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Lecture of the Rev. A. De Sola, at Montreal.
The messenger from our oppressed and persecuted
brethren of Shushan, (referred to in
Vol. V. No. 11, of the Occident,)
arrived in Montreal on the 6th of October last; and the following
evening our Hazan, the Rev. Mr. De Sola, (whose guest the Rabbi
continued to be during the five weeks he remained in Montreal,) made an
appeal for him in the Synagogue,—it being Ereb Kippur,—which was
responded to by an offering of about seventy dollars. As this sum,
though it may be deemed liberal as an offering of so small a community,
was considered too trifling to repay the Rabbi for travelling so far
north, the trustees met to consider in what way this amount could be
increased; when on the suggestion of the president, the Rev. Mr. De Sola
was asked to deliver a public lecture, which that gentleman readily
agreed to do.
The committee’s announcement of “A Lecture on the
Present State of the Jews and Christians, in the dominions of the Shah,”
was regarded with much interest by both Israelites and Christians; the
latter, indeed, expressed the most lively sympathy for the Jewish
sufferers, although neither of their country nor their creed. As an
instance of which I may mention that the Rev. Mr. Cordner, minister to
the Unitarian congregation, the Sunday preceding the lecture, called the
attention of his flock thereto, and recommended them to attend. Other
ministers are said to have done the same, and the public press were not
behindhand in their advocacy. Each paper came out with editorials, alike
creditable to the writers as complimentary to those connected with the
lecture. The following from the Transcript may perhaps serve as a
specimen.
<<514>>
Independently of the great interest excited of late
years by everything relating to the Jewish people, to whatever land they
may belong, there will be, this evening, a strong provocative
administered to the curiosity of the visitors, in the appearance of “an
accredited messenger” from his oppressed brethren in Persia. A crowded
audience is anticipated,—so much so, indeed, that the Temperance Hall
has been selected in preference to the old News Room, in St. Joseph
Street—at which place the lecture was previously announced to be
delivered.
In the course of lectures delivered before the
Mercantile Library Association last winter, was one by the same
gentleman who proposes to deliver the lecture this evening, having for
its theme the persecutions endured by the Jews for centuries in Great
Britain and other nations of Europe—now happily unknown and unfelt,
except among the semi-barbarous Slavonian nations of Poland and
Russia;—in England, France and Germany, and in Southern Europe, the Jews
being now generally acknowledged among the most loyal, and in many
cases, the most respected subjects of these empires.
We recollect with what a feeling of interest the
lecture we speak of was regarded—although the lecturer spoke only of
sufferings long and patiently endured, but now passed away for ever.
With how much more eagerness then, will the discourse of this evening be
listened to? It will refer to a people, the oldest as a distinct race,
that the world has known: commercially and politically amalgamating, yet
still socially distinct from other nations—unchangeable, though all but
themselves have changed—adhering still to that faith whence we derive
our own, and to the customs and forms of worship of their forefathers,
alike through prosperity and adversity, through good and through evil
report; while that portion of this people to whom it will more
particularly refer, are still the suffering victims of persecution, of
the most cruel and degrading character.
There is something in the mission of the Rabbi
which calls for a more than usual exercise of generosity; for, in the
words of the Herald of yesterday morning, “after centuries of changes,
one of the people most stable in their faith, comes from Persia, a land
most stable in its manners, to a country inhabited by the two most
restless nations in the world. After ages of enmity, a member of one of
two hostile faiths comes from a country where the antagonists are alike
oppressed, to plead for both, were each is equally free, and both are
friendly.”
We hope the plea will be responded to.
On the evening of the lecture, the 26th, the hall
was crowded with one of the most respectable audiences that had ever
assembled to listen to a lecture in Montreal. Among the company was the
Speaker of the House of Assembly; the attorney and solicitor generals,
judges, heads of colleges, and the clergy of various denominations, in
short, all the literati of our city were present; and it is but
justice to Mr. De Sola to say, that he acquitted himself of his task
with great credit, and fully satisfied the eager expectations which the
announcement of the lecture had raised. “The lecture,” says the Pilot
newspaper, “was a most interesting one, and the thrilling details of the
persecution and suffering to which the Jews and Christians are exposed
in the kingdom of the Shah, were listened to with the deepest attention,
and excited the profoundest sympathy. We cannot attempt to follow the
lecturer through his graphic description of the habits and mode of life
of the <<515>>Jewish inhabitants of the city of Shushan, nor of the horrible
cruelties inflicted on them by the Mahometans &c., &c.” I am unable to
give you any digest of the lecture, not having the lecture nor any notes
before me; but perhaps the following notice may do to give some idea of
the points touched upon, in a discourse which gave unusual satisfaction
to a highly intelligent and respectable audience. It is from the report
of The Transcript newspaper, of 28th October.
