Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project.)

JEWISH LITERATURE

AND OTHER ESSAYS

JEWISH LITERATURE

AND

OTHER ESSAYS

BY

GUSTAV KARPELES

PHILADELPHIA THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA 1895

Copyright 1895, by
THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA

Press of
The Friedenwald Co.
Baltimore

PREFACE

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 characteristic figure, the thinker Sa'adia, ranking
high as author and religious philosopher, known also as a grammarian and
a poet. He is followed by Sherira, to whom we owe the beginnings of a
history of Talmudic literature, and his son Haï Gaon, a strictly
orthodox teacher of the Law. In their wake come troops of physicians,
theologians, lexicographers, Talmudists, and grammarians. Great is the
circle of our national literature: it embraces theology, philosophy,
exegesis, grammar, poetry, and jurisprudence, yea, even astronomy and
chronology, mathematics and medicine. But these widely varying subjects
constitute only one class, inasmuch as they all are infused with the
spirit of Judaism, and subordinate themselves to its demands. A mention
of the prominent actors would turn this whole essay into a dry list of
names. Therefore it is better for us merely to sketch the period in
outline, dwelling only on its greatest poets and philosophers, the
moulders of its character.

The opinion is current that the Semitic race lacks the philosophic
faculty. Yet it cannot be denied that Jews were the first to carry Greek
philosophy to Europe, teaching and developing it there before its
dissemination by celebrated Arabs. In their zeal to harmonize philosophy
with their religion, and in the lesser endeavor to defend traditional
Judaism against the polemic attacks of a new sect, the Karaites, they
invested the Aristotelian system with peculiar features, making it, as
it were, their national philosophy. At all events, it must be
universally accepted that the Jews share with the Arabs the merit "of
having cherished the study of philosophy during centuries of barbarism,
and of having for a long time exerted a civilizing influence upon
Europe."

The meagre achievements of the Jews in the departments of history and
history of literature do not justify the conclusion that they are
wanting in historic perception. The lack of writings on these subjects
is traceable to the sufferings and persecutions that have marked their
pathway. Before their chroniclers had time to record past afflictions,
new sorrows and troubles broke in upon them. In the middle ages, the
history of Jewish literature is the entire history of the Jewish people,
its course outlined by blood and watered by rivers of tears, at whose
source the genius of Jewish poetry sits lamenting. "The Orient dwells an
exile in the Occident," Franz Delitzsch, the first alien to give loving
study to this literature, poetically says, "and its tears of longing for
home are the fountain-head of Jewish poetry."[6]

That poetry reached its perfection in the works of the celebrated trio,
Solomon Gabirol, Yehuda Halevi, and Moses ben Ezra. Their dazzling
triumphs had been heralded by the more modest achievements of Abitur,
writing Hebrew, and Adia and the poetess Xemona (Kasmune) using Arabic,
to sing the praise of God and lament the woes of Israel.

The predominant, but not exclusive, characteristic of Jewish poetry is
its religious strain. Great thinkers, men equipped with philosophic
training, and at the same time endowed with poetic gifts, have
contributed to the huge volume of synagogue poetry, whose subjects are
praise of the Lord and regret for Zion. The sorrow for our lost
fatherland has never taken on more glowing colors, never been expressed
in fuller tones than in this poetry. As ancient Hebrew poetry flowed in
the two streams of prophecy and psalmody, so the Jewish poetry of the
middle ages was divided into _Piut_ and _Selicha_. Songs of hope and
despair, cries of revenge, exhortations to peace among men, elegies on
every single persecution, and laments for Zion, follow each other in
kaleidoscopic succession. Unfortunately, there never was lack of
historic matter for this poetry to elaborate. To furnish that was the
well-accomplished task of rulers and priests in the middle ages, alike
"in the realm of the Islamic king of kings and in that of the apostolic
servant of servants." So fate made this poetry classical and eminently
national. Those characteristics which, in general literature, earn for a
work the description "Homeric," in Jewish literature make a liturgical
poem "Kaliric," so called from the poet Eliezer Kalir, the subject of
many mythical tales, and the first of a long line of poets, Spanish,
French, and German, extending to the sixteenth or seventeenth century.
The literary history of this epoch has been written by Leopold Zunz with
warmth of feeling and stupendous learning. He closes his work with the
hope that mankind, at some future day, will adopt Israel's religious
poetry as its own, transforming the elegiac _Selicha_ into a joyous
psalm of universal peace and good-will.

Side by side with religious flourishes secular poetry, clothing itself
in rhyme and metre, adopting every current form of poesy, and treating
of every appropriate subject. Its first votary was Solomon Gabirol, that

    "Human nightingale that warbled
    Forth her songs of tender love,
    In the darkness of the sombre,
    Gothic mediæval night.

    She, that nightingale, sang only,
    Sobbing forth her adoration,
    To her Lord, her God, in heaven,
    Whom her songs of praise extolled."[7]

Solomon Gabirol may be said to have been the first poet thrilled by
_Weltschmerz_. "He produced hymns and songs, penitential prayers,
psalms, and threnodies, filled with hope and longing for a blessed
future. They are marked throughout by austere earnestness, brushing
away, in its rigor, the color and bloom of life; but side by side with
it, surging forth from the deepest recesses of a human soul, is humble
adoration of God."

Gabirol was a distinguished philosopher besides. In 1150, his chief
work, "The Fount of Life," was translated into Latin by Archdeacon
Dominicus Gundisalvi, with the help of Johannes Avendeath, an apostate
Jew, the author's name being corrupted into Avencebrol, later becoming
Avicebron. The work was made a text-book of scholastic philosophy, but
neither Scotists nor Thomists, neither adherents nor detractors,
suspected that a heretical Jew was slumbering under the name Avicebron.
It remained for an inquirer of our own day, Solomon Munk, to reveal the
face of Gabirol under the mask of a garbled name. Amazed, we behold that
the pessimistic philosopher of to-day can as little as the schoolmen of
the middle ages shake himself free from the despised Jew. Schopenhauer
may object as he will, it is certain that Gabirol was his predecessor by
more than eight hundred years!

Charisi, whom we shall presently meet, has expressed the verdict on his
poetry which still holds good: "Solomon Gabirol pleases to call himself
the small--yet before him all the great must dwindle and fall.--Who can
like him with mighty speech appall?--Compared with him the poets of his
time are without power--he, the small, alone is a tower.--The highest
round of poetry's ladder has he won.--Wisdom fondled him, eloquence hath
called him son--and clothing him with purple, said: 'Lo!--my first-born
son, go forth, to conquest go!'--His predecessors' songs are naught with
his compared--nor have his many followers better fared.--The later
singers by him were taught--the heirs they are of his poetic
thought.--But still he's king, to him all praise belongs--for Solomon's
is the Song of Songs."

By Gabirol's side stands Yehuda Halevi, probably the only Jewish poet
known to the reader of general literature, to whom his name, life, and
fate have become familiar through Heinrich Heine's _Romanzero_. His
magnificent descriptions of nature "reflect southern skies, verdant
meadows, deep blue rivers, and the stormy sea," and his erotic lyrics
are chaste and tender. He sounds the praise of wine, youth, and
happiness, and extols the charms of his lady-love, but above and beyond
all he devotes his song to Zion and his people. The pearl of his poems

    "Is the famous lamentation
    Sung in all the tents of Jacob,
    Scattered wide upon the earth ...

    Yea, it is the song of Zion,
    Which Yehuda ben Halevy,
    Dying on the holy ruins,
    Sang of loved Jerusalem."[8]

"In the whole compass of religious poetry, Milton's and Klopstock's not
excepted, nothing can be found to surpass the elegy of Zion," says a
modern writer, a non-Jew.[9] This soul-stirring "Lay of Zion," better
than any number of critical dissertations, will give the reader a clear
insight into the character and spirit of Jewish poetry in general:

    O Zion! of thine exiles' peace take thought,
    The remnant of thy flock, who thine have sought!
    From west, from east, from north and south resounds,
    Afar and now anear, from all thy bounds,
              And no surcease,
              "With thee be peace!"

    In longing's fetters chained I greet thee, too,
    My tears fast welling forth like Hermon's dew--
    O bliss could they but drop on holy hills!
    A croaking bird I turn, when through me thrills
    Thy desolate state; but when I dream anon,
    The Lord brings back thy ev'ry captive son--
              A harp straightway
              To sing thy lay.

    In heart I dwell where once thy purest son
    At Bethel and Peniel, triumphs won;
    God's awesome presence there was close to thee,
    Whose doors thy Maker, by divine decree,
          Opposed as mates
          To heaven's gates.

    Nor sun, nor moon, nor stars had need to be;
    God's countenance alone illumined thee
    On whose elect He poured his spirit out.
    In thee would I my soul pour forth devout!
    Thou wert the kingdom's seat, of God the throne,
    And now there dwells a slave race, not thine own,
          In royal state,
          Where reigned thy great.

