The following essays were delivered during the last ten years, in the
form of addresses, before the largest associations in the great cities
of Germany. Each one is a dear and precious possession to me. As I once
more pass them in review, reminiscences fill my mind of solemn occasions
and impressive scenes, of excellent men and charming women. I feel as
though I were sending the best beloved children of my fancy out into the
world, and sadness seizes me when I realize that they no longer belong
to me alone--that they have become the property of strangers. The living
word falling upon the ear of the listener is one thing; quite another
the word staring from the cold, printed page. Will my thoughts be
accorded the same friendly welcome that greeted them when first they
were uttered?
I venture to hope that they may be kindly received; for these addresses
were born of devoted love to Judaism. The consciousness that Israel is
charged with a great historical mission, not yet accomplished, ushered
them into existence. Truth and sincerity stood sponsor to every word. Is
it presumptuous, then, to hope that they may find favor in the New
World? Brethren of my faith live there as here; our ancient watchword,
"Sh'ma Yisrael," resounds in their synagogues as in ours; the old
blood-stained flag, with its sublime inscription, "The Lord is my
banner!" floats over them; and Jewish hearts in America are loyal like
ours, and sustained by steadfast faith in the Messianic time when our
hopes and ideals, our aims and dreams, will be realized.
There is but
one Judaism the world over, by the Jordan and the Tagus as by the
Vistula and the Mississippi. God bless and protect it, and lead it to
the goal of its glorious future!
To all Jewish hearts beyond the ocean, in free America, fraternal
greetings!
GUSTAV KARPELES
BERLIN, Pesach 5652/1892.
CONTENTS
A GLANCE AT JEWISH LITERATURE
THE TALMUD
THE JEW IN THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION
WOMEN IN JEWISH LITERATURE
MOSES MAIMONIDES
JEWISH TROUBADOURS AND MINNESINGERS
HUMOR AND LOVE IN JEWISH POETRY
THE JEWISH STAGE
THE JEW'S QUEST IN AFRICA
A JEWISH KING IN POLAND
JEWISH SOCIETY IN THE TIME OF MENDELSSOHN
LEOPOLD ZUNZ
HEINRICH HEINE AND JUDAISM
THE MUSIC OF THE SYNAGOGUE
A GLANCE AT JEWISH LITERATURE
In a well-known passage of the _Romanzero_, rebuking Jewish women for
their ignorance of the magnificent golden age of their nation's poetry,
Heine used unmeasured terms of condemnation. He was too severe, for the
sources from which he drew his own information were of a purely
scientific character, necessarily unintelligible to the ordinary reader.
The first truly popular presentation of the whole of Jewish literature
was made only a few years ago, and could not have existed in Heine's
time, as the most valuable treasures of that literature, a veritable
Hebrew Pompeii, have been unearthed from the mould and rubbish of the
libraries within this century. Investigations of the history of Jewish
literature have been possible, then, only during the last fifty years.
But in the course of this half-century, conscientious research has so
actively been prosecuted that we can now gain at least a bird's-eye view
of the whole course of our literature. Some stretches still lie in
shadow, and it is not astonishing that eminent scholars continue to
maintain that "there is no such thing as an organic history, a logical
development, of the gigantic neo-Hebraic literature"; while such as are
acquainted with the results of late research at best concede that
Hebrew literature has been permitted to garner a "tender aftermath."
Both verdicts are untrue and unfair. Jewish literature has developed
organically, and in the course of its evolution it has had its
spring-tide as well as its season of decay, this again followed by
vigorous rejuvenescence.
Such opinions are part and parcel of the vicissitudes of our literature,
in themselves sufficient matter for an interesting book.
