George Eliot and kabbalism

historical and literary context

pp. 25-34

in: Saleel Nurbhai, K. M. Newton, George Eliot, judaism and the novels, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002

Abstract

My Gentile nature kicks most resolutely against any assumption of superiority in the Jews, and is almost ready to echo Voltaire’s vituperation. I bow to the supremacy of Hebrew poetry, but much of their early mythology and almost all of their history is utterly revolting. Their stock has produced a Moses and a Jesus, but Moses was impregnated with Egyptian philosophy and Jesus is venerated and adored by us only for that wherein he transcended or resisted Judaism. The very exhaltation of their idea of a national deity into a spiritual monotheism seems to have been borrowed from other oriental tribes. Everything specifically Jewish is of a low grade. (Letters, I, 246–7)1 (Eliot’s emphasis)