    O would that I could roam o'er ev'ry place
    Where God to missioned prophets showed His grace!
    And who will give me wings? An off'ring meet,
    I'd haste to lay upon thy shattered seat,
          Thy counterpart--
          My bruisèd heart.

    Upon thy precious ground I'd fall prostrate,
    Thy stones caress, the dust within thy gate,
    And happiness it were in awe to stand
    At Hebron's graves, the treasures of thy land,
    And greet thy woods, thy vine-clad slopes, thy vales,
    Greet Abarim and Hor, whose light ne'er pales,
          A radiant crown,
          Thy priests' renown.

    Thy air is balm for souls; like myrrh thy sand;
    With honey run the rivers of thy land.
    Though bare my feet, my heart's delight I'd count
    To thread my way all o'er thy desert mount,
          Where once rose tall
          Thy holy hall,

    Where stood thy treasure-ark, in recess dim,
    Close-curtained, guarded o'er by cherubim.
    My Naz'rite's crown would I pluck off, and cast
    It gladly forth. With curses would I blast
    The impious time thy people, diadem-crowned,
    Thy Nazirites, did pass, by en'mies bound
          With hatred's bands,
          In unclean lands.

    By dogs thy lusty lions are brutal torn
    And dragged; thy strong, young eaglets, heav'nward
    borne,
    By foul-mouthed ravens snatched, and all undone.
    Can food still tempt my taste? Can light of sun
          Seem fair to shine
          To eyes like mine?

    Soft, soft! Leave off a while, O cup of pain!
    My loins are weighted down, my heart and brain,
    With bitterness from thee. Whene'er I think
    Of Oholah,[10] proud northern queen, I drink
    Thy wrath, and when my Oholivah forlorn
    Comes back to mind--'tis then I quaff thy scorn,
          Then, draught of pain,
          Thy lees I drain.

    O Zion! Crown of grace! Thy comeliness
    Hath ever favor won and fond caress.
    Thy faithful lovers' lives are bound in thine;
    They joy in thy security, but pine
          And weep in gloom
          O'er thy sad doom.

    From out the prisoner's cell they sigh for thee,
    And each in prayer, wherever he may be,
    Towards thy demolished portals turns. Exiled,
    Dispersed from mount to hill, thy flock defiled
    Hath not forgot thy sheltering fold. They grasp
    Thy garment's hem, and trustful, eager, clasp,
              With outstretched arms,
              Thy branching palms.

    Shinar, Pathros--can they in majesty
    With thee compare? Or their idolatry
    With thy Urim and thy Thummim august?
    Who can surpass thy priests, thy saintly just,
              Thy prophets bold,
              And bards of old?

    The heathen kingdoms change and wholly cease--
    Thy might alone stands firm without decrease,
    Thy Nazirites from age to age abide,
    Thy God in thee desireth to reside.
    Then happy he who maketh choice of thee
    To dwell within thy courts, and waits to see,
              And toils to make,
              Thy light awake.

    On him shall as the morning break thy light,
    The bliss of thy elect shall glad his sight,
    In thy felicities shall he rejoice,
    In triumph sweet exult, with jubilant voice,
              O'er thee, adored,
              To youth restored.

We have loitered long with Yehuda Halevi, and still not long enough, for
we have not yet spoken of his claims to the title philosopher, won for
him by his book _Al-Chazari_. But now we must hurry on to Moses ben
Ezra, the last and most worldly of the three great poets. He devotes his
genius to his patrons, to wine, his faithless mistress, and to
"bacchanalian feasts under leafy canopies, with merry minstrelsy of
birds." He laments over separation from friends and kin, weeps over the
shortness of life and the rapid approach of hoary age--all in polished
language, sometimes, however, lacking euphony. Even when he strikes his
lyre in praise and honor of his people Israel, he fails to rise to the
lofty heights attained by his mates in song.

With Yehuda Charisi, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, the
period of the epigones sets in for Spanish-Jewish literature. In
Charisi's _Tachkemoni_, an imitation of the poetry of the Arab Hariri,
jest and serious criticism, joy and grief, the sublime and the trivial,
follow each other like tints in a parti-colored skein. His distinction
is the ease with which he plays upon the Hebrew language, not the most
pliable of instruments. In general, Jewish poets and philosophers have
manipulated that language with surprising dexterity. Songs, hymns,
elegies, penitential prayers, exhortations, and religious meditations,
generation after generation, were couched in the idiom of the psalmist,
yet the structure of the language underwent no change. "The development
of the neo-Hebraic idiom from the ancient Hebrew," a distinguished
modern ethnographer justly says, "confirms, by linguistic evidence, the
plasticity, the logical acumen, the comprehensive and at the same time
versatile intellectuality of the Jewish race. By the ingenious
compounding of words, by investing old expressions with new meanings,
and adapting the material offered by alien or related languages to its
own purposes, it has increased and enriched a comparatively meagre
treasury of words."[11]

Side by side with this cosmopolitanism, illustrated in the Haggada,
whose pages prove that nothing human is strange to the Jewish race, it
reveals, in its literary development, as notably in the Halacha, a
sharply defined subjectivity. Jellinek says: "Not losing itself in the
contemplation of the phenomena of life, not devoting itself to any
subject unless it be with an ulterior purpose, but seeing all things in
their relation to itself, and subordinating them to its own boldly
asserted _ego_, the Jewish race is not inclined to apply its powers to
the solution of intricate philosophic problems, or to abstruse
metaphysical speculations. It is, therefore, not a philosophic race, and
its participation in the philosophic work of the world dates only from
its contact with the Greeks." The same author, on the other hand,
emphasizes the liberality, the broad sympathies, of the Jewish race, in
his statement that the Jewish mind, at its first meeting with Arabic
philosophy, absorbed it as a leaven into its intellectual life. The
product of the assimilation was--as early as the twelfth century, mark
you--a philosophic conception of life, whose broad liberality culminates
in the sentiment expressed by two most eminent thinkers: Christianity
and Islam are the precursors of a world-religion, the preliminary
conditions for the great religious system satisfying all men. Yehuda
Halevi and Moses Maimonides were the philosophers bold enough to utter
this thought of far-reaching significance.

The second efflorescence of Jewish poetry brings forth exotic romances,
satires, verbose hymns, and humorous narrative poems. Such productions
certainly do not justify the application of the epithet "theological" to
Jewish literature. Solomon ben Sakbel composes a satiric romance in the
Makamat[12] form, describing the varied adventures of Asher ben Yehuda,
another Don Quixote; Berachya Hanakdan puts into Hebrew the fables of
Æsop and Lokman, furnishing La Fontaine with some of his material;
Abraham ibn Sahl receives from the Arabs, certainly not noted for
liberality, ten goldpieces for each of his love-songs; Santob de Carrion
is a beloved Spanish bard, bold enough to tell unpleasant truths unto a
king; Joseph ibn Sabara writes a humorous romance; Yehuda Sabbataï, epic
satires, "The War of Wealth and Wisdom," and "A Gift from a Misogynist,"
and unnamed authors, "Truth's Campaign," and "Praise of Women."

A satirist of more than ordinary gifts was the Italian Kalonymos, whose
"Touchstone," like Ibn Chasdaï's Makamat, "The Prince and the Dervish,"
has been translated into German. Contemporaneous with them was Süsskind
von Trimberg, the Suabian minnesinger, and Samson Pnie, of Strasburg,
who helped the German poets continue _Parzival_, while later on, in
Italy, Moses Rieti composed "The Paradise" in Hebrew _terza-rima_.

In the decadence of Jewish literature, the most prominent figure is
Immanuel ben Solomon, or Manoello, as the Italians call him. Critics
think him the precursor of Boccaccio, and history knows him as the
friend of Dante, whose _Divina Commedia_ he travestied in Hebrew. The
author of the first Hebrew sonnet and of the first Hebrew novel, he was
a talented writer, but as frivolous as talented.

This is the development of Jewish poetry during its great period. In
other departments of literature, in philosophy, in theology, in ethics,
in Bible exegesis, the race is equally prolific in minds of the first
order. Glancing back for a moment, our eye is arrested by Moses
Maimonides, the great systematizer of the Jewish Law, and the connecting
link between scholasticism and the Greek-Arabic development of the
Aristotelian system. Before his time Bechaï ibn Pakuda and Joseph ibn
Zadik had entered upon theosophic speculations with the object of
harmonizing Arabic and Greek philosophy, and in the age immediately
preceding that of Maimonides, Abraham ibn Daud, a writer of surprisingly
liberal views, had undertaken, in "The Highest Faith," the task of
reconciling faith with philosophy. At the same time rationalistic Bible
exegesis was begun by Abraham ibn Ezra, an acute but reckless
controversialist. Orthodox interpretations of the Bible had, before him,
been taught in France by Rashi (Solomon Yitschaki) and Samuel ben Meïr,
and continued by German rabbis, who, at the same time, were preachers of
morality--a noteworthy phenomenon in a persecuted tribe. "How pure and
strong its ethical principles were is shown by its religious poetry as
well as by its practical Law. What pervades the poetry as a high ideal,
in the application of the Law becomes demonstrable reality. The wrapt
enthusiasm in the hymns of Samuel the Pious and other poets is embodied,
lives, in the rulings of Yehuda Hakohen, Solomon Yitschaki, and Jacob
ben Meïr; in the legal opinions of Isaac ben Abraham, Eliezer ha-Levi,
Isaac ben Moses, Meïr ben Baruch, and their successors, and in the
codices of Eliezer of Metz and Moses de Coucy. A German professor[13] of
a hundred years ago, after glancing through some few Jewish writings,
exclaimed, in a tone of condescending approval: 'Christians of that time
could scarcely have been expected to enjoin such high moral principles
as this Jew wrote down and bequeathed to his brethren in faith!'"

