History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, Volume 2 [of 3]: From the Death of Alexander I until the Death of Alexander III (1825-1894)Dubnow, Simon
Religion
History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, Volume 2 [of 3]: From the Death of Alexander I until the Death of Alexander III (1825-1894)
Dubnow, Simon
Jews -- Poland -- History; Jews -- Russia -- History; Poland -- History; Russia -- History
As I hear--he said--the Emperor of Russia is a good husband and a
tender father, and I cannot but think that such a man must
necessarily be kindly disposed to all his subjects. On his Majesty
the Emperor of Russia the hopes of the Russian Jews are at the
present moment fixed. He can by one stroke of his pen annul those
laws which now press so grievously upon them and he can thus give a
happy life to those Jewish subjects of his who now can hardly be
said to live at all.
In conclusion, the Lord Mayor expressed the wish that Alexander III. may
become the "emancipator" of the Russian Jews, just as his father
Alexander II. had been the emancipator of the Russian serfs.
Cardinal Manning, the warm-hearted champion of Jewish emancipation, who
was prevented by illness from being present, sent a long letter which
was read to the meeting. The argument against interfering with the inner
politics of a foreign country, the cardinal wrote, had found its first
expression in Cain's question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" There is a
united Jewish race scattered all over the world, and the pain inflicted
upon it in Russia is felt by the Jewish race in England. It is wrong to
keep silent when we see six million men reduced to the level of
criminals, particularly when they belong to a race "with a sacred
history of nearly four thousand years."
The speakers who followed the Lord Mayor pictured in vivid colors the
political and civil bondage of Russian Jewry.
The first speaker, the Duke of Westminster, after recounting the
sufferings of Russian Jewry, moved the adoption of the protest
resolution, notwithstanding the fact that the "great protest of 1882"
(at the Mansion House meeting)[1] had brought no results. "We read in
the history of the Jewish race that 'God hardened the heart of Pharaoh
so that he would not let the people of Israel go'; but deliverance came
at last by the hand of Moses."
[Footnote 1: See p. 288 et seq.]
After brilliant speeches by the Bishop of Ripon, the Earl of Meath, and
others, the following resolution was adopted:
That in the opinion of this meeting the renewed sufferings of the
Jews in Russia from the operation of severe and exceptional edicts
and disabilities are deeply to be deplored, and that in this last
decade of the nineteenth century religious liberty is a principle
which should be recognized by every Christian community as among the
natural human rights.
At the same time a second resolution was adopted to the following
effect:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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