to-morrow in Rome, next year in Prague or Cracow, and so Jewish
literature is the "wandering Jew" among the world's literatures.
The fourth period, the Augustan age of our literature, closes with a
jarring discord--the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, their second
home, in which they had seen ministers, princes, professors, and poets
rise from their ranks. The scene of literary activity changes: France,
Italy, but chiefly the Slavonic East, are pushed into the foreground. It
is not a salutary change; it ushers in three centuries of decay and
stagnation in literary endeavor. The sum of the efforts is indicated by
the name of the period, the Rabbinical, for its chief work was the
development and fixation of Rabbinism.
Decadence did not set in immediately. Certain beneficent forces, either
continuing in action from the former period, or arising out of the new
concatenation of circumstances, were in operation: Jewish exiles from
Spain carried their culture to the asylums hospitably offered them in
the Orient and a few of the European countries, notably Holland; the art
of printing was spreading, the first presses in Italy bringing out
Jewish works; and the sun of humanism and of the Reformation was rising
and shedding solitary rays of its effulgence on the Jewish minds then at
work.
Among the noteworthy authors standing between the two periods and
belonging to both, the most prominent is Nachmanides, a pious and
learned Bible scholar. With logical force and critical candor he entered
into the great conflict between science and faith, then dividing the
Jewish world into two camps, with Maimonides' works as their shibboleth.
The Aristotelian philosophy was no longer satisfying.
Minds and hearts
were yearning for a new revelation, and in default thereof steeping
themselves in mystical speculations. A voluminous theosophic literature
sprang up. The _Zohar_, the Bible of mysticism, was circulated, its
authorship being fastened upon a rabbi of olden days. It is altogether
probable that the real author was living at the time; many think that it
was Moses de Leon. The liberal party counted in its ranks the two
distinguished families of Tibbon and Kimchi, the former famed as
successful translators, the latter as grammarians. Their best known
representatives were Judah ibn Tibbon and David Kimchi.
Curiously
enough, the will of the former contains, in unmistakable terms, the
opinion that "Property is theft," anticipating Proudhon, who, had he
known it, would have seen in its early enunciation additional testimony
to its truth. The liberal faction was also supported by Jacob ben
Abba-Mari, the friend of Frederick II. and Michael Scotus. Abba-Mari
lived at the German emperor's court at Naples, and quoted him in his
commentary upon the Bible as an exegete. Besides there were among the
Maimunists, or rationalists, Levi ben Abraham, an extraordinarily
liberal man; Shemtob Palquera, one of the most learned Jews of his
century, and Yedaya Penini, a philosopher and pessimistic poet, whose
"Contemplation of the World" was translated by Mendelssohn, and praised
by Lessing and Goethe. Despite this array of talent, the opponents were
stronger, the most representative partisan being the Talmudist Solomon
ben Aderet.
At the same time disputations about the Talmud, ending with its public
burning at Paris, were carried on with the Christian clergy. The other
literary current of the age is designated by the word Kabbala, which
held many of the finest and noblest minds captive to its witchery. The
Kabbala is unquestionably a continuation of earlier theosophic
inquiries. Its chief doctrines have been stated by a thorough student of
our literature: All that exists originates in God, the source of light
eternal. He Himself can be known only through His manifestations. He is
without beginning, and veiled in mystery, or, He is nothing, because the
whole of creation has developed from nothing. This nothing is one,
indivisible, and limitless--_En-Sof_. God fills space, He is space
itself. In order to manifest Himself, in order to create, that is,
disclose Himself by means of emanations, He contracts, thus producing
vacant space. The _En-Sof_ first manifested itself in the prototype of
the whole of creation, in the macrocosm called the "son of God," the
first man, as he appears upon the chariot of Ezekiel.
From this
primitive man the whole created world emanates in four stages: _Azila_,
_Beria_, _Yezira_, _Asiya_. The _Azila_ emanation represents the active
qualities of primitive man. They are forces or intelligences flowing
from him, at once his essential qualities and the faculties by which he
acts. There are ten of these forces, forming the ten sacred _Sefiroth_,
a word which first meaning number came to stand for sphere. The first
three _Sefiroth_ are intelligences, the seven others, attributes. They
are supposed to follow each other in this order: 1.
