasburg, of which two first cousins serve – the one in the French, the other in the Prussian army” (p. 10). Virtually every issue included reports of heroic acts performed by Jewish soldiers, especially on the German side. 22. A striking articulation of similar sentiments can be found in the German Reform Rabbi Leopold Stein’s Rosh Hashanah sermon of 1870 (delivered on the evening of 25 September) at Frankfurt am Main. Stein bitterly condemns the war without obviously taking sides: “You believed this to be a century of Progress!? Your stride forward is a murderous stride (Dein Fortschritt ist ein Mordschritt), with which on one day you grind many thousands of fine human lives into dust”. Stein, Leopold. Der Kampf des Lebens: ein Cyclus von Festpredigten, in Bezhiehung zu dem grossen Völkerkampfe der Gegenwart …. 5631–1870) im israelitischen Betsaale Westend‐Union zu Frankfurt a. M. Mannheim: Schneider, Citation1871. 1–2. The sentiment here is quite different from that in the sermon delivered on the German day of national prayer in late July by Moritz Rahmer, Milhemeth hovah: oder, Der heilige Krieg. Predigt gehalten am Bettage den 27 Juli 1870. 23. Mendes‐Flohr, Paul. “The Kriegserlebnis and Jewish Consciousness.” Jews in the Weimar Republic. Ed. Tübingen: Wolfgang Benz et al. Citation1998, e.g. pp. 227–28, on Leo Baeck’s sermon delivered at the day of prayer proclaimed by the Kaiser for 5 August 1914, on which all Berlin’s synagogues were filled to capacity. 24. Jewish Chronicle, 21 August Citation1914: 11–12. This sermon was not included by Joseph in the last volume of his sermons, but he did include several others on the war, and in one, delivered after the Armistice, he proclaimed that only Jews and Quakers “dared to preach peace during the past period of strife when most other men were for war”, and that his pulpit was consecrated to preaching peace throughout the five years of awful conflict. “Peace and Goodwill”, in The Spirit of Judaism, p. 224. 25. On these themes in British Christian sermons, see Hoover, A. J. God, Germany, and Britain in the Great War. New York: Praeger, Citation1989. 22, 110–11. 26. Gollancz, “Nationalism Within Bounds.” Rosh Hashanah, Citation1918, Fifty Years After: Sermons and Addresses. London: Humphrey Milford, 1924. 82, 84. The resonance of these words in the context of current debates in the United States over the Patriot Act need not be emphasized. 27. See Hebrews 6:5–6. 28. For a picture of Anton Lang delivering the Prologue in 1930 (when his son Alois played Christ), see Diemer, Hermine, and Franz X. Bogenrieder, Oberammergau und seine Passionsspiele. Munich, Seyfried & Comp., and www.donet.com/~devitt/stories.htm. The New York Times of 24 October 1915 (II, 17:4) carried a short article entitled “Anton Lang Not Killed: Letter to Relative Here Shows That He is Not Even Fighting”. The earlier announcement of his death was based on a letter to a different relative, and the article continued, “It is believed that a mistake has been made by confusing the identity of the Oberammergau player with that of a relative of the same name”. For the American Reform Rabbis Joseph Krauskopf’s impression of Lang in 1900, see A Rabbi’s Impressions of the Oberammergau Passion Play. Philadelphia: Rayner Publishers, Citation1901. 46–47. 29. Cf. the statement by William Temple soon after the outbreak of war, deploring the situation in which “members of the body of Christ are tearing one another, and His body is bleeding as it once bled on Calvary, but this time the wounds are dealt by His friends. It is as though Peter were driving home the nails and John were piercing the side”. “Christianity and War”, quoted by Hoover, God, Germany, and Britain, p. 6. 30. Green was alluding here to the notorious “Hymn of Hate against England” (Hassgesang gegen England), written by the nationalist German Jewish poet Ernst Lissauer near the beginning of the war and widely distributed: see J. P. Bang, Hurrah and Halleluyah. New York: George H. Doran Co., Citation1917. 48–49; Hoover, God, Germany and Britain, p. 52. 31. Eighteen year earlier, an American Christian preacher, responding to the Queen Regent of Spain and American Congressmen appealing to God for victory in the newly declared war between them, said, “That two nations of the same faith should appeal to the same God for vengeance on each other is a theological difficulty, a doctrinal embarrassment, a religious absurdity, which the thinking people of the world cannot much longer abide. The very sentiment of prayer is fatally compromised.” W. S. Crowe, cited in the New York Times, 25 April 1898: 10. 32. The poem, by Rudyard Kipling, begins, “For all we have and are,/ For all our children’s fate,/ Stand up and meet the war/ The Hun is at the gate!” 33. For this theme in contemporary Christian preaching of war as elevating the sacrifice for spiritual values above the rampant materialism of the preceding age, see Hoover, God, Germans, and Britain, pp. 9–14. 34. This generalization excludes what we would define as the “ultra‐Orthodox” community, whose sermons were generally published in Hebrew or Yiddish. For sermons published in English (whether in England or in the United States), the mindsets of the Orthodox and the Reform preachers appear to have more in common than do the Orthodox and the ultra‐Orthodox, for whom the mythic Jewish world‐view of Kabbalah and messianism tends to overpower the political and military data.