JUDIAISM: A RACE OR A RELIGION ?

Ashburton Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 991, 10 July 1883, Page 4

JUDIAISM: A RACE OR A RELIGION ?

'Apart from their importance to that history of religion which has been the study of his life, the Jews have always had a peculiar interest for M. Renan. He is fond of throwing off, as it were in his spare moments, “ short studies ” on by-points in their character or fortunes. In adecture which he has just delivered before a historical society, and which displays to the full both his vast learning and* his rare gifts of style, M. Renan has promulgated a somewhat new view of the extent to which Judaism has been a proselytizing religion. The question is of great importance as being, in fact, the crucial point in the eternal controversy whether Judaism is a racial or a universal religion. If Judaisnii is anything more than a triba religion, why does it not proselytize 1 It has proselytized, M. Renan replies, far more than you have any idea.' The activity of Judaism in this respect during the centuries immediataly preceding the birth of Christianity is familiar to everyone. It is generally recognised, too, nowadays that this movement continued unabated in the earlier centuries of our era. In the dark records of those'days the progress of Judaism and that of Christianity are at this distance of time as hard to distinguish as they were by pagan writers continually confused., But M. Renan discoyers a proselyting activity on the' s parirbf the former religion at a rauchtatu date, and in quarters not generally ''suspected.' * He cites the authority of Gregory of Tours, for the number of Jews in France at the time of tEe’~Merovihgiahs, and argues that the majority of these Jews cannot have been Hebrews by race, but must have been converted Gauls. “ Gregory of Tours speaks of the Jews as of a particular kind of heretics, not as of a separate race. In a general sense the Jewish colonies of Germany and England come from Gaul. One sees how improper it is under these conditions to speak of a Jewish race, at least in our West.**' Arabia and Abyssinia were for many centuries after the commencement of the Christian era the scene of a vigorous Jewish proselyfism, as was South-eastern Europe. flAs late as the Eighth century the conversion of the Khozars led to the establishment of a Jewish Tartar kingdom between the Caspian and the Crimea. “ Among the numerous Jews of Southern Russia and of the Scalvonic countries there is perhaps but a very small proportion of Palestinian elements.”

If, then, the Jews of to-day are to a far less extent than is commonly supposed the descendants of a particular race, how are we to explain the Jewish type? In the first place, replies M. Renan, there are several Jewish types. In the next place, the long community of life and manners among a persecuted sect explains the development of sharply-marked types, distinguishing them from their neighbors. “ There is a psychology, so to speak, of religious minorities, and that psychology is in? dependent of race. The consequences of a constrained life, full of prohibitions, are the same at all times and in all places. As to the similarity of spirit in the bosom of the same sect, it is sufficiently explained by similarity of education and of religious practices.” Thb Syriac-speaking villages north of Damascus which have been converted to Mohammedanism exactly resemble the Mohammedans of a different race among whom they dwell, and differ profoundly in character and habits from the bulk of the Christian Syrians, to whom they are by race closely allied: For the rest, M. Renan rejoices that these discussions, interesting as they may be Trom; an historical point of view, have no longer, in France at any rate, any political importance. “ The work of the Nineteenth century is to break down the barriers of all the Ghettos. We have no sympathy with those who think they can serve their national idea 1 by raising these barriers anew; Wei judge man by what he is worth, not by the creed that his ancestors professed or the blood that flows in his veins.” There are perhaps a few Jews who would prefer that M. Renan should attack their;religion rather than undermine the" belief in the peculiar purity of their race. Whatever may have been the case in the past, it is his race to which the Jew who is still orthodox most clings, and many a Jew, too, who is no longer orthodox. His religion is nothing more than the bulwark of his racial distinctness. By a strange but not'uncommon" irony of fate, the the end have unconsciously changedi places. Purity of race was once cherished to ensure purity of creed. It is still worshipped for its own sake, I even when all creed is gone. —Pall Mall Gazette.