Jewish literature in this and the next period consists largely of
theological discussions and of commentaries on the Talmud produced by
the hundred. It would be idle to name even the most prominent authors;
their works belong to the history of theologic science, and rarely had a
determining influence upon the development of genuine literature.

We must also pass over in silence the numerous Jewish physicians and
medical writers; but it must be remembered that they, too, belong to
Jewish literature. The most marvellous characteristic of this literature
is that in it the Jewish race has registered each step of its
development. "All things learned, gathered, obtained, on its journeyings
hither and thither--Greek philosophy and Arabic, as well as Latin
scholasticism--all deposited themselves in layers about the Bible, so
stamping later Jewish literature with an individuality that gave it an
unique place among the literatures of the world."

The travellers, however, must be mentioned by name. Their itineraries
were wholly dedicated to the interests of their co-religionists. The
first of the line is Eldad, the narrator of a sort of Hebrew Odyssey.
Benjamin of Tudela and Petachya of Ratisbon are deserving of more
confidence as veracious chroniclers, and their descriptions, together
with Charisi's, complete the Jewish library of travels of those early
days, unless, with Steinschneider, we consider, as we truly may, the
majority of Jewish authors under this head. For Jewish writers a hard,
necessitous lot has ever been a storm wind, tossing them hither and
thither, and blowing the seeds of knowledge over all lands. Withal
learning proved an enveloping, protecting cloak to these mendicant and
pilgrim authors. The dispersion of the Jews, their international
commerce, and the desire to maintain their academies, stimulated a love
for travel, made frequent journeyings a necessity, indeed. In this way
only can we account for the extraordinarily rapid spread of Jewish
literature in the middle ages. The student of those times often chances
across a rabbi, who this day teaches, lectures, writes in Candia,
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, during which a wonderful change had taken place in the
captive people. An idolatrous, rebellious nation had turned into a pious
congregation of the Lord, possessed with zeal for the study of the Law.
By degrees there grew up out of this study a science of wide scope,
whose beginnings are hidden in the last book of the Bible, in the word
_Midrash_, translated by "story" in the Authorized Version. Its true
meaning is indicated by that of its root, _darash_, to study, to
expound. Four different methods of explaining the sacred Scriptures were
current: the first aimed to reach the simple understanding of words as
they stood; the second availed itself of suggestions offered by
apparently superfluous letters and signs in the text to arrive at its
meaning; the third was "a homiletic application of that which had been
to that which was and would be, of prophetical and historical dicta to
the actual condition of things"; and the fourth devoted itself to
theosophic mysteries--but all led to a common goal.

In the course of the centuries the development of the Midrash, or study
of the Law, lay along the two strongly marked lines of Halacha, the
explanation and formulating of laws, and Haggada, their poetical
illustration and ethical application. These are the two spheres within
which the intellectual life of Judaism revolved, and these the two
elements, the legal and the æsthetic, making up the Talmud.

The two Midrashic systems emphasize respectively the rule of law and the
sway of liberty: Halacha is law incarnate; Haggada, liberty regulated by
law and bearing the impress of morality. Halacha stands for the rigid
authority of the Law, for the absolute importance of theory--the law and
theory which the Haggada illustrates by public opinion and the dicta of
common-sense morality. The Halacha embraces the statutes enjoined by
oral tradition, which was the unwritten commentary of the ages on the
written Law, along with the discussions of the academies of Palestine
and Babylonia, resulting in the final formulating of the Halachic
ordinances. The Haggada, while also starting from the word of the Bible,
only plays with it, explaining it by sagas and legends, by tales and
poems, allegories, ethical reflections, and historical reminiscences.
For it, the Bible was not only the supreme law, from whose behests there
was no appeal, but also "a golden nail upon which" the Haggada "hung its
gorgeous tapestries," so that the Bible word was the introduction,
refrain, text, and subject of the poetical glosses of the Talmud. It was
the province of the Halacha to build, upon the foundation of biblical
law, a legal superstructure capable of resisting the ravages of time,
and, unmindful of contemporaneous distress and hardship, to trace out,
for future generations, the extreme logical consequences of the Law in
its application. To the Haggada belonged the high, ethical mission of
consoling, edifying, exhorting, and teaching a nation suffering the
pangs, and threatened with the spiritual stagnation, of exile; of
proclaiming that the glories of the past prefigured a future of equal
brilliancy, and that the very wretchedness of the present was part of
the divine plan outlined in the Bible. If the simile is accurate that
likens the Halacha to the ramparts about Israel's sanctuary, which every
Jew was ready to defend with his last drop of blood, then the Haggada
must seem "flowery mazes, of exotic colors and bewildering fragrance,"
within the shelter of the Temple walls.

The complete work of expounding, developing, and finally establishing
the Law represents the labor of many generations, the method of
procedure varying from time to time. In the long interval between the
close of the Holy Canon and the completion of the Talmud can be
distinguished three historical strata deposited by three different
classes of teachers. The first set, the Scribes--_Soferim_--flourished
in the period beginning with the return from Babylonian captivity and
ending with the Syrian persecutions (220 B.C.E.), and their work was the
preservation of the text of the Holy Writings and the simple expounding
of biblical ordinances. They were followed by the
"Learners"--_Tanaïm_--whose activity extended until 220 C.E. Great
historical events occurred in that period: the campaigns of the
Maccabean heroes, the birth of Jesus, the destruction of the Temple by
the Romans, the rebellion under Bar-Kochba, and the final complete
dispersion of the Jews. Amid all these storms the _Tanaïm_ did not for a
moment relinquish their diligent research in the Law. The Talmud tells
the story of a celebrated rabbi, than which nothing can better
characterize the age and its scholars: Night was falling. A funeral
cortege was moving through the streets of old Jerusalem. It was said
that disciples were bearing a well-beloved teacher to the grave.
Reverentially the way was cleared, not even the Roman guard at the gate
hindered the procession. Beyond the city walls it halted, the bier was
set down, the lid of the coffin opened, and out of it arose the
venerable form of Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkaï, who, to reach the Roman
camp unmolested, had feigned death. He went before Vespasian, and,
impressed by the noble figure of the hoary rabbi, the general promised
him the fulfilment of any wish he might express. What was his petition?
Not for his nation, not for the preservation of the Holy City, not even
for the Temple. His request was simple: "Permit me to open a school at
Jabneh." The proud Roman smilingly gave consent. He had no conception of
the significance of this prayer and of the prophetic wisdom of the
petitioner, who, standing on the ruins of his nation's independence,
thought only of rescuing the Law. Rome, the empire of the "iron legs,"
was doomed to be crushed, nation after nation to be swallowed in the
vortex of time, but Israel lives by the Law, the very law snatched from
the smouldering ruins of Jerusalem, the beloved alike of crazy zealots
and despairing peace advocates, and carried to the tiny seaport of
Jabneh. There Jochanan ben Zakkaï opened his academy, the gathering
place of the dispersed of his disciples and his people, and thence,
gifted with a prophet's keen vision, he proclaimed Israel's mission to
be, not the offering of sacrifices, but the accomplishment of works of
peace.[14]

The _Tanaïm_ may be considered the most original expounders of the
science of Judaism, which they fostered at their academies. In the
course of centuries their intellectual labor amassed an abundant store
of scientific material, together with so vast a number of injunctions,
prohibitions, and laws that it became almost impossible to master the
subject. The task of scholars now was to arrange the accumulation of
material and reduce it to a system. Rabbi after rabbi undertook the
task, but only the fourth attempt at codification, that made by Yehuda
the Prince, was successful. His compilation, classifying the
subject-matter under six heads, subdivided into sixty-three tractates,
containing five hundred and twenty-four chapters, was called Mishna, and
came to be the authority appealed to on points of law.