_Kether_ (crown); 2.
_Chochma_ (wisdom); 3. _Beena_ (understanding); 4.
_Chesed_ (grace), or
_Ghedulla_ (greatness); 5. _Ghevoora_ (dignity); 6.
_Tifereth_
(splendor); 7. _Nezach_ (victory); 8. _Hod_ (majesty); 9. _Yesod_
(principle); 10. _Malchuth_ (kingdom). From this first world of the
_Azila_ emanate the three other worlds, _Asiya_ being the lowest stage.
Man has part in these three worlds; a microcosm, he realizes in his
actual being what is foreshadowed by the ideal, primitive man. He holds
to the _Asiya_ by his vital part (_Nefesh_), to the _Yezira_ by his
intellect (_Ruach_), to the _Beria_ by his soul (_Neshama_). The last is
his immortal part, a spark of divinity.
Speculations like these, followed to their logical issue, are bound to
lead the investigator out of Judaism into Trinitarianism or Pantheism.
Kabbalists, of course only in rare cases, realized the danger. The sad
conditions prevailing in the era after the expulsion from Spain, a third
exile, were in all respects calculated to promote the development of
mysticism, and it did flourish luxuriantly.
Some few philosophers, the last of a long line, still await mention:
Levi ben Gerson, Joseph Kaspi, Moses of Narbonne in southern France,
long a seat of Jewish learning; then, Isaac ben Sheshet, Chasdaï
Crescas, whose "Light of God" exercised deep influence upon Spinoza and
his philosophy; the Duran family, particularly Profiat Duran, successful
defender of Judaism against the attacks of apostates and Christians; and
Joseph Albo, who in his principal philosophic work, _Ikkarim_, shows
Judaism to be based upon three fundamental doctrines: the belief in the
existence of God, Revelation, and the belief in future reward and
punishment. These writers are the last to reflect the glories of the
golden age.
At the entrance to the next period we again meet a man of extraordinary
ability, Isaac Abrabanel, one of the most eminent and esteemed of Bible
commentators, in early life minister to a Catholic king, later on a
pilgrim scholar wandering about exiled with his sons, one of whom,
Yehuda, has fame as the author of the _Dialoghi di Amore_. In the train
of exiles passing from Portugal to the Orient are Abraham Zacuto, an
eminent historian of Jewish literature and sometime professor of
astronomy at the university of Salamanca; Joseph ibn Verga, the
historian of his nation; Amatus Lusitanus, who came close upon the
discovery of the circulation of the blood; Israel Nagara, the most
gifted poet of the century, whose hymns brought him popular favor;
later, Joseph Karo, "the most influential personage of the sixteenth
century," his claims upon recognition resting on the _Shulchan Aruch_,
an exhaustive codex of Jewish customs and laws; and many others. In
Salonica, the exiles soon formed a prosperous community, where
flourished Jacob ibn Chabib, the first compiler of the Haggadistic tales
of the Talmud, and afterwards David Conforte, a reputable historian. In
Jerusalem, Obadiah Bertinoro was engaged on his celebrated Mishna
commentary, in the midst of a large circle of Kabbalists, of whom
Solomon Alkabez is the best known on account of his famous Sabbath song,
_Lecho Dodi_. Once again Jerusalem was the objective point of many
pilgrims, lured thither by the prevalent Kabbalistic and Messianic
vagaries. True literature gained little from such extremists. The only
work produced by them that can be admitted to have literary qualities is
Isaiah Hurwitz's "The Two Tables of the Testimony," even at this day
enjoying celebrity. It is a sort of cyclopædia of Jewish learning,
compiled and expounded from a mystic's point of view.
