STOP
Early Journal Content on JSTOR, Free to Anyone in the World
This article is one of nearly 500,000 scholarly works digitized and made freely available to everyone in
the world byJSTOR.
Known as the Early Journal Content, this set of works include research articles, news, letters, and other
writings published in more than 200 of the oldest leading academic journals. The works date from the
mid-seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries.
We encourage people to read and share the Early Journal Content openly and to tell others that this
resource exists. People may post this content online or redistribute in any way for non-commercial
purposes.
Read more about Early Journal Content at http://about.istor.org/participate-istor/individuals/early-
journal-content .
JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary source objects. JSTOR helps people
discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content through a powerful research and teaching
platform, and preserves this content for future generations. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit
organization that also includes Ithaka S+R and Portico. For more information about JSTOR, please
contact support@jstor.org.
518 Jewish Quarterly Review.
A NEW JEWISH NOVEL.
Tlie World and the Cloister. A Novel. By Oswald John Simon.
(2 vols. 1890.)
Mr. Oswald Simon is an idealist. This accounts both for the strength
and the weakness of his book. As an idealist the goal to be desired is
for him nothing less than unity of religion, in which humanity will form
one great holy brotherhood, with bye-laws from that code which is the
inheritance of Israel ; but as such he little reckons with the obstacles
preventing the attainment of this goal. " He cometh leaping over the
mountains, skipping over the hills," and gets a glance into the promised
land, into which neither he nor his contemporaries nor many future
generations will come.
But this is only an amiable weakness, and we must not complain too
much of it. It is now nearly a generation since Daniel Deronda set out
for a wedding trip to the Holy Land, full of hopes and ideals. But not
much was heard of him, nor did he find such a great following as his
well-wishers expected. "We are rather afraid that Deronda's enthusiasm
was quenched a little when he saw that the realisation of his hopes is in the
first instance very much a matter of shillings and pounds, of which the
noble, but unpractical Mordecai knew nothing. He might also have found
that " to bind our race together in spite of heresy, for our religion united us
before it divided us," is a much more difficult task than he had thought.
People are determined to keep up the divisions, and to place each other
without the pale of Judaism. And as to the Gwendolens they (the Jewish
ones at least) are now worse than ever. To judge from their latest
novels they look again at the world from the Monaco point of view,
every thing being to them — religion, marriage, calling — nothing else but a
game, the success in which depends entirely on accomplishment in the
art of cheating. And what is still worse is that they want to persuade
us that they give us only facts.
But if these be facts they are brutal facts, and Mr. Simon has done
well in dispensing with them, and transporting us into a region of the
noblest aspirations and purest ideals with which his book is permeated.
This he was able to do by a strong appeal to the past, when " there was
self -negation " even " on the part of men and women who have not been
trained in the monastic life," who have shown " examples of heroism
more signal than the accumulated incidents of the whole body of
Christian saints," and by placing an unbounded faith in the future, when
" the Supreme Being, as the Parent of all, will be recognised as the greatest
bond between men and nations, so great a bond, indeed, that all differ-
ences sink into a subordinate place."
It is true that Mr. Simon, overpowered by the glorious vision of a re-
mote future, is rather inclined to see the present in much brighter colours
than it really is. M.P.'s in the close of our century, for instance, are not
supposed to be in search of a religion. Generally they are satisfied in
conforming to that of their constituency, and it happens only very seldom
that their religious aspirations mount higher than the stairs which lead to
their platform. "VVe may also remark that Roderick is a little too much
of a rationalist for us. Indeed, it would seem to us that Mr. Simon's
hero has too good a lot in this world. Without the least personal ani-
mosity to Roderick, we should have liked to see him go through some
great spiritual crisis, followed by those mental agonies for which the
Psalms form the only cure which Providence has prepared for us. Again,
Critical Notices. 519
instead of passing his time in yachts and drawing-rooms, where, as it
would seem, both salvation and politics are the subject of intrigue, we
should have preferred him to mix a little with some simple-minded
people whose religion is a warm and real expression of the heart. In
this case Roderick would have shown more sympathy with ceremonies
and observances that do quicken spirituality, though we can quite
appreciate the notions of ihose who prefer "religion without form"
to " form without religion."
But it must not be supposed that Mr. Simon's ideals are so much in
divergence with re<ality as these minor points would suggest. Irene's
exaltation over the " two distinct propositions : first, the historical
national sentiments of the Hebrew race, bearing traces of great anti-
quity ; and, secondly, those essential elements of the Jewish faith
which represent universality," which may be described as the racial and
the missionary elements in Judaism, expresses fully the sentiments of the
great majority of those of our generation who still take the trouble to
think over our position and destination in the history of mankind.
We must say that personally we are not very fond of this over-
emphasising of the racial element which degrades Jews into a kind
of " Monotheistic breed," and makes religion a mere matter of blind
instinct.
However, here again the force of Mr. Simon's idealism asserts itself,
and ennobles everything on which he touches. To him this racial
element only serves to show that the Jews have the innate ability for
their mission, which consists in proclaiming the name of God — and God
alone— to the world, for which Mr. Simon pleads with the ardent faith
worthy of such a sublime idea, an idea which has animated all our sages,
from those who compiled our prayer-book down to the latest historians in
the present century. The following passage displays the feelings of
Mr. Simon's heroes when they enter the synagogue on their wedding-
day : — '"They saw before them the two tablets of stone holding up
the Ten Commandments, and in them they saw not a tomb nor an
image, but the imperishable corner-stone of the world's civilisation."
We have no doubt that this faith will prove contagious to the reader,
who, after having finished the book, must feel that he has spent an
hour with one whose heart is pure, whose mind is noble, and who has
something to say to the world worth listening to.
S. SCHECIITER.
