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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 aesthetic elements been dwelt upon
along with, often in defiance of, dogmatic considerations. Up to this
time, Ernest Meier and Theodor Noeldeke 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 mediaeval poetry so
arbitrarily interpreted. As a natural consequence, the aesthetic
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 archaeology, 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 aesthetic 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 naivest 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 Judaeo-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 Aramaean, 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 Judaeo-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 _litterateurs_:
the dramatist Ezekielos; Jason; Philo the Elder; Arist