Strange it
certainly is that a people without a home, without a land, living under
repression and persecution, could produce so great a literature;
stranger still, that it should at first have been preserved and
disseminated, then forgotten, or treated with the disdain of prejudice,
and finally roused from torpid slumber into robust life by the breath of
the modern era. In the neighborhood of twenty-two thousand works are
known to us now. Fifty years ago bibliographers were ignorant of the
existence of half of these, and in the libraries of Italy, England, and
Germany an untold number awaits resurrection.
In fact, our literature has not yet been given a name that recommends
itself to universal acceptance. Some have called it
"Rabbinical
Literature," because during the middle ages every Jew of learning bore
the title Rabbi; others, "Neo-Hebraic"; and a third party considers it
purely theological. These names are all inadequate.
Perhaps the only one
sufficiently comprehensive is "Jewish Literature." That embraces, as it
should, the aggregate of writings produced by Jews from the earliest
days of their history up to the present time, regardless of form, of
language, and, in the middle ages at least, of subject-matter.
With this definition in mind, we are able to sketch the whole course of
our literature, though in the frame of an essay only in outline. We
shall learn, as Leopold Zunz, the Humboldt of Jewish science, well says,
that it is "intimately bound up with the culture of the ancient world,
with the origin and development of Christianity, and with the scientific
endeavors of the middle ages. Inasmuch as it shares the intellectual
aspirations of the past and the present, their conflicts and their
reverses, it is supplementary to general literature. Its peculiar
features, themselves falling under universal laws, are in turn helpful
in the interpretation of general characteristics. If the aggregate
results of mankind's intellectual activity can be likened unto a sea,
Jewish literature is one of the tributaries that feed it. Like other
literatures and like literature in general, it reveals to the student
what noble ideals the soul of man has cherished, and striven to realize,
and discloses the varied achievements of man's intellectual powers. If
we of to-day are the witnesses and the offspring of an eternal, creative
principle, then, in turn, the present is but the beginning of a future,
that is, the translation of knowledge into life.
Spiritual ideals
consciously held by any portion of mankind lend freedom to thought,
grace to feeling, and by sailing up this one stream we may reach the
fountain-head whence have emanated all spiritual forces, and about
which, as a fixed pole, all spiritual currents eddy."[1]
The cornerstone of this Jewish literature is the Bible, or what we call
Old Testament literature--the oldest and at the same time the most
important of Jewish writings. It extends over the period ending with the
second century before the common era; is written, for the most part, in
Hebrew, and is the clearest and the most faithful reflection of the
original characteristics of the Jewish people. This biblical literature
has engaged the closest attention of all nations and every age. Until
the seventeenth century, biblical science was purely dogmatic, and only
since Herder pointed the way have its æsthetic elements been dwelt upon
along with, often in defiance of, dogmatic considerations. Up to this
time, Ernest Meier and Theodor Nöldeke have been the only ones to treat
of the Old Testament with reference to its place in the history of
literature.
Despite the dogmatic air clinging to the critical introductions to the
study of the Old Testament, their authors have not shrunk from treating
the book sacred to two religions with childish arbitrariness. Since the
days of Spinoza's essay at rationalistic explanation, Bible criticism
has been the wrestling-ground of the most extravagant exegesis, of bold
hypotheses, and hazardous conjectures. No Latin or Greek classic has
been so ruthlessly attacked and dissected; no mediæval poetry so
arbitrarily interpreted. As a natural consequence, the æsthetic
elements were more and more pushed into the background.
Only recently
have we begun to ridicule this craze for hypotheses, and returned to
more sober methods of inquiry. Bible criticism reached the climax of
absurdity, and the scorn was just which greeted one of the most
important works of the critical school, Hitzig's
"Explanation of the
Psalms." A reviewer said: "We may entertain the fond hope that, in a
second edition of this clever writer's commentary, he will be in the
enviable position to tell us the day and the hour when each psalm was
composed."