The condition of the Jews in Italy was favorable, and their literary
products derive grace from their good fortune. The Renaissance had a
benign effect upon them, and the revival of classical studies influenced
their intellectual work. Greek thought met Jewish a third time. Learning
was enjoying its resurrection, and whenever their wretched political
and social condition was not a hindrance, the Jews joined in the
general delight. Their misery, however, was an undiminishing burden,
yea, even in the days in which, according to Erasmus, it was joy to
live. In fact, it was growing heavier. All the more noteworthy is it
that Hebrew studies engaged the research of scholars, albeit they showed
care for the word of God, and not for His people. Pico della Mirandola
studies the Kabbala; the Jewish grammarian Elias Levita is the teacher
of Cardinal Egidio de Viterbo, and later of Paul Fagius and Sebastian
Münster, the latter translating his teacher's works into Latin; popes
and sultans prefer Jews as their physicians in ordinary, who, as a rule,
are men of literary distinction; the Jews translate philosophic writings
from Hebrew and Arabic into Latin; Elias del Medigo is summoned as
arbiter in the scholastic conflict at the University of Padua;--all
boots nothing, ruin is not averted. Reuchlin may protest as he will, the
Jew is exiled, the Talmud burnt.
In such dreary days the Portuguese Samuel Usque writes his work,
_Consolaçam as Tribulações de Ysrael_, and Joseph Cohen, his chronicle,
"The Vale of Weeping," the most important history produced since the day
of Flavius Josephus,--additional proofs that the race possesses native
buoyancy, and undaunted heroism in enduring suffering.
Women, too, in
increasing number, participate in the spiritual work of their nation;
among them, Deborah Ascarelli and Sara Copia Sullam, the most
distinguished of a long array of names.
The keen critic and scholar, Azariah de Rossi, is one of the literary
giants of his period. His researches in the history of Jewish literature
are the basis upon which subsequent work in this department rests, and
many of his conclusions still stand unassailable. About him are grouped
Abraham de Portaleone, an excellent archæologist, who established that
Jews had been the first to observe the medicinal uses of gold; David de
Pomis, the author of a famous defense of Jewish physicians; and Leo de
Modena, the rabbi of Venice, "unstable as water,"
wavering between faith
and unbelief, and, Kabbalist and rabbi though he was, writing works
against the Kabbala on the one hand, and against rabbinical tradition on
the other. Similar to him in character is Joseph del Medigo, an
itinerant author, who sometimes reviles, sometimes extols, the Kabbala.
There are men of higher calibre, as, for instance, Isaac Aboab, whose
_Nomologia_ undertakes to defend Jewish tradition against every sort of
assailant; Samuel Aboab, a great Bible scholar; Azariah Figo, a famous
preacher; and, above all, Moses Chayyim Luzzatto, the first Jewish
dramatist, the dramas preceding his having interest only as attempts.
He, too, is caught in the meshes of the Kabbala, and falls a victim to
its powers of darkness. His dramas testify to poetic gifts and to
extraordinary mastery of the Hebrew language, the faithful companion of
the Jewish nation in all its journeyings. To complete this sketch of the
Italian Jews of that period, it should be added that while in intellect
and attainments they stand above their brethren in faith of other
countries, in character and purity of morals they are their inferiors.
Thereafter literary interest centres in Poland, where rabbinical
literature found its most zealous and most learned exponents. Throughout
the land schools were established, in which the Talmud was taught by the
_Pilpul_, an ingenious, quibbling method of Talmudic reasoning and
discussion, said to have originated with Jacob Pollak.
Again we have a
long succession of distinguished names. There are Solomon Luria, Moses
Isserles, Joel Sirkes, David ben Levi, Sabbataï Kohen, and Elias Wilna.
Sabbataï Kohen, from whom, were pride of ancestry permissible in the
republic of letters, the present writer would boast descent, was not
only a Talmudic writer; he also left historical and poetical works.
Elias Wilna, the last in the list, had a subtle, delicately poised mind,
and deserves special mention for his determined opposition to the
Kabbala and its offspring Chassidism, hostile and ruinous to Judaism and
Jewish learning.
A gleam of true pleasure can be obtained from the history of the Dutch
Jews. In Holland the Jews united secular culture with religious
devotion, and the professors of other faiths met them with tolerance and
friendliness. Sunshine falls upon the Jewish schools, and right into the
heart of a youth, who straightway abandons the Talmud folios, and goes
out into the world to proclaim to wondering mankind the evangel of a
new philosophy. The youth is Baruch Spinoza!
