Zionism/Jewish Emancipation in England
§7. Jewish Emancipation in England
Not till after a generation of heated controversy did even England admit Jews to Parliament. In this controversy Macaulay took a leading part. His maiden speech, delivered in the House of Commons in 1830, was in favour of Grant's Bill for the Removal of Jewish Disabilities. 'On every principle of moral obligation', he said, 'the Jew has a right to political power.' His famous essay on the 'Civil Disabilities of the Jews' appeared in the Edinburgh Review of January 1831. His argument against the idea that Jewish Nationalism unfits the Jews for complete civil rights outside Palestine is worth quoting.
But it is said, the Scriptures declare that the Jews are to be restored to their own country; and the whole nation looks forward to that restoration. They are therefore not so deeply interested as others in the prosperity of England. It is not their home, but merely the place of their sojourn, the house of their bondage. This argument, which first appeared in The Times newspaper[1] ... belongs to a class of sophisms by which the most hateful persecutions may easily be justified. To charge men with practical consequences which they themselves deny is disingenuous in controversy; it is atrocious in government.... People are now reasoning about the Jews as our fathers reasoned about the Papists.... The Christian believes, as well as the Jew, that at some future period the present order of things will come to an end. Nay, many Christians believe that the Messiah will shortly establish a kingdom on the earth.... Now wherein does this doctrine differ, as far as its political tendency is concerned, from the doctrine of the Jew? If a Jew is unfit to legislate for us because he believes that he or his remote descendants will be removed to Palestine, can we safely open the House of Commons to a fifth monarchy man, who expects that before this generation shall pass away, all the kingdoms of the earth will be swallowed up in one divine empire?
Nearly thirty years elapsed before Jewish emancipation in England was accomplished,[2] but during that period Macaulay's essay undoubtedly played a great part in converting public opinion. In 1847 the Quarterly Review published an article setting forth the case against the Jewish claim, but the whole argument is directed towards rebutting that of the essay. The advocates of emancipation frankly confessed their belief that, once given equal civil rights, the Jews would soon be completely assimilated.
About this time various institutions were founded in connexion with Palestine which showed the lively interest of the public. Such were—
Of some of these committees Montefiore was a member; and, though some Zionists have been inclined to look upon him as an opposing influence, as the protagonist of the philanthropic school, there can be no doubt that in the nineteenth century Palestine owed most to him for the beginnings of its colonization. Cobbett's taunt that 'the Israelite is never seen to take a spade in his hand' had made a deep impression upon him, and he determined to do his best to encourage agriculture and handicrafts among his brethren, especially in Palestine. Colonel Churchill wished to re-establish a Jewish kingdom in Palestine. Montefiore, though he threw cold water on the idea on the ground that the times were not ripe, entrusted the Colonel on his return to the East with a fund or the encouragement of thrift among the Jews of the Holy Land; he sent a printing-press to Jerusalem, started a linen factory, and supplied various committees there with agricultural implements and even with cattle. In 1849 Colonel Gawler accompanied him on another visit to the Holy Land. In 1854 he and Chief Rabbi Nathan Adler appealed to the Jews of England for funds to relieve distress in Palestine due to the failure of the harvest and the crisis caused by the Crimean War. The Holy Land Relief Fund then constituted is still in existence. Having raised upwards of £20,000 and having also just received a legacy of $50,000 for the benefit of Palestine Jews from Judah Touro of New Orleans, Sir Moses went out again to Palestine in May 1855. On his way he obtained from the Sultan a firman permitting the purchase of land, and bought land at Jaffa and Jerusalem on which he planted gardens, erected a windmill, opened a girls' school, and established agricultural colonies at Safed and Tiberias. In 1874 correspondence between Montefiore, Colonel Gawler's son, the Haham Bashi of Jerusalem, and many of the local Jews, was published by the Jewish Board of Deputies 'on the Promotion of Agriculture and other Industrial Pursuits' in the Holy Land; and in the same year Sir Moses made his seventh, and last, pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He suggested sanitary improvements, housing of the working classes in garden cities where olive-trees, vines, and vegetables should be grown, and loan societies to enable colonists to purchase land; and he bade them 'begin at once'. The Sir Moses Montefiore Testimonial Committee, founded in 1878 to commemorate his centenary, adopted some of these suggestions; and the neat little houses outside the Jaffa gate have been erected by building societies which it constituted. Montefiore's noble life kindled the imagination of his co-religionists throughout the world, created quite a literature concerning him in many languages, and, although the glamour attached to his activities is now somewhat out of fashion among Zionists, undoubtedly led to an ever-increasing faith in Palestine as the country for the Jewish colonist. In 1876 George Eliot's Daniel Deronda appeared—a famous novel in which both emancipation and nationalism are claimed for the Jew. Mordecai is the prophet of the hope that 'our race shall have an organic centre, a heart and brain to watch and guide and execute; the outraged Jew shall have a defence in the court of nations'.