The reaction began a few years ago with the recognition of the
inadequacy of Astruc's document hypothesis, until then the creed of all
Bible critics. Astruc, a celebrated French physician, in 1753 advanced
the theory that the Pentateuch--the five books of Moses-
-consists of two
parallel documents, called respectively Yahvistic and Elohistic, from
the name applied to God in each. On this basis, German science after him
raised a superstructure. No date was deemed too late to be assigned to
the composition of the Pentateuch. If the historian Flavius Josephus had
not existed, and if Jesus had not spoken of "the Law"
and "the
prophets," and of the things "which were written in the Law of Moses,
and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms," critics would have been
disposed to transfer the redaction of the Bible to some period of the
Christian era. So wide is the divergence of opinions on the subject
that two learned critics, Ewald and Hitzig, differ in the date assigned
to a certain biblical passage by no less than a thousand years!
Bible archæology, Bible exegesis, and discussions of grammatical
niceties, were confounded with the history of biblical literature, and
naturally it was the latter that suffered by the lack of differentiation. Orthodoxy assumed a purely divine origin for the Bible,
while sceptics treated the holy book with greater levity than they would
dare display in criticising a modern novel. The one party raised a hue
and cry when Moses was spoken of as the first author; the other
discovered "obscene, rude, even cannibalistic traits"[2]
in the sublime
narratives of the Bible. It should be the task of coming generations,
successors by one remove of credulous Bible lovers, and immediate heirs
of thorough-going rationalists, to reconcile and fuse in a higher
conception of the Bible the two divergent theories of its purely divine
and its purely human origin. Unfortunately, it must be admitted that
Ernest Meier is right, when he says, in his "History of the National
Poetry of the Hebrews," that this task wholly belongs to the future; at
present it is an unsolved problem.
The æsthetic is the only proper point of view for a full recognition of
the value of biblical literature. It certainly does not rob the sacred
Scriptures, the perennial source of spiritual comfort, of their exalted
character and divine worth to assume that legend, myth, and history
have combined to produce the perfect harmony which is their imperishable
distinction. The peasant dwelling on inaccessible mountain-heights, next
to the record of Abraham's shepherd life, inscribes the main events of
his own career, the anniversary dates sacred to his family. The young
count among their first impressions that of "the brown folio," and more
vividly than all else remember
"The maidens fair and true,
The sages and the heroes bold,
Whose tale by seers inspired
In our Book of books is told.
The simple life and faith
Of patriarchs of ancient day
Like angels hover near,
And guard, and lead them on the way."[3]
Above all, a whole nation has for centuries been living with, and only
by virtue of, this book. Surely this is abundant testimony to the
undying value of the great work, in which the simplest shepherd tales
and the naïvest legends, profound moral saws and magnificent images, the
ideals of a Messianic future and the purest, the most humane conception
of life, alternate with sublime descriptions of nature and the sweet
strains of love-poems, with national songs breathing hope, or trembling
with anguish, and with the dull tones of despairing pessimism and the
divinely inspired hymns of an exalted theodicy--all blending to form
what the reverential love of men has named the Book of books.
It was natural that a book of this kind should become the basis of a
great literature. Whatever was produced in later times had to submit to
be judged by its exalted standard. It became the rule of conduct, the
prophetic mirror reflecting the future work of a nation whose fate was
inextricably bound up with its own. It is not known how and when the
biblical scriptures were welded into one book, a holy canon, but it is
probably correct to assume that it was done by the _Soferim_, the
Scribes, between 200 and 150 B.C.E. At all events, it is certain that
the three divisions of the Bible--the Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the
miscellaneous writings--were contained in the Greek version, the
Septuagint, so called from the seventy or seventy-two Alexandrians
supposed to have done the work of translation under Ptolemy
Philadelphus.
