Friday, April 15, 2005
THE BIRTH OF FREEMASONRY - ITS JEWISH ROOTS
A Masonic scholar and former Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite in Israel, as well as a Fellow of The Philalethes Society, Leon Zeldis speaks with some authority on Masonic subjects. He has written an article on the social climate in England and on the continent at the founding of Freemasonry in 1717. It is clear in this article that he had no love for the Church of that time period.
Interestingly, he includes a translation of the Kabbalah in his description of the time period:
In 1684, Knorr von Rosenroth published Kabbalah Denudata (Kabbalah Unveiled), a translation of passages from the Zohar and essays on the meaning of Kabbalah (including portions of Cordovero's Pardes Rimonim) examined from a Christian point of view. Rosenroth's work was the most important non-Hebrew reference book on the Kabbalah until the end of the 19th century and it became the major source of this subject for non-Jewish scholars.
In speaking of the establishment of the Scottish Rite, he indicates that mysticism was a part of the picture:
Some Stuart supporters, mainly Scots, followed him in exile and were involved in the creation of the first Masonic lodges in the continent. Here they received the influence of the mystic trends current in Europe, and they created the additional degrees which, not surprisingly, were called "Scottish". Thus, after a long evolution, the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite was born.
Presumably, then, since he offers no other source, and since he rejects the Church, this mysticism would have come from the Kabbalah of Rosenroth. And in fact he says that
European thought was strongly influenced by esoteric thinking, the Rosicrucians, the Cabbala, alchemy and tarot. Hebrew was highly regarded, as the sacred language of the Bible, and also as the language spoken by God when addressing man. Some scholars believed that from Hebrew were derived all other languages.
One statement seems to echo the current enfatuation with seeing the world as a living organism. Zeldis says
voices began to be heard proposing changes, making appeal to reason instead of subservience to dogma, these thinkers regarded society as a living organism, they were aware of its defects and wanted to find solutions to improve it.
He indicates as well that "Some of the most prominent founders of the premier Grand Lodge were active in" the Royal Society founded in London in 1662, which provided a platform for researchers and scholars in the newly emerging sciences of astronomy which replaced astrology, of chemistry which replaced alchemy, and anatomy and physiology which were making strides in revolutionizing medicine.
Freemsonry in Israel, a website offering a series of Masonic scholarly papers, one of which, also written by Zeldis, describes the earliest birth of the Lodge in Israel:
The historic origins of Freemasonry in the Holy Land date from the 13th of May, 1868, when M.W. Bro. Dr. Robert Morris, Past Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Kentucky, directed a Secret Monitor ceremony in the Cave of Zedekiah, popularly known as King Solomon's Quarries, deep under the walls of the old city of Jerusalem.
Dr. Morris worked unceasingly to erect the first regular Masonic Lodge, and in 1873, he finally succeeded in obtaining a charter from the Grand Lodge of Canada, Ontario, for the Royal Solomon Mother Lodge No. 293, working "at the city of Jerusalem or adjacent places." This was the first regular Lodge in Israel. Most of its founding members were American settlers living in Jaffa, belonging to a Christian sect called the Church of the Messiah. In 1866, they had left Jonesport, Maine, for the Holy Land, with the avowed intention of founding an agricultural settlement. Dr. Robert Morris was supposed to be the Lodge's first Master, but, it appears that he could not arrive, and Bro. Rolla Floyd, one of the leaders of the American group, called "The Palestine Emigration Society," took his place. The Lodge had a difficult existence and after a few years, stopped reporting to the Grand Lodge of Canada. It was finally erased in 1907.
This predates the founding of the state of Israel by nearly 80 years. The Israeli lodges were not accepted by the Grand Lodge of England until 1953 when the Israeli Grand Lodge was created. This brought the needed recognition from Grand Lodge of England as well as international recognition. Without this recognition, members of the Israeli lodges were not welcome to visit other Masonic Lodges.
An additional article by Zeldis calls Jerusalem "the symbolic cradle of Freemasonry."
In "Some Sephardic Jews in Freemasonry", Zeldis offers this explanation of Jewish involvement with English Masonry:
In England, where the Jews had been expelled by King Edward I in the year 1290, some "secret" Jews entered the country surreptitiously, under the appearance of being Spanish or Portuguese Catholics. They attended mass in the embassies of Spain, Portugal and France, but observed Jewish traditions in their homes. These Jews were tolerated because of their financial and mercantile contacts with the rest of Europe, and by their assistance in extending the commercial interests of England throughout the world. Enjoying the more liberal environment prevailing in England and Holland, some Jews gradually revealed themselves as such. In 1655, the Sephardic Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel (also known as Manoel Días Soeiro, 1604-1657) from Amsterdam, submitted a petition to Oliver Cromwell to allow the official residence of Jews in England. No record has been found of the result of this démarche, but a small congregation of Sephardim was officially recognized by King Charles II in 1664, after the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy.1
Thus, the new Israelite congregation in England was composed almost exclusively of Sephardim. The first Jews who received nobility titles in England also were Sephardim: Solomon de Medina (c. 1650-1730) and Sir Moses Montefiore (1784-1885), who was knighted in 1837 and made a baronet in 1846.
It is not surprising, then, that the first known Jewish Mason, dating from 1716 (one year before the creation of the first Grand Lodge) was an English Sephardi: Francis Francia, also known as the "Jacobite Jew." He was tried and later exonerated from an accusation of high treason. In an English newspaper of 1877, recounting this incident, Francia is called a Mason.
This combination of enthusiasm in England for the newly translated Kabbalah, a social climate that was just emerging from mysticism into rationalism, and Sephardic Jews instrumental at the very beginning of the Lodge would go a long way toward explaining why the Kabbalah is so prominent in some upper degrees of Freemasonry, and why so much of the symbolism of the Lodge is Jewish.
