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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Renascence of Hebrew Literature
+(1743-1885), by Nahum Slouschz
+
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+Title: The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885)
+
+Author: Nahum Slouschz
+
+Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7530]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on May 14, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RENASCENCE HEBREW LIT. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Blain Nelson
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE
+(1743-1885)
+
+BY NAHUM SLOUSCHZ
+
+_Translated from the French_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
+
+The modern chapter in the history of Hebrew literature herewith
+presented to English readers was written by Dr. Nahum Slouschz as his
+thesis for the doctorate at the University of Paris, and published in
+book form in 1902. A few years later (1906-1907), the author himself put
+his Essay into Hebrew, and it was brought out as a publication of the
+_Tushiyah_, under the title _Korot ha-Safrut ha-'Ibrit ha-
+Hadashah_. The Hebrew is not, however, a mere translation of the
+French book. The material in the latter was revised and extended, and
+the presentation was considerably changed, in view of the different
+attitude toward the subject naturally taken by Hebrew readers, as
+compared with a Western public, Jewish or non-Jewish.
+
+The present English translation, which has had the benefit of the
+author's revision, purports to be a rendition from the French. But the
+Hebrew recasting of the book has been consulted at almost every point,
+and the Hebrew works quoted by Dr. Slouschz were resorted to directly,
+though, as far as seemed practicable, the translator paid regard to the
+author's conception and Occidentalization of the Hebrew passages
+revealed in his translation of them into French.
+
+HENRIETTA SZOLD.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CONTENTS
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+CHAPTER I
+  In Italy--Moses Hayyim Luzzatto
+
+CHAPTER II
+  In Germany--The Meassefim
+
+CHAPTER III
+  In Poland and Austria--The Galician School
+
+CHAPTER IV
+  In Lithuania--Humanism in Russia
+
+CHAPTER V
+  The Romantic Movement--Abraham Mapu
+
+CHAPTER VI
+  The Emancipation Movement--The Realists
+
+CHAPTER VII
+  The Conflict with Rabbinism--Judah Leon Gordon
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+  Reformers and Conservatives--The Two Extremes
+
+CHAPTER IX
+  The National Progressive Movement--Perez Smolenskin
+
+CHAPTER X
+  The Contributors to _Ha-Shahar_
+
+CHAPTER XI
+  The Novels of Smolenskin
+
+CHAPTER XII
+  Contemporaneous Literature
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+INDEX
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+It was long believed that Hebrew had no place among the modern languages
+as a literary vehicle. The circumstance that the Jews of Western
+countries had given up the use of their national language outside of the
+synagogue was not calculated to discredit the belief. The Hebrew, it was
+generally held, had once been alive, but now it belonged among the dead
+languages, in the same sense as the Greek and the Latin. And when from
+time to time some new work in Hebrew, or even a periodical publication,
+reached a library, the cataloguer classified it with theologic and
+Rabbinic treatises, without taking the trouble to obtain information as
+to the subject of the book or the purpose of the journal. In point of
+fact, in the large majority of cases they were far enough removed from
+Rabbinic controversy.
+
+Sometimes it happened that one or another Hebraist was overcome with
+astonishment at the sight of a Hebrew translation of a modern author.
+And he stopped at that. He never went so far as to enable himself to
+pass judgment upon it from the critical or the literary point of view.
+To what purpose? he would ask himself. Hebrew has been dead these many
+centuries, and to use it is an anachronism. He considered it only a
+curiosity of literature, literary sleight of hand, nothing more.
+
+The bare possibility of the existence of a modern literature in Hebrew
+seemed so strange, so improbable, that the best-informed circles refused
+to entertain the notion seriously--perhaps not without some semblance of
+a reason for their incredulity.
+
+The history of the development of modern Hebrew literature, its
+character, the extraordinary conditions fostering it, its very
+existence, are of a sort to surprise one who has not kept in touch with
+the internal struggles, the intellectual currents that have agitated the
+Judaism of Eastern Europe in the course of the past century.
+
+So far from deserving a reputation for casuistry, modern Hebrew
+literature is, if anything, distinctly rationalistic in character. It is
+anti-dogmatic and anti-Rabbinic. Its avowed aim is to enlighten the
+Jewish masses that have remained faithful to religious tradition, and to
+interpenetrate the Jewish communities with the conceptions of modern
+life.
+
+Since the French Revolution the ghetto has produced valiant champions of
+every good cause, politicians, legislators, poets, who have taken part
+in all the movements of their day. But it has also given birth to a
+legion of men of action sprung from the people and remaining with the
+people, who, in the name of liberty of conscience and in the name of
+science, fought the same battles upon the field of traditional Judaism
+that the others were fighting outside.
+
+A whole school of literary humanists undertook the work of emancipating
+the Jewish masses, and pursued it for several generations with admirable
+zeal. Hebrew became an excellent instrument of propaganda in their
+hands. Thanks to their efforts, the language of the prophets,
+inarticulate for nearly two thousand years, was developed to a striking
+degree of perfection. It was shown to be a flexible medium, varied
+enough to serve as the vehicle for any modern idea.
+
+The great wonder is that this modern literature in Hebrew made itself
+without teachers, without patrons, without academies and literary
+_salons_, without encouragement in any shape or form. Nor is that
+all. It was impeded by inconceivable obstacles, ranging from the
+fraudulence of an absurd censorship to the persecution of fanatics. In
+such circumstances, only the purest idealism, and the most
+disinterested, could have ventured to enter the lists, and could have
+come off the victor.
+
+While the emancipated Jew of the Occident replaced Hebrew by the
+vernacular of his adopted country; while the Rabbis were distrustful of
+whatever is not religion; and rich patrons refused to support a
+literature that had not the _entrée_ of good society,--while these
+held aloof, the _Maskil_ ("the intellectual") of the small
+provincial town, the Polish vagabond _Mehabber_ ("author"),
+despised and unknown, often a martyr to his conviction, who devoted
+himself heart, soul, and might to maintaining honorably the literary
+traditions of Hebrew,--he alone remained faithful to what has been the
+true mission of the Bible language since its beginnings.
+
+It is a renewal of the ancient literary impulse of the humble, the
+disinherited, whence first sprang the Bible. It is a repetition of the
+phenomenon of the popular prophet-orators, reappearing in modern Hebrew
+garb.
+
+The return to the language and the ideas of an eventful past marks a
+decisive stage in the perturbed career of the Jewish people. It
+indicates the re-awakening of national feeling.
+
+The history of modern Hebrew literature thus forms an extremely
+instructive page in the history of the Jewish people. It is especially
+interesting from the point of view of social psychology, furnishing, as
+it does, valuable documents upon the course taken by new ideas in
+impregnating surroundings that are characteristically obdurate toward
+intellectual suggestions from without. The century-long struggle between
+free-thinking and blind faith, between common sense and absurdity
+consecrated by age and exalted by suffering, reveals an intense social
+life, a continual clashing of ideas and sentiments.
+
+It is a literature that offers us the grievous spectacle of poets and
+writers who are constantly expressing their anxiety lest it disappear
+with them, and yet devote themselves unremittingly to its cultivation,
+with all the ardor of despair. At their side, however, we see optimistic
+dreamers, worthy disciples of the prophets. In the midst of the ruin of
+all that made the past glorious, and in the face of the downfall of
+cherished hopes, they lose not an iota of their faith in the future of
+their people, in its speedy regeneration.
+
+What we have before us is the issue of the supreme internal struggle
+that engaged the great masses of the Jews torn from their moorings by
+the disquietude of modern existence. A fervent desire for a better
+social life took possession of all minds. The conviction that the
+eternal people cannot disappear seems to have regained ground and to
+have been stronger than ever, and the current again set in the direction
+of auto-emancipation.
+
+It is the true literature of the Jewish people that we are called upon
+to examine, the product of the ghetto, the reflex of its psychic states,
+the expression of its misery, its suffering, and also its hope. The
+people of the Bible is not dead, and in its very own language we must
+seek the true Jewish spirit, the national soul.
+
+Let not the reader expect to find perfection of form, pure art, in its
+often monotonous lyric poetry, or its prolix, didactic novels. The
+authors of the ghetto felt too much, suffered too much, were too much
+under the dominance of a life of misery, a semi-Asiatic, semi-mediaeval
+_régime_, to have had heart for the cultivation of mere form. Does
+the Song of Songs fall short of being a literary document of the first
+order because it does not equal the dramas of Euripides in artistic
+completeness? It is conceded that the proper aim of the artist is art,
+finished and perfect art, but to the philosopher, the social
+investigator, the important thing is the advance of ideas.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The object of the writer in presenting this essay to the public was not
+to presume to give a detailed exposition of the development of modern
+Hebrew literature, accomplishing itself under the most complex of social
+and political conditions and in a social _milieu_ totally unknown
+to the public at large. That would have led too far. It was not even
+possible to give an adequate idea of all the authors requiring mention
+within the limited frame adopted perforce. Besides, nothing or almost
+nothing existed in the way of monographs that might have facilitated the
+task. [Footnote: In point of fact, all that can be cited are the
+following: the admirable biographical essays on Mapu, Smolenskin, etc.,
+by Reuben Brainin; those of S. Bernfeld on Rapoport, etc., these two
+critics writing in Hebrew; and the sketch of our subject by M. Klausner,
+in the Russian language. Besides, mention may be made of an article in
+the _Revue des Revues_, by M. Ludvipol, of Paris. In spite of the
+diversity of schools and the conditions giving rise to them, which are
+here to be treated for the first time from the point of view of a modern
+history of literature, the reader will readily convince himself that the
+subject lacks neither coherence nor unity. It is superfluous to say that
+in this first attempt at a history of modern Hebrew literature, the
+grouping of movements and schools borrowed from the Occidental
+literatures is bound to have only relative value.]
+
+The aim set up by the present writer is merely to follow up the various
+stages through which modern Hebrew literature has passed, to deduce and
+specify the general principles that have moulded it, and analyze the
+literary and social value of the works produced by the representative
+writers of the epoch embraced.
+
+In a word, the object is to show how Hebrew poetry was emancipated from
+the tradition of the Middle Ages under the influence of the Italian
+humanists, how it underwent a process of modernization, and served as
+the model for a literary renascence in Germany and Austria. [Footnote:
+Especially Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, in his "Glory to the Righteous",
+published in 1743, which has been made the point of departure in the
+present inquiry.] In these two countries Hebrew letters were enriched
+and perfected from the point of view of form as well as content.
+Finally, due to favorable circumstances, the Hebrew language captured
+its place as the literary and national language among the Jews of
+Poland, and particularly of Lithuania.
+
+In this progress eastward, Hebrew literature has never been faithless to
+its mission. Two currents of ideas, more or less distinct, characterize
+it. On the one hand is the intellectual emancipation of the Jewish
+masses, which had fallen into ignorance, and, as a consequence, the
+conflict with prejudice and Rabbinic dogmatism; and, on the other hand,
+the awakening of national sentiment and Jewish solidarity. These two
+currents of ideas finally flow together in contemporaneous literature,
+in the creation of the national Jewish movement in its various
+modifications. During a period of about twenty years, since 1882, the
+course of events has forced the national emancipation of the Jewish
+masses upon their educated leaders. By the same token, Hebrew has been
+assigned a dominating position in all vital questions agitating Judaism,
+and there has been brought about a literary development that is truly
+significant.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+IN ITALY
+
+MOSES HAYYIM LUZZATTO
+
+
+In its precise sense, the term Renascence cannot be applied to the
+movement that asserted itself in Hebrew literature at the end of the
+fifteenth century, as little as the term Decadence can be applied to the
+epoch preceding it.
+
+Long before Dante and Boccaccio, as far back as the eleventh century,
+Hebrew literature, particularly in Spain, and to a certain extent also
+in the Provence, had reached a degree of development unknown in European
+languages during the Middle Ages.
+
+Though the persecutions toward the end of the fourteenth and the
+fifteenth century crushed the Jewish communities in Spain and in the
+Provence, they yet did not succeed in annihilating completely the
+intellectual traditions of the Spanish and French Jews. Remnants of
+Jewish science and Jewish literature were carried by the refugees into
+the countries of their adoption, and in the Netherlands, in Turkey, even
+in Palestine, schools were founded after a short interval.
+
+But a literary revival was possible only in Italy. Elsewhere, in the
+backward countries of the North and the East, the Jews, smarting from
+blows recently inflicted, withdrew within themselves. They took refuge
+in the most sombre of mysticisms, or, at least, in dogmatism of the
+narrowest kind. The Italian Jewish communities, thanks to the more
+bearable conditions prevailing around them, were in a position to carry
+on the literary traditions of Jewish Spain. In Italy thinkers arose, and
+writers, and poets. There was Azariah dei Rossi, the father of
+historical criticism; Messer Leon, the subtle philosopher; Elijah
+Levita, the grammarian; Leon of Modena, the keen-witted rationalist;
+Joseph Delmedigo, of encyclopedic mind; the Frances brothers, both
+poets, who combated mysticism; and many others too numerous to mention.
+[Footnote: For the greater part of these writers, see Gustav Karpeles,
+_Geschichte der jüdischen Literatur_, 2 vols., Berlin, 1886.]
+These, together with a few stray writers in Turkey and the Netherlands,
+imparted a certain degree of distinction to the Hebrew literature of the
+sixteenth and the seventeenth century. Heirs to the Spanish traditions,
+they nevertheless were inclined to oppose the spirit and particularly
+the rules of Arabic prosody, which had put manacles upon Hebrew poetry.
+Their efforts were directed to the end of introducing new literary forms
+and new concepts into Hebrew literature.
+
+They did not meet with notable success. The greater number of Jewish men
+of letters, whose knowledge of foreign literatures was meagre, were
+destined to remain in the thrall of the Middle Ages until a much later
+time. As to the unlettered, they preferred to make use of the
+vernacular, which presented fewer difficulties than the Hebrew.
+
+The task of tearing asunder the chains that hampered the evolution of
+Hebrew in a modern sense devolved upon an Italian Jew of amazing talent.
+He became the true, the sovereign inaugurator of the Hebrew Renascence.
+
+Moses Hayyim Luzzatto was born at Padua, in 1707. He was descended from
+a family celebrated for the Rabbinic scholars and the writers it had
+given to Judaism, a celebrity which it has continued to earn for itself
+down to our own day.
+
+His education was strictly Rabbinic, consisting chiefly of the study of
+the Talmud, under the direction of a Polish teacher, for the Polish
+Rabbis had attained to a position of great esteem as early as Luzzatto's
+day. He lost little time in initiating his pupil into the mysteries of
+the Kabbalah, and so the early childhood years of our poet were a sad
+time spent in the stifling atmosphere of the ghetto. Happily for him, it
+was an Italian ghetto, whence secular learning had not been banished
+completely.
+
+While pursuing his religious studies, the child became acquainted with
+the Hebrew poetry of the Middle Ages and with the Italian literature of
+his own time. In the latter accomplishment lies his superiority to the
+Hebrew scholars of other countries, who were shut off from every outside
+influence, and held fast to obsolete forms and ideas.
+
+From early youth Luzzatto showed remarkable aptitude for poetry. At the
+age of seventeen he composed a drama in verse entitled "Samson and
+Delilah". A little later he published a work on prosody, _Leshon
+Limmudim_ ("The Language of Learners", Mantua, 1727), and dedicated
+it to his Polish teacher. The young man then decided to break with the
+poetry of the Middle Ages, which hampered the development of the Hebrew
+language. His allegorical drama, _Migdal 'Oz_ ("The Tower of
+Victory"), inspired by the _Pastor fido_ of Guarini, was the first
+token of this reform. Its style is marked by an elegance and vividness
+not attained since the close of the Bible. [Footnote: Though it was
+widely circulated in manuscript, _Migdal 'Oz_ did not appear in
+print until 1837, at Leipsic, edited by M. H. Letteris.] In spite of its
+prolixity and the absence of all dramatic action, it continues to this
+day to make its appeal to the fancy of the literary. A poetic breath
+animates it, and it is characterized by the artistic taste that is one
+of the distinctions of its author.
+
+It was a new world that _Migdal 'Oz_, by its laudation of rural
+life, disclosed to the votaries of a literature the most enlightened
+representatives of which refused to see in the Song of Songs anything
+but religious symbolism, so far had their appreciation of reality and
+nature degenerated.
+
+In imitation of the pastorals of his time, though it may be with more
+genuine feeling, Luzzatto sings the praises of the shepherd's life:
+
+  "How beautiful, how sweet, is the lot of the young shepherd of
+  flocks! Between the folds he leads his sheep, now walking, now
+  running hither and thither. Poor though he is, he is full of joy.
+  His countenance reflects the gladness of his heart. In the shade
+  of trees he reposes, and apprehends no danger. Poor though he is,
+  yet he is happy....
+
+  "The maiden who charms his eyes, and attracts his desire, in whom
+  his heart has pleasure, returns his affection with responsive
+  gladness. They know naught but delight--neither separation nor
+  obstacle affrights them. They sport together, they enjoy their
+  happiness, with none to disturb. When weariness steals over him,
+  he forgets his toil on her bosom; the light of her countenance
+  swiftly banishes all thought of his travail. Poor though he is,
+  yet he is happy!" (Act III, scene I.)
+
+Alas, this call to a more natural life, after centuries of physical
+degeneration and suppression of all feeling for nature, could not be
+understood, nor even taken seriously, in surroundings in which air,
+sunlight, the very right to live, had been refused or measured out
+penuriously. The drama remained in manuscript, and did not become known
+to the public at large.
+
+It was Luzzatto's chief work that exercised decisive influence on the
+development of Hebrew literature. _La-Yesharim Tehillah_ ("Glory to
+the Righteous"), another allegorical drama, which appeared in 1743, is
+considered a model of its kind until this day. It introduced a new
+epoch, the modern epoch, in the history of Hebrew literature. The master
+stands revealed by every touch. Everything betrays his skill--the style,
+at once elegant, significant, and precise, recalling the pure style of
+the Bible, the fresh and glowing figures of speech, the original poetic
+inspiration, and the thought, which bears the imprint of a profound
+philosophy and a high moral sense, and is free from all trace of
+mystical exaggeration.
+
+From the point of view of dramatic art, the piece is not of the highest
+interest. The subject, purely moral and didactic, gives no opportunity
+for a serious study of character, and, as in all allegorical pieces, the
+dramatic action is weak.
+
+The theme was not new. Even in Hebrew and before Luzzatto, it had been
+treated several times. It is the struggle between Justice and Injustice,
+between Truth and Falsehood. The allegorical personages who take part in
+the action are, arrayed on one side, Yosher (Righteousness) aided by
+Sekel (Reason) and Mishpat (Justice), and, on the other side, Sheker
+(Falsehood) and her auxiliaries, Tarmit (Deceit), Dimyon (Imagination),
+and Taäwah (Passion). The two hostile camps strive together for the
+favor of the beautiful maiden Tehillah (Glory), the daughter of Hamon
+(the Crowd). The struggle is unequal. Imagination and Passion carry the
+day in the face of Truth and Righteousness. Then the inevitable _deus
+ex machina_, in this case God Himself, intervenes, and Justice is
+again enthroned.
+
+This simple and not strikingly original frame encloses beautiful
+descriptions of nature and, above all, sublime thoughts, which make the
+piece one of the gems of Hebrew poetry. The predominant idea of the book
+is to glorify God and admire the "innumerable wonders of the Creator."
+
+  "All who seek will find them, in every living being, in every
+  plant, in every lifeless object, in all things on earth and in
+  the sea, in whatsoever the human eye rests upon. Happy he who
+  hath found knowledge and wisdom, happy he if their speech hath
+  fallen upon an attentive ear!" (Act II, scene I.)
+
+But the Creator is not capricious. Reason and Truth are His attributes,
+and they appear in all His acts. Humanity is a mob, and two opposing
+forces contend for the mastery over it: Truth with Righteousness on one
+side, Falsehood and her ilk on the other. Each of these two forces seeks
+to rule the crowd and prevail in triumph.
+
+The Reason personified by the poet has nothing in common with the
+positive Reason of the rationalists, which takes the world to be
+directed by mechanical and immutable laws. It is supreme Reason, obeying
+moral laws too sublimated for our powers of appreciation. How could it
+be otherwise? Are we not the continual plaything of our senses, which
+are incapable of grasping absolute truths, and deceive us even about the
+appearance of things?
+
+  "Truly, our eyes are deluded, for eyes of flesh they are.
+  Therefore they change truth into falsehood, darkness they make
+  light, and light darkness. Lo, a small chance, a mere accident,
+  suffices to distort our view of tangible things; how much more do
+  we stray from the truth with things beyond the reach of our
+  senses? See the oars in the water. They seem crooked and twisted.
+  Yet we know them to be straight....
+
+  "Verily, man's heart is like the ocean ceaselessly agitated by
+  the battling winds. As the waves roll forward and backward in
+  perpetual motion, so our hearts are stirred by never-ending pain
+  and trouble, and as our emotions sway our will, so our senses
+  suffer change within us. We see only what we desire to see, hear
+  only what we long to hear, what our imagination conjures up."
+  (Act II, scene i.)
+
+This philosophy of externalism and of the impotence of the human mind
+threw the poet, believer and devotee of the Kabbalah, into a most
+dangerous mysticism. He continued to write for some time: an imitation
+of the Psalms; a treatise on logic, _Ha-Higgayon_, not without
+value; another treatise on ethics, _Mesilat Yesharim_ ("The Path of
+the Righteous"); and a large number of poetic pieces and Kabbalistic
+compositions, the greater part of which were never published; and this
+enumeration does not exhaust the tale of his literary achievements.