There are many left to expound Judaism: Manasseh ben Israel, writing
both Hebrew and Latin books to plead the cause of the emancipation of
his people and of its literary pre-eminence; David Neto, a student of
philosophy; Benjamin Mussafia, Orobio de Castro, David Abenator Melo,
the Spanish translator of the Psalms, and Daniel de Barrios, poet and
critic--all using their rapidly acquired fluency in the Dutch language
to champion the cause of their people.
In Germany, a mixture of German and Hebrew had come into use among the
Jews as the medium of daily intercourse. In this peculiar patois, called
_Judendeutsch_, a large literature had developed. Before Luther's time,
it possessed two fine translations of the Bible, besides numerous
writings of an ethical, poetical, and historical character, among which
particular mention should be made of those on the German legend-cycles
of the middle ages. At the same time, the Talmud receives its due of
time, effort, and talent. New life comes only with the era of
emancipation and enlightenment.
Only a few names shall be mentioned, the rest would be bound soon to
escape the memory of the casual reader: there is an historian, David
Gans; a bibliographer, Sabbataï Bassista, and the Talmudists Abigedor
Kara, Jacob Joshua, Jacob Emden, Jonathan Eibeschütz, and Ezekiel
Landau. It is delight to be able once again to chronicle the interest
taken in long neglected Jewish literature by such Christian scholars as
the two Buxtorfs, Bartolocci, Wolff, Surrenhuys, and De Rossi.
Unfortunately, the interest dies out with them, and it is significant
that to this day most eminent theologians, decidedly to their own
disadvantage, "content themselves with unreliable secondary sources,"
instead of drinking from the fountain itself.
We have arrived at the sixth and last period, our own, not yet
completed, whose fruits will be judged by a future generation. It is the
period of the rejuvenescence of Jewish literature.
Changes in character,
tenor, form, and language take place. Germany for the first time is in
the van, and Mendelssohn, its most attractive figure, stands at the
beginning of the period, surrounded by his disciples Wessely, Homberg,
Euchel, Friedländer, and others, in conjunction with whom he gives Jews
a new, pure German Bible translation. Poetry and philology are zealously
pursued, and soon Jewish science, through its votaries Leopold Zunz and
S. J. Rappaport, celebrates a brilliant renascence, such as the poet
describes: "In the distant East the dawn is breaking,--
The olden times
are growing young again."
_Die Gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden_, by Zunz, published in 1832,
was the pioneer work of the new Jewish science, whose present
development, despite its wide range, has not yet exhausted the
suggestions made, by the author. Other equally important works from the
same pen followed, and then came the researches of Rappaport, Z.
Frankel, I. M. Jost, M. Sachs, S. D. Luzzatto, S. Munk, A. Geiger, L.
Herzfeld, H. Graetz, J. Fürst, L. Dukes, M.
Steinschneider, D. Cassel,
S. Holdheim, and a host of minor investigators and teachers. Their
loving devotion roused Jewish science and literature from their secular
sleep to vigorous, intellectual life, reacting beneficently on the
spiritual development of Judaism itself. The moulders of the new
literature are such men as the celebrated preachers Adolf Jellinek,
Salomon, Kley, Mannheimer; the able thinkers Steinheim, Hirsch,
Krochmal; the illustrious scholars M. Lazarus, H.
Steinthal; and the
versatile journalists G. Riesser and L. Philipson.
Poetry has not been neglected in the general revival.
The first Jewish
poet to write in German was M. E. Kuh, whose tragic fate has been
pathetically told by Berthold Auerbach in his _Dichter und Kaufmann_.
The burden of this modern Jewish poetry is, of course, the glorification
of the loyalty and fortitude that preserved the race during a calamitous
past. Such poets as Steinheim, Wihl, L. A. Frankl, M.
Beer, K. Beck, Th.
Creizenach, M. Hartmann, S. H. Mosenthal, Henriette Ottenheimer, Moritz
Rappaport, and L. Stein, sing the songs of Zion in the tongue of the
German. And can Heine be forgotten, he who in his _Romanzero_ has so
melodiously, yet so touchingly given word to the hoary sorrow of the
Jew?
