10
CA N AD IAN JE WISH BE VIEW
December 30, 1935
Viewing The Ruins, A Modern Historian U Not Assured Of The Perpetuity
Of Any One Branch Of Hie House Of Israel
The following is the presidential . address delivered by Dr. Cecil Roth, outstanding Jewish historian, of London, England, before the Birmingham Jewish Literary Associa-tlon: � '".1" '�"'*. ."F" :".
The Late Lord Morley once said: "I do not in the least want to know what happened In the past except as it enables me to see my way more Clearly through that which is happening to-day." Permit me to say. that, personally, I do not quite agree . with this pronouncement, Clio is, .-..after all, a Muse. I am interested in the past because" it is out past, f am
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interested-writ for the inspiration it can give us. I am interested in it� and I do not hesitate to admit it� for the picturesque colouring which �it can provide.
Yet an historiography which is . not co-related with the happenings of the day, and which throws no light upon the problems which beset us. is a useless ornament. At this unique time of crisis; when th^ World � is passing through a period of tribu-
lation perhaps unexampled in Hying memory, it is not unnatural that you should turn to the student of the Jewish past and demand what light his studies a\nd his researches can throw upon the difficulties which surround you to-day.
Jewish life in the fourth decade of. the twentieth century, as we are continually told, stands at the parting of the ways. Our condition (I do not speak of our material so much as our spiritual condition) is in a complete state of flux. The old values are rapidly disintegrating; newer - conceptions are arising throughout the intellectual world; and some of our profoundest thinkers are beginning to wonder whether Judaism will be able to stand the strain. Frankly, I wonder sometimes myself. But when I wonder I console myself� I beg you to forgive the egotism�by recalling a passage from my own History of the Jews in Venice, which recently-appeared. In the chapter entitled "Life in tire Ghetto" I artlessly wrote as follows;
"(In the Venetian Ghetto) relations with the outside world, whether amatory, social or literary, Were close- and constant. Rabbis had begun to speak of Jesus as one of the Jewish prophets, while Gentiles, oh their side, flocked to hear the sermons in the synagogues. Pietists complained how Hebrew culture was neglected in favour of Italian; Ignorance of the sacred tongue was so far spread that there was a movement tor prayers In the vernacular. The spirit of reform was rife. There was a strong current of opposition to the Talmud and Talmudlc literature. Works were written attacking Jewish tradition, evoking a whole literature In Hebrew, Italian, and Spanish in its defence. The ceremonial laws were not Infrequently neglected. Ingenious arguments were put forward in. favour of going in a gondola, or even riding, upon the Sabbath day. Mystical tendencies, and the miraculous stories attached to them, were openly derided! The nineteenth century was anticipated in the disputes concerning the introduction of instrumental music in the synagogues. We even find the
phenomenon of the card-playing
rabbi, more concerned with justifying Judaism to the Cristlan than teaching it to the Jew. Literary and intellectual life, though centred in Hebrew studies, was by no means confined to them. We find vernacular playwrights, apologists, astronomers, mathematicians, and economists vying in activity. Prom that day to this it is doubtful Whether bo surprisingly modern an atmosphere has at any other time prevailed."
My consideration of this passage sets me meditating, from seventeenth-century Italy I am carried back in imagination five or six centuries further, to Cordova in the age of the Caliphs. There onw finds an essential Similarity to conditions of to-day more striking still in many ways than that which the Venetian Ghetto provided.
The Moslem Empire was, at that time, the centre of the world's civilisation. A traveller who went from Paris to Cordova made the acquaintance of a higher civilisation, just as one does who goes from Cairo to Paris to-day. There was- a world-language and a world-culture quite as spacious and as competing ai tse
RED CAP ALE
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FUEL on. DEPARTMENT
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to his Jewish friemis at this holiday season
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