The Greek translation of the Bible marks the beginning of the second
period of Jewish literature, the Judæo-Hellenic. Hebrew ceased to be the
language of the people; it was thenceforth used only by scholars and in
divine worship. Jewish for the first time met Greek intellect. Shem and
Japheth embraced fraternally. "But even while the teachings of Hellas
were pushing their way into subjugated Palestine, seducing Jewish
philosophy to apostasy, and seeking, by main force, to introduce
paganism, the Greek philosophers themselves stood awed by the majesty
and power of the Jewish prophets. Swords and words entered the lists as
champions of Judaism. The vernacular Aramæan, having suffered the Greek
to put its impress upon many of its substantives, refused to yield to
the influence of the Greek verb, and, in the end, Hebrew truth, in the
guise of the teachings of Jesus, undermined the proud structure of the
heathen." This is a most excellent characterization of that literary
period, which lasted about three centuries, ending between 100 and 150
C. E. Its influence upon Jewish literature can scarcely be said to have
been enduring. To it belong all the apocryphal writings which,
originally composed in the Greek language, were for that reason not
incorporated into the Holy Canon. The centre of intellectual life was no
longer in Palestine, but at Alexandria in Egypt, where three hundred
thousand Jews were then living, and thus this literature came to be
called Judæo-Alexandrian. It includes among its writers the last of the
Neoplatonists, particularly Philo, the originator of the allegorical
interpretation of the Bible and of a Jewish philosophy of religion;
Aristeas, and pseudo-Phokylides. There were also Jewish _littérateurs_:
the dramatist Ezekielos; Jason; Philo the Elder; Aristobulus, the
popularizer of the Aristotelian philosophy; Eupolemos, the historian;
and probably the Jewish Sybil, who had to have recourse to the oracular
manner of the pagans to proclaim the truths of Judaism, and to Greek
figures of speech for her apocalyptic visions, which foretold, in
biblical phrase and with prophetic ardor, the future of Israel and of
the nations in contact with it.
Meanwhile the word of the Bible was steadily gaining importance in
Palestine. To search into and expound the sacred text had become the
inheritance of the congregation of Jacob, of those that had not lent ear
to the siren notes of Hellenism. Midrash, as the investigations of the
commentators were called, by and by divided into two streams--Halacha,
which establishes and systematizes the statutes of the Law, and Haggada,
which uses the sacred texts for homiletic, historical, ethical, and
pedagogic discussions. The latter is the poetic, the former, the
legislative, element in the Talmudic writings, whose composition,
extending over a thousand years, constitutes the third, the most
momentous, period of Jewish literature. Of course, none of these periods
can be so sharply defined as a rapid survey might lead one to suppose.
For instance, on the threshold of this third epoch stands the figure of
Flavius Josephus, the famous Jewish historian, who, at once an
enthusiastic Jew and a friend of the Romans, writes the story of his
nation in the Greek language--a character as peculiar as his age, which,
listening to the mocking laughter of a Lucian, saw Olympus overthrown
and its gods dethroned, the Temple at Jerusalem pass away in flame and
smoke, and the new doctrine of the son of the carpenter at Nazareth
begin its victorious course.
By the side of this Janus-faced historian, the heroes of the Talmud
stand enveloped in glory. We meet with men like Hillel and Shammaï,
Jochanan ben Zakkaï, Gamaliel, Joshua ben Chananya, the famous Akiba,
and later on Yehuda the Prince, friend of the imperial philosopher
Marcus Aurelius, and compiler of the Mishna, the authoritative code of
laws superseding all other collections. Then there are the fabulist
Meïr; Simon ben Yochaï, falsely accused of the authorship of the
mystical Kabbala; Chiya; Rab; Samuel, equally famous as a physician and
a rabbi; Jochanan, the supposed compiler of the Jerusalem Talmud; and
Ashi and Abina, the former probably the arranger of the Babylonian
Talmud. This latter Talmud, the one invested with authority among Jews,
by reason of its varying fortunes, is the most marvellous literary
monument extant. Never has book been so hated and so persecuted, so
misjudged and so despised, on the other hand, so prized and so honored,
and, above all, so imperfectly understood, as this very Talmud.
