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Many years ago, when I was working at Cardiff's Central Library, I came across a nineteenth-century map inscribed with the shape of Wales superimposed upon that of Palestine. Brecon was Jerusalem and Joppa above Cardigan Bay neatly fitted Joppa above the Mediterranean. Masada coincided with the BBC headquarters at Llandaf, and the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem was equivalent to that from Coedpoeth to Merthyr. (Perhaps Harri Webb had hit on the truth when he wrote: 'When Christ was born at Dowlais Top'.)
That Wales was Palestine seemed altogether correct to me, for when I was very young I was convinced that my father had single-handedly captured Jerusalem from the Turks in 1918. He was certainly there – indeed the malaria he caught while trudging with Allenby across the Sinai Desert eventually killed him. He, like all the other British soldiers in Jerusalem, was presented with a two-foot crucifix. He sent it to his mother, who had been widowed by the Maerdy explosion of 1885. As she was a cleaner of Daniel Rowland's very own chapel, I wonder what she thought of it.
In the 1970s, in the month that the Israel-Egypt border was reopened, I made my father's journey in reverse. The route lay via Beersheba, where a graveyard, superbly maintained by the British War Graves Commission, has over twenty graves bearing englynion. I remember one of them: 'Hwyliodd yn wyn o Walia,/Drwy y drin, wron da,/I hir saib ym Meersheba.' Most of the englynion expressed the pride of parents that their sons had freed the Holy Land and that they had been lain to rest in the land that contains the tomb of Christ.
These were the memories which came to me while reading this admirable book. Grahame Davies has gathered together a wide range of comments by Gentile Welsh writers on the Jews and by Jewish Welsh writers on the Welsh. They range from a translation of the editor's own moving poem to Merthyr's Jewish cemetery to a selection of Dannie Abse's splendid reminiscences, from Lord Elwyn-Jones's memories of the Nuremberg trials to Mimi Josephson's memorable portrayal of her loyalty to Wales and to Israel. The editor has not shirked the duty of including Welsh anti-semitic comments, the worst example of which is an extraordinarily vicious passage by that Welsh icon, Owen M. Edwards. The extracts are linked by the editor's sensitive commentary, which is particularly perceptive where Saunders Lewis is concerned. Unlike some Welsh commentators, Grahame Davies is not in the business of exculpation.
One of the themes running through the book is the Welsh predeliction for giving Hebrew names to their chapels, names which were frequently adopted as place-names. Perhaps the matter could have been pursued statistically. The Calvinistic Methodists' Handbook of 1911 lists 310 chapels which, between them, bore a total of 51 biblical names. The top ten were Penuel (22), Bethel (20), Carmel (16), Salem (16), Seion (16), Bethania (15) Bethlehem (13), Hermon (12), Tabernacl (11) and Saron (11). At the bottom of the list, with only one apiece, were Berea, Cedron, Bozrah, Dothan, Gerizim, Caesarea, Gilgal, Golan, Gibea, Pharan, and curiously enough, Calfaria.
Another theme is the degree to which Welsh philo-semitism – based on the bible-olatry of the country's Nonconformity – inspired Lloyd George to authorize the promulgation of the Balfour Declaration, the declaration central to the process which eventually led to the establishment of the state of Israel. The book contains an extract from a speech Lloyd George made in 1925, when he reminded the Jewish Historical Society of England that 'Palestine was never a land exclusively of Jews'. It is a reminder which the present leaders of Israel should ponder.
John Davies
It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgement should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.
Gellir defnyddio’r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatâd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.
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