Think and Thank: A Tale

Let's go back to the nineteenth century, and imagine that you're the Jewish Publication Society.  You want to publish an English public school tale-cum-historical novel about the staunchly Orthodox Sir Moses Montefiore that will also do double-duty as an anti-anti-semitic tale.  Clearly, your first choice for the job has to be...Samuel Williams Cooper, a lawyer from Philadelphia, very not Jewish (or English), and a member of the very not Orthodox Ethical Culture Society.  Hmmm.    In any event, what results is Think and Thank: A Tale (1890), which is enthusiastically anti-anti-Semitic, but remarkably short on anything resembling Judaism. 

In all likelihood, Cooper's primary source would have been Lucien Wolf's 1884 biography, which has virtually nothing to say about Montefiore's early life.  As a result, Cooper takes what we might call an exceptionally free attitude to the historical record (i.e., don't believe a word of the book).  The plot, as I said, yokes the public school novel (think Tom Brown's School Days) to what is supposed to be a historical novel, although nobody appears to have informed the illustrator.  To the extent that the novel registers historical difference, it's in the existence of anti-Semitism itself.  Sir Moses' career, we are informed at the end, has made Jews "free among men to work out their destinies, according to the truth that was in their hearts" (120).  The novel very much draws on the Victorian "Great Man" theory of history: Sir Moses' decision to make common cause with his fellow Jews turns out to be not only providential, but also the decisive turning point in their emancipation.  His Self-Help-ish interest in first personal and then what is represented as racial development (again, there's virtually no religion in this novel; Jews are treated as  a "race") produces equality, but also models how boys ought to go about combating prejudice.  Thus, on the one hand, the late-Victorian Jew enjoys not only the full benefits of English civil rights, but also rests secure in English public opinion; on the other, the late-Victorian Jewish child needs instructions on dealing with anti-Semitic bullying.  The novel does not deal with this internal contradiction.

The book's plot very loosely rewrites the Biblical Moses narrative, in the sense that Moses starts off by aspiring to full Englishness and English patriotism, and then transitions to focusing on his Jewish brethren.  The former, however, turns out to be training for the latter (something--OK, the only thing--the novel has in common with Daniel Deronda).  Moses learns about the virtues of self-control, application, and the occasional bout of physical force while at school, where his Christian peers, emulating their elders, "had delight in annoying their Jewish school-mates" (7).  But along with his younger brother and his friend Isaac Goldsmid, Moses masters the school's omnipresent anti-Semitism by demonstrating his essentially "English" virtues.  He withstands vicious flagellation administered without cause! He refuses to peach! He beats up some bullies! He's great at building snow forts and waging battles with snowballs! He engineers the return of a teacher's stolen manuscript! He even rescues the bully from certain death by drowning, at great risk to his own life (and hair)! (After a bit, I began to wonder when the kid was going to chop down a cherry tree.)  The important adjective here, which comes up several times, is "manly."  Moses wins over the school because his behavior conforms to the ideals of English manhood, which also turn out (at first) to be identical with Jewish manhood.  The first stage of his development, that is, asserts a universal standard for masculine norms and virtues, a ground on which those of any faith can meet.  These virtues, one notes, are cast in fully secular terms; there's little mention of the divine here. 

But Moses' uncle Joshua Montefiore represents the novel’s greatest temptation.  Joshua has pursued a successful military career, strongly aligned with British imperialism (the novel’s liberal attitude to Jews is not echoed in its attitude to any other race).  Initially, Moses wishes to follow his uncle’s example, and trains ardently in one of the Napoleonic-era militias; he even gains Lord Nelson’s approval.  Joshua’s example suggests that Jews might well be entirely assimilated to Englishness and English ideals, and the novel certainly holds out such assimilation as an ultimate good.  Yet Joshua's tales of heroic derring-do, while exceptionally entertaining, also illustrate the limits of the public school/military model when it comes to undoing anti-Semitism.  The novel genders the moral imbalance involved.  Not only does Moses need to overcome his immature objection to pesky girls ("'they are not so bad to play soldier with'" [95]), but also he must learn to truly listen to his mother, who becomes the voice of authentically Jewish virtue.  Although his uncle Moses supplies the historical background of Jewish oppression, and offers Moses a means of fulfilling his duty to his people, it is his mother Rachel who argues that a literal soldier's career can bring only "'sorrow'" and "'sufferings'" (115); only fighting for "'a truth'"" (112) constitutes a fully moral form of warfare.  This, clearly offered as the Jewish woman's perspective, turns out to be the necessary corrective to public school thinking.  By acceding to his mother's wishes, Moses abandons the quest for Englishness for the quest for Jewish well-being.  The result, if not military glory, is nevertheless glory just as well.