RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Israel, History of
community was put to death at the stake, in others they burned themselves to death. While in many places the magistrates swore never to receive Jews back again for residence, the oath soon became a dead letter, and to Strasburg, Nuremberg, Vienna, Erfurt, Basel, Zurich, and Heilbronn the Jews returned by invitation. Campaigns against the Hussites began always with assaults upon Jews. The Council of Basel occupied itself in its nineteenth sitting with this people, ordered the enforcement of the ecclesiastical regulations, and recommended the study of Hebrew and Aramaic to the universities in order better to carry on missions among them. At the instigation of a Jewish-Christian convert named Pfefferkorn the Dominicans at Cologne began a campaign against the Talmud, and were opposed by Johann Reuchlin (q.v.), who believed that in the Talmud and the Cabala were to be found divine philosophy and the wisdom of the patriarchs. Against Reuchlin came Jakob van Hoogstraten (q.v.) with his composition on the " Destruction of the Cabala." In 1509 Pfefferkorn obtained an order from Emperor Maximilian to the Jews to deliver to the former all their anti-Christian writings, and a second edict directed Hoogstraten, Reuchlin, a Jewish-Christian named Viktor von Karben, and certain universities to pronounce upon the contents. Reuchlin adduced what he declared to be Christ's testimony to the Talmud as a witness for Christian verity. Reuchlin and Pfefferkorn engaged in a campaign of nicknames into which the archbishop of Mainz intruded, the humanists of Germany took the part of Reuchlin with an anti-ecclesiastical bias, and Luther found therein one of his opportunities (see EpistoLuE Obscurorttm Virohum). In several of his utterances he manifested favor to the Jews, though later he reversed his position and violently assailed them, so that the Reformation did not bring to them the relief they expected. But in 1544 Charles V. restored to the Jews their privileges and declared them not guilty of murdering Christian children for Passover purposes.
The suspicions and attacks under which the Jews after the twelfth century had suffered throughout Europe prevented expansion and growth of spiritual life, and a further
10. Revival of Messianism.
hindrance was the opposition of the rabbis to the study of philosophy on the ground that it led to Christianity and heresy. Hence the Jews became superstitious and sank into the practise of magic and into religious fanaticism. Consequently the people came to look for Messianic deliverance, and under the pressure of constant reports of coming relief Shabbethai Zebi (b. in Smyrna in 1626) claimed to be the Messiah, put forth prophecies, and in the year 1666, reckoned by Jews as the year of the coming redemption, went to Jerusalem, while another Jew assumed the role of Elijah. The greatest expectations were aroused among his own people throughout Europe. Had Shabbethai possessed the qualities requisite for the carrying out of such a scheme, he would have caused the greatest movement of modern times among the Jews. But in 1666 the Turkish cadi sent him to the sultan at Constantinople, who put on him a white turban and a green mantle and made him, as
11. Jews
Mehemed Effendi, his doorkeeper, while the Jews of Europe were plunged into shame and chagrin. Among the more intelligent Jews this one experience killed all seeds of the Messianic hope. But the ignorant masses of the East still had expectations, and in 1720 in Galicia Jacob Frank (q.v.) claimed to be the reincarnated Shabbethai and gained a following which replaced the Talmud by the Sohar. The Chasidim of Russia and Poland, named from Juda Chasid, are the remainder of a movement similar to that inaugurated by Frank. Among them ecstasy is sought with the aid of stimulants, asceticism is practised, and the Sohar is regarded as of the highest value (see Chasidim, 2). Contemporaneous with these outbreaks of fanaticism and superstition were the life and momentous work of Baruch Spinoza (1632-77), whose achievements prove that the inner genius of Judaism could not be destroyed by opposing external forces or by internal error, though indeed official Judaism sought to destroy by ban and actual attack the man who glorified this race.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Poland became the chief center of Judaism. Since the fourteenth century that land had been the refuge of persecuted Jews Poland. from the west of Europe, especially from Germany. Consequently Russian and Polish Jews came to use a mixed dialect of which the foundation is German with Russian, Polish and Hebrew words mingled, and this dialect has produced a literature. Settlement of Jews from the East was made in quite early times. Gregory IX. urged King Andrew to exclude Jews and Mohammedans from office, and the synod of Ofen (1279) ordered Jews to wear a red wheel on the left breast. Casimir the Great renewed and extended in 1334 the favorable laws of a century earlier, requiring the accordant testimony of three Jews and three Christians to convict a Jew of the crime of murder of a Christian child; thirteen years later he limited the privileges accorded Jews. During a pestilence the Jews of the principal cities were attacked by the populace. Casimir IV. made the laws still more favorable, but Cardinal Olesnick permitted the monk Capistrano, " the scourge of the Jews," to preach against them, and Casimir had to withdraw his concessions. Sigismund I. (1506-48) protected the Jews. Meanwhile the study of the Talmud had flourished under the care of German Jews in Poland, and Joseph Caro produced the Shulhan Aruch, which has remained the guide of life for Jews since, while the Talmudic schools of the land became celebrated in all Europe. Study of the Bible languished, only one work of importance being issued, the Hizzuk emunah by Isaac Troki (cf. JE, xii. 265-266), a keen polemic against the Gospels and Christianity. During the seventeenth century the Jews of Poland were ruled by their own rabbis, constituting a state within a state with an annual synod. But under this regime and a narrowing of studies to matters of legal refinement, the character of the people had deteriorated, while the Polish impress stamped all European Judaism, except that of Spain, with the traits most disliked by the European peoples. Polish Jews became compro-
Israel, History of