+[Footnote: The greater part of Luzzatto's works have never been
+published.] Then his powers were used up, the tension of his mind
+increased to the last degree; he lost his moral equilibrium. The day
+came when he strayed so far afield as to believe himself called to play
+the rôle of the Messiah. The Rabbis, alarmed at the gloomy prospect of a
+repetition of the pseudo-Messianic movements which time and again had
+shaken the Jewish world to its foundations, launched the ban against
+him. His fate was sealed by his ingenious imitation of the Zohar,
+written in Aramaic, of which only fragments have been preserved. Obliged
+to leave Italy, Luzzatto wandered through Germany, and took up his abode
+at Amsterdam. He enjoyed the gratification of being welcomed there by
+literary men among his people as a veritable master. At Amsterdam he
+wrote his last works. But he did not remain there long. He went to seek
+Divine inspiration at Safed in Palestine, the far-famed centre of the
+Kabbalah. There he died, cut off by the plague at the age of forty.
+
+Such was the sad life of the poet, a victim of the abnormal surroundings
+in which he lived. Under more favorable conditions, he might have
+achieved that which would have won him universal recognition. His main
+distinction is that he released the Hebrew language forever from the
+forms and ideas of the Middle Ages, and connected it with the circle of
+modern literatures. He bequeathed to posterity a model of classic
+poetry, which ushered in Hebrew humanism, the return to the style and
+the manner of the Bible, in the same way as the general humanistic
+movement led the European mind back upon its own steps along the paths
+marked out by the classic languages. No sooner did his work become known
+in the north countries and in the Orient than it raised up imitators.
+Mendes and Wessely, leaders of literary revivals, the one at Amsterdam,
+the other in Germany, are but the disciples and successors of the
+Italian poet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+IN GERMANY
+
+THE MEASSEFIM
+
+
+The intellectual emancipation of the Jews in Germany anticipated their
+political and social emancipation. That is a truth generally
+acknowledged. Long secluded from all foreign ideas, confined within
+religious and dogmatic bounds, German Judaism was a sharer in the
+physical and social misery of the Judaism of Slavic countries. The
+philosophic and tolerant ideas in vogue at the end of the eighteenth
+century startled it somewhat out of its torpor. In the measure in which
+those ideas gained a foothold in the communities, conditions, at least
+in the larger centres, took on a comfortable aspect, with more or less
+assurance of permanent well-being. The first contact of the ghetto with
+the enlightened circles of the day gave the impetus to a marked movement
+toward an inner emancipation. Associations of _Maskilim_
+("intellectuals") were formed at Berlin, Hamburg, and Breslau. "The
+Seekers of the Good and the Noble" (_Shohare ha-Tob weha-Tushiyah_)
+should be mentioned particularly. They were composed of educated men
+familiar with Occidental culture, and animated by the desire to make the
+light of that culture penetrate to the heart of the provincial
+communities. These "intellectuals" entered the lists against religious
+fanaticism and casuistic methods, seeking to replace them by liberal
+ideas and scientific research. Two schools, headed respectively by the
+philosopher Mendelssohn and the poet Wessely, had their origin in this
+movement--the school of the _Biurists_, deriving their name from
+the _Biur_, a commentary on the Bible, and the school of the
+_Meassefim_, from _Meassef_, "Collector." [Footnote: A
+specimen of the _Biur_ appeared at Amsterdam, in 1778, under the
+title _'Alim le-Terufah_.] The former defended Judaism against the
+enemies from without, and combated the prejudices and the ignorance of
+the Jews themselves. The Meassefim took as their sphere of activity the
+reform of the education of the young and the revival of the Hebrew
+language. The two schools agreed that to elevate the moral and social
+status of the Jews, it was necessary to remove first the external
+peculiarities separating them from their fellow-citizens. A new
+translation of the Bible into literary German, undertaken by
+Mendelssohn, was to deal the death blow to the Jewish-German
+(_jüdisch-deutsch_) jargon, and the _Biur_, the commentary on
+the Bible mentioned above, produced by the co-operation of a galaxy of
+scholars and men of culture, was expected to sweep aside all mystic and
+allegoric interpretations of the Scriptures and introduce the rational
+and scientific method.
+
+The results achieved by the Biurists tended beyond a doubt toward the
+elevation of the mass of the Jews. One of these results was, as had been
+hoped for, the dislodgment of the Jewish-German by the spread of the
+pure German. The influence wielded by the Biurists, so far from stopping
+with the German Jews, extended to the Jewish communities of Eastern
+Europe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In 1784-5, two Hebrew writers, Isaac Euchel and Mendel Bresslau,
+undertook to publish a magazine, entitled _Ha-Meassef_ ("The
+Collector"), whence the name Meassefim. The enterprise was under the
+auspices of Mendelssohn and Wessely. A double aim was to be served. The
+periodical was to promote the spread of knowledge and modern ideas in
+the Hebrew language, the only language available for the Jews of the
+ghetto; and at the same time it was to promote the purification of
+Hebrew, which had degenerated in the Rabbinical schools. Its readers
+were to be familiarized with the social and aesthetic demands of modern
+life, and induced to rid themselves of ingrained peculiarities. Besides
+its success in these directions, it must be set to the credit of _Ha-
+Meassef_, that it was the first agency to gather under one banner all
+the champions of the _Haskalah_ in the several countries of Europe.
+It supplied the link connecting them with one another. [Footnote:
+Properly speaking, the term Haskalah includes the notion at once of
+humanism and humanitarianism.]
+
+From the literary point of view _Ha-Meassef_ is of subordinate
+interest. Its contributors were devoid of taste. They offered their
+readers mainly questionable imitations of the works of the German
+romantic school. The periodical brought no new talent truly worthy of
+the description into notice. Whatever reputation its principal writers
+enjoyed had been won before the appearance of _Ha-Meassef_. They
+owed their fame primarily to the favor acquired for Hebrew letters
+through the efforts of Luzzatto's disciples. [Footnote: Since the
+appearance of _La-Yesharim Tehillah_ by Luzzatto, imitations of it
+without number have been published, and for the eighteenth century alone
+allegorical dramas by the dozen might be enumerated.] Of the poems
+published in _Ha-Meassef_ but a few deserve notice, and even they
+are nothing more than mediocre imitations of didactic pieces in the
+style of the day, or odes celebrating the splendor of contemporary kings
+and princes. A poem by Wessely forms a rare exception. It extols the
+residents of Basle, who, in 1789, welcomed Jewish refugees from Alsace.
+And if we turn from its poetry to its historical contributions, we find
+that the biographies, as of Abarbanel and Joseph Delmedigo, are hardly
+scientific; they occupy themselves with external facts to the neglect of
+underlying ideas. On the whole, _Ha-Meassef_ was an engine of
+propaganda and polemics rather than a literary production, though the
+campaign carried on in its pages against strait-laced orthodoxy and the
+Rabbis did not reach the degree of bitterness which was to characterize
+later periods--moderation that was due to its most prominent
+contributors. Wessely exhorted the editors not to attack religiousness
+nor ridicule the Rabbis, and Mendelssohn devoted his articles to minor
+points of Rabbinic practice, such as the permissibility of vaccination
+under the Jewish law.
+
+The French Revolution precipitated events in an unexpected way. The tone
+of _Ha-Meassef_ changed. It held that knowledge and liberty alone
+could save the Jews. More aggressive toward the Rabbis than before, it
+attacked fanaticism, and gave space to trite poems, glorifying a life,
+for instance, in which women and wine played the prominent part (1790).
+Six years after its first issue, _Ha-Meassef_ ceased to appear, not
+without having materially advanced the intellectual emancipation of the
+German Jews and the revival of Hebrew as a secular language. [Footnote:
+The first series of _Ha-Meassef_ ran from 1784-1786 (Königsberg),
+and from 1788-1790 (Königsberg and Berlin). An additional volume began
+to appear in 1794, at Berlin and Breslau, under the editorship of Löwe
+and Wolfsohn, and was completed in 1797. The second series ran from 1809
+to 1811 at Berlin, Altona, and Dessau, under Shalom Hacohen. [Trl.] ] So
+important was this first co-operative enterprise in Hebrew letters, that
+it imposed its name on the whole of the literary movement of the second
+half of the eighteenth century, the epoch of the Meassefim.
+
+Two poets and five or six prose writers more or less worthy of the name
+of author dominated the period.
+
+Naphtali Hartwig Wessely (born at Hamburg in 1725; died there in 1805)
+is considered the prince of the poets of the time. Belonging to a rather
+intelligent family in easy circumstances, he received a modern
+education. Though his mind was open to all the new influences, he
+nevertheless remained a loyal adherent of his faith, and occupied
+strictly religious ground until the end. He devoted himself with success
+to the cultivation of poetry, and completed the work of reform begun by
+the Italian Luzzatto, to whom, however, he was inferior in depth and
+originality.
+
+Wessely's poetic masterpiece was _Shire Tiferet_ ("Songs of
+Glory"), or the Epic of Moses (Berlin, 1789), in five volumes. This poem
+of the Exodus is on the model of the pseudo-classic productions of the
+Germany of his day; the influence of Klopstock's _Messias_, for
+instance, is striking.
+
+Depth of thought, feeling for art, and original poetic imagination are
+lacking in _Shire Tiferet_. Practically it is nothing more than an
+oratorical paraphrase of the Biblical recital. The shortcomings of his
+main work are characteristic of all the poetry by Wessely. On the other
+hand, his oratorical manner is unusually attractive, and his Hebrew is
+elegant and chaste. The somewhat labored precision of his style, taken
+together with the absence of the poetic temperament, makes of him the
+Malherbe of modern Hebrew poetry. He enjoyed the love and admiration of
+his contemporaries to an extraordinary degree, and his chief poem
+underwent a large number of editions, becoming in course of time a
+popular book, and regarded with kindly favor even by the most orthodox--
+testimony at once to the poet's personal influence upon his co-
+religionists and the growing importance of the Hebrew language.
+
+Wessely wrote also several important works on questions in Hebrew
+grammar and philology. The chief of them is _Lebanon_, two parts of
+which appeared, each separately, under the title _Gan Na'ul_ ("The
+Locked Garden", Berlin, 1765); the other parts never appeared in print.
+They bear witness to their author's solid scientific attainments, and it
+is regrettable that their value is obscured by his style, diffuse to the
+point of prolixity. Besides, Wessely contributed to the German
+translation of the Bible, and to the commentary on the Bible, both, as
+mentioned before, works presided over by Mendelssohn, to whom he was
+attached by the tie of admiring friendship.
+
+Wessely's chief distinction, however, was his firm character and his
+love of truth. His high ethical qualities were revealed notably in his
+pamphlet _Dibre Shalom wa-Emet_ ("Words of Peace and Truth,"
+Berlin, 1781), elicited by the edict of Emperor Joseph II ordering a
+reform of Jewish education and the establishment of modern schools for
+Jews. Though well on in years, he yet did not shrink from the risk of
+incurring the anger of the fanatics. He openly declared himself in favor
+of pedagogic innovations. With sage-like modesty and mildness, the poet
+stated the pressing need for adopting new educational methods, and
+showed them to be by no means in opposition to the Mosaic and Rabbinic
+conception of the Jewish faith. In the name of _Torat ha-Adam_, the
+law for man as such, he set forth urgent reforms which would raise the
+prestige of the Law as well as of the Jews. He hoped for civil liberty,
+the liberty the Jews were enjoying in England and in the Netherlands.
+However, this courageous course gained for him the ban of the fanatics,
+the effect of which was mitigated by the intervention of the Italian
+Rabbis in favor of Wessely. On the other hand, it made him the most
+prominent member of the Meassefim circle; he was regarded as the master
+of the Maskilim.
+
+Among the most distinguished of the contributors to _Ha-Meassef_ is
+the second writer acclaimed poet by popular consent. David Franco Mendes
+(1713-1792) was born at Amsterdam, of a family escaped from the
+Inquisition. Like most Jews of Spanish origin, his family clung to the
+Spanish language. He was the friend and disciple, and likewise the
+imitator, of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto. What was true of Eastern Europe,
+that the Hebrew language prevailed in the ghetto, and had to be resorted
+to by all who would reach the Jewish masses, did not apply to the
+countries of the Romance languages. Here Hebrew had little by little
+been supplanted by the vernacular. Mendes, who paid veritable worship to
+Hebrew literature, was distressed to see the object of his devotion
+scorned by his co-religionists and the productions of the classic age of
+France preferred to it. In the preface to his tragedy, "Athaliah's
+Recompense" (_Gemul Athaliah_, Amsterdam, 1770), he set himself the
+task of demonstrating the superiority of the sacred language to the
+profane languages. Yet this very tragedy, in spite of its author's
+protestations, is nothing more than a _rifacimento_ of Racine's
+drama, and rather infelicitous at that, though it must be admitted that
+Mendes' style is of classic purity, and some of his scenes are in a
+measure characterized by vivacity of action. His other drama, "Judith",
+also published at Amsterdam, has no greater merit than "Athaliah's
+Recompense." Besides these dramas, Mendes wrote several biographical
+sketches of the learned men of the Middle Ages for _Ha-Meassef_.
+
+It were far from the truth to say that Mendes succeeded in rivalling the
+French and Italian authors whom he set up as models for himself.
+Nevertheless he was endorsed and admired by the literary men of his time
+as the heir of Luzzatto.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An enumeration of all the writers and all the scholars who, directly or
+indirectly, contributed to the work of _Ha-Meassef_, would be
+wearisome. Only those who are distinguished by some degree of
+originality will be set down by name.
+
+Rabbi Solomon Pappenheim (1776-1814), of Breslau, was the author of a
+sentimental elegy, _Arba' Kosot_ ("The Four Cups", Berlin, 1790).
+The poem, inspired by Young's "Night Thoughts," is remarkable for its
+personal note. In his plaints recalling Job's, this Hebrew Werther
+mourns the loss, not of his mistress--that would not have been in
+consonance with the spirit of the ghetto--but of his wife and his three
+children. The elegy came near being a popular poem. Its vapid
+sentimentality and its affected and exaggerated style were to exercise a
+baneful influence upon the following generations. It is the tribute paid
+by Hebrew literature to the diseased spirit of the age. Pappenheim
+wrote, besides, on Hebrew philology. His work, _Yeri'ot Shelomoh_
+("The Curtains of Solomon"), is an important contribution to the
+subject.
+
+Shalom Hacohen, the editor of a second series of _Ha-Meassef_,
+published in 1809-1811 (Berlin, Altona, and Dessau), deserves mention.
+He won considerable fame by his poems and articles, which appeared in
+the second series of _Ha-Meassef_ and in _Bikkure ha-'Ittim_ ("The
+First Fruits of the Times"), and especially through his historical
+drama, "Amal and Tirzah" (Rödelheim, 1812). The last, a naďvely
+conceived piece of work, is well fitted into its Biblical frame. Hacohen
+is one of the intermediaries between the German Meassefim and their
+successors in Poland. [Footnote: Another writer of the epoch, Hartwig
+Derenburg, whose son and grandson have brilliantly carried on, in
+France, the literary and scientific traditions of the family, was the
+author of a widely-read allegorical drama, _Yoshebe Tebel_ ("The
+Inhabitants of the World", Offenbach, 1789).]
+
+Mendelssohn, the master admired and respected by all, contributed, as
+was mentioned before, only minor controversial articles to _Ha-
+Meassef_. His preface to the _Biur_ and his commentary on
+Maimonides' treatise on logic are in good style. His philosophical
+works, "Jerusalem" and "Phaedon," translated into Hebrew by his
+disciples, were largely instrumental in giving prevalence to the idea
+that the Jewish people is a religious community rather than a nation.
+This circumstance explains the banishment of Hebrew from the synagogue
+by his less religious followers, such as David Friedländer, and the
+attacks of Herz Homberg on traditional Judaism in his pamphlet "To the
+Shepherds of Israel" (_El Ro'e Yisraël_).
+
+The chief editor of _Ha-Meassef_, Isaac Euchel (1756-1804), became
+known for his polemic articles against the superstitions and
+obscurantism of the fanatics of the ghetto. Euchel wrote also a
+biographical sketch of Mendelssohn, which was published at Vienna in
+1814.
+
+There were also scientific writers among the Meassefim. Baruch Lindau
+wrote a treatise on the natural sciences, _Reshit Limmudim_ ("The
+Elements of the Sciences", Brünn, 1788), and Mordecai Gumpel Levisohn,
+the learned professor at the University of Upsala, was the author of a
+series of scientific essays in _Ha-Meassef_, which contributed
+greatly to its success.
+
+Up to the time we are speaking of, Poland had supplied the Jewish people
+with Rabbis and Talmudists, and when the German Jews became imbued with
+the new spirit, their Polish brethren did not lag behind. Polish authors
+are to be found among the Meassefim, and several of them deserve special
+notice.
+
+Kant's brilliant disciple, the profound thinker Solomon Maimon,
+published only his exegetical works and his ingenious commentary on
+Maimonides in Hebrew. Another Polish writer, Solomon Dubno (1735-1813),
+one of the first to co-operate with Mendelssohn in his _Biur_, was
+a remarkable grammarian and stylist. Among other things he wrote an
+allegorical drama and a number of poetic satires. Of the latter, the
+"Hymn to Hypocrisy", published in _Bikkure To'elet_, is a finished
+production.
+
+Judah Ben-Zeëb (1764-1811) published in Berlin a Manual of the Hebrew
+Language (_Talmud Leshon 'Ibri_), planned on modern lines, a work
+contributing greatly toward spreading a knowledge of philology and
+rhetoric among the Jews. His Hebrew-German Dictionary and his Hebrew
+version of Ben Sira are well known to Hebraists.
+
+Isaac Satanow (1732-1804), a Pole residing at Berlin, was a curious
+personage, interesting alike for the variety of his productions and the
+oddity of his mental make-up. He possessed a surprising capacity for
+assimilation. It was this that enabled him to excel, whether he imitated
+the style of the Bible or the style of mediaeval authors. Hebrew and
+Aramaic he handled with the same ingenious skill. All his works he
+attributed to some ancient author. His collection of Proverbs, bearing
+the name of the Psalmist Asaph (_Mishle Asaph_, Berlin, 1789 and
+1792, in three books), would cut a respectable figure in any literature.
+
+A few specimens of his _Mishle_, or maxims, follow:
+
+  "Truth springs from research, justice from intelligence. The
+  beginning of research is curiosity, its essence is discernment,
+  and its goal truth and justice" (7: 5, 6).
+
+  "On the day of thy birth thou didst weep, and those about thee
+  were glad. On the day of thy death thou wilt laugh, and those
+  about thee will sigh. Know then, thou wilt one day be born anew
+  to rejoice in God, and matter will no longer hinder thee" (15: 5,
+  6). [Footnote: A play upon words: _Geshem_ in Hebrew means
+  both "matter" and "rain."]
+
+  "Rule thy spirit lest others rule thy body" (24:2).
+
+  "Pincers are made by means of pincers; work is helped on by work,
+  and science by science" (34:23).
+
+  "Think not what is sweet to thy palate is sweet to thy neighbor's
+  palate. Not so; for many are the beautiful wives that are hated
+  by their husbands, and many the ill-featured wives that are
+  beloved" (43:6,7).
+
+  "Every living being leaves off reproducing itself in its old age;
+  but falsehood plays the harlot even in her decrepitude. The older
+  she grows, the deeper she strikes root in the ground, the more
+  numerous becomes her lying progeny, the further does it spread
+  abroad. Her lovers multiply, and those who pay respect to the old
+  adhere to her, that her name be not wiped from the face of the
+  earth" (42:29-31).
+
+Satanow pleaded for the language of the Mishnah as forming part of the
+Hebrew linguistic stock, but the moment was not propitious to the reform
+of the prevailing literary style suggested by him.
+
+On the whole, as was intimated before, the literary movement called
+forth by the Meassefim produced nothing, or almost nothing, of permanent
+value. The writers of this school acted the part of pioneers and
+heralds. Being primarily iconoclasts and reformers, they disappeared,
+with but few exceptions, as soon as their task was completed and the
+emancipation of the Jews was an accomplished fact in Western Europe.
+They survived long enough, however, to see the movement with which they
+were identified sweep away, along with the traditions of the past, also
+the Hebrew language, the only relic dear to them, the only Jewish thing
+capable of awakening a responsive thrill in their hearts.
+
+Passionate humanists, and not very clear-sighted, they permitted
+themselves to be dazzled by modernity and promises of light and liberty,
+and forswore the ideal of the re-nationalization of Israel, so placing
+themselves outside the fellowship bond that united, by a common hope,
+the great masses of the Jews who were still attached to their faith and
+to their people.
+
+Writers of no consequence in many cases, and of no originality
+whatsoever, failing to recognize the grandeur of Israel's past, the
+Meassefim despised their Jewish surroundings too heartily to seek
+inspiration in them. For the most part they were shallow imitators,
+second-rate translators of Schiller and Racine. The language of the
+Jewish soul they could not speak, and they could not formulate a new
+ideal to take the place of the tottering traditions of the past and the
+faltering hope of a Messianic time. An entire generation was to pass
+before historical Judaism came into its own again, through the creation
+of a pure "Science of Judaism" and the conception of the mission of the
+Jewish people.
