Rachel Levi and Caleb Asher

Nineteenth-century Anglo-Jewish didactic fiction owed much to the flood of cheap texts, especially tracts, emerging from the Religious Tract Society and similar publishers.  We can see this influence at work in two early English novellas, Rachel Levi, A Tale (1847) and  Charlotte Montefiore’s Caleb Asher (1845), the latter of which first appeared in the UK in Montefiore's "Cheap Jewish Library"; both were published in the USA under the auspices of Isaac Leeser's Jewish Publication Society.   both piggy-back on popular contemporary genres:  Rachel Levi is, among other things, a seamstress novel, while Caleb Asher simultaneously combines the tale of working-class poverty with a deconstruction of the evangelical conversion novel.   Notably, both tales ground Judaism in the Bible alone, in line with the anti-Talmudic bent of both Grace Aguilar’s popular theology and Montefiore’s own  A Few Words to the Jews ("The theological writings of Rabbis or Fathers of the church bear upon their pages the dust and toil of time ; and as the human mind progresses, it must necessarily shake it off and leave them behind" [153]) [1].   Beyond that, there’s almost no mention of theology at all.  Both tales insist that while a strong work ethic eo ipso won’t necessarily ensure success, a strong work ethic plus sincere piety will lead to both earthly and heavenly rewards.   Last but not least, both stories associate stable Jewish identity with feminine influence, whether maternal or sororal. 

Rachel Levi takes place in a thoroughly Jewish community, barely touched by Christianity (or Christians).    The story’s core moral is about the importance of keeping the Sabbath, which can still be observed in the “’temple’” of “’our heart and mind’” (73) despite the loss of the temple itself; observing the Sabbath, above all things, turns out to define modern Jewish identity.   The title character, an orphaned adolescent, determines to leave the observant household maintained by her aunt, Mrs. Ellis, and find work as a seamstress.  Rachel effectively has two mothers in this novel, the lost mother (whose “precepts” and “pure example” [61]  sustain Rachel’s faith) and her aunt, who supplies the spiritual and practical advice the dead mother cannot.   As in Christian didactic fiction, Rachel’s mother delivers both an all-important deathbed speech (62) and passes on “a Bible and prayer-book” (63).  In fact, there are no influential male figures anywhere in this novella: the Jewish Biblical and cultural inheritance turns out to be matrilineal in more than one sense.   Nadia Valman comments that one of Grace Aguilar's novels "represents the relationship between mother and daughter as an ecstatic exchange of feeling that emulates the limitless love of God," and something of the sort is at play here [2].  But in this novella, where the Jewish mother instructs, the Jewish daughter exemplifies, and through her example, reclaims “bad” Jewish mothers—like Rachel’s first employer, Mrs. Davis.   Rachel’s prayers for Mrs. Davis (65) and her dedication to her work when the other girls shell out their cash on “unnecessary objects” (67)—that is, her piety and her self-disciplined investment in her employer’s best interests--gain her Mrs. Davis’ initial approval.  Alas, Mrs. Davis, increasingly in debt,  asks Rachel to work on Saturday (69), and Rachel’s refusal to violate the Sabbath because “’I cannot do even for once what I consider to be wrong’” (70) gets her promptly cashiered.  (Even so, Rachel is charity in action: she initially refuses to take the wages owed her because Mrs. Davis might need the money [71].)  By this point in the tale, then, the narrative develops a traditional hierarchy of working-class obligations: to God first, the employer second, and the self third.  Ideally, self intervenes only when religious obligations interfere with the employer’s commands.

Despite appearing to be an ideal young Jewish woman, Rachel proves deficient in one respect: she has yet to learn how to transform suffering into charity (78).  Having hit rock bottom after losing her job and being unable to find another, Rachel follows Mrs. Ellis’ counsels and applies herself to the usual Victorian womanly domestic tasks.  This work turns out to prepare her for an entirely new task: after being recalled by an ailing Mrs. Davis, who has concluded that “’she who fulfilled one of God’s commandments to her apparent disadvantage, would likewise fulfill her duty to me’” (81), Rachel finds herself invited to take over the task of mothering Mrs. Davis’ children. And then, as Mrs. Davis fears herself on the brink of death, it falls to Rachel to call her former employer to prayer and repentance (83).  The religious circuit is complete, as the daughter “mothers” the bad Jewish mother, and is rewarded with a partnership in return (84).   Religious faith produces worldly results.  The essence of Judaism thus turns out to rely on mutual female mentoring, bolstered by private Bible reading.  Notably, while the novel repeatedly alludes to attending synagogue, we never see the characters actually there; the emphasis falls entirely on the individual’s personal relationship to God, reinforced by the counsel of other women.

