Baron d'Holbach 1764

The Abbot and the Rabbi


Source: Grimm, Correspondence Litteraire. Paris, Furne, 1829;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor 2005;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2005.


A Venetian abbot, arguing with a rabbi from Ferrara, claimed to have proved the truth of the Christian religion and the certainty of the arrival of the Messiah. He based this, as is the common usage, on the fulfillment of the prophecies that announced the dispersion of the Jews and the misfortunes that have fallen upon that nation. The rabbi answered him by first saying that the messiah announced by the scriptures was neither a God, nor a liberator, nor a monarch, as was commonly believed. Instead, it was a period of great happiness that had already arrived, and which the Hebrews have enjoyed for a great number of centuries. He went so far as to prove to the abbot that the Jewish people were incomparably happier than the Christians or any other people on earth. Here is what he based this paradox on:

  1. He said: “As you yourself avow, we adore the true God, but his upkeep doesn’t cost us anything. We no longer have any temples or altars or sacrifices. We have neither pope nor bishops nor priests to dearly pay. We aren’t obliged to provide for a mass of monks who devour the substance of nations without being of any use to them...
  2. The Eternal doesn’t ask of us that we do ourselves harm. Jews don’t condemn themselves to voluntary celibacy. The daughters of Zion don’t think that the Divinity is flattered by seeing them groan in perpetual prisons where they uselessly die after having been unhappy all their lives. They don’t reproach themselves for producing descendants of Abraham and for multiplying their race like the stars in the sky...
  3. We don’t have a monarch to maintain, courtiers to sate, troops to pay off. We are the subjects of your princes only as long as this is convenient for us. As soon as a country displeases us we pass into another, and with the assistance of letters of exchange – which we invented – our fortune follows us. Deprived of the right to acquire land, we are, thank God, foreigners in every country...
  4. Equally descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, among ourselves there are none of the troublesome distinctions between nobles and commoners. Every Jew’s birth is illustrious, and we hold none of our brothers in contempt...
  5. If the others nations hold us in contempt, we feel the same for them: there doesn’t exist a Jew who doesn’t have utter contempt for other peoples. Among us no man is a slave, like the negroes, or a serf, like the Christians. We aren’t condemned to the mines or to public works. We never serve as soldiers or sailors; we are never made to fire on the militia. The Christians fight among themselves so our commerce can flourish....
  6. The rewards promised us by the God of Abraham are purely temporal, and we have enjoyed them for a long while. We were promised the fat of the land, and that fat is money. We have the benefits, and others the charges. Don’t we have in our hands a great part of the world’s riches? We were promised that we would loan usuriously: are we not the greatest usurers in the world? We were promised that others would not use usury on us: is there a single Christian who can brag of having made a usurious loan to a Jew?
  7. We are accused of fraud and bad faith towards outsiders. But are those outsiders not our enemies? We are gentle, humane, and compassionate towards our brothers. Among ourselves we observe the strictest justice; we are faithful in out commitments. Our God gave us dispensed us from these obligations towards others. And for all the good they wish upon us or do us, you will agree that we don’t owe them much.
  8. We don’t mix with Christian women, or any other modern people. We are the people the least infected with the sickness that the pious Spaniards brought from the ends of the earth. If some accident of this kind occurs, it usually only falls upon some Portuguese Jew who transgresses his law by paying homage to the daughter of an uncircumcised.

Weigh these advantages, said the rabbi, and see if the Jews are as unhappy as is thought. Do you doubt that our nation is more numerous than when it was confined in arid Judea? Do you not think it is richer than under David and Solomon? Through its very dispersion, has not the whole universe become its inheritance? Don’t we gather what others planted? Don’t Christians go to the ends of the world to gather riches and kill each other for us?”

The abbot remained silent. He was forced to agree that the Hebrews, condemned as they are, are not the least favored people in this world.