+
+Nevertheless the movement called into being by the Meassefim caused
+considerable stir. For the first time the Rabbinic tradition, petrified
+by age and ignorance, was assailed, in the sacred language at that, and
+the attack was launched in the name of science and life. For the first
+time the _Haskalah_, Hebrew humanism, declared war on whatever in
+the past trammelled the modern evolution of Judaism. In vain the
+Meassefim, save the exceptional few, refrained scrupulously from violent
+declamation against primary dogmatic principles. In vain their master
+Mendelssohn, contravening good sense and historical Judaism, went so far
+as to proclaim these principles sacrosanct. The secularization of Jewish
+literature and Jewish life had made a breach in the ghetto wall.
+Thereafter nothing could oppose the march of new ideas. The Rabbis of
+the period saw it clearly; hence the stubbornness of their opposition.
+
+Beginning with this time a new class appeared among the Jews of the
+ghetto, the class of the _Maskilim_, or men of lay learning and
+letters, a class with which the Rabbis have since had to reckon, with
+which, indeed, they have had to share their authority over the people.
+
+So far as the Hebrew language is concerned, the Meassefim succeeded in
+purifying it and restoring it to its Biblical form. Wessely and Mendes
+obliterated the last vestiges of the Middle Ages, and many of the
+litterateurs of the period bequeathed models of the classic style to
+posterity. But the return to the manner of the Bible had its
+disadvantages. It went to extremes, and led to the creation of a
+pompous, affected style, the _Melizah_, which has left indelible
+traces in neo-Hebrew literature. In the effort to guard the Biblical
+style against the Rabbinisms which had impaired the elegance of the
+Hebrew language, the purists had gone beyond the bounds of moderation.
+To express the most prosaic thought, the simplest ideas, they drew upon
+the metaphors and the elevated diction of the Bible. This rage for
+academic correctness is responsible for the reputation, not merited by
+Hebrew literature, that it lacks originality, that it is no more than a
+_jeu d'esprit_, a jumble of quibbling conceits.
+
+Italian men of letters also took part in the literary movement of the
+end of the eighteenth century. Two of them are worthy of mention by
+name. The first is the poet Ephraim Luzzatto (1727-1792), whose love
+sonnets, written in a sprightly style, sound a lyric note. The other is
+Samuel Romanelli, the author of a melodrama, much admired by his
+contemporaries, and of a "Journey to Arabia."
+
+In France, also, especially in Alsace, there were collaborators of the
+German Meassefim, the best known among them Ensheim. Besides, France
+harbored the only poet of the period who can lay claim to originality,
+but he was not of the school of the Meassefim. Elie Half an Halévy
+(1760-1822), of Paris, the grandfather of Ludovic Halévy, by far
+surpasses the other poets of his day in poetic temperament and fertility
+of imagination. Unluckily, we do not possess all the poems written by
+Halévy, who, moreover, was not a very prolific author. In what has come
+down to us his talent is abundantly proved by the charm of his
+individual style and the wealth of his images. The reader feels that the
+breath of the Revolution has blown through his pages. His "Hymn to
+Peace" (_Shir ha-Shalom_), published at Paris in 1804, is the
+apotheosis of Napoleon, whom the poet hails as "liberty rescued" and
+"beautiful France", the home of liberty. This unique poem is
+characterized by unbounded love for France and the French, the beautiful
+country, the free, high-mettled people, bearing love of country in its
+heart and in its hand the avenging sword, and cherishing hatred against
+"tyranny on the throne, which had changed a terrestrial Paradise into a
+charnel house." The poet extols the dictator not only because he is a
+"friend of victory", but because he is at the same time and still more a
+"friend of science." He salutes the victorious armies. Although they
+bring destruction and misery in their wake, they bear before them the
+standard of science, civilization, and progress.
+
+The cry of liberty wakened a loud echo in the ghettos of even the most
+backward countries. Hebrew literature contains a number of curious
+mementos, tokens of the ardent hopes which the French Revolution and the
+Napoleonic conquests evoked in the breast of the Jews, whose character
+has little enough affinity with the rule of despotism. In numerous
+Hebrew hymns and songs they welcomed the armies of Napoleon as of the
+savior Messiah. [Footnote: To name but a few among the many: an ode by
+the celebrated Rabbi Jacob Meďr in Alsace, an ancestor of the family of
+the Grand-Rabbin Zadoc Kahn; another ode composed at Vienna by the
+Polish grammarian Ben-Zeëb; and the hymns sung in the synagogue at
+Frankfort (1807), at Hamburg (1811), etc. The Revolutionary Code
+published at Amsterdam in 1795 is also worthy of mention.] Before the
+first flush of joy died away, the reaction set in, and their hopes were
+blighted. The Jews relapsed into their olden social misery.
+Nevertheless, the clash between received notions and the new conceptions
+had contributed not a little to produce a ferment of ideas and create
+new tendencies in the ghetto, at last aroused from its millennial
+slumber.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+IN POLAND AND AUSTRIA
+
+THE GALICIAN SCHOOL
+
+
+The Polish scholars domiciled in Germany entered, as we have seen, into
+the work of the Meassefim. Presently it will appear that the movement
+itself was transferred to Poland, where it produced a much more lasting
+effect than elsewhere.
+
+In the West of Europe Hebrew was destined to vanish little by little,
+and make room for the languages of the various countries. In the Slavic
+East, on the other hand, the neo-Hebrew gained and spread until it was
+the predominating language used by writers. By and by a profane
+literature grew up in it, which extends to our day without a break.
+
+From the sixteenth century on, the Jewry of Poland, isolated in destiny
+and in political constitution, comprised the greater part of the Jewish
+people. The agglomerations of Jews in Poland, originating in many
+different countries, and fused into one mass, enjoyed a large measure of
+autonomy. Their fortunes were governed and their life regulated by a
+political and religious organization administered by the Rabbis and the
+representatives of the _Kahal_, the "community." This organization
+formed a sort of theocratic state known as "The Synod of the Four
+Countries" (Poland, Little Poland, Little Russia, and, later, Lithuania,
+with its autonomous synod). Constituting almost the whole of the Third
+Estate of a country three times the size of France, the Jews were not
+only merchants, but also, and more particularly, artisans, workingmen,
+and even farmers. They were a people apart, distinct from the others.
+The restricted ghettos and small communities of the Occident widened
+out, in Poland, into provinces with cities and towns peopled by Jews.
+The Thirty Years' War, which had cast a large number of German Jews into
+Poland, produced the effect of giving a definite constitution to this
+social organism. The new-comers quickly attained to controlling
+influence in the Jewish communities, and succeeded in foisting their
+German idiom upon the older settlers. One of their distinguishing traits
+was that they pushed the study of the Law to the utmost. The Talmud
+schools in Poland and the Polish Rabbis soon acquired a reputation
+unassailed in the whole of the Diaspora. Despised and maltreated by the
+Polish magnates, condemned, by reason of a never-ceasing stream of
+immigration and the meagre resources of the country, to a bitter
+struggle for existence, the Jews of Poland centred all their ambition in
+the study of the Law, and consoled themselves with the Messianic hope.
+Empty casuistry and dry dogmatism sufficed for the intellectual needs of
+the most enlightened. A piety without limit, the rigorous and minute
+observance of Rabbinical prescriptions, and a cult compounded of
+traditional and superstitious practices accumulated during many
+centuries, filled the void left in their minds by the wretched life of
+the masses. To satisfy the cravings of the heart, they had the homilies
+of the _Maggidim_ ("preachers"), a sort of popular instruction
+based on sacred texts, tricked out with Talmudic narratives, mystic
+allusions, and a variety of superstitions.
+
+By the dreadful insurrection of the Cossacks in the Ukraine, half a
+million of Jews lost their lives. The terror that followed the uprising
+during the latter part of the seventeenth and the first half of the
+eighteenth century threw the Jewish population of the southern provinces
+into sad confusion. At that moment the _Hasidim_ [1] with their
+Oriental fatalism, and their worship of the _Zaddik_ ("Saint"),
+whom they revered as a wonder-worker, appeared upon the scene and won
+the Jews of a large part of Poland to their standard. Then there ensued
+a period of moral and intellectual degradation, which coincided
+precisely with the epoch in which the civilizing influence of the
+Meassefim was uppermost in Germany. [Footnote 1: Literally, the "pious."
+A sect founded in Wolhynia in the second half of the eighteenth century,
+the adherents of which, though they remained faithful to the Rabbinic
+law, placed piety, mystic exaltation, and a worship of holy men in
+opposition to the study of the Talmud and the dogmatism of the Rabbis.]
+
+The reforms of Emperor Joseph II planned for the Jews in the part of
+Poland annexed by Austria, especially the extension of compulsory
+military service to them, were looked upon by the ignorant masses as a
+dire misfortune. They rebelled against every change, and placed no
+belief in the promises made by the authorities to better their
+condition. They were terrorized by the severity of the measures taken
+against them, and, impotent to carry on a struggle against authority,
+they threw themselves into the arms of Hasidism, which preached the
+merging of self in a mystic solidarity. This meant the cessation of all
+growth, social as well as religious. Superstition established itself as
+sovereign mistress, and the end was the utter degeneration of the
+Austrian-Polish section of Jews.
+
+In order to guard against the danger with which the spread of the new
+sect was fraught, and enlighten at least the more intelligent of the
+people, the intellectual Jews of Poland took up the work of the
+Meassefim, and constituted themselves the champions of the
+_Haskalah_, the liberal movement. They became thus the lieutenants
+of the Austrian government. By and by their activity assumed importance,
+and in time modern schools were established and literary circles were
+formed in the greater part of the villages of Galicia.
+
+Even into Russian Poland the campaign against obscurantism was carried,
+by men like Tobias Feder and David Samoscz; the former the author of an
+incisive pamphlet against Hasidism, as well as numerous philological and
+poetical publications; the latter a prolific writer, the author of a
+collection of poems entitled _Resise ha-Melizah_ ("Drops of
+Poetry", 1798).
+
+The movement was aided and abetted by rich and influential Jews. Joseph
+Perl, the founder of a modern school and several other educational
+institutions, is a typical representative of these friends and patrons
+of progress. [Footnote: Perl was the author of a parody on Hasidism,
+published anonymously under the title _Megalle Temirin_ ("The
+Revealer of Mysteries"). A monograph upon parodies, a literary form
+widely cultivated in Hebrew, which was long a desideratum has recently
+been written by Dr. Israel Davidson ("Parody in Jewish Literature", New
+York, Columbia University Press, 1908). The Hebrew parody is
+distinguished particularly for its adaptation of the Talmudic language
+to modern customs and questions. It was made the vehicle of polemics and
+of ridicule, as in the case of Perl's pamphlet, or of satire on social
+conditions, as in the "Treatise of Commercial Men", which appeared at
+Warsaw, and the "Treatise America", published at New York, etc.
+Frequently it was meant merely to divert and amuse, as, for instance,
+_Hakundus_, Wilna, 1827, and numerous editions of the "Treatise
+Purim."]
+
+_Ha-Meassef_ was succeeded by a progeny of periodical literature,
+scientific and literary. After the _Bikkure ha-'Ittim_ ("The First
+Fruits of the Times"), edited by Shalom Hacohen, Vienna, 1820-1831, came
+the _Kerem Hemed_ ("The Delicious Vineyard"), edited by Goldenberg,
+at Tarnopol, 1833-1842; the _Ozar Nehmad_ ("The Delightful
+Treasure"), edited by Blumenfeld; _He-Haluz_ ("The Pioneer"),
+founded in 1853 by Erter, together with Schorr, the witty writer and
+bold reformer; _Kokebe Yizhak_ ("The Stars of Isaac"), edited by I.
+Stern, at Vienna, 1850-1863; _Bikkure ha-Shanah_ ("The First Fruits
+of the Year", 1844); _Peri To'elet_ ("Successful Labor", 1821-
+1825); "Jerusalem", 1845; "Zion", 1842; _Ha-Zefirah_ ("The
+Morningstar"), 1824; _Yeshurun_. 1847, etc. These collections of
+essays are of a much more serious character than ever _Ha-Meassef_
+attained to. As a rule they display more originality and more scientific
+depth.
+
+To attract the intelligent among the Polish Jews, permeated as they were
+with deep knowledge of Rabbinic literature, more was needed than witty
+sallies and childish conceits in an affected style. The appeal had to be
+made to their reason, to their convictions, their constant longing for
+intellectual occupation. Their minds could be turned away from a most
+absurd mysticism only by setting a new ideal before them, calculated to
+engage feelings and attract hearts yearning for consolation, and left
+unsatisfied by the pursuit of the Law, the nourishment given to all who
+thought and studied in the ghetto.
+
+Two men, the most eminent of the Jewish humanists in Austrian Poland,
+succeeded in meeting the spiritual needs of their compatriots. The Rabbi
+Solomon Jehudah Rapoport, one of the founders of the Science of Judaism,
+the pursuit that was to replace Rabbinic scholasticism, and the
+philosopher Nahman Krochmal, the promoter of the idea of the "mission of
+the Jewish people", a substitute for the mystic, religious ideal--they
+were the two who transformed the literary movement inaugurated in
+Germany into a permanent influence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Solomon Jehudah Rapoport (1790-1867), called "the father of the Science
+of Judaism", was born at Lemberg of a family of Rabbis. His studies were
+purely Rabbinic, but his alert mind grasped every opportunity of
+acquiring other knowledge, and in this incidental way he became familiar
+first with French and then with German. The influence of the philosopher
+Krochmal, with whom he came in close personal contact, shaped his career
+as a writer and a scholar. In 1814, at Lemberg, he wrote, in Hebrew, a
+description of the city of Paris and the Isle of Elba, to satisfy the
+curiosity which the events of the time had aroused in the Polish ghetto.
+In imitation of Mendes, whose writings exercised some influence upon
+him, he later published a translation of Racine's "Esther" (_Bikkure
+ha-'Ittim_, 1827), and of a number of Schiller's poems. But he did
+not stop at that. His profound study of the Jewish scholars and poets of
+the Middle Ages turned his mind to historical investigations. In the
+_Bikkure ha-'Ittim_ and the _Kerem Hemed_ he published a
+series of biographical and literary studies, in which he shows himself
+to be possessed of large critical sense and keen judgment. In its
+sobriety and precision his style has not been excelled. These studies of
+his gave new direction to the eager minds of the age. As a result, Jost,
+Zunz, and Samuel David Luzzatto devoted themselves to the thorough
+examination of the Judaism of the Middle Ages. The outcome was a new
+science, the Science of Judaism.
+
+Rapoport published also a pamphlet against the Hasidim and their wonder-
+working Rabbis, and various articles on the necessity of promoting
+knowledge and civilization among the Jews. In this way he brought upon
+himself the hatred of the fanatics. Appointed Rabbi at Tarnopol at the
+instigation of Perl, the patron of Jewish science, he was forced to
+leave the city by the intrigues of the Hasidim. He went to Prague, to
+become Rabbi in that important community, and there he ended his days.
+
+The disciple and successor of the German Meassefim, Rapoport inherited
+from them the conviction which characterized the Jewish _Maskil_,
+that science alone and modern civilization can raise the intellectual
+level and improve the political situation of his co-religionists. All
+his life he fought for the Haskalah. He loved knowledge with
+disinterested devotion, and not merely because it was an instrument to
+promote the political emancipation of the Jews. The work of assimilation
+set on foot in the Occident, he realized, was not applicable in the East
+of Europe, and would even be useless there. No vain illusions on the
+subject possessed him. He was very much wrought up against such
+religious reforms in Judaism as, he believed, would inevitably split the
+people into sects, and sow the seed of disunion and indifference to
+national institutions. This appears strikingly in his campaign against
+Schorr, the editor of _He-Haluz_, and Judah Mises, and especially
+in his pamphlet _Tokohat Megullah_ ("Public Reproach"), which
+appeared in Frankfort in 1846. To those who faltered, having lost faith
+in the future of Judaism, Rapoport addresses himself in several of his
+writings, especially in the introduction to "Esther", holding up his own
+ideals before them. Love of my nation, he says in effect, is the
+cornerstone of my existence. This love alone has the power to confirm my
+faith, for the national sentiment of the Jew and his religion are
+closely linked with each other. And not only this national sentiment and
+this religion are inconceivable the one without the other, but a third
+factor is joined with them so intimately as to be indispensable--it is
+the Holy Land.
+
+The desire to explain rationally the Jew's love for his ancient land
+suggested to Rapoport, long before Buckle and Lazarus, the theory of the
+influence of climate on the psychology of nations. In his sketch of
+Rabbi Hananel (_Bikkure ha-'Ittim_, 1832), he explains the
+psychologic traits of the Jewish people by the fact that they resided in
+a temperate climate and in a country situated between Asia and Africa.
+Thence was derived the tendency to maintain equilibrium between feeling
+and reason which characterizes the Jew. Under favorable conditions, and
+if the Roman conquest had not intervened, the Jews would have reached
+the highest degree of this equilibrium, and become a model nation. That
+is why Palestine is the political and spiritual fatherland of the Jew,
+the only country in which his genius can develop untrammelled; that is
+why Palestine is so indissolubly attached to the destinies of Israel,
+and is so dear to every Jewish heart. But even in the exile, "in the
+darkness of the Middle Ages, the Jews were the sole bearers of light and
+knowledge". This is what Rapoport strove to demonstrate in his works on
+the scholars of the Middle Ages, and in his Talmudic encyclopedia,
+_'Erek Millin_ (Prague, 1852), which, unfortunately, was not
+finished.
+
+In this fashion Rapoport, who did not hesitate to write on Bible
+criticism in Hebrew, the first to use the ancient language for the
+purpose, endeavored to reconcile the reason of a modern mind with the
+faith and the Messianic hope of an orthodox Rabbi.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is a significant phenomenon that the Science of Judaism, the ideal
+meant to replace the dry study of the Law, and fill the void left in the
+Jewish mind by the course of recent developments, took firm hold upon
+the Polish Jews, the very bodyguard of Rabbinism, of which, in point of
+fact, it is but a modern and rational transformation.
+
+Yet this new science, founded on the study of Israel's glorious past,
+and warmly welcomed by the intellectual and the cultivated in Western
+Europe, could not entirely satisfy the intelligent in Polish Jewry. In
+an environment wholly Jewish, having no reason to nurse illusive hopes
+of imminent assimilation with their neighbors, from whom they were
+divided by every possible circumstance, beginning with moral notions and
+ending with political fortune, the Polish Jews resigned themselves to a
+sort of Messianic mysticism. But the mystic's explanation of the
+phenomenon of the existence of Judaism also failed to satisfy their
+yearnings. What they sought was a warrant in reason itself justifying
+the permanence of Judaism and its future. The arguments set forth by
+Maimonides and Jehudah Halevi contained no appeal for the modern soul. A
+philosopher was needed, one who should solve the problem of the
+existence of the Jewish people and its proper sphere from the vantage-
+ground of authoritative knowledge. Such a philosopher arose in Galicia
+itself.
+
+Nahman Krochmal (1785-1840), the originator of the idea of the "mission
+of the Jewish people", was born at Brody. His chief work, published
+posthumously through the efforts of Zunz, the _Moreh Nebuke ha-
+Zeman_ ("The Guide of the Perplexed of Modern Times"), is the most
+original piece of philosophic writing in modern Hebrew. Krochmal led the
+sad life of the Polish-Jewish scholar--void of pleasures and filled to
+overflowing with privation and suffering. His whole time was consecrated
+to Jewish science. He led a retired life, and while he lived nothing of
+his was published. On account of the precarious state of his health, he
+never left the small town in which he was born. However, his house
+became the foregathering place of the votaries of Jewish science.
+Especially young men eager to learn came from everywhere to sit at the
+feet of the master. The influence which he thus exerted during his life
+was reinforced and perpetuated after his death by the publication of the
+"Guide of the Perplexed of Modern Times", in 1851, at Lemberg.
+
+The studies contained in this work, for the most part unfinished
+sketches, form a curious collection. Limitations of space forbid more
+than a summary of its contents, and an analysis of its chief principles.
+
+The need of finding a philosophic explanation of Divine existence forced
+Hegel to formulate the axiom, that reason alone constitutes the reality
+of things, and absolute truth is to be found in the union of the
+subjective and the objective--the subjective corresponding to the
+concrete state of every being, that is, matter, which forms his actual
+reason, and the objective corresponding to his abstract state, that is,
+the idea, which forms his absolute reason.
+
+On this Hegelian axiom of actual reason and absolute reason, Krochmal
+builds up his ingenious system of the philosophy of Jewish history. He
+is the first Jewish scholar who views Judaism, not as a distinct and
+independent entity, but as a part of the whole of civilization. At the
+same time, while it is attached to the civilized world, it is
+distinguished by qualities peculiar to itself. It leads the independent
+existence of a national organism similar to all others, but it also
+aspires to an absolute, spiritual expression, consequently to
+universalism. The result of this double aspect is that while Jewish
+_nationality_ forms the element peculiar to the Jewish people, its
+civilization, its intellect are _universal_, and detach themselves
+from its peculiar national life. Hence it comes that Jewish culture is
+essentially spiritual, ideal, and tends to promote the perfection of the
+human kind. Krochmal in this way arrives at the following three
+conclusions:
+
+1. The Jewish nation is like the phoenix, constantly arising to new life
+from its ashes. It comprises within itself the three elements of Hegel's
+triad: the idea, the object, and the intelligence. The successive
+resurrections of the Jewish people follow an ascendant progression,
+which tends toward the spiritually absolute. Starting as a political
+organism, it soon developed into a dogmatically religious sect, only to
+be transformed into a spiritual entity. Krochmal--though he does not say
+it explicitly--sees in religion only a passing phenomenon in the history
+of the Jewish people, exactly as its political existence was but a
+temporary phase.