Having assumed fixity as a code, the Mishna in turn became what the
Bible had been for centuries--a text, the basis of all legal development
and scientific discussion. So it was used by the epigones, the
_Amoraïm_, or Speakers, the expounders of the third period. For
generations commenting on the Mishna was the sum-total of literary
endeavor. Traditions unheeded before sprang to light. New methods
asserted themselves. To the older generation of Halachists succeeded a
set of men headed by Akiba ben Joseph, who, ignoring practical issues,
evolved laws from the Bible text or from traditions held to be divine. A
spiritual, truly religious conception of Judaism was supplanted by legal
quibbling and subtle methods of interpretation. Like the sophists of
Rome and Alexandria at that time, the most celebrated teachers in the
academies of Babylonia and Palestine for centuries gave themselves up to
casuistry. This is the history of the development of the Talmud, or more
correctly of the two Talmuds, the one, finished in 390 C. E., being the
expression of what was taught at the Palestinian academies; the other,
more important one, completed in 500 C. E., of what was taught in
Babylonia.

The Babylonian, the one regarded as authoritative, is about four times
as large as the Jerusalem Talmud. Its thirty-six treatises
(_Massichtoth_), in our present edition, cover upwards of three thousand
folio pages, bound in twelve huge volumes. To speak of a completed
Talmud is as incorrect as to speak of a biblical canon. No religious
body, no solemn resolution of a synod, ever declared either the Talmud
or the Bible a completed whole. Canonizing of any kind is distinctly
opposed to the spirit of Judaism. The fact is that the tide of
traditional lore has never ceased to flow.

We now have before us a faint outline sketch of the growth of the
Talmud. To portray the busy world fitting into this frame is another and
more difficult matter. A catalogue of its contents may be made. It may
be said that it is a book containing laws and discussions, philosophic,
theologic, and juridic dicta, historical notes and national
reminiscences, injunctions and prohibitions controlling all the
positions and relations of life, curious, quaint tales, ideal maxims and
proverbs, uplifting legends, charming lyrical outbursts, and attractive
enigmas side by side with misanthropic utterances, bewildering medical
prescriptions, superstitious practices, expressions of deep agony,
peculiar astrological charms, and rambling digressions on law,
zoology, and botany, and when all this has been said, not half its
contents have been told. It is a luxuriant jungle, which must be
explored by him who would gain an adequate idea of its features and
products.

The Ghemara, that is, the whole body of discussions recorded in the two
Talmuds, primarily forms a running commentary on the text of the Mishna.
At the same time, it is the arena for the debating and investigating of
subjects growing out of the Mishna, or suggested by a literature
developed along with the Talmudic literature. These discussions,
debates, and investigations are the opinions and arguments of the
different schools, holding opposite views, developed with rare acumen
and scholastic subtlety, and finally harmonized in the solution reached.
The one firm and impregnable rock supporting the gigantic structure of
the Talmud is the word of the Bible, held sacred and inviolable.

The best translations--single treatises have been put into modern
languages--fail to convey an adequate idea of the discussions and method
that evolved the Halacha. It is easier to give an approximately true
presentation of the rabbinical system of practical morality as gleaned
from the Haggada. It must, of course, be borne in mind that Halacha and
Haggada are not separate works; they are two fibres of the same thread.
"The whole of the Haggadistic literature--the hitherto unappreciated
archives of language, history, archæology, religion, poetry, and
science--with but slight reservations may be called a national
literature, containing as it does the aggregate of the views and
opinions of thousands of thinkers belonging to widely separated
generations. Largely, of course, these views and opinions are peculiar
to the individuals holding them or to their time"; still, every
Haggadistic expression, in a general way, illustrates some fundamental,
national law, based upon the national religion and the national
history.[15] Through the Haggada we are vouchsafed a glance into a
mysterious world, which mayhap has hitherto repelled us as strange and
grewsome. Its poesy reveals vistas of gleaming beauty and light,
luxuriant growth and exuberant life, while familiar melodies caress our
ears.

The Haggada conveys its poetic message in the garb of allegory song, and
chiefly epigrammatic saying. Form is disregarded; the spirit is
all-important, and suffices to cover up every fault of form. The Talmud,
of course, does not yield a complete system of ethics, but its practical
philosophy consists of doctrines that underlie a moral life. The
injustice of the abuse heaped upon it would become apparent to its
harshest critics from a few of its maxims and rules of conduct, such as
the following: Be of them that are persecuted, not of the
persecutors.--Be the cursed, not he that curses.--They that are
persecuted, and do not persecute, that are vilified and do not retort,
that act in love, and are cheerful even in suffering, they are the
lovers of God.--Bless God for the good as well as the evil. When thou
hearest of a death, say, "Blessed be the righteous Judge."--Life is like
unto a fleeting shadow. Is it the shadow of a tower or of a bird? It is
the shadow of a bird in its flight. Away flies the bird, and neither
bird nor shadow remains behind.--Repentance and good works are the aim
of all earthly wisdom.--Even the just will not have so high a place in
heaven as the truly repentant.--He whose learning surpasses his good
works is like a tree with many branches and few roots, which a
wind-storm uproots and casts to the ground. But he whose good works
surpass his learning is like a tree with few branches and many roots;
all the winds of heaven cannot move it from its place.--There are three
crowns: the crown of the Law, the crown of the priesthood, the crown of
kingship. But greater than all is the crown of a good name.--Four there
are that cannot enter Paradise: the scoffer, the liar, the hypocrite,
and the backbiter.--Beat the gods, and the priests will
tremble.--Contrition is better than many flagellations.--When the
pitcher falls upon the stone, woe unto the pitcher; when the stone falls
upon the pitcher, woe unto the pitcher; whatever betides, woe unto the
pitcher.--The place does not honor the man, the man honors the
place.--He who humbles himself will be exalted; he who exalts himself
will be humbled,--Whosoever pursues greatness, from him will greatness
flee; whosoever flees from greatness, him will greatness
pursue.--Charity is as important as all other virtues combined.--Be
tender and yielding like a reed, not hard and proud like a cedar.--The
hypocrite will not see God.--It is not sufficient to be innocent before
God; we must show our innocence to the world.--The works encouraged by a
good man are better than those he executes.--Woe unto him that practices
usury, he shall not live; whithersoever he goes, he carries injustice
and death.

The same Talmud that fills chapter after chapter with minute legal
details and hairsplitting debates outlines with a few strokes the most
ideal conception of life, worth more than theories and systems of
religious philosophy. A Haggada passage says: Six hundred and thirteen
injunctions were given by Moses to the people of Israel. David reduced
them to eleven; the prophet Isaiah classified these under six heads;
Micah enumerated only three: "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to
do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God." Another
prophet limited them to two: "Keep ye judgment, and do righteousness."
Amos put all the commandments under one: "Seek ye me, and ye shall
live"; and Habakkuk said: "The just shall live by his faith."--This is
the ethics of the Talmud.

Another characteristic manifestation of the idealism of the Talmud is
its delicate feeling for women and children. Almost extravagant
affection is displayed for the little ones. All the verses of Scripture
that speak of flowers and gardens are applied in the Talmud to children
and schools. Their breath sustains the moral order of the universe: "Out
of the mouth of babes and sucklings has God founded His might." They are
called flowers, stars, the anointed of God. When God was about to give
the Law, He demanded of the Israelites pledges to assure Him that they
would keep His commandments holy. They offered the patriarchs, but each
one of them had committed some sin. They named Moses as their surety;
not even he was guiltless. Then they said: "Let our children be our
hostages." The Lord accepted them.

Similarly, there are many expressions to show that woman was held in
high esteem by the rabbis of the Talmud: Love thy wife as thyself; honor
her more than thyself.--In choosing a wife, descend a step.--If thy wife
is small, bend and whisper into her ear.--God's altar weeps for him that
forsakes the love of his youth.--He who sees his wife die before him
has, as it were, been present at the destruction of the sanctuary
itself; around him the world grows dark.--It is woman alone through whom
God's blessings are vouchsafed to a house.--The children of him that
marries for money shall be a curse unto him,--a warning singularly
applicable to the circumstances of our own times.

The peculiar charm of the Haggada is best revealed in its legends and
tales, its fables and myths, its apologues and allegories, its riddles
and songs. The starting-point of the Haggada usually is some memory of
the great past. It entwines and enmeshes in a magic network the lives of
the patriarchs, prophets, and martyrs, and clothes with fresh, luxuriant
green the old ideals and figures, giving them new life for a remote
generation. The teachers of the Haggada allow no opportunity, sad or
merry, to pass without utilizing it in the guise of an apologue or
parable. Alike for wedding-feasts and funerals, for banquets and days of
fasting, the garden of the Haggada is rifled of its fragrant blossoms
and luscious fruits. Simplicity, grace, and childlike merriment pervade
its fables, yet they are profound, even sublime, in their truth. "Their
chief and enduring charm is their fathomless depth, their unassuming
loveliness." Poems constructed with great artistic skill do not occur.
Here and there a modest bud of lyric poesy shyly raises its head, like
the following couplet, describing a celebrated but ill-favored rabbi:

    "Without charm of form and face.
    But a mind of rarest grace."

Over the grave of the same teacher the Talmud wails:

    "The Holy Land did beautify what womb of Shinar gave;
    And now Tiberias' tear-filled eye weeps o'er her treasure's grave."

