'Next year may we meet at Jerusalem??
In 1874, Burton, author of 'The Thousand and One Nights', explorer of the Middle East and noted scholar of the languages, literature and religions of that region, wrote the following words about the prospects of a revived Jewish state in Palestine in 'The Jew, The Gypsy, and El Islam' *.
"This Russian pre-emption of the Holy Land is a benefit to the Jew, although the latter may not recognize it. But for this he would hasten to fulfill the prophecy; he would buy up the country, as indeed he is now doing at Jerusalem; he would conquer the people by capital, and he would once more form a nation.
"But here the question obtrudes itself: If Judaism should again prevail - indeed its advocates say it shall prevail universally - how long could it endure?
"Those who know the codes of the Talmud and of the Safed School, which are still, despite certain petty struggles, the life-light of Judaism, will have no trouble in replying:
"A people whose highest ideas of religious existence are the superstitious sanctification of Sabbath by the washing of hands, the blowing of ram's horns, the saving rite of circumcision, and the thousand external functions compensating for moral delinquencies, with Abraham sitting at the gate of Hell to keep it closed for Jews;
"a community which would declare marriage impossible to some twelve millions of Gentiles, forbid them the Sabbath, and sentence to death every 'stranger' reading an Old Testament; which would have all the Ger [Goyim] who are not idolaters without religion, whilst forbidding those whom it calls 'idolaters' (the Christians) to exercise the commonest feelings of humanity; which would degrade and insult one half of humanity, the weaker sex, and which would sanction slavery, and at the same time oppress and vilify its slaves by placing them on a level with oxen and asses;
"a faith which, abounding in heathen practices, would encourage the study of the Black Art, would loosen every moral obligation, would grant dispensations to men's oaths, and would sanction the murder of the unlearned;
"a system of injustice, whose Sanhedrins, at once heathenish and unlawful, have distinguished themselves only for force and fraud, for superabundant self-conceit, for cold-blooded cruelty, and for unrelenting enmity to all human nature; such conditions, it is evident, are not calculated to create or to preserve national life.
"The civilized world would never endure the presence of a creed which says to man, 'Hate thy neighbor unless he be one of ye' , or of a code written in blood, not in ink, which visits the least infractions of the Rabbinical laws with exorcism and excommunication, with stoning and flogging to death.
"A year of such spectacles would more than suffice to excite the wrath and revenge of outraged humanity; the race, cruel, fierce, dogged, and desperate as in the days of Titus and Hadrian, would defend itself to the last; the result would be another siege and capture of Jerusalem, and the 'Chosen People' would once more lie prostrate in their blood and be stamped out of the Holy Land.
"Briefly, it is evident that nothing but Russian preponderance in Syria and Palestine prevents its being reoccupied by its old intolerant and persecuting owners, and that to these the greatest possible misfortune would be the granting of their daily, weekly, and yearly prayer:
" 'Next year may we meet at Jerusalem'. " |