+
+2. The Jewish people presents a double aspect to the observer. It is
+national in its particularism, or its concrete aspect, and universal in
+its spiritualism. The national genius of all other peoples of antiquity
+was narrowly particularistic. That is why they were submerged. Only the
+Jewish prophets conceived of the absolutely and universally spiritual
+and of moral truth, and therein lies the secret of the continued
+existence of the Jewish people.
+
+3. With Hegel Krochmal admits that the resultants from the historical
+development of a people form the quintessence of its existence.
+[Footnote: See chapters IX, XVI, and others; also M. Bernfeld, _Da'at
+Elohim_ ("The Knowledge of God"); and M. Landau, _Die Bibel und der
+Hegelianismus_ (Dissertation).] But what he does not believe is that
+the essential element in the existence of a people is the resultant. The
+process of historical evolution is in itself an adequate reason for its
+existence. More rational than Hegel himself, Krochmal thus avoids the
+contradiction which follows from the mystical definition of existence in
+the Hegelian system.
+
+For the German metaphysician, existence is the interval between not
+being and being, that is, the period of _becoming_. Krochmal simply
+eliminates this more or less materialistic notion of the
+_interval_. He substitutes the moral effects produced incidentally
+to the course of historic action, for the idea of effects posterior to
+the same action, the effects called the resultants. The more or less
+materialistic manner in which historic action develops replaces with him
+the idea of the transition period, the period of becoming, as a
+mysterious intermediary between actual reason and absolute reason.
+
+Proceeding from these axioms, Krochmal, at a time in which
+_Völkerpsychologie_ and sociology were embryonic sciences, explains
+the phenomena of Jewish history as well as the phenomena of the
+religious and spiritual evolution of mankind, and does it with
+remarkable originality and profundity.
+
+Krochmal's ideas produced an effect not to be exaggerated upon the
+intelligent among the Polish Jews, who had thrown off the trammels of
+dogmatism and mystic hope, but were in a hesitating state of mind,
+casting about for the reason of their very existence as Jews. His book
+offered them an explanation, based on modern science and yet in accord
+with their Jewish essence as revealed by history and therefore
+satisfying to their national pride.
+
+Thus Krochmal opened up a way for the seekers after enlightenment in
+future generations. On the ideas of the master, his successors built up
+their conceptions of the Jewish people. Abraham Mapu, the father of the
+historical novel in Hebrew, drew his inspiration from the "Guide", and
+in our days the well-known essayist Ahad ha-'Am has seized upon certain
+of Krochmal's principles, notably the importance to be attached to the
+spiritual element in the life of the Jewish people. [Footnote: R.
+Brainin, in his biography of Mapu, p. 64, Warsaw, 1900.]
+
+These two leaders, Rapoport and Krochmal, stimulated a whole school of
+writers, whose works established the fortune of the Hebrew language in
+Galicia. With more or less originality, all departments of literature
+and science were cultivated.
+
+Very soon, however, the times ceased to be propitious to serene thinking
+and investigation of the past. Hasidism, triumphant, having conquered
+the whole of Russian-Poland, threatened to crush all thought and reason
+at the very time in which the _Kulturkampf_ was battering at the
+gates of the Polish ghetto. Rapoport, we have seen, contended with
+Hasidism in a witty pamphlet. After him, there appeared a satirist of
+great talent, who waged pitiless war with its partisans and with all the
+powers of darkness.
+
+Isaac Erter, of Przemysl (1792-1841), was the friend and disciple of
+Krochmal. An infant prodigy, he spent all the years of his early
+childhood in the exclusive study of the Law. When he was thirteen years
+old, his father married him to a girl of eighteen, whom he had not set
+eyes upon before the day of their marriage. She did not live long. Erter
+went on with his Rabbinic studies, and married a second time. A lucky
+chance brought him in contact with a Maskil who led him to the study of
+Hebrew grammar, and he became a devotee of the Haskalah. Encouraged by
+Rapoport and Krochmal, with whom he had entered into relations, he
+published his first satire on Hasidism. It evoked considerable comment.
+Persecuted by the fanatics on account of it, he could not continue to
+follow his vocation as teacher of Hebrew. He was obliged to quit his
+native city, and he went to Brody, where the circle of Maskilim welcomed
+him with delight. Otherwise his life at Brody was full of hardships. His
+wife, as courageous as she was intelligent, urged him to equip himself
+for some serious profession. Accordingly, at the age of thirty-three, he
+went to Buda-Pesth to study medicine, and five years later he returned
+to Brody fortified with his diploma as a physician. Thereafter he
+occupied an independent position, and he could dare wage uncompromising
+warfare with obscurantism and the mystics. He published numerous
+articles in the periodicals of the day. After his death, they were
+collected by the poet Letteris in one volume bearing the title _Ha-
+Zofeh le-Bet Yisraël_ ("The Watchman for the House of Israel").
+
+Erter as satirist and critic of morals is a writer of the first order.
+For vivacity, his style, at once incisive and elegant, may be compared
+with that of his contemporaries Heine and Börne. He possesses not a few
+traits in common with these two writers. More serious and positive than
+Heine, he pursues a steady aim in his satires. Tears mingle with his
+laugh, and if he castigates, it is in order to chasten. More original
+and more poetic than Börne, he thinks clearly and to the point, and the
+effect of his thought is in no way impaired by his stilted mannerisms.
+Without bias or passion, and with fine irony, he rallies the Hasidim on
+their baneful superstitions, their worship of angels and demons. He
+criticises the ignorance and narrow-mindedness of the Rabbis, and
+scourges the shabby vanity of the communal representatives.
+
+Animated by the desire to spread truth and culture among his co-
+religionists, he does not direct his attacks against the fanatics alone.
+He is equally bold in driving home the truth with the "moderns" of the
+ghetto, the "intellectuals", boastful of their diplomas, who seek their
+own profit, and do nothing to further the welfare of the people in
+general. Corresponding to the number of articles he wrote is the number
+of arrows shot into the very heart of the backward system imposed upon
+the Jews of his country. He is the first Hebrew poet who dared expose
+the social evils honeycombing the curious surroundings, full of
+contrasts and _naďveté_, amid which his people lived. This he did
+in a series of startling descriptions. After the fashion of Cervantes,
+he employs ridicule to kill off the Rabbi and murder the mystic.
+
+Erter deserves a place in the first rank of the champions of
+civilization among the Jews.
+
+Galicia gave birth also to a lyric poet of some distinction. Meďr Halevi
+Letteris (1815-1871) was a learned philologist, but his chief literary
+excellencies he displayed as a poet. Like Rapoport's, his maiden effort
+was a translation of the Biblical dramas of Racine. His workmanship was
+exact and beautiful. He was a productive writer, and his activity
+expressed itself in every sort of literary form. He left upward of
+thirty volumes in prose and verse. [Footnote: His poetry was collected
+in one volume, and published at Vienna, under the title _Tofes Kinnor
+we-'Ugab_ ("Master of the Lyre and the Cithern").] His Hebrew version
+of _Faust_, published at Vienna, is a masterpiece in point of
+style, and it gained him conspicuous renown. He ventured upon a bold
+departure from Goethe's work. Desiring to transfer the dramatic action
+to soil wholly Jewish, he substituted for Faust a Gnostic Rabbi of the
+Talmud, Elisha ben Abuyah, surnamed _Aher_ ("Another"). This change
+necessitated a number of others, which were far from being advantageous
+to the Hebrew version.
+
+The prose of Letteris is heavy. It lacks grace and naturalness,
+qualities possessed by the greater number of his contemporaries in
+Russia. It should, however, be set down to his credit that, unlike many
+others, he never showed any inclination to sacrifice clearness of
+thought to elegance of style.
+
+By way of compensation, his poetry, from the point of view of style and
+versification, is raised beyond adverse criticism. It merits the
+description classic. His numerous translations from modern poets prove
+the facility with which the ancient language can be handled by a master.
+But, having acknowledged the superiority of his style, the literary
+critic has said all there is to be said in praise of his work. The
+breath of poesy, the tone of personal inspiration, the gift of fancy,
+are on the whole lacking. His most original poems are nothing more than
+an echo of the romantic school.
+
+Nevertheless, there is a certain simple charm diffused through some of
+his verses, especially those in which he pours out his sorrowful Jewish
+heart. His Zionist poems are perfect expressions of the national spirit.
+One of them, the very best his muse has produced, has been almost
+universally accepted as the national hymn. It Is called _Yonah
+Homiah_ ("The Plaintive Dove"). The dove is the symbol for Israel
+used by the prophetical writers of the Bible. Her mournful cooing voices
+the grief of the Jewish people driven forth from its native land and
+forsaken by its God.
+
+  "'Alas for my affliction! I must roam about abandoned since I
+  left the shelter in the cleft of my rock. Around me rages the
+  storm, alone and forsaken I fly to the forest to seek safety in
+  its thickets. My Friend has abandoned me! His anger was kindled,
+  because faithless to Him I permitted the stranger to seduce me,
+  and now my enemies harry me without respite. Since my Friend
+  deserted me, my eyes have been overflowing with tears. Without
+  Thee, O my Glory, what care I for life? Better to dwell in the
+  shadow of death than wander o'er the wide world. For the
+  oppressed death is as a brother in adversity.
+
+  "'Yonder two birds are billing and cooing, and tasting of the
+  sweets of love. They live at ease ensconced in the branches of
+  the trees, nestling amid green olive vines and garlands of
+  flowers. I, only I, am exiled! Where shall I find a refuge? My
+  rock-shelter is hedged about with prickly thorns and thistles....
+  E'en the wild birds of prey mate happily, only I, poor mourning
+  dove, alone among all beings alive, dwell apart. E'en those who
+  gorge themselves with innocent blood live tranquil in their home
+  eyries. Alas! only the righteous must weep, only the poor are
+  stripped of all hope!...
+
+  "'Return, then, my Life, my Breath! Return, my Comforter! Hear my
+  bitter wail of woe, lead me back to my home. Have pity on my
+  loneliness! Restore Thy love to me, bring me once again
+  to the cleft of my rock, and let me hide myself in the shadow of
+  Thy wings.'
+
+  "Such moaning and dull wailing, my ear caught in the night, when
+  the fields and the woods were bathed in Divine peace; and hearing
+  the plaintive voice of the mourning dove, my soul knew it to be
+  the voice of the bitter woe of the daughter of my people!"
+
+Other writers and translators in large numbers added to the lustre of
+Galicia as a centre of Hebrew literature. The most important among them
+is Samson Bloch, the author of a geography of the world, including a
+sentimental description of Palestine, written in oratorical style.
+Joseph Efrati (1820) wrote an historical drama, _Meluhat Shaül_
+("The Royalty of Saul"), which deserves mention for its fine conception.
+And Judah Mises, in his two works, _Tekunat ha-Rabbanim_
+("Characterization of the Rabbis"), and _Kinat ha-Emet_ ("The Zeal
+for Truth"), opposed Rabbinic tradition and the authorities of the
+Middle Ages. His antiquated rationalism called forth the severe
+reproaches of Rapoport. Nevertheless he stirred up a grave controversy,
+which gave rise to a series of consequences extending down to the
+literary warfare begun by the collection _Ha-Roëh u-Mebakker_ ("The
+Seer and the Searcher"), published by Bodek and Fischmann, in which the
+works of Zunz, S. D. Luzzatto, and Jost are criticised.
+
+At this point ceases the dominance of the litterateurs of Austrian
+Poland. The centre of literary activity was thereafter transferred to
+Russia permanently. Hasidism was about to take complete possession of
+Galicia, and Hebrew literature, confined to a few small circles, was
+never again to reach there the heights which it had occupied in the days
+of Rapoport and Krochmal.
+
+Though the centre of the Hebrew literary movement during the earlier
+half of the nineteenth century lay in Galicia, yet the Jews elsewhere
+had a share in it. In almost all the Slav countries as well as in the
+Occident, in Germany, in Holland, and especially in Italy, Hebrew was
+cultivated both by scholars and literary men. Some of the works of Zunz,
+Geiger, Jellinek, and Frankel, for instance, were published in Hebrew.
+
+At Amsterdam, out of a whole school of litterateurs, but one name can be
+selected for special mention, that of the poet and scholar Samuel Mulder
+(1789-1862). Besides being active as the editor of several collections
+of essays, and writing remarkable historical studies, he was the
+composer of poems very much admired by his contemporaries. Most of them
+appeared in the _Bikkure To'elet_ ("Useful First Fruits"), which he
+published at Amsterdam, in 1820, under the auspices of the Maskilim
+society _To'elet_. The Talmudic narrative about the seduction of
+the celebrated wife of Rabbi Meďr, forms the subject of an excellent
+poem, entitled "Beruriah", on the fickleness of women.
+
+In Germany it was chiefly the discussion evoked by the movement for
+religious reforms (1840-1860) that created a literature in Hebrew. To
+cite an instance, there was the fiery pamphlet _Or Nogah_ ("The
+Bright Light"), by E. Lieberman, a masterpiece in point of style and as
+a satire upon the orthodox party, together with the replies of the
+Rabbis and the men of letters. It is curious to read pleas, in Hebrew,
+for the abolition of the Hebrew language, and against the maintenance of
+Jewish nationality. Abraham Geiger sided with the extreme reformers,
+while Frankel and Zunz insisted upon the necessity of retaining Hebrew
+as the language of worship. Another remarkable pamphlet directed against
+religious reforms in Judaism must be singled out for mention, that
+written by Meďr Israel Bresselau, entitled _Hereb Nokemet Nekam
+Berit_ ("The Avenging Sword of the Covenant").
+
+Moses Mendelsohn, of Hamburg, a German Harizi both in the character of
+his work and by reason of his position as a straggler of the Meassefim,
+was a disciple and imitator of Wessely. His Makamat _Pene Tebel_
+("The Face of the World", Amsterdam, 1870) contain literary
+reminiscences.
+
+Among the contributors to the periodical literature published in
+Galicia, Judah Jeiteles, of Prague (1773-1838), should be mentioned as a
+writer of epigrams, models of their kind. [Footnote: _Bene ha-
+Ne'urim_ ("Youth"), Prague, 1821.]
+
+The following one is addressed to Tirzah:
+
+  "She is as beautiful as the moon, radiant as the sun; her whole
+  being resembles the two heavenly luminaries. The maiden lavishes
+  her gifts upon the whole world, and like the two orbs she rules
+  both day and night."
+
+Jeiteles also carried on a sharp pamphlet war against Hasidism.
+[Footnote: Like the Vienna and the Brody of that day, Prague also had
+its literary centres. Among its Hebrew men of letters was Gabriel
+Südfeld, the father of the celebrated author Max Nordau, and himself the
+author of a drama and of an exegetical work, which appeared in 1850.]
+
+Hungary, whose Jews had the same customs and characteristics as the Jews
+of Poland, gave birth to one poet of real merit. Solomon Levinsohn, of
+Moor (1789-1822), was brought up in orthodox surroundings, and had to
+contend against all sorts of obstacles, spiritual and material. He
+triumphed over them, and became a scholar of serious attainments and a
+poet of distinction. Besides his historical studies, in German, he wrote
+an excellent geography of Palestine, in Hebrew, under the title
+_Mehkere Erez_ ("Investigations of the Land"), published at Vienna
+in 1819. His poetical treatise _Melizat Yeshurun_ (a Hebrew
+rhetoric), also published at Vienna, in 1846, is a master work, both as
+a treatise on rhetoric and as poetic literature. The introductory poem,
+on "Poetic Eloquence", an apotheosis of poetry and _belles
+lettres_, is one of the finest ever written in Hebrew. The poet
+displays a rich imagination, his figures of speech are clear-cut and
+telling, and his style is remarkable for its classic quality. An unhappy
+love affair terminated his days before his genius reached the period of
+full flowering. [Footnote: Simon Bacher, the father of the scholar
+Wilhelm Bacher, also won a name as an eloquent poet.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The literary movement of the first half of the nineteenth century did
+not succeed in making itself felt among the masses. It failed to call
+forth a national literature of even a slight degree of originality. The
+Maskilim of Galicia fell into the same mistake as their predecessors in
+Germany. In constituting themselves the champions of humanism in Poland,
+in a community thoroughly religious, and affected by modern conceptions
+only superficially, they should not have attached the undue importance
+they did to arguments addressed to reason. Their appeal should have been
+directed to the feelings of their co-religionists. They labored under
+the delusion that positive reasoning could carry conviction to a people
+immersed in mystical speculation, crushed by the double yoke of
+ceremonialism and an inferior social position, and sustained only by the
+Messianic hope of a glorious future. If Galician humanism never spread
+beyond the small circles of the literary, it was only what might have
+been expected. It could not become a popular movement. Neither the depth
+of thinkers like Rapoport and Krochmal, nor the biting satire of an
+Erter, nor the Zionistic lyricism of a Letteris, had force enough to cry
+a halt to the Hasidim and impede their dark work. In point of fact, the
+newer ideas all but failed to make an impression on the most independent
+of the young Rabbis. They were affrighted by the religious decadence in
+evidence in Germany, and they took a rather determined stand in
+opposition to the spread of a secular literature in Hebrew. [Footnote:
+Cases might be cited besides that of the learned friend of Rapoport,
+Jacob Samuel Bick, referred to by Bernfeld in his biography of Rapoport,
+p. 13. He deserted from the humanist camp, in which his Jewish feeling
+was left unsatisfied, and took refuge in Hasidism.] As a result, we
+shall see a steady decline in the position of the Hebrew litterateur in
+Poland, and a decrease in the number of Hebrew publications. The
+_Mehabber_ makes his appearance as a type--the vagabond author who
+offers his own writings for sale, fairly forcing them on unwilling
+purchasers. No more eloquent index is needed to the state of a
+struggling literature.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is questionable whether the work of the Galician Maskilim would not
+have been doomed to perpetual sterility, with no hope of ever making an
+impression on the Jewish masses, if an Italian writer had not appeared
+on the scene, who possessed the Jewish feeling that was lacking in his
+predecessors. In Samuel David Luzzatto general culture and genuine
+breadth of mind were united with Jewish loyalty raised to the highest
+pitch. He succeeded in discovering the formula by which modern culture
+can be brought to the religious without wounding their Jewish
+sensibilities. The life and work of so remarkable a personage deserve
+more than passing mention.
+
+After a rather long period of inactivity in Hebrew letters in Italy, a
+new literary and scientific school sprang into being during the first
+half of the nineteenth century. It participated with notable success in
+the movement of the north. The celebrated critic, Isaac Samuel Reggio
+(1784-1854), an independent thinker, exercised enormous influence upon
+his contemporaries by his publications in the history of literature and
+his bold articles on religious reform. His chief work, "The Law and
+Philosophy", which appeared in Vienna in 1827, is an attempt at
+harmonizing the Jewish Law with science.
+
+The best known of the poets were Joseph Almanzi (1790-1860) and Rachel
+Morpurgo. [Footnote: The reader is referred to the anthology of the
+Italian poets of the period, published by Abraham Baruch Piperno, under
+the title _Kol Ugab_ ("The Voice of the Harp", Leghorn, 1846).]
+Almanzi's poems were published in two collections, one entitled
+_Higgayon be-Kinnor_ ("The Lyric Harp"), and _Nezem Zahab_
+("Ornament of Gold").
+
+Rachel Morpurgo (1790-1860), a kinswoman of the Luzzatto family, left a
+collection of poems on various subjects, entitled _'Ugab Rahel_
+("The Harp of Rachel"), a carefully prepared edition of which was
+published by the scholar Vittorio Castiglioni. It is a curious document
+in the history of Hebrew literature. The language of the poetess is
+essentially Biblical, her style sprightly and original, and her thought
+is dominated by a fine serenity of soul and unwavering faith in the
+Messianic future of Israel.
+
+The following sonnet was inspired by the democratic revolution of 1848,
+which shook modern society to its very foundations, and in which the
+Jews were largely and deeply interested:
+
+  "He who bringeth low the proud, hath brought low all the kings of
+  the earth.... He hath sent disaster and ruin into the fortified
+  cities, and sated with blood their cringing defenders.
+
+  "All, both young and old, gird on the sword, greedier for prey
+  than the beasts of the forest; they all cry for liberty, the wise
+  and the boors; the fury of the battle rages like the billows of
+  the stormy sea....
+
+  "Not thus the servants of God, the valiant of His host. They do
+  battle day and night with their evil inclinations. Patiently they
+  bear the yoke of their Rock, and increase cometh to their
+  strength. My Friend is like a hart, like a sportive gazelle.
+
+  "He will sound the great trumpet to summon the Deliverer;
+  the righteous Sprout shall grow forth from the earth. Their Rock
+  will soothe their pain, He will repair every breach. The Lord
+  reigneth, and the earth rejoiceth aloud."
+
+Rachel's finest poem is without a doubt the one named _'Emek 'Akor_
+("The Dark Valley") in which she affirms her steadfast faith in the
+truths and consolations of religion:
+
+  "O dark valley, covered with night and mist, how long wilt thou
+  keep me bound with thy chains? Better to die and abide under the
+  shadow of the Almighty, than sit desolate in the seething
+  waters."
