John Braham - Braham As A Jew

Braham As A Jew

However, both by his own choice and by the sentiments of his audiences in England, Braham’s Jewishness remained a prominent feature of his career until his marriage in 1816, and as the most famous English Jew of this period he became a significant incarnation of 'the Jew' in the British consciousness. He also regularly supported Jewish charities and causes.

Braham’s physical appearance made it in any case difficult to disguise his origins, being short, stocky, swarthy and in general the epitome of a caricature Jew. The quality of his singing rendered his looks irrelevant to his audience; as was unpleasantly expressed by the satirist John Williams, who at the end of a long catalogue of supposed Jewish malpractices and some lubricious references to Braham's supposed venery, concludes his passage:

His voice and his judgement completely atone

For that heap of repulsion he cannot disown.

When he breathes his divisions and liquidly soars,

Frigid Science first hears, then bows low and adores!

The writer and essayist Charles Lamb is effusive, if patronising, about Braham in a letter of 1808:

Do you like Braham’s singing. The little Jew has bewitched me. I follow him like as the boys follow Tom the Piper. He cures me of melancholy as David cured Saul Braham’s singing when it is impassion’d is finer than Mrs. Siddons or Mr. Kemble's acting & when it is not impassion'd it as good as hearing a person of fine sense talking. The brave little Jew!

In his published essays however Lamb, whilst continuing to profess admiration for Braham, lets his prejudices rip. His attitude does not differ much, in fact, from that of Williams already referred to, accepting Braham’s talents only in the context of supposed distasteful practices of his people. In his essay ‘Imperfect Sympathies’ published in 1821, he wrote:

B– would have been more in keeping if he had abided by the faith of his forefathers. There is a fine scorn in his face, which nature meant to be of - Christians. The Hebrew spirit is strong in him, in spite of his proselytism. He cannot conquer the Shibboleth. How it breaks out, when he sings, "The Children of Israel passed through the Red Sea!" The auditors, for the moment, are as Egyptians to him, and he rides over our necks in triumph. There is no mistaking him. – B– has a strong expression of sense in his countenance, and it is confirmed by his singing. The foundation of his vocal excellence is use. He sings with understanding, as Kemble delivered dialogue. He would sing the Commandments, and give an appropriate character to each prohibition.