“Mr. De Sola commenced his lecture by alluding to
the sad and sorrowful cause which had led the learned and pious Rabbi to
come on a mission of wo, to his co-religionists in various portions of
the globe, in the hope of obtaining from them the means of alleviating
in some degree the intolerable persecutions under which the Jews of the
Persian empire laboured.
“The reverend gentleman entered into a brief but
very interesting description of the city of Shusan, more especially of
the Christian and Jewish quarters of the city, describing minutely the
manners and customs, the garb, modes of worship, household and domestic
economy, &c , &c., of this distant and interesting people. He also gave
a glowing description of the interior of the markets, bazaars, and
places of public worship, and prisons of this populous Eastern city—the
description of which may be considered as a type of all the rest. After
amusing and interesting his audience for some time with details of this
nature, Mr. De Sola proceeded to give some information as to the
treatment of the Jews and Christians by the Mahomedan portion of the
population, and of the cruelties and indignities daily perpetrated by
Mahomedans of all classes, for mere love of wanton barbarity, on their
unhappy and unresisting fellow-countrymen, and fellow-citizens, of an
opposite faith.
“The Jews and Christians, he observed, were both
hated and despised by the Mahomedans—perhaps the Christians were the
objects of a deeper hatred than the Jews, although they did not so
generally feel the effects of the persecutions so deeply, as the Jews
inhabited the towns chiefly, while the Christians were spread abroad to
the country. A mutual feeling of oppression and ill-treatment has caused
a strong feeling of friendship, and a desire mutually to aid one another
in their distress, to spring up between these two oppressed classes of
the subjects of Mahmoud Shah, and, as generally happens among the
persecuted of any race, the oppressed Jews and Christians were always
ready to afford such aid and shelter as lay in their power, each to the
other.
“We have not space to enter into the various
interesting details mentioned by Mr. De Sola; we will, therefore, merely
state a few of the oppressive practices of the Mahomedans, in the city
of Shusan. Among other grievances, every family of Jews is compelled to
pay to the Shah—be that family, rich or poor—the sum of three dollars
weekly, as a poll tax, with the exception of four months in the year,
answering to March, April, May, and June, in the Christian
calendar—these months being those during which several important phases
occurred in the life of Mahomet. It must be recollected that the
relative value of money is widely different in Persia and in Great
Britain and Canada, and that three dollars is very much larger sum there
than it is here—from this, the dreadful oppression of this tax may be
conceived. The method of collecting this tax is also of a tyrannical
character. A Mahomedan officer, on the day appointed for receiving this
tax, goes into the quarter inhabited by the Jews, accompanied by a guard
of soldiers, and the tax collector. Having seated himself in the middle
of the street, he sends his myrmidons to the different houses, to
receive the money from the hands of the oppressed. The soldier, having
knocked at the door of the enclosure containing the domestic offices of
the families, immediately demands the amount, frequently in this
style:—“Come forth, dog of a Jew, and pay your tax!” This the
<<516>>master of
the house immediately runs out to deliver, holding his hand open that
the money may be seen, or the brutal soldier would not wait until he
came to him, but he would be immediately seized and dragged to a place
of punishment, and in all probability cruelly bastinadoed, often to the
great risk of his life.
“When a Jew or a Christian in Shusan goes to
market, he dare not touch the articles he sees exposed for sale in the
bazaars, but modestly inquires the price of the vender, standing at a
distance; on being told the value, he spreads a cloth on the ground, on
to which the purchase is thrown—the purchaser depositing his money in a
basin of water, that it may be purified before it touches the palms of
the follower of Mahomet. Two or three especial acts of the grossest
barbarity which have occurred of late years were related, from
information received on good authority, by Mr. De Sola. One was that in
the year 1840, a Mahomedan child was lost, and some Jews being near the
place where the child was last seen, they were immediately charged with
having murdered the child for the purpose of obtaining the blood for
the celebration of the Passover. In vain the Jews remonstrated; one was
seized and condemned to be burnt alive by a slow fire. His brother
endeavouring to gain his pardon was condemned to the same punishment,
and both suffered amidst the tears and lamentations of the whole of
their fellow-citizens—many of the Mahomedan spectators being compelled
to retire, struck with horror, from the scene. A Jewish goldsmith, also,
of great skill in his handicraft, was seized on a false charge of having
dared to kiss a Mahomedan lady, in consequence of having some weeks
before offended the lady by refusing to repair a ring, in consequence of
a press of business, and condemned to a most cruel death.
