Cesarani was tasked with writing this biography for the Jewish Lives series. As such, this is a look at Disraeli’s life through the lens of his Judaism, a fact complicated by the fact that his father, Isaac, had him baptized in the Anglican Church at seven, after the father’s falling out with Synagogue elders. In fact, had Disraeli not been baptized he could not have sat in the House of Commons, as Jews were barred at the time of his entry. Eventually, the debate over Jewish Emancipation was finally precipitated by Lionel de Rothschild’s election in 1847. He refused to swear allegiance to the Christian God and so was barred from taking his seat in the Commons. Disraeli, sitting in opposition, was “forced” to declare support for First Minister Lord John Russell’s measure modifying the Oath, despite vehement objections from the Tory backbenchers and Lord Stanley in the House of Lords. The backbench Tory MPs, already reluctant to embrace Disraeli because of his non-aristocratic origins, his early opportunistic attempts to enter Parliament as a Radical, his Oriental looks and dandy dress, his flip-floppery on key issues, and his backstabbing of Peel as the head of the Young England faction when the Tories were last in power, had little taste to have Disraeli lead their party in opposition. However, Lord Stanley confessed that, with the passing of George Bentinck, Disraeli was the only man with the verbal acuity for the job. Stanley was even willing to condone Disraeli’s personal support for Jewish Emancipation, while himself continuing to oppose the measure in the House of Lords. Disraeli vainly tried to mollify his own party, “all the tendencies of the Jewish race are conservative. Their bias is to religion, property, and natural aristocracy.” It would take a number more years, but Russell, with Disraeli’s tepid help, would eventually change the oath of office and Rothschild was allowed to take his seat in the Commons. This ambivalence was a common theme for Disraeli. He was a reluctant Jew, who considered himself part of the Sephardim, but in racial rather than religious terms. Nonetheless, he was proud of his ancestry, even as he made it out to be more illustrious than it was. It is probable he knew full well that his ancestors were not evicted from vast lands in Aragon during the Inquisition, nor had they large commercial estates in the Venetian Republic, despite his public intimations. His novels often contained Jewish characters, though often, stereotypically, money lenders or bankers who moved mountains behind the scenes. Sidonia, loosely based on Lionel de Rothschild, was his most illustrious character: a man with interests and informers in every European capital, strictly anti-democratic, and skilled at playing politicians like marionettes. He was a wise and wily advisor to aspiring bon vivants, who he took under his wing to mold for greater purpose and glory, Jew and gentile alike. Like Sidonia, ultimately, Disraeli’s novels showed Jews in their best and worst lights. Similarly, his speeches in the Commons combined an illustrious praise of Judaism’s past with its paramount shortcomings. He likened Christianity to “Judaism completed” and defended the Jews killing of Jesus by saying that it was the only way He could have died for all of man’s sins- hardly a ringing endorsement of his birthed faith. Disraeli might have been conflicted by his ancestry, but he knew that for all his Anglican upbringing he would always be looked upon by friends and foes alike as a Jew. Racially, he would have agreed. In his last novel the character Sergius, a Sidonia clone, advises his young pupil, “no man will treat with indifference the principle of race. It is the key of history, and why history is often so confused is that it has been written by men who were ignorant of this principle and all the knowledge it involves… Language and religion do not make a race- there is only one thing which makes a race, and that is blood.”
No comments:
Post a Comment