On seeing the dead body of the Patriarch Yehuda, a rabbi laments:

    "Angels strove to win the testimony's ark.
    Men they overcame; lo! vanished is the ark!"

Another threnody over some prince in the realm of the intellect:

    "The cedar hath by flames been seized;
    Can hyssop then be saved?
    Leviathan with hook was caught;
    Alas! ye little fish!
    The deep and mighty stream ran dry,
    Ah woe! ye shallow brooks!"

Nor is humor lacking. "Ah, hamper great, with books well-filled, thou'rt
gone!" is a bookworm's eulogy.

Poets naturally have not been slow to avail themselves of the material
stored in the Haggada. Many of its treasures, tricked out in modern
verse, have been given to the world. The following are samples:[16]

    BIRTH AND DEATH

    "His hands fast clenched, his fingers firmly clasped,
    So man this life begins.
    He claims earth's wealth, and constitutes himself
    The heir of all her gifts.
    He thinks his hand may snatch and hold
    Whatever life doth yield.

    But when at last the end has come,
    His hands are open wide,
    No longer closed. He knoweth now full well,
    That vain were all his hopes.
    He humbly says, 'I go, and nothing take
    Of all my hands have wrought.'"

The next, "Interest and Usury," may serve to give the pertinacious
opponent of the Talmud a better opinion of its position on financial
subjects:

    "Behold! created things of every kind
      Lend each to each. The day from night doth take,
      And night from day; nor do they quarrel make
    Like men, who doubting one another's mind,
    E'en while they utter friendly words, think ill.
      The moon delighted helps the starry host,
      And each returns her gift without a boast.
    'Tis only when the Lord supreme doth will
    That earth in gloom shall be enwrapped,
      He tells the moon: 'Refrain, keep back thy light!'
      And quenches, too, the myriad lamps of night.
    From wisdom's fount hath knowledge ofttimes lapped,
    While wisdom humbly doth from knowledge learn.
      The skies drop blessings on the grateful earth,
      And she--of precious store there is no dearth--
    Exhales and sends aloft a fair return.
    Stern law with mercy tempers its decree,
      And mercy acts with strength by justice lent.
      Good deeds are based on creed from heaven sent,
    In which, in turn, the sap of deeds must be.
      Each creature borrows, lends, and gives with love,
      Nor e'er disputes, to honor God above.

    When man, howe'er, his fellowman hath fed,
      Then 'spite the law forbidding interest,
      He thinketh naught but cursèd gain to wrest.
    Who taketh usury methinks hath said:
    'O Lord, in beauty has Thy earth been wrought!
      But why should men for naught enjoy its plains?
      Ask usance, since 'tis Thou that sendest rains.
    Have they the trees, their fruits, and blossoms bought?
    For all they here enjoy, Thy int'rest claim:
      For heaven's orbs that shine by day and night,
      Th' immortal soul enkindled by Thy light,
    And for the wondrous structure of their frame.'
    But God replies: 'Now come, and see! I give
      With open, bounteous hand, yet nothing take;
      The earth yields wealth, nor must return ye make.
    But know, O men, that only while ye live,
    You may enjoy these gifts of my award.
      The capital's mine, and surely I'll demand
      The spirit in you planted by my hand,
    And also earth will claim her due reward.'
      Man's dust to dust is gathered in the grave,
      His soul returns to God who gracious gave."

R. Yehuda ben Zakkaï answers his pupils who ask:

    "Why doth the Law with them more harshly deal
      That filch a lamb from fold away,
    Than with the highwaymen who shameless steal
      Thy purse by force in open day?"

    "Because in like esteem the brigands hold
      The master and his serving man.
    Their wickedness is open, frank, and bold,
      They fear not God, nor human ban.

    The thief feels more respect for earthly law
      Than for his heav'nly Master's eye,
    Man's presence flees in fear and awe,
      Forgets he's seen by God on high."

That is a glimpse of the world of the Haggada--a wonderful, fantastic
world, a kaleidoscopic panorama of enchanting views. "Well can we
understand the distress of mind in a mediæval divine, or even in a
modern _savant_, who, bent upon following the most subtle windings of
some scientific debate in the Talmudical pages--geometrical, botanical,
financial, or otherwise--as it revolves round the Sabbath journey, the
raising of seeds, the computation of tithes and taxes--feels, as it
were, the ground suddenly give way. The loud voices grow thin, the doors
and walls of the school-room vanish before his eyes, and in their place
uprises Rome the Great, the _Urbs et Orbis_ and her million-voiced life.
Or the blooming vineyards round that other City of Hills, Jerusalem the
Golden herself, are seen, and white-clad virgins move dreamily among
them. Snatches of their songs are heard, the rhythm of their choric
dances rises and falls: it is the most dread Day of Atonement itself,
which, in poetical contrast, was chosen by the 'Rose of Sharon' as a day
of rejoicing to walk among those waving lily-fields and vine-clad
slopes. Or the clarion of rebellion rings high and shrill through the
complicated debate, and Belshazzar, the story of whose ghastly banquet
is told with all the additions of maddening horror, is doing service for
Nero the bloody; or Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian tyrant, and all his
hosts, are cursed with a yelling curse--_à propos_ of some utterly
inappropriate legal point, while to the initiated he stands for Titus
the--at last exploded--'Delight of Humanity.' ... Often--far too often
for the interests of study and the glory of the human race--does the
steady tramp of the Roman cohort, the password of the revolution, the
shriek and clangor of the bloody field, interrupt these debates, and
the arguing masters and disciples don their arms, and, with the cry,
'Jerusalem and Liberty,' rush to the fray."[17] Such is the world of the
Talmud.

THE JEW IN THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION[18]

In the childhood of civilization, the digging of wells was regarded as
beneficent work. Guide-posts, visible from afar, marked their position,
and hymns were composed, and solemn feasts celebrated, in honor of the
event. One of the choicest bits of early Hebrew poetry is a song of the
well. The soul, in grateful joy, jubilantly calls to her mates: "Arise!
sing a song unto the well! Well, which the princes have dug, which the
nobles of the people have hollowed out."[19] This house, too, is a
guide-post to a newly-found well of humanity and culture, a monument to
our faithfulness and zeal in the recognition and the diffusion of truth.
A scene like this brings to my mind the psalmist's beautiful words:[20]
"Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together
in unity. It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down
upon the beard, even Aaron's beard, that went down to the skirts of his
garment; as the dew of Hermon, running down upon the mountains of Zion;
for there hath the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for
evermore."

Wondrous thoughts veiled with wondrous imagery! The underlying meaning
will lead us to our feast of the well, our celebration in honor of
newly-discovered waters. Our order is based upon the conviction that all
men should be banded together for purposes of humanity. But what is
humanity? Not philanthropy, not benevolence, not charity: it is "human
culture risen to the stage on which man is conscious of universal
brotherhood, and strives for the realization of the general good." In
early times, leaders of men were anointed with oil, symbol of wisdom and
divine inspiration. Above all it was meet that it be used in the
consecration of priests, the exponents of the divine spirit and the Law.
The psalmist's idea is, that as the precious ointment in its abundance
runs down Aaron's beard to the hem of his garment, even so shall wisdom
and the divine spirit overflow the lips of priests, the guides, friends,
and teachers of the people, the promoters of the law of peace and love.

"As the dew of Hermon, running down upon the mountains of Zion!" High
above all mountains towers Hermon, its crest enveloped by clouds and
covered with eternal snow. From that supernal peak grateful dew trickles
down, fructifying the land once "flowing with milk and honey." From its
clefts gushes forth Jordan, mightiest stream of the land, watering a
broad plain in its course. In this guise the Lord has granted His
blessing to the land, the blessing of civilization and material
prosperity, from which spring as corollaries the duties of charity and
universal humanity.

A picture of the olden time this, a lodge-address of the days of the
psalm singers. Days flee, time abides; men pass away, mankind endures.
Filled with time-honored thoughts, inspired by the hopes of by-gone
generations, striving for the goal of noble men in all ages, like the
psalm singers in the days of early culture, we celebrate a feast of the
well by reviewing the past and looking forward down the avenues of time.

Less than fifty years ago a band of energetic, loyal Jews, on the other
side of the Atlantic, founded our beloved Order. Now it has established
itself in every part of the world, from the extreme western coast of
America to the blessed meadows of the Jordan; yea, even the Holy Land,
unfurling everywhere the banner of charity, brotherly love, and unity,
and seeking to spread education and culture, the forerunners of
humanity. Judaism, mark you, is the religion of humanity. By far too
late for our good and that of mankind, we began to proclaim this truth
with becoming energy and emphasis, and to demonstrate it with the
joyousness of conviction. The question is, are we permeated with this
conviction? Our knowledge of Judaism is slight; we have barely a
suspicion of what in the course of centuries, nay, of thousands of
years, it has done for the progress of civilization. In my estimation,
our house-warming cannot more fittingly be celebrated than by taking a
bird's-eye view of Jewish culture.