“The circumstances which immediately led to the
determination of sending forth messengers of their tribe, to endeavour
to stimulate the sympathy of their foreign co-religionists in their
behalf, was the imprisonment, with grievous corporal punishment, of the
whole of the inhabitants of the Jewish quarter, in consequence of a
child having been killed by falling from the roof of a house in the Mahomedan portion of the
city, and carried to the Jewish quarter, out of sheer enmity, for the
purpose of enabling the parents to charge the Jews with having caused
his death. Remonstrance, of course, was useless; and the jail, with the
most cruel privations and inflictions, was the doom of the oppressed.
The king’s brother purchased the captives for the sum of $48,000—an
immense sum in Persia—and then going to the jail, he offered them their
liberty on embracing the tenets of Mahomet, or otherwise on promising
payment of the whole sum with 20 per cent. interest after three years.
After some time, seeing no prospect of relief, and their friends and
relations dying around them, the unfortunate Jews consented to the terms
of their oppressor, and were liberated, only to find on their return to
their homes, that robbery and spoliation had been at work, and that they
were reduced to utter beggary. Then it was resolved, in a conclave of
the almost maddened victims, to send forth messengers to pray for
succour and relief; lots were cast, and three trustworthy, learned, and
pious members of the community chosen, who departed on different routes,
in hopes, by the recital of the suffering of their tribes, to awake a
sympathy that might lead to an amelioration of their abject condition.
The Rabbi was chosen to travel westward, over Europe and America. Some
of his own family have been crippled for life by the cruel application
of the lash. This was in 1843. Since that period he has travelled
through the principal cities of Europe and the United States, and has
now come to Canada to solicit that aid which, in the cause of humanity,
be it Jewish or Christian, has never been withheld.
“Mr. De Sola related some particulars of the result
of the mission, especially the interest that the Rothschild family and
Sir Moses Montefiore, the celebrated Jewish philanthropist, had taken in
the behalf of their suffering <<517>>countrymen. The Queen of Great Britain had
also sent a letter to the Shah of Persia, requesting him, in
consideration of the friendship existing between the two Courts, to take
into consideration the oppressed state of his Jewish and Christian
subjects, and devise means for the amelioration of their unhappy
condition. The result of this application is yet unknown, as the Rabbi
left Europe shortly after the missive had been sent.
“In America, his success has exceeded his hopes,
and he has everywhere met with kindness and sympathy.
“Mr. De Sola concluded his very interesting lecture
with the expression of a hope that in the cause of charity the Jews and
Christians of this country might ever be, as now, united. He thanked the
assembly for the kindness and attention they had shown, and said if the
Christians should ever need relief, the Jews would not be backward in
the holy work of charity.
“The Rabbi then thanked the assembly in the Hebrew
language—which was translated to the audience by Mr. De Sola—for their
kindness, and made his obeisance in the oriental style. The large and
highly gratified assembly then separated.”
I might mention that the Rev. Mr. Cordner took
occasion the Sunday after the lecture, to allude to it a second time, in
the following terms as given by a friend:
“The feelings of Christians towards Jews in former
times, were absurd and wrong. The Jewish authorities in Jerusalem caused
‘Our Lord’ to be put to death, some eighteen centuries since. But even
their descendants should not be held by us as responsible for this,
still less the Jews of other times and places. We might as well hold all
Catholics responsible for the massacre of Bartholomew’s day, or all
Episcopal Protestants for the rigour and tyranny of Laud, or all Scotch
Presbyterians for the murder of the Bishop of St. Andrews, or all
Calvinists for the burning of Servetus. Christians are bound by the law
to treat all men kindly and with paternal sympathy.
The committee were asked to make arrangements for
the repetition of the lecture, but, thought proper to decline; but the
managers of the Mechanics’ Institute have requested Mr. De Sola to
deliver a second lecture at the Institute, during their winter course,
to which I am glad to say he has consented, and I have no doubt it will
be equally successful with his last. D——d. |