+
+  "I discern them from afar, the hills of eternity, their ever-
+  enduring summits clothed with garlands of bloom. O that I might
+  rise on wings like the eagle, fly upward with my eyes, and raise
+  my countenance and gaze into the heart of the sun!
+
+  "O Heaven, how beautiful are thy paths, they lead to where
+  liberty reigneth ever. How gentle the zephyrs wafted over thy
+  heights, who hath words to tell?"
+
+The same mystic note struck by Rachel Morpurgo recurs in the works of
+other Italian writers of the time. It distinguishes them strikingly from
+their contemporaries in Galicia and Russia, who proclaim themselves
+almost without exception the followers of a relentless rationalism.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Unquestionably the most original of all these writers, and the one who
+occupied the most prominent and influential place, is Samuel David
+Luzzatto (1800-1865). He was born at Triest, the son of a carpenter, a
+poor man, but none the less educated and respected. The childhood years
+of Luzzatto were passed in poverty and study. He emerged a conqueror
+from the struggle for life and knowledge. As early as 1829 he was
+appointed rector of the Rabbinical Seminary at Padua. Thereafter he
+could devote himself without hindrance to science and the education of
+disciples, many of whom became celebrated.
+
+Luzzatto's learning was vast in extent and as thorough. Besides, he
+possessed literary taste and modern culture. In his southern
+temperament, feeling had the upper hand of reason. He was an
+indefatigable worker, his mind was always actively alert. Versed alike
+in philology, archaeology, poetry, and philosophy, he was productive in
+each of these departments, without ever laying himself open to the
+charge of mediocrity. He was the creator of the Science of Judaism in
+the Italian language, but above all he was a Hebrew writer.
+
+He published excellent editions of the Hebrew masters of the Middle
+Ages, for the first time bringing to the doors of readers, scholarly
+readers as well as others, the works of such poets as Jehudah Halevi
+(Prague, 1840). The notes in these editions of his are ingenious and
+scientific. His own verses and poems are wholly devoid of inspiration
+and fancy, but in form and style they are irreproachable. [Footnote:
+_Kinnor Na'im_ ("The Sweet Lyre"), Vienna, 1835, and others.] His
+prose is vigorous and precise, at the same time preserving some of the
+Oriental charm native to the Hebrew.
+
+His chief distinction is that he was a romantic Jew. His patriotic heart
+was chilled by the attacks upon the Jewish religion and upon Jewish
+nationalism by the German and Galician humanists. He was hostile to
+rationalism, and opposed it all his life. In his sight, science, the
+importance of which he in no degree denied, was yet not equal in value
+to religious feeling. This alone, he held, is able to establish morality
+in a position of supremacy.
+
+S. Bernfeld, in his sketch of Rapoport, considers it a surprising
+anachronism that this romanticist, this Jewish Chateaubriand, should
+have appeared on the scene at the very moment of the triumph of
+rationalism in Hebrew letters everywhere. [Footnote: Warsaw and Berlin,
+1899] Luzzatto was the first among Hebrew humanists to claim the right
+of existence not only for Jewish nationality, but also for the Jewish
+religion in its integrity.
+
+  "A people in possession of a land of its own can maintain itself,
+  even without a religion of its own. But the Jewish people,
+  dispersed in all four corners of the earth, can maintain itself
+  only by virtue, of its attachment to its faith. And if, heaven
+  forbid, it should cease to believe in revelation, it must
+  inevitably be assimilated with the other peoples.... The science
+  of Judaism, with which some scholars are at present occupying
+  themselves in Germany, cannot preserve Judaism. [1] It is not an
+  object in itself to them. When all is said, Goethe and Schiller
+  are more important to these gentlemen, and much dearer to them,
+  than all the prophets and all the Rabbis of the Talmud. They
+  pursue the Science of Judaism pretty much as others study
+  Egyptology or Assyriology, or the lore of Persia. They are
+  inspired by a love of science, by the desire for personal renown,
+  or, at best, by the intention to attach glory to the name of
+  Israel, and they extol certain old works for the purpose of
+  hastening the first redemption, that is, the political
+  emancipation of the Jews. But this Science of Judaism has no
+  stability. It cannot survive the emancipation of the Jews, or the
+  death of those who studied the Torah and believed in God and
+  Moses before they took lessons of Eichhorn and his disciples."
+
+  "The true Science of Judaism, the science which will last as long
+  as time itself, is that which is founded on the faith; which
+  endeavors to understand the Bible as a Divine work, and the
+  history of a peculiar people whose lot has been peculiar; which,
+  finally, dwells upon those moments in the various epochs of
+  Jewish history when the innate genius of Judaism wages a conflict
+  with the genius of humanity in general, as it lies in wait
+  without, and how the Divine spirit of Judaism mastered the spirit
+  of humanity throughout all the centuries. For the day on which
+  the positions shall be reversed, and the spirit of humanity shall
+  remain in possession of the field, that day will be the last in
+  the life of the people of Israel."
+
+[Footnote 1: Jost, in his "History of the Jewish People", etc.]
+
+This conception of the providential rôle assigned to Israel is the point
+at which the Italian romanticist meets Krochmal, wide apart though their
+starting-places are. At bottom both do but interpret the ancient notion
+of the Divine selection of Israel and of a "chosen people". But while
+Krochmal regards religion as a fleeting phase in the existence of the
+nation, for Luzzatto religion is an essential element in Judaism, a view
+not unlike Bossuet's. However, it does not lead him astray. He still
+tries to harmonize faith with the demands of the modern spirit. The
+Jewish religion is in his opinion the moral doctrine _par
+excellence_. Like Heine he takes the world to be dominated by two
+opposite forces, Hellenism and Hebraism. Justice, truth, the good, and
+self-abnegation, whatever appertains to these is Jewish. The beautiful,
+the rational, the sensuous, is Attic. Luzzatto does not hesitate to
+criticise the masters of the Middle Ages rather sharply, chief among
+them Maimonides, who attempted the impossible when he endeavored to
+harmonize science and faith, reason and feeling, Moses and Aristotle.
+These are the irreconcilable oppositions in human life.
+
+  "Science does not make us happy; the highest morality alone is
+  capable of conferring true happiness upon us, and spiritual
+  peace. And this morality is to be found not with Aristotle, but
+  only with the prophets of Israel.
+
+  "The happiness of the Jewish people, the people of morality, does
+  not depend upon its political emancipation, but upon its faith
+  and its morality. The French and German Rabbis of the Middle
+  Ages, simple-minded and uncultured, but pious and sincere, are
+  preferable to the speculative minds of Spain, whose arguing and
+  rhetoric warped their judgment."
+
+Such ideas as these involved Luzzatto in discussions and polemics with
+the greater number of his friends, the German Jewish scholars, whose
+views were far removed from his. He defied his contemporaries, as he
+attacked the masters of the Middle Ages. In one of his letters he goes
+to the length of asserting, that while Jost and his colleagues were
+engaged in what they believed to be the useful work of defending Judaism
+against its enemies, they were in reality doing it more harm than these
+same enemies. The latter tended to preserve the Jewish people as a
+nation apart, while the rationalistic criticism of the former, directed
+against the Jewish religion, burst the bonds that hold the nation
+together, and hasten its dissolution.
+
+  "When, my dear German scholars", he cries out vehemently, "when
+  will the Lord open your eyes? How long will you fail to
+  understand that, carried away by the general current, you are
+  permitting national feeling to become extinct and the language of
+  our ancestors to fall into desuetude, and are thus preparing the
+  way for the triumphant invasion of Atticism.... So long as you do
+  not teach that the Good is not that which is visible to the eyes,
+  but that which is felt within the heart, and that the prosperity
+  of our people is not dependent upon civil emancipation, but upon
+  the love of a man for his neighbor, ... their hearts will not be
+  possessed with zeal for God." [Footnote: Letters, I, No. 267, p.
+  660.]
+
+Luzzatto has no fondness for dry dogmatism, nor for detailed
+prohibitions and Rabbinic controversies. He is too modern for that, too
+much of a poet. What he loves is the poetry of religion. He is attracted
+by its moral elevation. Like Jehudah Halevi, the sentimental philosopher
+whose successor he is, Luzzatto feels and thinks in the peculiar fashion
+that distinguishes the intuitive minds among the Jews. He loves his
+native country, and this love appears clearly in his writings, yet, at
+the same time, they all, whether in prose, as in his Letters, or in
+verse, as in the _Kinnor Na'im_, sound a Zionistic note.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Luzzatto became the founder of a school. Writers of our own day, like
+Vittorio Castiglioni, Eude Lolli, and others, draw upon the works of the
+master as a source, and they acknowledge it openly. His philological and
+linguistic works, the _Bet ha-Ozar_ among others, have inestimable
+value, and his Letters, published by Gräber in five volumes, the edition
+from which most of the passages cited have been taken, abundantly prove
+his influence on his contemporaries.
+
+He was a master and a prophet, a gracious and brilliant exponent of the
+Renascence of Hebrew literature, which had been inaugurated by one of
+his ancestors, another Luzzatto.
+
+A century of efforts and uninterrupted labor had wrought the
+resurrection of the Hebrew language. After it had been transformed into
+a modern tongue, in touch with all departments of thought, the sole
+remaining task was to make it acceptable to the masses of the orthodox
+Jews, and use it as an effective instrument of social and religious
+emancipation. This task became easy of accomplishment because Luzzatto
+knew how to direct the mind of his contemporaries. He found the key to
+the heart of the masses.
+
+A message in verse addressed to him by a young Lithuanian poet, in 1857,
+gives an eloquent interpretation of the sentiment felt for the Italian
+_maëstro_ by the devotees of a budding school of literature:
+
+  "From the icy north country, where the flowers and the sun endure
+  but a few short moons, these halting lines speed with their
+  greeting away from the hoar frost, to the eloquent sage in the
+  southland, enthroned among the wise and extolled by the pious--to
+  the gentle guide whose heart burns, like the sun of his own fair
+  land, with love for the people whence he was hewn, and for the
+  tongue of the Jews." [Footnote: Poems, by J. L. Gordon, St.
+  Petersburg, 1884, I, p. 125.]
+
+The "icy north country" was Lithuania, in which the literary movement
+had just effected a triumphal entry, bringing with it the light of
+science, and the young poet was Judah Leon Gordon, destined to become
+the greatest Jewish poet of the nineteenth century.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Here we arrive at the end of the first part of our essay, devoted in
+particular to Hebrew literature in Western Europe. For its future we
+must look to the East.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+IN LITHUANIA
+
+HUMANISM IN RUSSIA
+
+
+We are in the Jewish country, perhaps the only Jewish country in the
+world. [Footnote: See Slouschz, _Massa' be-Lita_ ("Journey through
+Lithuania"), Jerusalem, 1899.]
+
+The last to participate in the intellectual movement of European
+Judaism, the Lithuanian Jews start into view, in the second half of the
+seventeenth century, as a peculiar social organism, clearly marked as
+such from its first appearance. The Rabbis and scholars of Lithuania
+acquired fame without a struggle, and its Rabbinical schools quickly
+became the busy centres of Talmudic research.
+
+The destinies of the Jewish population of Lithuania, so different in
+character from that of Poland proper, were ruled absolutely by the
+"Synod of the Four Countries", with Brest, and afterwards Wilna, as
+headquarters.
+
+The revolutions and upheavals to which is due the social and religious
+decadence of the Polish Jews during the eighteenth century, barely
+touched this forsaken corner of the earth. Even the Cossack invasion
+dealt leniently with Lithuania, if the city of Wilna is excepted, and
+its early annexation by Russia saved the province from the anarchy and
+excitement which agitated Poland during its latter days.
+
+Left to their fate, neglected by the authorities, and forming almost the
+whole of the urban population, the Jews of Lithuania, in the full glare
+of the eighteenth century, were in all essentials an autonomous
+community with Jewish national and theocratic features. The Talmud did
+service as their civil and religious code. The court of final appeal was
+a Rabbinical expert, supported by the central synod and the local
+_Kahal_, and exercising absolute authority over the moral and
+material interests of those subordinated to his jurisdiction. The study
+of the Law was carried to the extreme of devotion. To have an
+illiterate, an _'Am ha-Arez_, a "rustic", in one's family, was
+considered a pitiable fate.
+
+Lithuania, in fine, was the promised land of Rabbinism, in which
+everything favored the development of a national Jewish centre.
+
+The natural poverty of the country, its barren soil, dense forests, and
+lack of populous centres of civilization, all tended to keep the Polish
+lords aloof. Poland offered them a more inviting sojourn. There was
+nothing to hinder the pious scholars who had escaped from religious
+persecution in the countries of Europe, especially France and Germany,
+from devoting themselves, with all their heart and energy, to the study
+of the Talmud and the ceremonials of their religion. No infusion of
+aliens disturbed them. The inhospitable skies, the absence of
+diversions, little troubled the refugees of the ghetto, for whom the
+Book and the dead letter were all-sufficing. They were not affected,
+their dignity was hardly wounded, by the haughty and arbitrary treatment
+which the nobleman accorded to the Jewish "factor" and steward, and by
+the many humiliations which were the price paid in return for the right
+to live, for without the protection of the lords they would not have
+been able to hold out against the wretched orthodox peasants. In
+morality and in race, however, they considered themselves the superior
+of the "Poriz", the Polish nobleman, with his extravagance and folly.
+
+In the villages, the Jews had the upper hand, either as the actual
+owners of the estates, or as the overseers, and in the rude cities with
+their wooden buildings, they constituted the bulk of the merchants, the
+middlemen, the artisans, even the workmen. They all led a sordid life.
+Mere existence required a bitter struggle. Destitute of all pleasures
+save the intimate joys of family life, fostering no ambition except such
+as was connected with the study of the Law, disciplined by religious
+authority, and chastened by austere and rigid principles of morality,
+the Jewish masses had a peculiar stamp impressed upon their character by
+their life of subjection and misery. The mind was constantly kept alert
+by the dialectics of the Talmud and the ingenious efforts needed to
+secure one's daily bread. Even the Messianic dreams, inspired by a
+belief in Divine justice and in the moral and religious superiority of
+Israel, rather than by a mystic conception of life, gave but a faint
+touch of beauty and glamour to an existence so mournful, so abjectly
+sad.
+
+Such was, and such in part is still, the manner in which they live--a
+sober, energetic, melancholy, and subtle people, the mass of the two
+millions of Jews who reside in Lithuania and White Russia, and send
+forth, to the great capitals of Europe and to the countries beyond seas,
+a stream of industrious immigrants, resourceful intellectually and
+morally.
+
+In the second half of the eighteenth century, thanks to the peace with
+which Lithuania was blessed after its subjection by Russia, Rabbinical
+studies reached their zenith. The high schools, the _Yeshibot_,
+became the centres of attraction for the best of the young men. The
+number of writers and scholars increased considerably, and the Hebrew
+printing presses were kept in full blast. The ideal of every Lithuanian
+Jew was, if not to marry his daughter to a scholar, at least to have a
+_Bahur_ at his table, a student of the Talmud, a prospective Rabbi.
+"The Torah is the best _Sehorah_" ("merchandise"), every Lithuanian
+mother croons at the cradle of her child.
+
+In those days a Rabbinic authority arose like unto whom none had been
+known among Jews in the later centuries, and his earnest, independent
+genius, as well as his moral grandeur, conferred a consecration upon the
+peculiar spiritual tendencies prevailing in Lithuanian Judaism, which he
+personified at its loftiest. Elijah of Wilna, surnamed "the Gaon", "his
+Excellency", succeeded in resisting the assaults of Hasidism, which
+threatened to overwhelm, if not the learned among them, certainly the
+Lithuanian masses. To parry the dangers of mysticism, which exercised so
+powerful an attraction that the dry and subtle casuistry of Rabbinic
+learning could not damp its ardor, he broke with scholastic methods, and
+took up a comparatively rational interpretation of texts and the laws.
+He went to the extreme of asserting the value of profane and practical
+knowledge, the pursuit of which could not but bring advantage to the
+study of the Law--a position unheard of at his day, and excusable only
+in so popular a man as he was. He himself wrote a treatise on
+mathematics, and philologic research was a favorite occupation with him.
+His pupils followed his example; they translated several scientific
+works into Hebrew, and founded schools and centres of puritanism, not
+only in Lithuania, but also as far away as Palestine. From this time on
+the _Yeshibah_ of Wolosin became the chief seat of traditional
+Talmud study and Rabbinic rationalism.
+
+One of the contemporaries of "the Gaon" was the physician Judah Hurwitz,
+of Wilna, who opposed Hasidism in his pamphlet _Megillat Sedarim_
+("A Book of Essays"), and in his ethical work _Ammude Bet-Yehudah_
+("The Pillars of the House of Judah ", Prague, 1793), he pleads the
+cause of internationalism and the equality of men and races!
+
+It would be rash to suppose that an echo of the studies of the
+Encyclopedists had reached a province double-barred and double-locked by
+politics and religion. The European languages were unknown in the
+Lithuanian Jewries of the Gaon's day, and his pupils sought their mental
+pabulum in the writings of the Jewish scholars of the Middle Ages,
+Maimonides, and Albo, and their compeers. The result was an odd,
+whimsical science. False, antiquated notions and theories were
+introduced through the medium of the Hebrew, and they attained no slight
+vogue. At the end of the eighteenth century, a certain Elias, a Rabbi,
+also of Wilna, undertook to gather all the facts of science into one
+collection. He compiled a curious encyclopedia, the _Sefer ha-
+Berit_ ("The Book of the Covenant"). By the side of geographic
+details of the most fantastic sort, he set down chemical discoveries and
+physical laws in the form of magical formulas. This book, by no means
+the only one of its kind, was reprinted many a time, and in our own day
+it still affords delight to orthodox readers.
+
+A long time passed before the Russian government took note of the
+intellectual condition of its Jewish subjects, who, in turn, asked
+nothing better than to be left undisturbed. Nevertheless, the treatment
+accorded them by the government was not calculated to inspire them with
+great confidence in it. As for a Russification of the Jewish masses,
+there could be no question of that, at a time when Russian civilization
+and language were themselves in an embryonic state.
+
+It was only when the first Alexander came to the throne that the reforms
+planned by the government began to make an impression upon the distant
+ghetto. A special commission was instituted for the purpose of studying
+the conditions under which the Jews were living, and how to ameliorate
+them materially and intellectually. The first close contact between Jews
+and Russians took place in the little town of Shklow, inhabited almost
+entirely by Jews. It was an important station on the route from the
+capital to Western Europe, and the Jews were afforded an opportunity of
+entering into relations with men of mark, both Russians and strangers,
+who passed through on their way to St. Petersburg. [Footnote: As early
+as 1780 a Hebrew ode was published on the occasion of Empress Catherine
+II's passing through Shklow. A printing press was set up there about
+1777, and it was at Shklow that a litterateur, N. H. Schulmann, made the
+first attempt to found a weekly political journal in Hebrew, announcing
+it in his edition of the _Zeker Rab_.] A circle of literary men
+under the influence of the Meassefim was founded there, and a curious
+literary document issued thence testifies to the hopes aroused by the
+reform projects planned in the reign of Alexander I for the improvement
+of the condition of the Jews. It is a pamphlet bearing the title _Kol
+Shaw'at Bat-Yehudah_, or _Sinat ha-Dat_ ("The Loud Voice of the
+Daughter of Judah", or "Religious Hatred"), and published, in Shklow in
+1803, in Hebrew and Russian. The author, whose name was Löb Nevakhovich,
+protests energetically, in behalf of truth and humanity, against the
+contemptuous treatment accorded the Jews. [Footnote: Grandfather of the
+well-known scholar E. Metchnikoff, of the Pasteur Institute.]
+
+  "Ah, ye Christians, men of the newer faith, who vaunt your mercy
+  and lovingkindness! Exercise your mercy upon us, turn your loving
+  hearts toward us. Why do you scorn the Jew? If he forsakes his
+  faith, how doth it profit you? Have you not heard the voice of
+  Moses Mendelssohn, the celebrated writer of our people, who asked
+  your co-religionists, 'Of what avail that you should continue to
+  attach men lacking faith and religion to yourselves'? Can you
+  not understand that the Jew, too, loves righteousness and justice
+  like unto yourselves? Why do you constantly scrutinize the
+  _man_ to find the _Jew_ in him? Seek but the man in the
+  Jew, and you will surely find him!"
+
+Like so many that have followed, this first appeal awakened no answering
+echo in Russian hearts. A century has passed since then, and Russia
+still fails to find the man in the unconverted Jew!
+
+The hopes aroused in the Jews of Lithuania by the Napoleonic wars were
+disappointed. An iron hand held them down, and they continued to
+vegetate miserably in their gloomy, abandoned corner.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The story goes that when Napoleon at the head of the _grande armée_
+entered Wilna, the exclamation was forced from him, "Why, this is the
+Jerusalem of Lithuania!" Whether the story is true or not, it is a fact
+that no other city was more deserving of the epithet. The residence of
+the Gaon was a Jewish metropolis as early as the eighteenth century, and
+during the whole of the nineteenth century Wilna was the Jewish city
+_par excellence_, a distinction to which it was helped by several
+facts--by the systematic and intentional elimination of the Polish
+element, especially since the insurrection of 1831, by the prohibition
+of the Polish language, the closing of the university, and the absence
+of a Lithuanian population. The dethroned capital of a people betrayed
+by its nobility became, after its abandonment by the native inhabitants,
+the centre of a Jewry independent of its surroundings and undisturbed in
+its internal development. Without in the least deviating from Rabbinic
+traditions, its constitutional platform, Jewish society in Wilna was
+gradually penetrated by modern ideas.