The Bible is the text-book of general literature. Out of the Bible, more
particularly from the Ten Commandments, flashed from Sinai, mankind
learned its first ethical lesson in a system which still satisfies its
needs. To convey even a faint idea of what the Bible has done for
civilization, morality, and the literature of every people--of the
innumerable texts it has furnished to poets, and subjects to
painters--would in itself require a literature.

The conflicts with surrounding nations to which they were exposed made
the Jews concentrate their forces, and so enabled them to wage
successful war with nations mightier than themselves. Their heroism
under the Maccabees and under Bar-Kochba, in the middle ages and in
modern days, permits them to take rank among the most valiant in
history. A historian of literature, a non-Jew, enumerates three factors
constituting Jews important agents in the preservation and revival of
learning:[21] First, their ability as traders. The Phoenicians are
regarded as the oldest commercial nation, but the Jews contested the
palm with them. Zebulon and Asher in very early times were seafaring
tribes. Under Solomon, Israelitish vessels sailed as far as Ophir to
bring Afric's gold to Jerusalem. Before the destruction of the Holy
City, Jewish communities established themselves on the westernmost coast
of Europe. "The whole of the known world was covered with their
settlements, in constant communication with one another through
itinerant merchants, who effected an exchange of learning as well as of
wares; while the other nations grew more and more isolated, and shut
themselves off from even the sparse opportunities of mental culture then
available."

The second factor conducing to mental advancement was the schools which
have flourished in Israel since the days of the prophet Samuel; and the
third was the linguistic attainments of the Jews, which they owed to
natural ability in this direction. Scarcely had Greek allied itself with
Hebrew thought, when Jews in Alexandria wrote Greek comparable with
Plato's, and not more than two hundred years after the settlement of
Jews in Arabia we meet with a large number of Jewish poets among
Mohammed's disciples, while in the middle ages they taught and wrote
Arabic, Spanish, French, and German--versatility naturally favorable to
intellectual progress.

Jewish influence may be said to have begun to exercise itself upon
general culture when Judaism and Hellenism met for the first time. The
result of the meeting was the new product, Judæo-Hellenic literature.
Greek civilization was attractive to Jews. The new ideas were
popularized for all strata of the people to imbibe. Shortly before the
old pagan world crumbled, Hellenism enjoyed a beautiful, unexpected
revival in Alexandria. There, strange to say, Judaism, in its home
antagonistic to Hellenism, had filled and allied itself with the Greek
spirit. Its literature gradually adopted Greek traditions, and the ripe
fruit of the union was the Jewish-Alexandrian religious philosophy, the
mediation between two sharply contradictory systems, for the first time
brought into close juxtaposition, and requiring some such new element to
harmonize them. When ancient civilization in Judæa and in Hellas fell
into decay, human endeavor was charged with the task of reconciling
these two great historical forces diametrically opposed to each other,
and the first attempt looking to this end was inspired by a Jewish
genius, Jesus of Nazareth.

The Jews of Alexandria were engaged in widespread trade and shipping,
and they counted among them artists, poets, civil officers, and
mechanics. They naturally acquired Greek customs, and along with them
Hellenic vices. The bacchanalia of Athens were enthusiastically imitated
in Jerusalem, and, as a matter of course, in Alexandria. This point
reached, Roman civilization asserted itself, and the people sought to
affiliate with their Roman victors, while the rabbis devoted themselves
to the Law, not, however, to the exclusion of scientific work. In the
ranks of physicians and astronomers we find Jewish masters and Jewish
disciples. Medicine has always been held in high esteem by Jews, and
Samuel could justly boast before his contemporaries that the intricate
courses of the stars were as well known to him as the streets of
Nehardea in Babylonia.[22]

The treasures of information on pedagogics, medicine, jurisprudence,
astronomy, geography, zoology, botany, and last, though not least, on
general history, buried in the Talmud, have hitherto not been valued at
their true worth. The rabbis of the Talmud stood in the front ranks of
culture. They compiled a calendar, in complete accord with the Metonic
cycle, which modern science must declare faultless. Their classification
of the bones of the human body varies but little from present results of
the science of anatomy, and the Talmud demonstrates that certain Mishna
ordinances are based upon geometrical propositions, which could have
been known to but few mathematicians of that time. Rabbi Gamaliel, said
to have made use of a telescope, was celebrated as a mathematician and
astronomer, and in 289 C. E., Rabbi Joshua is reported to have
calculated the orbit of Halley's comet.

The Roman conquest of Palestine effected a change in the condition of
the Jews. Never before had Judah undergone such torture and suffering as
under the sceptre of Rome. The misery became unendurable, and internal
disorders being added to foreign oppression, the luckless insurrection
broke out which gave the deathblow to Jewish nationality, and drove
Judah into exile. On his thorny martyr's path he took naught with him
but a book--his code, his law. Yet how prodigal his contributions to
mankind's fund of culture!

About five hundred years later Judah saw springing up on his own soil a
new religion which appropriated the best and the most beautiful of his
spiritual possessions. Swiftly rose the vast political and intellectual
structure of Mohammedan power, and as before with Greek, so Jewish
thought now allied itself with Arabic endeavor, bringing forth in Spain
the golden age of neo-Hebraic literature in the spheres of poetry,
metaphysical speculation, and every department of scientific research.
It is not an exaggerated estimate to say that the middle ages sustained
themselves with the fruit of this intellectual labor, which, moreover,
has come down as a legacy to our modern era. Two hundred years after
Mohammed, the same language, Arabic, was spoken by the Jews of Kairwan
and those of Bagdad. Thus equipped, they performed in a remarkable way
the task allotted them by their talents and their circumstances, to
which they had been devoting themselves with singular zeal for two
centuries. The Jews are missioned mediators between the Orient and the
Occident, and their activity as such, illustrated by their additions to
general culture and science, is of peculiar interest. In the period
under consideration, their linguistic accomplishments fitted them to
assist the Syrians in making Greek literature accessible to the Arabic
mind. In Arabic literature itself, they attained to a prominent place.
Modern research has not yet succeeded in shedding light upon the
development and spread of science among the Arabs under the tutelage of
Syrian Christians. But out of the obscurity of Greek-Arabic culture
beginnings gleam Jewish names, whose possessors were the teachers of
eager Arabic disciples. Barely fifty years after the hosts of the
Prophet had conquered the Holy Land, a Jew of Bassora translated from
Syriac into Arabic the pandects by the presbyter Aaron, a famous medical
work of the middle ages. In the annals of the next century, among the
early contributors to Arabic literature, we meet with the names of Jews
as translators of medical, mathematical, and astronomical works, and as
grammarians, astronomers, scientists, and physicians. A Jew translated
Ptolemy's "Almagest"; another assisted in the first translation of the
Indian fox fables (_Kalila we-Dimna_); the first furnishing the middle
ages with the basis of their astronomical science, the second supplying
European poets with literary material. Through the instrumentality of
Jews, Arabs became acquainted as early as the eighth century, some time
before the learning of the Greeks was brought within their reach, with
Indian medicine, astronomy, and poetry. Greek science itself they owed
to Jewish mediation. Not only among Jews, but also among Greeks,
Syrians, and Arabs, Jewish versatility gave currency to the belief that
"all wisdom is of the Jews," a view often repeated by Hellenists, by the
"Righteous Brethren" among the Arabs, and later by the Christian monks
of Europe.

The academies of the Jews have always been pervaded by a scientific
spirit. As they influenced others, so they permitted the science and
culture of their neighbors to act upon their life and work. There is no
doubt, for instance, that, despite the marked difference between the
subjects treated by Arabs and Jews, the peculiar qualities of the old
Arabic lyrics shaped neo-Hebraic poetry. Again, as the Hebrew acrostic
psalms demonstrably served as models to the older Syrian Church poets,
so, in turn, Syriac psalmody probably became the pattern synagogue
poetry followed. Thus Hebrew poetry completed a circuit, which, to be
sure, cannot accurately be followed up through its historical stages,
but which critical investigations and the comparative study of
literatures have established almost as a certainty.

In the ninth century a bold, venturesome traveller, Eldad ha-Dani,[23] a
sort of Jewish Ulysses, appeared among Jews, and at the same time
Judaism produced Sa'adia, its first great religious philosopher and
Bible translator. The Church Fathers had always looked up to the rabbis
as authorities; henceforth Jews were accepted by all scholars as the
teachers of Bible exegesis. Sa'adia was the first of the rabbis to
translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Arabic. Justly his work is said to
"recognize the current of thought dominant in his time, and to express
the newly-awakened desire for the reconciliation of religious practice,
as developed in the course of generations, with the source of religious
inspiration." Besides, he was the first to elaborate a system of
religious philosophy according to a rigid plan, and in a strictly
scientific spirit.[24] Knowing Greek speculations, he controverts them
as vigorously as the _Kalâm_ of Islam philosophy. His teachings form a
system of practical ethics, luminous reflections, and sound maxims.
Among his contemporaries was Isaac Israeli, a physician at Kairwan,
whose works, in their Latin translation by the monk Constantine,
attained great reputation, and were later plagiarized by medical
writers. His treatise on fever was esteemed of high worth, a translation
of it being studied as a text-book for centuries, and his dietetic
writings remained authoritative for five hundred years. In general, the
medical science of the Arabs is under great obligations to him.
Reverence for Jewish medical ability was so exaggerated in those days
that Galen was identified with the Jewish sage Gamaliel. The error was
fostered in the _Sefer Asaf_, a curious medical fragment of uncertain
authorship and origin, by its rehearsal of an old Midrash, which traces
the origin of medicine to Shem, son of Noah, who received it from
angels, and transmitted it to the ancient Chaldeans, they in turn
passing it on to the Egyptians, Greeks, and Arabs.

