The Culture of Conversion

In nineteenth-century England the clearest sign of the ideology of Jewish conversion was its institutionalization in such well-known societies as the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews (founded in 1809) and the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews (founded in 1842). Numbering among their members some of England's best-known citizens, from powerful members of Parliament to influential clergymen (including William Wilberforce, Charles Simeon, and Lord Shaftesbury), and even enjoying the royal patronage of the duke of Kent, such societies became the subject of immense public attention and intense national debate. While the ideology of the conversion of the Jews was based on the scholarly exegesis of certain key texts of the Bible, the institutionalization of such an ideology—raising money, publishing journals and books, distributing tracts, setting up Christian schools for poor Jewish children, giving financial support to prospective converts—engaged the wider public in what became a debate over the religious, social, and political status of the Jews.

This chapter explores the public debate over the conversion of the Jews in general, and, more specifically, the controversial literature that grew out of the scandal surrounding the London Society. How did what otherwise might have been a local and self-contained controversy over the misadventures of one conversionist society at the beginning of the century reach such proportions, emerging into a debate that included the entire nation and lasted for decades? I will answer this question in part by showing how the controversy over the conversion of the Jews intersected with other important nineteenth-century debates, but my emphasis will be on the various literary forms (especially the conversionist novel) that disseminated, popularized, and reinvigorated the ideology of conversion even amid growing criticism of it.

The origins, development, and ultimate impact of the nineteenth-century conversionist novel is a largely unnoticed cultural phenomenon. Especially under the influence of the Evangelical Revival, novels became for the English public a major source of information about the Jews. Robert Southey, for example, recommended to a member of Parliament that he read, in preparation for debating Jewish Emancipation, the novel Sophia de Lissau, the subtitle of which defined the function of such novels: A Portraiture of the Jews of the Nineteenth Century; Being an Outline of their Religious and Domestic Habits With Explanatory Notes. The novel's preface made clear why the English public needed this information about the Jews: "how important is an intimate acquaintance with their most minute prejudices to those who would speak to them of Jesus!" Novels became a tool in the work of conversion, laying the groundwork for the English public to participate in this mission and preparing (in the case of Southey's correspondent) a member of Parliament to take part in the debates over Jewish emancipation—for the ideology of conversion played an important role in the parliamentary debates on Jewish civil and political disabilities. Novels about the Jews became so popular and wielded such influence that the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge decided to enter the field with Sadoc and Miriam: A Jewish Tale. This novel makes especially visible what can be found in subtler forms in the conversionist novel in general, namely, the vestigial traces of the oldest form of conversionist literature. In Sadoc and Miriam, narrative form is almost entirely erased in the debates between characters over the comparative values of Judaism versus Christianity, recalling those literary dialogues written by the Church fathers in which a Christian tries to convert a Jew through scriptural argument. Moreover, the London Society used the popularity of novels to advertise and support its own cause, regularly quoting Ivanhoe, for example, and even altering a passage in a famous novel like Daniel Deronda to make it serve the ideology of conversion.

In turning to the controversy over the Jewish conversionist societies and the way in which this controversy began to raise questions about English national identity, I explain in the first part of this chapter how the critics of such societies saw in them the sign of a kind of national insanity, "the English madness," which threatened to stain once again England's national character by being the latest development in a long history of England's abuses of the Jews. I go on to show how the literature of conversion represented England's missionary project as the sign that England was the chosen nation, the spiritual guide to all nations, initiating the salvation of the world by beckoning "the poor love of a Jew" to find refuge in "the Israel of modern times."

"The English Madness," or "This Mania of Conversion"

Writing in 1833, Isaac D'Israeli, the father of the future prime minister, offers a picture of the kind of activity that surrounded the missions to the Jews in nineteenth-century England: "The most learned Christians have composed excellent treatises; Jewish lectures have been delivered, even by converted Jews; conferences, both public and private, have been held; and societies, industrious like the 'the London,' assisted by every human means. We have arguments the most demonstrative on one side, and refutations the most complete on the other; exhortations which have drawn tears from both parties, and satires the most witty and malicious." D'Israeli, who eventually broke with the synagogue and had his children baptized—though he himself was never a convert to Christianity, as the London Society incorrectly claimed—goes on to explain those practices that turned Christian proselytism into "this trade of conversion," such as "hunting after miserable proselytes in the dark purlieus of filthy quarters, parentless children, or torn from their disconsolate parents; ... or importing young Polanders, who lose their Jewish complexion by fattening at the tables of their generous hosts."

D'Israeli here is reiterating the charges that had been brought before the public on many occasions, but perhaps most directly by a series of texts, published between 1816 and 1825, that were devoted exclusively to exposing the abuses of the London Society. When Robert Southey attacked the Society in 1830, he based his remarks on one of these popular critiques: "The Society for converting Jews has wasted more money than any other society in this country, which is a great deal. Norris published a most complete exposure of it." H. H. Norris's book, heavily indebted to two shocking exposes written by M. Sailman and B. R. Goakman, discusses the Society's notorious mismanagement of funds, its extraordinary expenditures, and its...