+
+The humanism of the German Jews, the Haskalah, met with no effective
+resistance in a comparatively enlightened world, prepared for it by the
+school of the Gaon. The Rabbinical students themselves were the first
+representatives of humanism in Lithuania. They became as ambitious in
+cultivating the Hebrew language and studying the secular sciences
+presented in it, as in searching out and examining the Talmud. Sprung
+from the people, living its life and sharing in its miseries, separated
+from Christian society by a barrier of prescriptions that seemed
+insuperable to them, the earliest of the Lithuanian litterateurs
+vitalized their young love for science and Hebrew letters with the
+disinterested devotion that characterizes the idealists of the ghetto in
+general.
+
+A literary circle, known as the "Berliners", was formed in Wilna, about
+1830. It was the pattern after which a large number were modelled a
+little later, all of them pursuing Hebrew literature with zeal and
+ardor.
+
+Two writers of worth, both from Wilna, the one a poet, the other a prose
+writer, headed the literary procession in Lithuania.
+
+Abraham Bär Lebensohn (Adam ha-Kohen, 1794-1880), surnamed the "father
+of poetry", was born at Wilna. He spent a sad childhood. Left motherless
+early, he was deprived of the love and the care that are the only
+consolations known to a child of the ghetto. At the age of three, he was
+sent to the _Heder_, at seven he was a student of the Talmud, then
+casuistry occupied his mind, and, finally, the Kabbalah. The last had
+but feeble attractions for the future poet. His mental mould was
+determined by his thorough study of the Bible and Hebrew grammar, which
+was good form in Wilna as early as his day, and the works of Wessely,
+for whom he always professed warm admiration, had a decided influence
+upon his poetic bias.
+
+In his first attempts at poetry, Lebensohn did not depart greatly from
+the achievements of the many Rabbinical students whose favorite pastime
+was to discuss the events of the day in Hebrew verse. An elegy to the
+memory of a Rabbi, an ode celebrating the equivocal glory of a Polish
+nobleman, and similar subjects, were the natural choice of the muse of
+the era, and the early flights of our author were not different. There
+was nothing in them to betray the future poet of merit. A little later
+he took up the study of German, but his knowledge of the language was
+never more than superficial. Haunted by the fame of Schiller, he devoted
+himself to poetry, and imitated the German poets, or tried to imitate
+them, for he never succeeded in grasping the true meaning of German
+poetry, nor in understanding erotic literature. To the Rabbinical
+student, with his puritanic spirit and austere manners, it was a
+collocation of poetic figures of speech and symbolic expressions.
+
+His life differed in no wise from that of the poor Jews of the ghetto.
+Given in marriage early by his father, he suddenly found himself deep in
+the bitter struggle for existence, before he had known the transport of
+living, or youth, or the passions, or love, or the inner doubts and
+beliefs that contend with one another in the heart of man. Feeling for
+nature, aesthetic delights, were strange provinces to this son of the
+ghetto. A conception of art that is destitute of a moral aim would have
+passed his understanding and his puritanic horizon. Too much of a free-
+thinker to follow the Rabbinical profession, he taught Hebrew to
+children--an unremunerative occupation, and little respected in a
+society in which the most ignorant are not uninstructed, and in which,
+the choice of vocations being restricted, the unsuccessful and the
+unskilled naturally drop into teaching. Ten years of it, daily from
+eight in the morning until nine at night, undermined his health. He fell
+sick, and was compelled to give up his hap-hazard calling, to the great
+gain of Hebrew poetry. He went into the brokerage business, and his
+small leisure he devoted to his muse. Harassed by petty, sordid cares,
+this broker was yet a genuine idealist, though it cannot be maintained
+that Lebensohn was of the stuff of which dreamers are made and great
+poets. But in his mind, rationalistic and logical to the point of
+dryness, there was a secluded recess pervaded with melancholy and real
+feeling. The Hebrew language he cherished with ardent and exalted love.
+Is it not a beautiful language and admirable? Is it not the last relic
+saved from the shipwreck in which all the national possessions of our
+people were lost? And is not he, Lebensohn himself, the heir to the
+prophets, the poet laureate and high priest to the holy language? With
+what pride he unveils the state of his soul to us:
+
+  "I am seated at the table of God, and with my hand I guide His
+  pen; and my hand writes the language holy unto Him, the language
+  of His Law, the language of His people, Selah! O God, arouse,
+  awake my spirit, for is it not Thy holy language wherein I sing
+  unto Thee?" [Footnote: _Shire Sefat Kodesh_, II, i.]
+
+A creature of his surroundings, and a disciple of the Rabbis, as he was,
+the dialectics of a logician were in him joined to native simplicity of
+spirit, yet he never reached the point of understanding the inner world
+of struggles and passions that agitate the individual lives of men. For
+a love song or a poem in praise of nature, he thought it necessary only
+to copy the German authors and link together a series of pointed verses.
+The poem "David and Bath-sheba" is a failure. His descriptions of nature
+are dry and artificial. He was never able to account for what was
+happening under his eyes and around him. Events produced an effect upon
+him out of all proportion to their importance. The military and civic
+reforms of Nicholas I, he celebrated in an ode, in which he applied the
+enthusiastic praise "Henceforth Israel will see only good!" to
+regulations that were wholly prejudicial to Jewish interests. When some
+Jewish banker or other was appointed consul-general in the Orient, he
+welcomed the occurrence in dithyrambic verses, dedicated to the poor
+fellow in the name of the Jews of Lithuania and White Russia. But
+whenever the heart of our poet beats in unison with the sentiments of
+his Jewish brethren, whenever he surrenders himself to the sadness, the
+peculiar melancholy, that pervades Jewish relations, then he attains to
+moral heights and lyric vigor unsurpassed. In his three volumes of
+poetry, by the side of numerous worthless pieces, we meet many gems of
+style and thought. The distressed cry of humanity against the
+wretchedness under which it staggers, the sorrowful protest man makes
+against the lack of compassion he encounters in his fellow, his
+obstinate refusal to understand the implacable cruelty of nature when
+she snatches his dearest from him, and his impotence in the presence of
+death--these are the subjects that have inspired Lebensohn's best
+efforts. He insists constantly, Is not pity the daughter of heaven? Do
+we not find her among beasts even, and among reptiles? Man alone is a
+stranger to her, and he makes himself the tyrant of his neighbor.
+
+But it is not man alone who refuses to know this daughter of heaven,
+Nature denies pity, too, and shows herself relentless:
+
+  "O world! House of mourning, valley of weeping! Thy rivers are
+  tears, and thy soil ashes. Upon thy surface thou bearest men that
+  mourn, and in thy bowels the corpses of the dead.... From out of
+  the mountains covered with snow and ice comes forth a chariot
+  with none to guide. Within sits man and the wife of his bosom,
+  beautiful as a flower, and at their knees play sweet children.
+  Alas! a caravan of the dead simulating life! They journey on, and
+  they go astray, and perish on the icy fields."
+
+Distress round about, and all hopes collapsed, death hovers apart, yet
+near, remorseless, threatening, and in the end victorious.
+
+In another poem, entitled "The Weeping Woman", his subject is pity
+again. He cries out:
+
+  "Thy enemy [cruelty] is stronger than thou. If thou art a burning
+  fire, she is a current of icy water!... Alas for thee, O pity!
+  Where is he that will have pity upon thee?"
+
+With a few vigorous strokes, the Hebrew poet describes the nothingness
+of man in the face of the vast world. The lot of the Hamlets and of the
+Renés is more enviable than that of the "Mourner" of the ghetto. They at
+least taste of life before becoming a prey to melancholy and delivering
+themselves up to pessimism. They know the charms of living and its
+vexations. The disappointed son of the ghetto lays no stress on
+gratifications and pleasures. In the name of the supreme moral law he
+sets himself up for a pessimistic philosopher.
+
+  "Our life is a breath, light as a floating bark. The grave is at
+  the very threshold of life, it awaits us not far from the womb of
+  our mother....
+
+  "Since the beginnings of the earth, we have been here, and she
+  changes us like the grass of her soil. She stands firm, unshaken.
+  We alone are changeable, and help there is none for us, no
+  refuge, nor may we decline to come hither. Like an angler of
+  fish, the world brings us up on a hook. Before it has finished
+  devouring one generation, the next is ready for its fate. One is
+  swallowed up, the other snatched away. Whence cometh our help?"
+
+To this general destruction, this wildness of the elements, which the
+"Mourner" fails to comprehend, permeated as he is with belief in Divine
+justice, is superadded the malice of man.
+
+  "And thou also, thou becomest a scourge unto thy brother! The
+  heavenly host is joined by thy fellow-man. From the wrath of man,
+  O man, thou wilt never escape. His jealousy of thee will last for
+  aye, until thou art no more!"
+
+
+And with all this, does life offer aught substantial, aught that is
+lasting?
+
+  "Where are they, the forgotten generations? Their very name and
+  memory have disappeared. And in the generation to come, we, too,
+  shall be forgotten. And who escapes his lot? Not a single one of
+  us all. None is secure from death. Wealth, wisdom, strength,
+  beauty, all are nothing, nothing...."
+
+In a burst of revolt, our poet exclaims:
+
+  "If I knew that my voice with its reverberations sufficed to
+  destroy the earth and the fulness thereof, and all the hosts of
+  heaven, I would cry with a thundering noise: Cease! Myself I
+  would return to nothing with the rest of mankind. Know not the
+  living that the grave will swallow them up after a life of
+  sadness and cruel misery? See they not that the whole of human
+  life is like the flash that goes before the fatal thunderbolt?"
+
+The same train of thought is not met with again until we come down to
+our own time, and Maupassant himself does not present it with greater
+vigor in _Sur l'eau_.
+
+And the end of the matter is that "man has nothing but the consciousness
+of sorrow; he is naked and starved, feeble and without energy. His soul
+desires all that he has not, and so he longs and languishes day and
+night."
+
+The uncertainty caused by the certainty of death, the terror inspired by
+the fatal end, the aching regrets over the parting with dear ones, these
+feelings, which possess even the devoutest Jew, are expressed in one of
+Lebensohn's most beautiful poems, "The Death Agony", and in "Knowledge
+and Death" the skepticism of the Maskil prevails over the optimism of
+the Jew.
+
+Sometimes he permits himself to sing of the misery of his people as
+such. In "The Wail of the Daughter of Judah" (_Naäkat Bat-
+Yehudah_), it would not be too much to say that there is an echo of
+the best of the Psalms. The weakest of his verses are, nevertheless,
+those in which he expresses longing for Jerusalem.
+
+A great misfortune befell Lebensohn. The premature death of his son, the
+young poet Micah Joseph, the centre of many and legitimate hopes,
+extorted cries of distress and despair from him.
+
+  "Who, alas! hath driven my bird from my nest? Who is it that hath
+  banished my lyre from my abode? Who hath shattered my heart, and
+  brought me lamentation?... Who hath with one blow blasted my
+  hopes?"
+
+There is enough in his writings to make the fortune of a great poet, in
+spite of their ballast of mediocre and tiresome verses, which the reader
+should disregard as he goes along. Between him and his contemporary, the
+haughty recluse Alfred de Vigny, there is not a little resemblance.
+Needless to say that Lebensohn had no acquaintance whatsoever with the
+works of the French poet.
+
+Lebensohn's poems, published at Wilna, in 1852, under the title "Poems
+in the Holy Language" (_Shire Sefat Kodesh_), were greeted with
+enthusiasm. The author was hailed as the "father of poetry". Besides, he
+published several works treating of grammar and exegesis.
+
+When the celebrated philanthropist Montefiore went to Russia, in 1848,
+to induce the Czar's government to ameliorate the civil condition of the
+Jews and grant reforms in the conduct of the schools, Lebensohn ranged
+himself publicly on the side of the reformers. According to him, the
+degradation of the Jews was due to three main causes:
+
+1. Absence of Haskalah, that is, a rational education, founded upon
+instruction in the language of the land, the ordinary branches of
+knowledge, and a handicraft.
+
+2. The ignorance of the Rabbis and preachers on all subjects outside of
+religion.
+
+3. Indulgence in luxuries, especially of the table and of dress.
+
+If the first two causes are more or less just, the third displays a
+ludicrously naďve conception of life. Lebensohn was speaking of a
+famished people, the majority of whom ate meat only once a week, on the
+Sabbath, and he reproaches them with gastronomic excesses and
+extravagance in dress. We shall see that his simple outlook was shared
+by most of the Russian Maskilim.
+
+In 1867, at the time when the struggle for the emancipation of the Jews
+and internal reforms in general was at its highest point, Lebensohn
+published his drama "Truth and Faith" (_Emet we-Emunah_, Wilna),
+which he had written all of twenty years earlier. It is a purely
+didactic work, blameless of any trace of poetic ardor. It must be
+conceded that the style is clear and fluent, and the ethical problem is
+stated with precision. But it lacks every attempt at analysis of
+character, and is destitute of all psychologic motivation. These being
+of the very essence of dramatic composition, his drama reduces itself to
+a moral treatise, wearisome at once and worthless. The plan is simple
+enough. Sheker (Falsehood) seeks to seduce and win over Hamon (the
+Crowd). He offers to give him his daughter Emunah (Faith) in marriage,
+but she is wooed by two lovers, Emet (Truth) and Sekel (Reason).
+
+The influence of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto is direct and manifest. Like the
+older author, Lebensohn, skeptic though he is, does not go to the length
+of casting doubt upon faith. He rises up against falsehood, hypocrisy,
+and mock piety, the piety that persecutes others, and steeps its
+votaries in ignorance. "Pure reason is not opposed to a pure religion",
+was the device adopted by the Wilna school.
+
+Belief in God being set aside as a basic principle, the reason invoked
+by the dramatist is positive reason, the reason of science, of justice,
+of rational logic. In verbose monologues, he combats the superstitions
+and fanaticism of the orthodox. The whole force of the Maskil's hatred
+against obscurantism is expressed through the character named Zibeon,
+Jewish hypocrite and chief adjutant in the camp of Sheker (Falsehood).
+This Jewish Tartufe is very different in his complexity from the
+character created by Moliere. Zibeon is a wonderworking Rabbi, a subtle
+sophist, a crafty dialectician. The waves of the Talmud, the casuistry
+of more than a millennium of scholasticism, have left their traces in
+his mind and personality. In his hatred of the adversaries of the
+Haskalah, Lebensohn depicts him, besides, as a hypocrite, a lover of the
+good things of this world, and given to lewdness, which are not the
+usual traits of these Rabbis. The alleged Tartufe of the ghetto cannot
+be called a hypocrite. He is a believer, and hence sincere. What leads
+him to commit the worst excesses, is his fanaticism, his blind piety.
+
+On the other hand, the dramatist is full of admiration for Sekel
+(Reason), Hokmah (Knowledge), Emet (Truth), and even Emunah (Faith).
+
+On the background of the prosiness of this work by Lebensohn, there
+stands out one passage of remarkable beauty, the prayer of Sekel
+beseeching God to liberate Emet. The triumph of Truth closes the drama.
+
+One characteristic feature should be pointed out: Neither Regesh
+(Sentiment), a prominent Jewish quality, nor Taawah (Passion), appears
+in this gallery of allegorical characters personifying the moral
+attributes. For Lebensohn, as for the whole school of the humanists of
+his time, the only thing that mattered was reason, and reason had to be
+shown all-sufficing to ensure the triumph of truth.
+
+In its day Lebensohn's drama excited the wrath of the orthodox. A Rabbi
+with literary pretensions, Malbim (Meir Lob ben Jehiel Michael),
+considered it his duty to intervene, and to the accusations launched by
+Lebensohn he replied in another drama, called _Mashal u-Melizah_
+("Allegory and Interpretation"), wherein he undertakes the defense of
+the orthodox against the charges of ill-disposed Maskilim.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If Abraham Bär Lebensohn is considered the father of poetry, his no less
+celebrated contemporary and compatriot, Mordecai Aaron Ginzburg, has an
+equally good claim to be called the foremost master of modern Hebrew
+prose. Ginzburg is the creator of a realistic Hebrew prose style, though
+he was permeated to the end with the style and the spirit of the Bible.
+Whenever the Biblical style can render modern thoughts only by torturing
+and twisting it, or by resorting to cumbersome circumlocutions, Ginzburg
+does not hesitate to levy contributions from Talmudic literature and
+even the modern languages. These linguistic additions made by him are
+always excellent, and in no way prejudicial to the elegance of Hebrew
+style. For it should be reiterated, in season and out of season, that it
+is a mistake to believe the neo-Hebrew to be essentially different from
+the language of the Bible, analogous to the difference between the
+modern and the classic Greek. The modern Hebrew is nothing more than an
+adaptation of the ancient Hebrew, conformable to the modern spirit and
+new ideas. The extreme innovators, who at best are few in number, cannot
+but confirm this statement of the case.
+
+Ginzburg was a fertile writer; he has left us fifteen volumes, and more,
+on various subjects. Endowed with good common sense, and equipped with a
+more solid modern education than the majority of the writers of the
+time, he exercised a very great influence upon his readers and upon the
+development of Hebrew literature. His "Abiezer", a sort of
+autobiography, very realistic, presents a striking picture of the
+defective education and backward ways of the ghetto, which the critic
+denounces, with remarkable subtlety, in the name of civilization and
+progress. Besides, he published two volumes on the Napoleonic wars; one
+volume, under the title _Hamat Damesek_ (1840), on the ritual
+murder accusation at Damascus; a history of Russia; a translation of the
+Alexandrian Philo's account of his mission to Rome; and a treatise on
+style (_Debir_). He was very successful with his works, and all of
+them were published during his lifetime, at Wilna, Prague, and Leipsic,
+and have been republished since. One of his achievements is that he
+helped to create a public of Hebrew readers. It must be admitted that
+the great mass of the people were at first somewhat repelled by his
+realism and by his terse and accurate way of writing. Their taste was
+not sufficiently refined to appreciate these qualities, and their
+primitive sensibilities could not derive pleasure from a description of
+things as they actually are. This is the difficulty which the second
+generation of Lithuanian writers took account of, and overcame, when
+they introduced romanticism into Hebrew literature.
+
+Though it was the first, Wilna was not the only centre of Hebrew
+literature in Russia. In the south, and quite independent of the Wilna
+school, literary circles were formed under the influence of the Galician
+writers and workers.
+
+At Odessa, a European window opening on the Empire of the Czar, we see
+the first enlightened Jewish community come into existence. The educated
+flocked thither from all parts, especially from Galicia. Simhah Pinsker
+and B. Stern are the representatives of the Science of Judaism in
+Russia, and the contributions of the Karaite Abraham Firkovich in the
+same field were most valuable, while Eichenbaum, Gottlober, and others
+distinguished themselves as poets and writers.
+
+Isaac Eichenbaum (1796-1861) was a graceful poet. Besides his prose
+writings and his remarkable treatise on the game of chess, we have a
+collection in verse by him, entitled _Kol Zimrah_ ("The Voice of
+Song", Leipsic, 1836). His sweetness and tenderness, his elegant and
+clear style, often recall Heine. The following quotation is from his
+poem "The Four Seasons".
+
+  "Winter has passed, the cold has fled, the ice melts under the
+  fiery darts of the sun. A stream of melted snow sends its limpid
+  waters flowing down the declivity of the rock. My beloved alone
+  is unmoved, and all the fires of my love cannot melt her icy
+  heart.
+
+  "The hills are clothed with festive mirth, the face of the
+  valleys smiles joyously. The cedar beams, the vine is jubilant,
+  and the pine tree finds a nest in the recesses of the jagged
+  mountain. But in me sighs increase, they bring me low--my friend
+  will not yet hearken unto me.
+
+  "All sings that lives in the woodland. The beasts of the earth
+  rejoice, and in the branches of the trees the winged creatures
+  warble, each to his mate. My well-beloved alone turns her steps
+  away from me, and under the shadow of my roof I am left in
+  solitude.
+
+  "The plants spring from the soil, the grass glitters in the
+  splendor of the sun, and the earth is covered with verdure. Upon
+  the meadows, the lilies and the roses bloom. Thus my hopes
+  blossom, too, and I am filled with joyous expectation--my friend
+  will come back and in her arms enfold me."
+
+The acknowledged master of the humanists in southern Russia was Isaac
+Bär Levinsohn, of Kremenetz, in Wolhynia (1788-1860). His proper place
+is in a history of the emancipation of the Russian Jews, rather than in
+a history of literature. Levinsohn was born in the country of Hasidism.
+A happy chance carried him to Brody when he was very young. He attached
+himself there to the humanist circle, and made the acquaintance of the
+Galician masters. On his return to his own country, he was actuated by
+the desire to work for the emancipation and promote the culture of the
+Russian Jews.