Though the birth of medicine is not likely to have taken place among
Jews, it is indisputable that physicians of the Jewish race are largely
to be credited with the development of medical science at every period.
At the time we speak of, Jews in Egypt, northern Africa, Italy, Spain,
France, and Germany were physicians in ordinary to caliphs, emperors,
and popes, and everywhere they are represented among medical writers.
The position occupied in the Arabian world by Israeli, in the Occident
was occupied by Sabattaï Donnolo, one of the Salerno school in its early
obscure days, the author of a work on _Materia medica_, possibly the
oldest original production on medicine in the Hebrew language.

The period of Jewish prosperity in Spain has been called a fairy vision
of history. The culture developed under its genial influences pervaded
the middle ages, and projected suggestions even into our modern era. One
of the most renowned _savants_ at the beginning of the period was the
statesman Chasdaï ben Shaprut, whose translation of Dioscorides's "Plant
Lore" served as the botanical textbook of mediæval Europe. The first
poet was Solomon ibn Gabirol, the author of "The Source of Life," a
systematic exposition of Neoplatonic philosophy, a book of most curious
fortunes. Through the Latin translation, made with the help of an
apostate Jew, and bearing the author's name in the mutilated form of
Avencebrol, later changed into Avicebron, scholasticism became saturated
with its philosophic ideas. The pious fathers of Christian philosophy,
Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, took pains to refute them, while
Duns Scotus and Giordano Bruno frequently consulted the work as an
authority. In the struggle between the Scotists and the Thomists it had
a prominent place as late as the fourteenth century, the contestants
taking it to be the work of some great Christian philosopher standing on
the threshold of the Occident and at the portals of philosophy. So it
happened that the author came down through the centuries, recognized by
none, forgotten by his own, until, in our time, behind the
Moorish-Christian mask of Avencebrol, Solomon Munk discovered the Jewish
thinker and poet Solomon ibn Gabirol.

The work _De Causis_, attributed to David, a forgotten Jewish
philosopher, must be classed with Gabirol's "Source of Life," on account
of its Neoplatonism and its paramount influence upon scholasticism. In
fact, only by means of a searching analysis of these two works can
insight be gained into the development and aberrations of the dogmatic
system of mediæval philosophy.

Other sciences, too, especially mathematics, flourished among them. One
century after he wrote them, the works of Abraham ibn Ezra, renowned as
an astronomer and mathematician, were translated into Latin by Italians,
among whom his prestige was so great that, as may still be seen, he was
painted among the expounders of mathematical science in an Italian
church fresco representing the seven liberal arts. Under the name
Abraham Judæus, later corrupted into Avenare, he is met with throughout
the middle ages. Abraham ben Chiya, another distinguished scientist,
known by the name Savasorda, compiled the first systematic outline of
astronomy, and in his geographical treatise, he explained the sphericity
of the earth, while the Latin translation of his geometry, based on
Arabic sources, proves him to have made considerable additions to the
stock of knowledge in this branch. Moses Maimuni's intellectual vigor,
and his influence upon the schoolmen through his medical, and more
particularly his religio-philosophical works, are too well known to need
more than passing mention.

Even in southern France and in Germany, whither the light of culture did
not spread so rapidly as in Spain, Jews participated in the development
of the sciences. Solomon ben Isaac, called Rashi, the great exegete, was
looked up to as an authority by others beside his brethren in faith.
Nicolas de Lyra, one of the most distinguished Christian Bible exegetes,
confesses that his simple explanations of Scriptural passages are
derived pre-eminently from Rashi's Bible commentary, and among
scientific men it is acknowledged that precisely in the matter of
exegesis this French monk exercised decisive influence upon Martin
Luther. So it happens that in places Luther's Bible translation reveals
Rashi seen through Nicolas de Lyra's spectacles.

In the quickened intellectual life of Provence Jews also took active
part. David Kimchi has come to be regarded as the teacher _par
excellence_ of Hebrew grammar and lexicography, and Judah ibn Tibbon,
one of the most notable of translators, in his testament addressed to
his son made a complete presentation of contemporary science, a
cyclopædia of the Arabic and the Hebrew language and literature,
grammar, poetry, botany, zoology, natural history, and particularly
religious philosophy, the studies of the Bible and the Talmud.

The golden age of letters was followed by a less creative period, a
significant turning-point in the history of Judaism as of spiritual
progress in general. The contest between tradition and philosophy
affected every mind. Literature was widely cultivated; each of its
departments found devotees. The European languages were studied, and
connections established between the literatures of the nations. Hardly a
spiritual current runs through the middle ages without, in some way,
affecting Jewish culture. It is the irony of history that puts among the
forty proscribers of the Talmud assembled at Paris in the thirteenth
century the Dominican Albertus Magnus, who, in his successful efforts to
divert scholastic philosophy into new channels, depended entirely upon
the writings and translations of the very Jews he was helping to
persecute. Schoolmen were too little conversant with Greek to read
Aristotle in the original, and so had to content themselves with
accepting the Judæo-Arabic construction put upon the Greek sage's
teachings.

Besides acting as intermediaries, Jews made original contributions to
scholastic philosophy. For instance, Maimonides, the first to reconcile
Aristotle's teachings with biblical theology, was the originator of the
method adopted by schoolmen in the case of Aristotelian principles at
variance with their dogmas. Frederick II., the liberal emperor, employed
Jewish scholars and translators at his court; among them Jacob ben
Abba-Mari ben Anatoli, to whom an annuity was paid for translating
Aristotelian works. Michael Scotus, the imperial astrologer, was his
intimate friend. His contemporaries were chiefly popular philosophers or
mystics, excepting only the prominent Provençal Jacob ben Machir, or
Profatius Judæus, as he was called, a member of the Tibbon family of
translators. His observations on the inclination of the earth's axis
were used later by Copernicus as the basis of further investigations. He
was a famous teacher at the Montpellier academy, which reminds me to
mention that Jews were prominently identified with the founding and the
success of the medical schools at Montpellier and Salerno, they, indeed,
being almost the only physicians in all parts of the known world.
Salerno, in turn, suggests Italy, where at that period translations were
made from Latin into Hebrew. Hillel ben Samuel, for instance, the same
who carried on a lively philosophic correspondence with another
distinguished Jew, Maestro Isaac Gayo, the pope's physician, translated
some of Thomas Aquinas's writings, Bruno di Lungoburgo's book on
surgery, and various other works, from Latin into Hebrew.

These successors of the great intellects of the golden age of
neo-Hebraic literature, thoroughly conversant with Arabic literature,
busied themselves with rendering accessible to literary Europe the
treasury of Indian and Greek fables. Their translations and compilations
have peculiar value in the history of literary development. During the
middle ages, when the memory of ancient literature had perished, they
were the means of preserving the romances, fairy tales, and fables that
have descended, by way of Spain and Arabia, from classical antiquity
and the many-hued Oriental world to our modern literatures. Between the
eleventh and the thirteenth century, the foundations were laid for our
narrative literature, demonstrating the importance of delight in fable
lore, stories of travel, and all sorts of narratives, for to it we owe
the creation of new and the transformation of old, literary forms.

In Germany at that time, a Jewish minnesinger and strolling minstrel,
Süsskind von Trimberg, went up and down the land, from castle to castle,
with the poets' guild; while Santob di Carrion, a Jewish troubadour,
ventured to impart counsel and moral lessons to the Castilian king Don
Pedro before his assembled people. A century later, another Jew, Samson
Pnie, of Strasburg, lent his assistance to the two German poets at work
upon the continuation of _Parzival_. The historians of German literature
have not laid sufficient stress upon the share of the Jews, heavily
oppressed and persecuted though they were, in the creation of national
epics and romances of chivalry from the thirteenth to the fifteenth
century. German Jews, being more than is generally recognized diligent
readers of the poets, were well acquainted with the drift of mediæval
poetry, and to this familiarity a new department of Jewish literature
owed its rise and development. It is said that a Hebrew version of the
Arthurian cycle was made as early as the thirteenth century, and at the
end of the period we run across epic poems on Bible characters, composed
in the _Nibelungen_ metre, in imitation of old German legend lore and
national poetry.