For the Jews and their literature it has had untold significance. That
the Talmud has been the conservator of Judaism is an irrefutable
statement. It is true that the study of the Talmud unduly absorbed the
great intellectual force of its adherents, and brought about a somewhat
one-sided mental development in the Jews; but it also is true, as a
writer says,[4] that "whenever in troublous times scientific inquiry was
laid low; whenever, for any reason, the Jew was excluded from
participation in public life, the study of the Talmud maintained the
elasticity and the vigor of the Jewish mind, and rescued the Jew from
sterile mysticism and spiritual apathy. The Talmud, as a rule, has been
inimical to mysticism, and the most brilliant Talmudists, in propitious
days, have achieved distinguished success in secular science. The Jew
survived ages of bitterness, all the while clinging loyally to his faith
in the midst of hostility, and the first ray of light that penetrated
the walls of the Ghetto found him ready to take part in the intellectual
work of his time. This admirable elasticity of mind he owes, first and
foremost, to the study of the Talmud."
From this much abused Talmud, as from its contemporary the Midrash in
the restricted sense, sprouted forth the blossoms of the Haggada--that
Haggada
"Where the beauteous, ancient sagas, Angel legends fraught with meaning,
Martyrs' silent sacrifices,
Festal songs and wisdom's sayings,
Trope and allegoric fancies--
All, howe'er by faith's triumphant
Glow pervaded--where they gleaming,
Glist'ning, well in strength exhaustless.
And the boyish heart responsive
Drinks the wild, fantastic sweetness, Greets the woful, wondrous anguish,
Yields to grewsome charm of myst'ry, Hid in blessed worlds of fable.
Overawed it hearkens solemn
To that sacred revelation
Mortal man hath poetry called."[5]
A story from the Midrash charmingly characterizes the relation between
Halacha and Haggada. Two rabbis, Chiya bar Abba, a Halachist, and
Abbahu, a Haggadist, happened to be lecturing in the same town. Abbahu,
the Haggadist, was always listened to by great crowds, while Chiya, with
his Halacha, stood practically deserted. The Haggadist comforted the
disappointed teacher with a parable. "Let us suppose two merchants," he
said, "to come to town, and offer wares for sale. The one has pearls and
precious gems to display, the other, cheap finery, gilt chains, rings,
and gaudy ribbons. About whose booth, think you, does the crowd
press?--Formerly, when the struggle for existence was not fierce and
inevitable, men had leisure and desire for the profound teachings of the
Law; now they need the cheering words of consolation and hope."
For more than a thousand years this nameless spirit of national poesy
was abroad, and produced manifold works, which, in the course of time,
were gathered together into comprehensive collections, variously named
Midrash Rabba, Pesikta, Tanchuma, etc. Their compilation was begun in
about 700 C. E., that is, soon after the close of the Talmud, in the
transition period from the third epoch of Jewish literature to the
fourth, the golden age, which lasted from the ninth to the fifteenth
century, and, according to the law of human products, shows a season of
growth, blossom, and decay.
The scene of action during this period was western Asia, northern
Africa, sometimes Italy and France, but chiefly Spain, where Arabic
culture, destined to influence Jewish thought to an incalculable degree,
was at that time at its zenith. "A second time the Jews were drawn into
the vortex of a foreign civilization, and two hundred years after
Mohammed, Jews in Kairwan and Bagdad were speaking the same language,
Arabic. A language once again became the mediatrix between Jewish and
general literature, and the best minds of the two races, by means of the
language, reciprocally influenced each other. Jews, as they once had
written Greek for their brethren, now wrote Arabic; and, as in
Hellenistic times, the civilization of the dominant race, both in its
original features and in its adaptations from foreign sources, was
reflected in that of the Jews." It would be interesting to analyze this
important process of assimilation, but we can concern ourselves only
with the works of the Jewish intellect. Again we meet, at the threshold
of the period, a ch