In an essay of this scope no more can be done than give the barest
outline of the modern movement. A detailed description of the work of
German-Jewish lyrists belongs to the history of German literature, and,
in fact, on its pages can be found a due appreciation of their worth by
unprejudiced critics, who give particularly high praise to the new
species of tales, the Jewish village, or Ghetto, tales, with which
Jewish and German literatures have latterly been enriched. Their object
is to depict the religious customs in vogue among Jews of past
generations, their home-life, and the conflicts that arose when the old
Judaism came into contact with modern views of life. The master in the
art of telling these Ghetto tales is Leopold Kompert. Of his
disciples--for all coming after him may be considered such--A. Bernstein
described the Jews of Posen; K. E. Franzos and L.
Herzberg-Fränkel,
those of Poland; E. Kulke, the Moravian Jews; M.
Goldschmied, the Dutch;
S. H. Mosenthal, the Hessian, and M. Lehmann, the South German. To
Berthold Auerbach's pioneer work this whole class of literature owes its
existence; and Heinrich Heine's fragment, _Rabbi von Bacharach_, a model
of its kind, puts him into this category of writers, too.
And so Judaism and Jewish literature are stepping into a new arena, on
which potent forces that may radically affect both are struggling with
each other. Is Jewish poetry on the point of dying out, or is it
destined to enjoy a resurrection? Who would be rash enough to prophesy
aught of a race whose entire past is a riddle, whose literature is a
question-mark? Of a race which for more than a thousand years has, like
its progenitor, been wrestling victoriously with gods and men?
To recapitulate: We have followed out the course of a literary
development, beginning in grey antiquity with biblical narratives,
assimilating Persian doctrines, Greek wisdom, and Roman law; later,
Arabic poetry and philosophy, and, finally, the whole of European
science in all its ramifications. The literature we have described has
contributed its share to every spiritual result achieved by humanity,
and is a still unexplored treasury of poetry and philosophy, of
experience and knowledge.
"All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is never full," saith the
Preacher; so all spiritual currents flow together into the vast ocean of
a world-literature, never full, never complete, rejoicing in every
accession, reaching the climax of its might and majesty on that day
when, according to the prophet, "the earth shall be full of the
knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."
THE TALMUD
In the whole range of the world's literatures there are few books with
so checkered a career, so curious a fate, as the Talmud has had. The
name is simple enough, it glides glibly from the tongue, yet how
difficult to explain its import to the uninitiated! From the Dominican
Henricus Seynensis, who took "Talmud" to be the name of a rabbi--he
introduces a quotation with _Ut narrat rabbinus Talmud_,
"As Rabbi
Talmud relates"--down to the church historians and university professors
of our day, the oddest misconceptions on the nature of the Talmud have
prevailed even among learned men. It is not astonishing, then, that the
general reader has no notion of what it is.
Only within recent years the Talmud has been made the subject of
scientific study, and now it is consulted by philologists, cited by
jurists, drawn upon by historians, the general public is beginning to be
interested in it, and of late the old Talmud has repeatedly been
summoned to appear in courts of law to give evidence.
Under these
circumstances it is natural to ask, What is the Talmud?
Futile to seek
an answer by comparing this gigantic monument of the human intellect
with any other book; it is _sui generis_. In the form in which it issued
from the Jewish academies of Babylonia and Palestine, it is a great
national work, a scientific document of first importance, the archives
of ten centuries, in which are preserved the thoughts and opinions, the
views and verdicts, the errors, transgressions, hopes, disappointments,
customs, ideals, convictions, and sorrows of Israel--a work produced by
the zeal and patience of thirty generations, laboring with a self-denial
unparalleled in the history of literature. A work of this character
assuredly deserves to be known. Unfortunately, the path to its
understanding is blocked by peculiar linguistic and historical
difficulties. Above all, explanations by comparison must be avoided. It
has been likened to a legal code, to a journal, to the transactions of
learned bodies; but these comparisons are both inadequate and
misleading. To make it approximately clear a lengthy explanation must be
entered upon, for, in truth, the Talmud, like the Bible, is a world in
miniature, embracing every possible phase of life.
The origin of the Talmud was simultaneous with Israel's return from the
Babylonian exile,