Dreamers of the Ghetto

With a Chapter From English Humorists of To-day by J. A. Hammerton

Israel Zangwill, J. A. Hammerton

• Publisher: Read & Co. Classics
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781406784176
• eBook ISBN: 9781528789943
• Subtopic: Historical Theory & Criticism

"Dreamers of the Ghetto", the 1898 novel by British author Israel Zangwill, is a series of fictionalised biographies of notable Jewish thinkers including Spinoza and Heine. In "Dreamers of the Ghetto", Zangwill explores the struggles of Jews trying to survive in the ignorant world of European Christian anti-Semitism at the turn of the century. Zangwill (1864–1926) was a leading figure in cultural Zionism during the 19th century, as well as close friend of father of modern political Zionism, Theodor Herzl. In later life, he renounced the seeking of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. A notable portion of Zangwill's work concentrated on ghetto life and earned him the nickname "the Dickens of the Ghetto". Other notable works by this author include: "The Master" (1907), "Ghetto Tragedies" (1899), and "Chosen Peoples" (1910). This classic work is being republished now in a new edition complete with an introductory chapter from "English Humourists of To-Day" by J. A. Hammerton.

URIEL ACOSTA

PART I -
GABRIEL DA COSTA

I

Gabriel Da Costa pricked his horse gently with the spur, and dashing down the long avenue of cork-trees, strove to forget the torment of spiritual problems in the fury of physical movement, to leave theology behind with the monasteries and chapels of Porto. He rode with grace and fire, this beautiful youth with the flashing eyes, and the dark hair flowing down the silken doublet, whom a poet might have feigned an image of the passionate spring of the South, but for whose own soul the warm blue sky of Portugal, the white of the almond blossoms, the pink of the peach sprays, the delicate odors of buds, and the glad clamor of birds made only a vague background to a whirl of thoughts.

No; it was impossible to believe that by confessing his sins as the Church prescribed he could obtain a plenary absolution. If salvation was to be secured only by particular rules, why, then, one might despair of salvation altogether. And, perhaps, eternal damnation was indeed his destiny, were it only for his doubts, and in despite of all his punctilious mechanical worship. Oh, for a deliverer—a deliverer from the questionings that made the splendid gloom of cathedrals a darkness for the captive spirit! Those cursed Jesuits, zealous with the zealotry of a new order! His blood flamed as he thought of their manœuvrings, and putting his hand to his holster, where hung a pair of silver-mounted pistols marked with his initial, he drew out one and took flying aim at a bird on a twig, pleasing himself with the foolish fancy that 'twas Ignatius Loyola. But though a sure marksman, he had not the heart to hurt any living thing, and changing with the swiftness of a flash he shot at the twig instead, snapping it off.

Why had his dead father set him to study ecclesiastical law? True, for a wealthy youth of the upper middle classes 'twas the one road to distinction, to social equality with the nobility—and whose fault but his own that even after the first stirrings of scepticism he had accepted semi-sacerdotal office as chief treasurer of a clerical college? But how should he foresee that these uneasinesses of youth would be aggravated rather than appeased by deeper study, more passionate devotion? Strange! All around him, in college or cathedral, was faith and peace; in his spirit alone a secret disquiet and a suppressed ferment that not all the soaring music of fresh-voiced boys could soothe or allay.

He felt his horse slacken suddenly under him, and had used his spurs viciously without effect, ere he became conscious that he had come to the steep, clayey bank of a ravine through which a tiny stream trickled, and that the animal's flanks were stained with blood. Instantly his eyes grew humid.

"Pobre!" he cried, leaping from the saddle and caressing the horse's nostrils. "To be shamed before men have I always dreaded, but 'tis worse to be shamed before myself."

And leading his steed by the bridle, the young cavalier turned back towards Porto by winding grassy paths purpled with anemones and bordered by gray olive-trees, with here and there the vivid gleam of oranges peeping amid deep green foliage that tore the sky into a thousand azure patches.