+
+Like Wessely, Levinsohn remained on strictly orthodox ground in his
+writings, and in the name of traditional religion itself he attacks
+superstition, and urges the obligatory study of the Hebrew language, the
+pursuit of the various branches of knowledge, and the learning of
+trades. His profound scholarship, the gentleness and sincerity of his
+writings, earned for him the respect of even the most orthodox. His
+_Bet-Yehudah_ ("The House of Judah") and _Te'udah be-Yisraël_
+("Testimony in Israel") are pleas in favor of modern schooling. In
+"Zerubbabel" he treats of questions of Hebrew philology, and with the
+help of documents he annihilates the legend of the ritual murder in his
+_Efes-Dammim_ ("No Blood!"). _Ahijah ha-Shiloni_ is a defense
+of Talmudic Judaism against its Christian detractors. Besides, Levinsohn
+wrote a number of other things, epigrams, articles, and essays.
+[Footnote: We owe a new edition of all his works to Nathansohn, Warsaw,
+1880-1900.]
+
+The contemporaries of Levinsohn exaggerated the importance of the
+literary part of his work. Not much of it, outside of his philologic
+studies, deserves to be called literary, and even they often fall below
+the mark on account of the simplicity of his views, and especially on
+account of his prolixity and his awkward diction and style. Also the
+direct influence which he has exerted upon Jews is less considerable
+than once was thought. Upon Hasidism he made no impression whatsoever.
+In Lithuania, to be sure, his works were widely read by the Jews, but in
+that home of the Hebrew language the subject-matter and arguments of an
+author play but little part in giving vogue to what is written in the
+Biblical language.
+
+By his self-abnegation and his wretched fortunes, his isolated life in a
+remote town, weak in body yet working for the elevation of his co-
+religionists, he won the admiration of his contemporaries without
+exception.
+
+The fame of the solitary idealist of Kremenetz spread until it reached
+government circles. Levinsohn was the first of the Jewish humanists who
+maintained direct relations with the Russian authorities. Czar Nicholas
+I gave him a personal audience, and several times sought his advice on
+problems connected with the endeavor to ameliorate the social condition
+of the Jews. The founding of Jewish elementary schools, the opening of
+two Rabbinical seminaries, one at Wilna and one at Zhitomir, the
+establishment of numerous agricultural colonies, the improvements
+effected in the political condition of the Jews and in the censorship of
+Hebrew books--all these progressive measures are in great part, if not
+entirely, due to the influence of Levinsohn. And the educated men of his
+time paid the tribute of veneration to a compeer who enjoyed the esteem
+of the governing classes to so high a degree.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT
+
+ABRAHAM MAPU
+
+
+The political reaction following upon the Polish revolution of 1831 made
+itself felt in Lithuania particularly. The hand of the government
+weighed heavy upon the people of this province. The University of Wilna
+was closed, and all traces of civilization were effaced.
+
+From the arbitrariness of the Polish nobles, the Jews were rescued only
+to fall into the tender mercies of unscrupulous officials. As it was,
+since 1823 the most rigorous measures had been devised against them.
+They were exposed to expulsions from the villages, and their commercial
+and other privileges had been considerably curtailed. Besides, a new
+scourge was inflicted upon them, compulsory service in the army, unknown
+until then, a frightful service, with an active period of twenty-five
+years. Children were torn from their families and their faith, and the
+whole life of a man was swallowed up. They struggled against this new
+incubus with all the weapons at the disposal of a feeble population.
+Bribery, premature marriage, wholesale evasion, voluntary or forced
+substitution, were the means employed by the well-to-do to save their
+progeny from military service.
+
+In order to ensure the regular recruiting of soldiers among the Jews,
+Czar Nicholas I, while abolishing the central synod organization,
+maintained the local _Kahal_ everywhere, and made it responsible
+for the military conscription. The wealthy, the learned, the heads of
+the communities profited greatly by this official recognition of the
+Kahal. It enabled them to free the members of their families from
+enrollment in the army. In their hands, it became an instrument for the
+oppression and exploitation of the poor. "The devil take the hindmost!"
+expresses the state of mind of the Russian Jews in the middle of the
+nineteenth century, during the whole of the period called the
+_Behalah_ ("Terror").
+
+The reforms projected by Alexander I for the benefit of the Jews, the
+hopes cherished by the Lithuanian humanists, proved abortive.
+Reactionary tendencies made themselves felt everywhere cruelly, but
+chiefly they injured the Jews, forever persecuted, downtrodden, and
+humiliated. The profound pessimism of Lebensohn's poetry is eloquent
+testimony to the feelings of educated Jews. And yet, these votaries of
+knowledge, of civilization, the daughter of heaven, clung to their
+illusions. They continued to insist that only thoroughgoing reforms can
+solve the Jewish question. The people at large did not side with them,
+and even among the educated their view of the situation was not shared
+by the younger men. In this moral disorder, the masses of the people
+permitted themselves to be carried along unresistingly by the current of
+Hasidic views, which had long been waiting to capture the last fortress
+of rational Judaism. The Rabbis stood by alarmed, unable to do anything
+to arrest the growing encroachments of the mystic movement. Yet there
+was an adversary ready and equipped. In the young neo-Hebrew literature,
+mysticism found a foeman far more powerful than ever logic and
+rationalism had been.
+
+The Hebrew language was cultivated with zeal by the educated classes,
+and even by the young Rabbis. It was the epoch of the _Melizah_,
+and the _Melizah_ was to supplement the jejuneness of Rabbinism and
+oppose the Hasidim with good results. Hebrew was in the ascendant, not
+only for poetry, but for general purposes as well. In the sunshine of
+the nineteenth century, it became the language of commerce, of
+jurisprudence, of friendly intercourse. Folklore itself, in the very
+teeth of the now despised jargon, knew no other tongue. The period
+produced a large quantity of popular poems, which to this day are sung
+by the Jews of Lithuania. The dominant note is the national plaint of
+the Jewish people, its dreams, and its Messianic hopes. They are
+essentially Zionistic.
+
+In polished and tender Hebrew, with lofty expressions and despairful
+cries worthy of Byron, a poet of the people mourns the misfortunes of
+Zion:
+
+  "Zion, Zion, city of our God! How awful is thy breach! Who will
+  heal thee!... Every nation, every country, sees its splendor grow
+  from day to day. Thou alone and thy people, ye fall from depth to
+  awful depth....
+
+  "Holy land, O Zion and Jerusalem! How dare the stranger trample
+  on thy soil with haughty foot? How, O Heaven, can the son of the
+  stranger stand upon the spot whence Thy command banishes him?"
+
+But hope is not entirely blasted:
+
+  "In the name of all thy people, in all their dwelling-places,
+  have we sworn unto thee, O Zion, with scorching tears, that thou
+  shalt always rest upon our hearts as a seal. Not by night and not
+  by day shalt thou be forgotten by us."
+
+Another popular poem, anonymous like the last, entitled "The Rose", is
+still more dolorous and despairful in tone. Stepped upon by every
+passerby, the rose supplicates incessantly, "O man, have pity on me,
+restore me to my home!"
+
+Besides these and others with the same underlying ideas, the lyrics of
+Lebensohn and "The Mourning Dove" by Letteris constituted the repertory
+of the people. But soon romanticism on the part of the litterateurs
+began to respond to the romanticism of the masses, asserting itself as a
+national Jewish need.
+
+A translation of _Les Mystčres de Paris_, published in Wilna in
+1847-8, introduced the romantic movement among the Jews, and at the same
+time the novel into the Hebrew language. This translation, or, rather,
+adaptation, of Sue's work, executed in a stilted Biblical style, won
+great renown for its young author, Kalman Schulman of Wilna (1826-1900).
+
+From the literary point of view, Schulman's achievement is interesting
+because of the kind of literature it was the first to offer to readers
+of Hebrew--pastime literature, fiction in place of the serious writings
+of the humanists. The enormous success obtained by this first work of
+the translator, the repeated editions which it underwent, testify to the
+existence of a public that craved light literature. Thenceforth,
+romanticism was to occupy the first place, and the _Melizah_ style
+was appropriated for the purposes of fiction, to the delight of the
+friends of the Bible language.
+
+In spite of his small originality, it happened that Kalman Schulman
+contributed more than any other writer to the achievement of securing a
+place for Hebrew in the hearts of the people. For the length of a half-
+century, he was regarded popularly as the master of Hebrew style.
+Romantic and conservative in religion, enthusiastic for whatsoever the
+Jewish genius produced, naďve in his conception of life, he let his
+activity play upon all the fields of literature. He published a History
+of the World in ten volumes; a geography, likewise in ten volumes; four
+volumes of biographical and literary essays on the Jewish writers of the
+Middle Ages; a national romance dealing with the time of Bar Kokbah (a
+composite made up of a number of translations); and curious Biblical and
+Talmudic essays. [Footnote: These works, first published at Wilna, have
+been republished again and again.]
+
+His language is the Hebrew of Isaiah. The artificialities and the undue
+emphasis of his style, his childlike views, his romantic sentimentality
+in all that touches Jews and Judaism, which appealed directly to the
+hearts of the simple, ignorant readers who constituted his public,
+explain the success of this writer, well merited even though he lacked
+originality. His books were spread broadcast, by the millions of copies,
+and they fostered love of Hebrew, of science, and knowledge in general
+among the people. By this token, Schulman was a civilizing agent of the
+first rank. His work is the portal through which the Maskil had to pass,
+and sometimes passes to this day, on the path of development toward
+modern civilization.
+
+Schulman became the head of a school. His poetic and inflated style long
+imposed itself upon all subjects, and hindered the natural development
+of Hebrew prose, inaugurated by Mordecai A. Ginzburg.
+
+More creative writers were not long in making their appearance. Among
+the poets of the romantic school, a prominent place belongs to Micah
+Joseph Lebensohn, briefly called Mikal (1828-1852), the son of Abraham
+Bär Lebensohn.
+
+Gentle and gracious in the same measure in which his father was hard and
+unyielding, Micah Joseph Lebensohn was the only writer of the time to
+enjoy the advantage of a complete modern education, and the only one of
+his generation to escape cruel want and the struggle for personal
+freedom. He knew German literature thoroughly, and he had taken a course
+in philosophy at Berlin, under Schelling. Along with these attainments,
+he was master of Hebrew as a living language. It was the vehicle for his
+most intimate thoughts and the subtlest shades of feeling.
+
+His rich poetic imagination, his harmonious style, warm figures of
+speech, consummate lyric quality, unmarred by the blatant, crude
+exaggerations of his predecessors, constitute Mikal the first artist of
+his day in Hebrew poetry.
+
+He made his appearance in the world of letters, in 1851, with a
+translation of Schiller's "Destruction of Troy", finished in style and
+in poetic polish. He was the first to apply the rules of modern prosody
+strictly to Hebrew poetry. His collection of poems, _Shire Bat-
+Ziyyon_ ("The Songs of the Daughter of Zion"), is a masterpiece. It
+contains six historical poems, admirable in thought, form, and
+inspiration. In "Solomon and Kohelet", his most ambitious poem, he
+brings the youth of King Solomon before our eyes. [Footnote: Wilna,
+1852. German translation by J. Steinberg, Wilna, 1859.] It was the first
+time the love of Solomon for the Shulammite was celebrated--a sublime,
+exalted love sung in marvellous fashion. The joy of life trembles in all
+the fibres of the poet's heart.... Then, the old age of Ecclesiastes is
+contrasted strikingly with the youth of Solomon--the king disillusioned,
+skeptical, convinced of the vanity of love, beauty, and knowledge. All
+is dross, vanity of vanities! And the young romantic poet ends his work
+with the conclusion that wisdom cannot exist without faith--that faith
+alone is capable of giving man supreme satisfaction.
+
+"Jael and Sisera", a noble production, treats of the silent struggle, in
+the heart of the valiant woman extolled by Deborah, between the duty of
+hospitality on the one side, and love of country on the other. The
+latter triumphs in the end:
+
+  "With this people I dwell, and in its land I am sheltered!
+  Should I not desire its prosperity and its happiness?"
+
+"Moses on Mount Abarim" is full of admiration for the great legislator.
+The poet says regarding his death:
+
+  "The light of the world is obscured and dun,
+  Of what avail the light of the sun?"
+
+His elegy on Jehudah Halevi is instinct with the pathos of patriotic
+love for the Holy Land:
+
+  "That land, where every stone is an altar to the living God, and
+  every rock a seat for a prophet of the supreme Lord".
+
+Or, as he exclaims in another poem, "Land of the muses, perfection of
+beauty, wherein every stone is a book, every rock a graven tablet!"
+
+Another collection of poems by Mikal, _Kinnor Bat-Ziyyon_ ("The
+Harp of the Daughter of Zion"), published at Wilna, posthumously,
+contains, besides a number of pieces translated from the German, also
+lyric poems, in which the poet breathes forth his soul and his
+suffering. He loves life passionately, but he divines that he will not
+be granted the opportunity of enjoying it long, and, in an access of
+despair, he cries out: "Accursed be death, accursed also life!" His
+nature changes, his muse grows sad, and, like his father, he discerns
+only injustice and misfortune in the world. In a poem addressed to "The
+Stars", he fairly storms high heaven to wrest from it the secret of the
+worlds:
+
+  "Answer me, I pray, answer me, ye who are denizens on high! O,
+  stop the march of the eternal laws a single instant! Alas, my
+  heart is full of disgust over this earth. Here man is born unto
+  pain and misery!... Here reigns religious Hatred! On her lips
+  she bears the name of the God of mercy, and in her hands the
+  blood-dripping sword. She prays, she throws herself upon her
+  knees, yet without cease, and in the name of God, she slaughters
+  her victims. This world, when the Lord created it in a fit of
+  anger, He cast it far away from Him in wrath. Then Death threw
+  herself upon it, scattering terror everywhere. She holds this
+  world in her talons. Misery also precipitates herself upon it,
+  gnashing her teeth in beast-like rage. She clutches man like a
+  beast of prey, she torments him without reprieve...."
+
+This posthumous collection of poems contains also love poems and Zionist
+lamentations, all bearing the impress of the deep melancholy and the
+sadness that characterized the last years of the poet's short life. A
+cruel malady carried him off at the age of twenty-four, and the friends
+of Hebrew poetry were left mourning in despair.
+
+Romantic fiction in Hebrew, which the strait-laced life and the
+austerity of the educated had rendered impossible up to this time, now
+made its first appearance in the form of translations of modern
+romances. They were received with acclaim by a well-disposed public
+greedy for novelties. The creators of original romances were not long in
+coming. The first master in the department, the father of Hebrew
+romance, was Abraham Mapu (1808-1867).
+
+Mapu was born at Slobodka, a suburb of Kowno, a sad town inhabited
+almost entirely by Jews. The whole of the population vegetates there
+amid the most deplorable conditions, economic and sanitary. The father
+of Mapu was a poor, melancholy _Melammed_, a teacher of Hebrew and
+the Talmud, simple in his outlook upon life, yet not without a certain
+degree of education. He loved and cultivated knowledge as taught by the
+Hebrew masters of the Middle Ages. Mapu's mother was gentle and sweet.
+With resignation and fortitude she endured the physical suffering that
+hampered her all her life. His brother Mattathias, a Rabbinical student,
+was a man of parts.
+
+In brief, it was misery itself, the life he knew, but the misery once
+surmounted, and vain desires eliminated, it was a life that tended to
+bind closer the ties of family love. Being a sickly child, Mapu did not
+begin to study the elementary branches until he was five years old, an
+advanced age among people whose children were usually sent to the
+_Heder_ at four, to spend years upon years there that brought no
+joy to the student as he sat all day long bent over the great folios of
+the Talmud, except the joy that comes from success in study. Rational
+instruction in the Bible and in Hebrew grammar, scorned by the Talmudic
+dialecticians as superficial studies, was banished from the
+_Heder_. Happily for the future writer, his father taught him the
+Bible, and awakened love in his sensitive heart for the Hebrew language
+and for the glorious past of his people. At the same time, his Talmudic
+education went on admirably. At the age of twelve, he had the reputation
+of being a scholar, at the age of thirteen, an _'Illui_, a
+"phenomenon", and from that time on he was at liberty to devote himself
+to his studies at his own free will, without submitting himself to the
+discipline of a master.
+
+Like all young Talmudists, he was soon sought after as a desirable son-
+in-law, and it was not long before his father affianced him to the
+daughter of a well-to-do burgher. At the age of seventeen, he was
+married. Marriage, however, did not change his life. As before, he
+pursued his studies, while his father-in-law provided for his wants. But
+soon his studies took a new direction. His pensive mind, stifled by
+Rabbinic scholasticism, turned to the Kabbalah. Mystical exaltation more
+and more took possession of him, and the day came when he all but
+declared himself a follower of Hasidism. It was his mother who saved
+him. He yielded to her prayers, and was held back from committing a
+perilous act of heresy.
+
+These internal conflicts between feeling and reason, the perplexities
+with which his spirit wrestled, did not affect our author to an
+excessive degree. They produced no radical change in his personality.
+All his life Mapu remained the humble scholar of the ghetto, a successor
+of the _Ebyonim_, of the psalmists and the prophets. Timorous,
+melancholy, lacking all desire for the things connected with practical
+life, often degraded by their own material wretchedness and by the
+intellectual wretchedness of their surroundings, these dreamers of the
+ghetto, more numerous than the outsider knows, hide a moral exaltation
+in the depths of their hearts, a supreme idealism, always ready to do
+battle, never conquered. In their persons we are offered the only
+explanation there is for the activity and persistence of the Messianic
+people.
+
+Mapu was on the point of succumbing, like so many others, the darkness
+of mysticism was about to drop like a pall upon his mind, when something
+happened, insignificant in itself, but important through its
+consequences, and he was snatched out of danger. A Latin psalter fell
+into his hands by chance; it gave a fresh turn to his studies, and his
+mind took its bearings anew.
+
+Was it curiosity, or was it desire for knowledge, that impelled him to
+decipher the sacred text in an unknown language at what cost soever? It
+is certain that no difficulty affrighted him. Word by word he translated
+the Latin text by dint of comparing it with the Hebrew original, and he
+succeeded in acquiring a large number of Latin words. He is not alone in
+this achievement. Solomon Maimon learned the alphabet of the German, the
+language in which he later wrote his best philosophic essays, from the
+German names of the treatises of the Talmud prefixed to an edition
+printed in Berlin. And many other such cases among the educated Jews of
+Lithuania might be cited.
+
+These mental gymnastics, the necessity of rendering account to himself
+as to the precise value of each word, helped Mapu to a better
+understanding of the Bible text and a closer identification with its
+spirit.
+
+Good fortune and material well-being are not stable possessions with
+people like the Russian Jews, obliged to earn their livelihood in the
+face of rabid competition, and exposed to the caprices of a hostile
+legislation. One day Mapu's father-in-law found himself ruined. The
+young man was obliged to interrupt his studies and accept a place as
+tutor in the family of a well-situated Jewish farmer.
+
+His prolonged stay in the country exerted an excellent influence upon
+the impressionable soul of the young man. His close communion with
+nature, which quickly captivated his mind, rent asunder forever the
+mystic veil that had enshrouded it. Still more important was his
+association with the enlightened Polish curate of the village, who
+interested himself in the young scholar and devoted much time to his
+instruction. Mapu threw himself with ardor into the study of the Latin
+classics. He is the first instance of a Hebrew poet having had the
+opportunity of forming his mind upon the ample models of classic
+antiquity. Continuing under the tuition of the curate, he studied
+French, the language of his preference, then German, and, only in the
+last instance, Russian. The Russian language was not held in high esteem
+by the Maskilim of Mapu's day. In Kowno, whither he returned after some
+time, he was compelled to hide his new acquisitions, for fear of
+arousing the hatred of the fanatics and suffering injury in his
+profession as teacher of Hebrew.
+
+Infatuated with the works of the romanticists, especially the novels of
+Eugčne Sue, his favorite author, he began to think out the first part of
+his historical romance _Ahabat Ziyyon_ ("The Love of Zion") as
+early as 1830. Twenty-three years were to pass before it saw the light
+of day. During that interval he led a life of never-ceasing privation
+and toil, laboring by day, dreaming by night. The Haskalah had created
+humanist centres in the little towns of Lithuania. In some of these, in
+Zhagor and in Rossieny, "the city of the educated, of the friends of
+their people and of the sacred tongue", Mapu finally found the
+opportunity to display his talents. But his material condition, bad
+enough to begin with, grew worse and worse. After oft-repeated
+applications, he received the appointment as teacher at a Jewish
+government school in Kowno, in 1848. This, together with the pecuniary
+assistance granted him by his more fortunate brother, put an end
+permanently to his embarrassment. Occupying an independent position, he
+could devote himself to his romance. Finally, the success obtained by
+the Hebrew translation of "The Mysteries of Paris" emboldened him to
+publish his "Love of Zion", and the timid author was overwhelmed,
+stupefied almost, when he realized the enthusiasm with which the public
+had greeted his first literary product.
+
+Into the ascetic and puritanic environment in which the world of
+sentiment and the life of the spirit were unknown, Mapu's romance
+descended like a flash of lightning, rending the cloud that enveloped
+all hearts. A century after Rousseau, there was still a corner in Europe
+in which pleasure, the joy of living, the good things of this life, and
+nature, were considered futilities, in which love was condemned as a
+crime, and the passions as the ruin of the soul. Such were the
+surroundings amid which "The Love of Zion", a Jewish _Nouvelle
+Héloďse_, appeared as the first plea for nature and love.