If German Jews found heart for literary interests, it may be assumed as
a matter of course that Spanish and Provençal Jews participated in the
advancement of their respective national literatures and in Troubadour
poetry. In these countries, too, the new taste for popular literature,
especially in the form of fables, was made to serve moral ends. A Jew,
Berachya ben Natronaï, was the precursor of Marie de France, the famous
French fabulist, and La Fontaine and Lessing are indebted to him for
some of their material. As in the case of Aristotelian philosophy and of
Greek and Arabic medical science, Jews assumed the rôle of mediators in
the transmission of fables. Indian fables reached their Arabic guise
either directly or by way of Persian and Greek; thence they passed into
Hebrew and Latin translations, and through these last forms became the
property of the European languages. For instance, the Hebrew translation
of the old Sanskrit fox fables was the one of greatest service in
literary evolution. The translator of the fox fables is credited also
with the translation of the romance of "The Seven Wise Masters," under
the title _Mishlé Sandabar_. These two works gave the impetus to a great
series in Occidental literature, and it seems altogether probable that
Europe's first acquaintance with them dates from their Hebrew
translation.

In Arabic poetry, too, many a Jew deservedly attained to celebrity.
Abraham ibn Sahl won such renown that the Arabs, notorious for
parsimony, gave ten gold pieces for one of his songs. Other poets have
come down to us by name, and Joseph Ezobi, whom Reuchlin calls _Judæorum
poeta dulcissimus_, went so far as to extol Arabic beyond Hebrew poetry.
He was the first to pronounce the dictum famous in Buffon's repetition:
"The style is the man himself." Provence, the land of song, produced
Kalonymos ben Kalonymos (Maestro Calo), known to his brethren in faith
not only as a poet, but also as a scholar, whose Hebrew translations
from the Arabic are of most important works on philosophy, medicine, and
mathematics. As Anatoli had worked under Emperor Frederick II., so
Kalonymos was attached to Robert of Naples, patron of Jewish scholars.
At the same time with the Spanish and the German minstrel, there
flourished in Rome Immanuel ben Solomon, the friend of Dante, upon whose
death he wrote an Italian sonnet, and whose _Divina Commedia_ inspired a
part of his poetical works also describing a visit to paradise and hell.

With the assiduous cultivation of romantic poetry, which was gradually
usurping the place of moral romances and novels, grew the importance of
Oriental legends and traditions, so pregnant with literary suggestions.
This is attested by the use made of the Hebrew translation of Indian
fables mentioned before, and of the famous collection of tales, the
_Disciplina clericalis_ by the baptized Jew Petrus Alphonsus. The Jews
naturally introduced many of their own peculiar traditions, and thus can
be explained the presence of tales from the Talmud and the Midrash in
our modern fairy tale books.

It is necessary to note again that the Jews in turn submitted to the
influence of foreign literatures. Immanuel Romi, for example, at his
best, is an exponent of Provençal versification and scholastic
philosophy, while his lapses testify to the self-complacency and levity
characteristic of the times. Yehuda Romano, one of his contemporaries,
is said to have been teacher to the king of Naples. He was the first Jew
to attain to a critical appreciation of the vagaries of scholasticism,
but his claim to mention rests upon his translations from the Latin.

As Jews assisted at the birth of Arabic, French, and German, so they
have a share in the beginnings of Spanish, literature. Jews must be
credited with the first "Chronicle of the Cid," with the romance, _Comte
Lyonnais, Palanus_, with the first collection of tales, the first chess
poems, and the first troubadour songs. Again, the oldest collection of
the last into a _cancionera_ was made by the Jew Juan Alfonso de Bæna.

Even distant Persia has proofs to show of Jewish ability and energy in
those days. One Jew composed an epic on a biblical subject in the
Persian language, another translated the Psalms into the vernacular.

The most prominent Jewish exponent of philosophy in this age of
strenuous interest in metaphysical speculations and contests was Levi
ben Gerson (Leon di Bannolas), theologian, scientist, physician, and
astronomer. One of his ancestors, Gerson ben Solomon, had written a work
typical of the state of the natural sciences in his day. Levi ben
Gerson's chief work became famous not among Jews alone. It was referred
to in words of praise by Pico della Mirandola, Reuchlin, Kepler, and
other Christian thinkers. He was the inventor of an astronomical
instrument, a description of which was translated into Latin at the
express command of Pope Clement VI., and carefully studied by Kepler.
Besides, Levi ben Gerson was the author of an arithmetical work. In
those days, in fact up to the seventeenth century, there was but a faint
dividing line between astronomy and mathematics, as between medicine and
natural history. John of Seville was a notable mathematician, the
compiler of a practical arithmetic, the first to make mention of decimal
fractions, which possibly may have been his invention, and in the Zohar,
the text-book of mediæval Jewish mysticism, which appeared centuries
before Copernicus's time, the cause of the succession of day and night
is stated to be the earth's revolution on its axis.

In this great translation period scarcely a single branch of human
science escaped the mental avidity of Jews. They found worthy of
translation such essays as "Rules for the Shoeing and Care of Horses in
Royal Stables" and "The Art of Carving and Serving at Princely Boards."
Translations of works on scholasticism now took rank beside those from
Greek and Arabic philosophers, and to translations from the Arabic into
Hebrew were added translations from and into Latin, or even into the
vernacular idiom wherever literary forms had developed. The bold
assertion can be made good that not a single prominent work of ancient
science was left untranslated. On the other hand it is hard to speculate
what would have been the fate of these treasures of antiquity without
Jewish intermediation. Doubtless an important factor in the work was the
encouragement given Jewish scholars by enlightened rulers, such as
Emperor Frederick II., Charles and Robert of Anjou, Jayme I. of Aragon,
and Alfonso X. of Castile, and by popes, and private patrons of
learning. Mention has been made of Jewish contributions to the work of
the medical schools of Montpellier and Salerno. Under Jayme I. Christian
and Jewish savants of Barcelona worked together harmoniously to promote
the cause of civilization and culture in their native land. The first to
use the Catalan dialect for literary purposes was the Jew Yehuda ben
Astruc, and under Alfonso (X.) the Wise, Jews again attained to
prominence in the king's favorite science of astronomy. The Alfonsine
Tables were chiefly the work of Isaac ibn Sid, a Toledo _chazan_
(precentor). In general, the results reached by Jewish scholarship at
Alfonso's court were of the utmost importance, having been largely
instrumental in establishing in the age of Tycho de Brahe and Kepler the
fundamental principles of astronomy and a correct view of the orbits of
the heavenly bodies. Equal suggestiveness characterizes Jewish research
in mathematics, a science to which, rising above the level of
intermediaries and translators, Jews made original contributions of
importance, the first being Isaac Israeli's "The Foundation of the
Universe." Basing his observations on Maimuni's and Abraham ben Chiya's
statement of the sphericity of the earth, Israeli showed that the
heavenly bodies do not seem to occupy the place in which they would
appear to an observer at the centre of the earth, and that the two
positions differ by a certain angle, since known as parallax in the
terminology of science. To Judah Hakohen, a scholar in correspondence
with Alfonso the Wise, is ascribed the arrangement of the stars in
forty-eight constellations, and to another Jew, Esthori Hafarchi, we owe
the first topographical description of Palestine, whither he emigrated
when the Jews were expelled from France by Philip the Fair.

Meanwhile the condition of the Jews, viewed from without and from
within, had become most pitiable. The Kabbala lured into her charmed
circle the strongest Jewish minds. Scientific aspirations seemed
completely extinguished. Even the study of the Talmud was abandoning
simple, undistorted methods of interpretation, and espousing the
hairsplitting dialectics of the northern French school. Synagogue poetry
was languishing, and general culture found no votaries among Jews.
Occasionally only the religious disputations between Jews and Christians
induced some few to court acquaintance with secular branches of
learning. In the fourteenth century Chasdaï Crecas was the only
philosopher with an original system, which in its arguments on free
will and the nature of God anticipated the views of one greater than
himself, who, however, had a different purpose in view. That later and
greater philosopher, to whom the world is indebted for the evangel of
modern life, was likewise a Jew, a descendant of Spanish-Jewish
fugitives. His name is Baruch Spinoza.

However sad their fortunes, the literature of the Jews never entirely
eschewed the consideration of subjects of general interest. This
receives curious confirmation from the re-introduction of Solomon
Gabirol's peculiar views into Jewish religious philosophy, by way of
Christian scholasticism, as formulated especially by Thomas Aquinas, the
_Doctor angelicus_.

The Renaissance and the humanistic movement also reveal Jewish
influences at work. The spirit of liberty abroad in the earth passed
through the halls of Israel, clearing the path thenceforth to be trodden
by men. Again the learned were compelled to engage the good offices of
the Jews, the custodians of biblical antiquity. The invention of the
printing press acted as a wonderful stimulus to the development of
Jewish literature. The first products of the new machine were Hebrew