II

He remounted his horse as he approached the market-place, from which the town climbed up; but he found his way blocked, for 'twas market-day, and the great square, bordered with a colonnade that made an Eastern bazaar, was thickly planted with stalls, whose white canvas awnings struck a delicious note of coolness against the throbbing blue sky and the flaming costumes of the peasants come up from the environs. Through a corner of the praça one saw poplars and elms and the fresh gleam of the river. The nasal hum of many voices sounded blithe and busy. At the bazaar entrance, where old women vended flowers and fruit, Gabriel reined in his horse.

"How happy these simple souls!" he mused. "How sure of their salvation! To count their beads and mutter their Ave Marias; 'tis all they need. Yon fisher, with his great gold ear-rings, who throws his nets and cuddles his Juanita and carouses with his mates, hath more to thank the saints for than miserable I, who, blessed with wealth, am cursed with loneliness, and loving my fellow-men, yet know they are but sheep. God's sheep, natheless, silly and deaf to the cry of their true shepherd, and misled by priestly wolves."

A cripple interrupted his reflections by a whining appeal. Gabriel shuddered with pity at the sight of his sores, and, giving him a piece of silver, lost himself in a new reverie on the mystery of suffering.

"Thine herbs sold out too!" cheerily grumbled a well-known voice, and, turning his head, Gabriel saw that the burly old gentleman addressing the wrinkled market-woman from the vantage-point of a mule's back was, indeed, Dom Diego de Balthasar, late professor of the logics at the University of Coimbra, and newly settled in Porto as a physician.

"Ay, indeed, ere noon!" the dried-up old dame mumbled. "All Porto seems hungry for bitter herbs to-day. But thus it happens sometimes about Eastertide, though I love not such salads myself."

"Naturally. They are good for the blood," laughed Dom Diego, as his eye caught Gabriel's. "And thou hast none, good dame."

There seemed almost a wink in the professorial eye, and the young horseman smiled in good-natured response to the physician's estimate of the jest.

"Then are the eaters sensible," he said.

"Ay, the only sensible people in Portugal," rejoined Dom Diego, changing his speech to Latin, but retaining his smile. "And the only good blood, Da Costa," he added, with what was now an unmistakable wink. But this time Gabriel failed to see the point.

"The only good blood?" he repeated. "Dost thou then hold with the Trappists that meat is an evil?"

A strange, startled look flashed across the physician's face, sweeping off its ruddy hue, and though his smile returned on the instant, it was as though forced back.

"In a measure," he replied. "Too much flesh generateth humors and distempers in the blood. Hence Holy Church hath ordained Lent. She is no friend to us physicians. Adeos!" and he ambled off on his mule, waving the young horseman a laughing farewell.

But Gabriel, skirting the market, rode up the steep streets troubled by a vague sense of a mystery, and later repeated the conversation to a friar at the college.

III.

A week later he heard in the town that Dom Diego de Balthasar had been arrested by the Inquisition for Judaism. The news brought him a more complex thrill than that shock of horror at the treacherous persistence of a pestilent heresy which it excited in the breast of his fellow-citizens. He recalled to mind now that there were thirty-four traces by which the bloodhounds of the Holy Office scented out the secret Jew, and that one of the tests ran: "If he celebrates the Passover by eating bitter herbs and lettuces." But the shudder which the thought of the Jew had once caused him was, to his own surprise, replaced by a secret sympathy. In his slowly-matured, self-evolved scepticism, he had forgotten that a whole race had remained Protestant from the first, rejecting at any and every cost the corner-stone of the Christian scheme. And this race—he remembered suddenly with a leap of the heart and a strang...

Table of contents

• Israel Zangwill
• PREFACE
• PRELUDE
• A CHILD OF THE GHETTO
• JOSEPH THE DREAMER
• URIEL ACOSTA
• URIEL ACOSTA
• THE TURKISH MESSIAH
• THE MAKER OF LENSES
• THE MASTER OF THE NAME
• MAIMON THE FOOL AND NATHAN THE WISE
• FROM A MATTRESS GRAVE
• THE PEOPLE'S SAVIOUR
• THE PRIMROSE SPHINX
• DREAMERS IN CONGRESS
• THE PALESTINE PILGRIM
• THE CONCILIATOR OF CHRISTENDOM
• THE JOYOUS COMRADE
• CHAD GADYA
• EPILOGUE