Charlotte Montefiore’s more complex Caleb Asher similarly insists that women are the key to Jewish identity: all of the novel’s backsliders are male.   It poses itself as a counterpart to (fictional) conversion narratives like “’The Life of a Jew made Happy and Rich’” (47), which link salvation and financial success to  Christianity—the rejection of the covenant for financial gain.     Given the novel’s representation of Gentile poverty, rather obviously lifted from Hogarth’s Gin Lane—drunkenness, prostitution, and so forth (50-51)—the connection between Christianity and either material or spiritual well-being seems obviously problematic.  The Ashers are an impoverished working-class family, with an out-of-work father (he’s injured) and equally out-of-work children (the son makes painted boxes for a living).   Like Benjamin Disraeli and Elizabeth Gaskell, Montefiore insists that the ideal relationship between laborer and employer rests on mutual sympathy; after all, if the workers would just understand that businessmen had their own financial issues, they wouldn’t go on strike when their wages were reduced, and “a common evil might often be averted, and good-will and kindly feeling be for ever established between the employed and the employwer, making the task of both at once more pleasant and honourable” (20).   In effect, following Harriet Martineau, Montefiore prescribes a good dose of political economy for the working class, with the goal of constructing an organic community of mutually-obligated employers and employees.  Unfortunately, there’s not much sympathy available. Both Caleb and his father are anxious and increasingly embittered, and here enters temptation.  The novel’s plot echoes Irish critiques of “souperism”—that is, Protestants bribing Catholics to convert with offers of food and other necessities.  Caleb Asher argues point-blank that Christian missionaries to the Jews are essentially predators who entice impoverished Jews to convert by paying them.  Caleb nearly succumbs to temptation, especially after he experiences the male equivalent of a “Bridge of Sighs” moment (24); his sister Sarah, however, is the essence of constancy, who dwells upon the reassuring thought that “’those only who forsake their God, are cut off from this blessed promise; they only, therefore, should be altogether miserable’” (16).  Significantly, Sarah counsels both her father and her brother; indeed, she also provides support to her mother (who is, nevertheless, more steadfast than either man).  Once again, women turn out to be the best, most faithful interpreters of the Bible, and the ones responsible for keeping the flame of faith alive within the household. 

Sarah, as it turns out, has a secret: her beloved converted to Christianity.  Here, the novel explicitly takes on and inverts evangelical texts.  Both nonfictional (e.g., the narrative of Joseph Frey) and fictional (e.g., Leila Ada) conversion narratives associate conversion with domestic violence:  the Jewish convert to Christianity is brutalized, imprisoned, and ultimately expelled from the household, only to find a spiritual home within a community united by Christian love.   Caleb Asher insists, in fact, that cutting off the convert is the right thing to do—but only because conversion to a Trinitarian faith means rejecting God.    That being said, the novel rejects anti-Christian prejudice per se, reserving its animus for missionaries; indeed, it concludes with a terribly impoverished Christian widow being adopted into the bosom of a Jewish family, suggesting that the female guardians of Jewish community may well extend their love in ecumenical directions (100). The family’s childhood friend (and Sarah’s would-be husband), Reuben Simeon, once he takes the step of becoming a Christian in order to rescue the family’s financial fortunes, finds himself promptly erased from his observant family—which, significantly, consists solely of a devout mother and sister, who reject the money and presents he sends them (thereby rendering the conversion worthless…) (39), and regard Reuben as effectively “dead” (41).    Reuben, in fact, is about to be really, truly dead, and the novel reverses the evangelical “good death” trope by having him deconvert on his deathbed.  Reuben’s deconversion narrative turns the Christian lady missionary into a temptress, the opposite of the ideal Jewish woman:  the lady missionary offers false sympathy and cash, both of which turn out to be conditional on his conversion (72).  (Mary, it turns out, anticipates Dickens’ Mrs. Pardiggle and Mrs. Jellyby in her missionary conduct [65-66].)  Once he has chosen the path of the Christian temptress (a second Eve of sorts?), Reuben finds himself suddenly bereft of sister, mother—who “’loved her God better than her children’” (73)—and beloved Sarah.  Having converted him, the temptress, Mary Marshall, promptly abandons him, in one of the novel’s few allusions to anti-Semitism (79).  To make matters even worse, his steadfast mother promptly inherits some cash, leaving a depressed Reuben to ruminate that “’had I had but a little patience, had I but trusted in my God, we might all have been happy’” (74).   The mother exiles her converted son because, in refusing to trust in God’s love and law, he has already exiled himself.  Nevertheless, at the end, she argues that “’I too soon renounced him’” (101)—admitting that, in effect, motherly love might have reclaimed the wayward son.   And yet, the narrative only allows this moderating sentiment after Reuben’s reclamation and death, while pointedly keeping the verb in play: renunciation was the right thing to do; only the timing may have been wrong.  The point is clear: the Jew who rejects God’s covenant has also rejected every Jew who holds the covenant dear. 

