AN EXTRAORDINARY ZIONIST

In 1290 King Edward I expelled all Jews from the Kingdom of England. After the expulsion, there was no overt Jewish community until the rule of Oliver Cromwell. Although Cromwell never officially readmitted Jews to England, a small colony of Sephardic Jews living in London was identified in 1656, and allowed to remain.

England, in the 19^th century was no exception to the rest of Europe when it came to bigotry and anti-Semitism. Jewish born Benjamin Disraeli had been converted to Christianity, allowing him to pursue a political career, at a time when Jews were barred from Parliament.  Even though he was elected twice as Prime Minister, he was constantly subjected to antisemitic slurs. He was regularly characterized  in cartoons with a hook nose and a stooped posture.

[In answer to a personal insult by a member of Parliament, Disraeli wrote in a letter to the Times: "Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the right honourable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon."]

George Eliot (nee Mary Ann Evans) was the literary sensation of the same Victorian era. Her first book, "Middlemarch", was considered a masterpiece. How sad that she  was obliged to give herself a masculine pseudonym, because women writers were not taken seriously. She led a notorious private life and was outspoken and fearless. Who else would have had the courage to name her last book after a Jewish hero, "Daniel Deronda".

"Deronda" was an English aristocrat adopted by a lord of the realm. He knew nothing of his origins and only discovered he was a Jew towards almost the end of the book.

Published in 1876, "Daniel Deronda" was disparaged by her agent Lewes, who warned that "the Jewish element seems to me likely to satisfy nobody”. And by its publisher, John Blackwood, who remarked that "even her magic pen cannot at once make (the Jews) a popular element in a novel". Despite the pessimism, it sold in large quantities and in many languages.

Jewish emancipation in England took place approximately in 1858. Even though some restrictions against Jews were lifted and conditions became more tolerable, condescension, and often revulsion, remained. It seeped into the books of England’s most famous authors. The Jew was invariably depicted as greedy,  thieving and deceitful.

Not only did Eliot avoid the above entrenched stereotypes, but she gave her Jewish characters depth, both spiritual and intellectual. Her depiction of noble Jews was groundbreaking and brave, for going against the prevailing tide.

 Eliot’s own Jewish awakening began in 1866 when she met Emanuel Deutsch, a Polish scholar and Hebraist who was working at the British Museum. Deutsch and Eliot became close and under his guidance she studied Hebrew, Mishnah and Talmud, wandering deep into Jewish lore, poring over the works of medieval sages and kabbalistic rabbis. Daniel Defoe's own Jewish awakening was initiated by a poor  Jewish  outstanding scholar, who inspired him  to study Jewish philosophical and spiritual texts.

That alone was an achievement. But then this non-Jewish writer did something outrageous. She filled her two Jewish main characters with a passion and yearning to, not only reclaim their ancestral homeland, but to embrace their unique heritage and destiny among the nations - insisting that both movements are inseparably linked.

 At the end of the book when "Deronda" discovers his Jewish heritage, he begins to make plans of relocating to the Middle East, together with his Jewish mentor and future Jewish wife. He states: "The idea I am possessed with is that of restoring a political existence to my People, making them a nation again, giving them a national centre, such as the English have. That is a task which presents itself to me as a duty: I am resolved to begin it, however weakly. I am resolved to devote my life to it. At the least, I may awaken a movement in other minds, such as has been awakened in my own".

It’s a strange quirk of Anglo-Jewish history that in the 19^th century, the finest book ever published about Jews was written by a gentile. George Eliot’s "Daniel Deronda" is the outstanding novel about British Jews, and nothing else really comes close. It is a work of radical empathy, that clearly expresses the creed of modern Zionism with foresight - some 20 years before the word even existed.