Page 58 - The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages - Alfred Rosenberg

The Track of the Jew through the Ages

Uriel was summoned to the synagogue and a public apology
and unconditional subjection were demanded. He refused this but
was banned and had to suffer the same persecutions as before.
Finally, as an old man, he declared that he was ready to renounce
his views and to subject himself to the rabbis. Acosta had to confess
from the pulpit in funeral clothes, a black candle in his hand, that on
account of his sins he had deserved death hundred times, that he
subjected himself to any punishment and promised that he would
never more become an apostate - Then he had to go to a corner of
the synagogue and strip to his girdle, whereupon he was bound to a
column where, amidst the singing ofpsalms by the whole community,
thus in the presence ofboth sexes, 39 whiplashes were administered
to his back.
After that the ban was revoked but Uriel was forced to lie
down in front of the exit from the synagogue where everybody
leaving placed a foot on him, which even his relatives did not spare
him, on the contrary, they trod on him most angrily. Humiliated
and, at the same time, embittered by these frightful mistreatments,
the old man decided to take revenge. He shot his brother, who had
treated him most cruelly; the shot missed, Uriel knew that he would
be discovered, locked himself up and made an end of his life with a
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pistol-shot.
Whereas in other countries the Jews were strictly watched,
in Amsterdam they still enjoyed all freedoms and it is uncanny to
see with what a tenacious hatred a man could be hounded and
persecuted for decades without any intervention on the part of the
authorities.
Indeed the Jews enjoyed in Amsterdam such a freedom that
Uriel d'Acosta could say rightly in his autobiography, which he
composed shortly before his death: "If Jesus of Nazareth came to
Amsterdam and the Jews wished to crucify him, they could do so
without fear".
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See Boissi, Dissertations, Uriel d 'Acosta; also J. Muller, Prolegomena and
Schudt, Jiidische Merkwiirdigkeiten, I, p. 286. [Louis Michel de Boissy (1725-
1793) was a French historian whose incomplete historical work, Dissertations
critiques pour servir d'eclaircissemens a I 'histoire des Juifs, avant et depuis
Jesus-Christ was published in two volumes in 1785.]
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