Notably, instead of being surrounded by women, the newly-converted Reuben winds up with a fake, all-male family, defined by “’the sense of our own degradation,’”  and “’where the name of brother was perpetually heard,’” even though “’no feelings of brotherhood ever existed’” (75).  The feminine spirit of Judaism gives way to the faux agape of Christianity, a bastion of masculine weakness.    Indeed, the novel’s one truly sardonic chapter, featuring Caleb before the “’Operative Jewish Converts’ Institution,’” makes it clear that this work is both masculine and mercenary.  George Marshall, wife of Mary, and one of the Society’s upstanding members, had shown himself singularly lacking in charity to Caleb before (22), and he spends the entire meeting doing “calculations” (65).  The run-up to Caleb’s appearance is all about donations, extracted honestly and otherwise, and the financial value of the converts (or lack thereof) to the board.    Montefiore here reverses anti-Semitic stereotypes, turning Christian missionaries into worldly, money-hungry figures of greed, who exploit poor Jews to line their own pockets.  Christian evangelism “converts” souls into coin, making religion into a sideline of capitalist endeavor.   By contrast, the novel’s Jews, male and female, are all defined by their charity—including Reuben, whose willingness to help others signals that he has not actually converted. 

It is Sarah, Mary Marshall’s opposite, who restores the dying and despairing Reuben to the fold by asking him to pray to the “’one God’” (91).   Reuben, thus empowered, speaks the moral: “’Cling with all your heart and soul to the Divine religion, that proclaims THE UNITY OF GOD, which enjoins the worship of one God alone, and whose practices are all in accordance with this belief: a religion, which the simple may comprehend and follow, which enforces love to God, charity and good-will to all men—whose moral creed contains no exaggerated enthusiasm, but noble and pure precepts that can be fulfilled letter by letter by letter, and whose accomplishment gives peace here, and peace hereafter’” (93).  This return to Judaism not only  reaffirms the consoling power of the Law, but also pointedly denies (Protestant) Christian claims to having the only truly accessible religion.  (The dig at “enthusiasm” echoes early attacks on Methodists and evangelicals for their emotional excess.)    Miraculously, Reuben survives just long enough to be welcomed back into his family’s feminine fold, inspiring Caleb to a more sincere faith; in the novel’s happily-ever-after, Caleb and Reuben’s sister Marion marry, supported by the wealthier Mrs. Simeon.  These fruits of Reuben’s death prove its “goodness,” with all the exemplary force of its Christian equivalent.  The interrupted union of the two families is thus completed, producing a truly godly family defined by “mutual love,” “piety,” and “virtue” (102)—in sharp contrast to the mercenary Marshalls.  Sarah, meanwhile, devotes herself to God and a life of ongoing charity within the community. 

In their emphasis on women’s spiritual authority, both novels “domesticate” Judaism in a manner very similar to evangelical Christianity.  Men are ineffective and easily led; women, by contrast, devote themselves to their Bibles and carefully study the Law.  This approach explicitly devalues rabbinical authority (not a rabbi to be seen) and the Talmud; nor is it clear if women are expected to know any Hebrew (and, notably, there’s no Hebrew, transliterated or otherwise, in either novel).  The Law may be patriarchal, but you certainly wouldn’t know it from these tales! At the same time, they both endorse mainstream arguments about the right relationships between workmen and their employers,  aligning Jewish labor ideals with those of their Christian brethren.  And, as the example of Mrs. Simeon and the Christian widow indicates, the novels do not necessarily argue against strong, affectionate relationships between Jews and Christians—only against Christians suborning Jews.  In that sense, Jews turn out to be both separate and quintessentially English. 

[1] On the professional relationship and religious overlap between Montefiore and Aguilar, see Michael Galchinsky, The Origin of the Modern Jewish Woman Writer: Romance and Reform in Victorian England (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1996), 175-85.  (Notably, Aguilar's novella The Perez Family features characters with the same names as those in Caleb Asher.) 

[2] Nadia Valman, The Jewess in Nineteenth-Century British Literary Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007), 84.