+
+"The Love of Zion" is an historical romance. It re-tells a chapter in
+the life of the Jewish people at the time of the prophet Isaiah. The
+poet could not exercise any choice as to his subject--it was forced upon
+him inevitably. In order to be sure of touching a responsive chord in
+his people, it was necessary to carry the action twenty-five centuries
+back. A Jewish novel based on contemporaneous life would have been
+incongruous both with truth and with the spirit of the ghetto.
+
+The time of his novel was the golden age of ancient Judea. It was the
+epoch of a great literary and prophetic outburst. Also it was an
+agitated time, presenting striking contrasts. At Jerusalem, an
+enlightened king was making a firm stand against the limitation of his
+power from within and against an almost invincible enemy from without.
+On the one side, society was decadent, on the other side arose the
+greatest moralists the world has ever seen, the prophets, the intrepid
+assailants of corruption. It was, finally, the period in which the
+noblest dreams of a better, an ideal humanity were dreamed. That is the
+time in which the author lets his story take place.
+
+  In the reign of King Ahaz, two friends lived at Jerusalem. The
+  one named Joram was an officer in the army and the owner of rich
+  domains; the other, Jedidiah, belonged to the royal family. Joram
+  had married two wives, Haggith and Naamah. The latter was his
+  favorite, but at the end of many years she had borne him no
+  children. Obliged to go forth to war against the Philistines,
+  Joram entrusted his family to the care of his friend Jedidiah. At
+  the moment of his departure, his wife Naamah, and also Tirzah,
+  the wife of Jedidiah, discovered, each, that she was with child.
+  The two friends agreed, that if the one bore a son and the other
+  a daughter, the two children should in time marry each other.
+
+  Things turned out according to the hopes of the fathers. The wife
+  of Jedidiah was the first to be confined, and she gave birth to a
+  daughter, who was named Tamar.
+
+  Joram was taken captive by the enemy, and did not return. At the
+  same time a great misfortune overtook his family. His steward
+  Achan permitted himself to be tempted to evil by a judge, Matthan
+  by name, a personal enemy of Joram. He set fire to the house of
+  his master, first having despoiled it of all there was in it. His
+  booty he carried to the house of Matthan, and Haggith and her
+  children perished in the flames. Achan laid the blame for the
+  fire upon Naamah, who, he said, desired to avenge herself upon
+  her rival Haggith. He substituted his own son Nabal for Azrikam,
+  the son of Haggith, the only one of Joram's family, he pretended,
+  to escape with his life. Poor Naamah, about to be delivered, was
+  compelled to flee and take refuge with a shepherd in the
+  neighborhood of Bethlehem. There she bore twins, a son named
+  Amnon, and a daughter, Peninnah.
+
+  Jedidiah, shocked by the calamity that had overwhelmed the house
+  of his friend, took the supposed Azrikam, the son of Joram, home
+  with him, and raised him with his own children. In order to keep
+  the spirit of his word to his friend, he considered Azrikam the
+  future husband of his daughter, seeing that Naamah had
+  disappeared, and was, besides, under the suspicion of being a
+  murderess. Achan's triumph was complete. His son was to take the
+  place of Azrikam, inherit the house of Joram, and marry the
+  beautiful Tamar.
+
+  In the meanwhile happened the fall of the kingdom of Samaria. The
+  Assyrians carried off the inhabitants captive, among them
+  Hananel, the father-in-law of Jedidiah. One of the captives, the
+  Samaritan priest Zimri, succeeded in making his escape, and he
+  fled to Jerusalem. The name of his fellow-prisoner Hananel, which
+  he used as a recommendation, opened the house and the trustful
+  heart of Jedidiah to him.
+
+  Tamar and Azrikam grew up side by side in the house of Jedidiah.
+  They differed from each other radically. Beautiful as Tamar
+  was, and good and generous, so ugly and perverse was Azrikam. The
+  maiden despised him with all her heart. One day Tamar, while
+  walking in the country near Bethlehem, was attacked by a lion. A
+  shepherd hastened to her rescue and saved her life. This shepherd
+  was none but Amnon, the son of the unfortunate Naamah.
+
+  Teman, the brother of Tamar, by chance happened upon Peninnah,
+  the sister of Amnon, who pretended she was an alien, and he was
+  seized with violent love for her. Thus the son and the daughter
+  of Jedidiah were infatuated, the one with the daughter of Naamah,
+  the other with her son, without suspecting who they were.
+
+  Amnon, who had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of
+  Tabernacles, was received with joy, by Jedidiah and his wife, as
+  the savior of their daughter. He was made at home in their house,
+  and won general favor by reason of his excellent character. The
+  young shepherd felt attracted to the study of sacred subjects. He
+  frequented the school of the prophets, and he was particularly
+  entranced with the eloquence of the great Isaiah.
+
+  The pretended Azrikam did not view the friendship established
+  between Tamar and Amnon with a favorable eye. He took the priest
+  Zimri into his confidence, and made him his accomplice and aid in
+  disposing of his rival. Jedidiah, meanwhile, remained faithful to
+  his promise, and persisted in his intention of giving his
+  daughter in marriage to Azrikam, in spite of her own wishes in
+  the matter. When the tender feeling between Tamar and Amnon
+  became evident, Jedidiah dismissed the latter from his house.
+
+  The period treated of is the most turbulent in the history of
+  Judea. The conflict of passions and intrigues is going on that
+  preceded the downfall of the kingdom of Judah and the great
+  Assyrian invasion. Moral disorder reigns everywhere, iniquity and
+  lies rule in place of justice. The upright tremble and hope,
+  encouraged by the prophets. The wicked are defiant, and give
+  themselves up shamelessly to their debauches.
+
+  "Let us drink, let us sing!" exclaimed the crowd of the impious.
+  "Who knows whether to-morrow finds us alive!"
+
+  Zimri meditates a master stroke. Every evening Amnon betook
+  himself to a little hut on the outskirts of the town, where his
+  mother and his sister lived. Zimri surprises him. He takes Tamar
+  and Teman there, and they watch Amnon embrace his sister. Now all
+  is over. A dreadful blow is dealt the love of brother and sister,
+  who are ignorant of the bonds of kinship uniting Amnon and
+  Peninnah. Repulsed by Tamar, for he knows not what reason, Amnon
+  leaves Jerusalem, despair in his heart.
+
+  All is not lost yet. Maltreated by his own son and plagued by
+  remorse, Achan confesses his misdeeds to the alleged Azrikam, and
+  reveals his real origin to him. Furious, Azrikam thinks of
+  nothing but to get rid of his father. He sets his father's house
+  afire, but, before his death, Achan makes a confession to the
+  court. Everything is disclosed, and everything is cleared up.
+  Tamar, now made aware of the error she has committed, is
+  inconsolable at having separated from Amnon.
+
+  Meantime the political events take their course. The brave king
+  Hezekiah carries on the struggle against his minister Shebnah,
+  who desires to surrender the capital to the Assyrians. The
+  miraculous defeat of the enemy at the gates of Jerusalem assures
+  the triumph of Hezekiah. Peace and justice are established once
+  more.
+
+  During this time, Amnon, taken prisoner in war and sold as slave
+  to a master living on one of the Ionian isles, has found his
+  father Jorara there. Both together succeed in making good their
+  escape, and they return to Jerusalem.
+
+  The joy of the Holy City delivered from the invader coincides
+  with the joy of the two reunited families, whose cherished wishes
+  are realized. The loves of Tamar and Amnon, and Teman and
+  Peninnah, triumph.
+
+This is the frame of the novel, which recalls the wonder-tales of the
+eighteenth century. From the point of view of romantic intrigue, study
+of character, and development of plot, it is a puerile work. The
+interest does not reside in the romantic story. Borrowed from modern
+works, the fiction rather injures Mapu's novel, which is primarily a
+poem and an historical reconstruction. "The Love of Zion" is more than
+an historical romance, more than a narrative invented by an imaginative
+romancer--it is ancient Judea herself, the Judea of the prophets and the
+kings, brought to life again in the dreams of the poet. The
+reconstruction of Jewish society of long ago, the appreciation of the
+prophetic life, the local color, the majesty of the descriptions of
+nature, the vivid and striking figures of speech, the elevated and
+vigorous style, everything is so instinct with the spirit of the Bible
+that, without the romantic story, one would believe himself to be
+perusing a long-lost and now recovered book of poetry of ancient Judea.
+
+Dreamy, guileless, ignorant of the actual and complicated phenomena of
+modern life, Mapu was able to identify himself with the times of the
+prophets so well that he confounded them with modern times. He committed
+the anachronism of transporting the humanist ideas of the Lithuanian
+Maskil to the period of Isaiah. But by reason of wishing to show himself
+modern, he became ancient. He was not even aware of the fact that he was
+restoring the past with its peculiar civilization, its manners, and
+ideas.
+
+None the less his aim as a reformer was attained. Guided by prophetic
+intuition, Mapu accomplished a task making for morality and culture. To
+men given over to a degenerate asceticism, or to a mystic attitude
+hostile to the present, he revealed a glorious past as it really had
+been, not as their brains, weighed down by misery and befogged by
+ignorance, pictured it to have been. He showed them, not the Judea of
+the Rabbis, of the pious, and the ascetics, but the land blessed by
+nature, the land where men took joy in living, the land of life, flowing
+with gaiety and love, the land of the Song of Songs and of Ruth. He drew
+Isaiah for them, not as a saintly Rabbi or a teller of mystical dreams,
+but a poetic Isaiah, patriot, sublime moralist, the prophet of a free
+Judea, the preacher of earthly prosperity, of goodness, and justice,
+opposing the narrow doctrines and minute and senseless ceremonialism
+inculcated by the priests, who were the predecessors of the Rabbis.
+
+The lesson of the novel is an exhortation to return to a natural life.
+It presents a world of pleasure, of feeling, of joyous living, justified
+and idealized in the name of the past. It sets forth the charms of rural
+life in a succession of poetic pictures. Judea, the pastoral land,
+passes under the eyes of the reader. The blithe humor of the vine-
+dressers, the light-heartedness of the shepherds, the popular festivals
+with their outbursts of joy and high spirits, are reproduced with
+masterly skill. The moral grandeur of Judea appears in the magnificent
+description of a whole people assembled to celebrate the Feast in the
+Holy City, and in the impassioned discourses of the prophets, who openly
+criticise the great and the priests in the name of justice and truth.
+But especially it is love that pervades the work, love, chaste and
+ingenuous, apotheosized in the relation of Amnon and Tamar.
+
+The impression that was made by the book is inconceivable. It can be
+compared with nothing less than the effect produced by the publication
+of the _Nouvelle Héloďse_.
+
+At last the Hebrew language had found the master who could make the
+appeal to popular taste, who understood the art of speaking to the
+multitude and touching them deeply. The success of the book was
+impressive. In spite of the fanatical intriguers, who looked with horror
+upon this profanation of the holy language, the novel made its way
+everywhere, into the academies for Rabbinical students, into the very
+synagogues. The young were amazed and entranced by the poetic flights
+and by the sentimentalism of the book. A whole people seemed to be
+reborn unto life, to emerge from its millennial lethargy. Upon all minds
+the comparison between ancient grandeur and actually existing misery
+obtruded itself.
+
+The Lithuanian woods witnessed a startling spectacle. Rabbinical
+students, playing truant, resorted thither to read Mapu's novel in
+secret. Luxuriously they lived the ancient days over again. The elevated
+love celebrated in the book touched all hearts, and many an artless
+romance was sketched in outline.
+
+But the greatest beneficiary of the new movement ushered into being by
+the appearance of "The Love of Zion" was the Hebrew language, revived in
+all its splendor.
+
+  "I have searched out the ancient Latin in its majestic vigor, the
+  German with its depth of meaning, the French full of charm and
+  ravishing expressions, the Russian in the flower of its youth.
+  Each has qualities of its own, each is crowned with beauty. But
+  in the face of all of them, whose voice appeals unto me? Is it
+  not thy voice, my dove? How pellucid is thy word, though its
+  music issues from the land of destruction!... The melody of thy
+  words sings in my ear like a heavenly harp." [Footnote: See
+  Brainin, "Abraham Mapu", p. 107.]
+
+This idealization of a language of the past, and of that past itself,
+produced an enormous effect upon all minds, and it prepared the soil for
+an abundant harvest. The success won by "The Love of Zion" encouraged
+Mapu to publish his other historical romance, the action of which is
+placed in the same period as the first work. _Ashmat Shomeron_
+("The Transgression of Samaria"), also published at Wilna, is an epic in
+the true sense. It reproduces the conflicts set afoot by the rivalry
+between Jerusalem and Samaria. The underlying idea in this novel is not
+unlike that of "The Love of Zion". But the author allows himself to run
+riot in the use of antitheses and contrasts. He arraigns the poor
+inhabitants of Samaria with pitiless severity. Whatever is good, just,
+beautiful, lofty, and chaste in love, proceeds from Jerusalem; whatever
+savors of hypocrisy, crookedness, dogmatism, absurdity, sensuality,
+proceeds from Samaria. The author is particularly implacable toward the
+hypocrites, and toward the blind fanatics with their narrow-mindedness.
+The personification of certain types of ghetto fanatics is a transparent
+ruse. The book excited the anger of the obscurantists, and, in their
+wrath, they persecuted all who read the works of Mapu.
+
+"The Transgression of Samaria" shares a number of faults of technique
+with the first novel, but also it is equally with the other a product of
+rich imaginativeness and epic vigor. In reproducing local color and the
+Biblical life, the author's touch is even surer than in "The Love of
+Zion".
+
+If one were inclined to apply to Mapu's novels the standards of art
+criticism, a radical fault would reveal itself. Mapu is not a
+psychologist. He does not know how to create heroes of flesh and blood.
+His men and women are blurred, artificial. The moral aim dominates. The
+plot is puerile, and the succession of events tiresome. But these
+shortcomings were not noticed by his simple, uncultivated readers, for
+the reason that they shared the artless _naďveté_ of the author.
+
+Besides these two, we have some poetic fragments of a third historical
+romance by Mapu, which was destroyed by the Russian censor. There is
+also an excellent manual of the Hebrew language, _Amon Padgug_
+("The Master Pedagogue"), very much valued by teachers of Hebrew, and,
+finally, a method of the French language In Hebrew.
+
+We shall revert elsewhere to his last novel, '_Ayit Zabua_' ("The
+Hypocrite"), which is very different in style and character from his
+first two romances.
+
+In his last years he was afflicted with a severe disease. Unable to
+work, he was supported by his brother, who had settled in Paris, and who
+invited Mapu to join him there. On the way, death overtook him, and he
+never saw the capital of the country for which he had expressed the
+greatest admiration all his life.
+
+In southern Russia, especially at Odessa, literary activity continued to
+be carried on with success. Abraham Bär Gottlober (1811-1900), writing
+under the pseudonym Mahalalel, was the most productive of the poets, if
+not the best endowed of the whole school.
+
+A disciple of Isaac Bär Levinsohn, and visibly affected by the influence
+of Wessely and Abraham Bär Lebensohn, he devoted himself to poetry. The
+first volume of his poems appeared at Wilna in 1851. Toward the end of
+his days, he published his complete works in three volumes, _Kol Shire
+Mahalalel_ ("Collected Poems", Warsaw, 1890). His earliest
+productions go back to the middle of the last century. He is a
+remarkable stylist, and, in some of his works, his language is both
+simple and polished. "Cain", or the Vagabond, is a marvel in style and
+thought.
+
+In the poem entitled "The Bird in the Cage", he writes as a Zionist, and
+he weeps over the trials of his people in exile. In another poem,
+_Nezah Yisraël_ ("The Eternity of Israel"), perhaps the best that
+issued from his pen, he puts forward a dignified claim to his title as
+Jew, of which he is proud.
+
+  "Judah has neither bow nor warring hosts, nor avenging dart, nor
+  sharpened sword. But he has a suit in the name of justice with
+  the nations that contend with him....
+
+  "I take good heed not to recount to you our glory. Why should I
+  extol the eternal people, for you detest its virtues, you desire
+  not to hear of them.... But remember, ye peoples, if I commit a
+  transgression, not in me lies the wrong--through your sin I have
+  stumbled....
+
+  "I ask not for pity, I ask but for justice."
+
+On the whole, Gottlober lacks poetic warmth. In the majority of his
+poems, his style errs on the side of prolixity and wordiness. He has
+made a number of translations into Hebrew, and his prose is excellent.
+His satires frequently display wit. His versified history of Hebrew
+poetry, contained in the third volume of his works, is inferior to the
+_Melizat Yeshurun_ by Solomon Levinsohn referred to above. Later he
+published a monthly review in Hebrew, under the title _Ha-Boker Or_
+("The Clear Morning"). His reminiscences of the Hasidim, whom he opposed
+all his life, are the best of his prose writings, and put him in a class
+with the realists. He also wrote a history of the Kabbalah and Hasidism
+(_Toledot ha-Kabbalah weha-Hasidut_). [Footnote: In the monthly
+_Ha-Boker Or_, and _Orot me-Ofel_ ("Gleams in the Darkness"),
+Warsaw, 1881.]
+
+Gottlober was the _Mehabber_ personified, the type of the vagabond
+author, who is obliged to go about in person and force his works upon
+patrons in easy circumstances.
+
+The number of writers belonging to the romantic school, by reason of the
+form of their works, or by reason of their content, is too large for us
+to give them all by name. Only a few can be mentioned and characterized
+briefly.
+
+Elias Mordecai Werbel (1805-1880) was the official poet of the literary
+circle at Odessa. A collection of his poems, which appeared at Odessa,
+is distinguished by its polished execution. Besides odes and occasional
+poems, they contain several historical pieces, the most remarkable of
+them "Huldah and Bor", Wilna, 1848, based on a Talmudic legend.
+[Footnote: In _Keneset Yisraël_, Warsaw, 1888.]
+
+He was excelled by Israel Roll (1830-1893), a Galician by birth, but
+living in Odessa. His _Shire Romi_ ("Roman Poems"), all translated
+from the works of the great Latin poets, give evidence of considerable
+poetic endowment. His style is classic, copious, and precise, and his
+volume of poems will always maintain a place in a library of Hebrew
+literature by the side of Mikal's version of Ovid and the admirable
+translation of the Sibylline books made by the eminent philologist
+Joshua Steinberg.
+
+In prose, first place belongs to Benjamin Mandelstamm (died 1886). Among
+his works is a history of Russia, but his most important production,
+_Hazon la-Mo'ed_, is a narrative of his travels and the impressions
+he received in the "Jewish zone", chiefly Lithuania. In certain
+respects, he must be classified with Mordecai A. Ginzburg, with whom he
+shares clarity of thought and wit. But his sentimentality, and his
+excessive indulgence in certain affectations of style, range him with
+the romantic poets.
+
+The distinguished poet Judah Leon Gordon in his beginnings also belonged
+to the romantic school. His earliest poems, especially "David and
+Michal", treat of Bible times. But Gordon did not remain long in
+sympathy with the endeavors of the romanticists, and the mature stage of
+his literary activity belongs to a later epoch.
+
+The characteristic trait of Hebrew romanticism, which distinguishes it
+from most analogous movements in Europe, is that it remained in the path
+of orderly progress and emancipation. It showed no sign of turning aside
+toward reactionary measures in religion or in other concerns. Neither
+the retrograde policy adopted by the government against the Jews, nor
+the uncompromising fanaticism of certain parties among the Jews
+themselves, could arrest the development of the humanitarian ideas
+disseminated by the Austrian and the Italian school.
+
+Since the origin of the German Meassefim movement, the evolution of
+Hebrew literature has not been stopped for a single instant in its
+striving for knowledge and light. The romantic movement is one of its
+most characteristic stages, and at the same time one most productive of
+good results. The sombre present held out no promises for the future,
+and the dark clouds on the political horizon eclipsed every hope of
+better fortunes. At such a time the champions of the Haskalah opposed
+ignorance and prejudice in the name of the past, and in the name of
+morality and idealism they sought to win the hearts of the populace for
+the "Divine Haskalah".
+
+The influence of Hebrew romanticism was many-sided. The blending of the
+rationalism of the first humanists with the patriotic sentiments of
+Luzzatto fortified the bonds that united the writers to the mass of the
+faithful believers. A sentimentalism that was called forth by a poetic
+revival of the times of the prophets did more for the diffusion of sane
+and natural ideas than exhortations and arguments without end, and the
+declaration, repeated again and again by the school of Wilna, that
+science and faith stand in no sort of opposition to each other, was an
+equally powerful means of bringing together the educated with the
+moderate among the religious.
+
+Soon the times were to become more favorable to a renewal of the combat
+with the obscurants, and then the antagonism between the educated
+classes and the orthodox would be resumed with fresh vigor. When that
+time arrived, a whole school of ardent realistic writers set themselves
+the task of counteracting the misery of Jewish life, and they executed
+it without sparing the susceptibilities and the self-love of the
+religious masses. They rose up in judgment against orthodox and
+traditional Judaism; they chastised it and traduced it. With acerbity
+they promulgated the gospel of modern humanism and the surrender of
+outward beliefs. By their side, however, we shall see a more moderate
+school claim its own, and one not less efficient. It will proclaim words
+of charity, faith, and hope. To the negations and destructive aphorisms
+of the realistic school it will oppose firm confidence in the early
+regeneration of the Jewish people, called to fulfil its destiny upon its
+national soil. The Zionist appeal will unite the orthodox masses and the
+emancipated youth in a single transport of action and hope.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE EMANCIPATION MOVEMENT
+
+THE REALISTS
+
+
+The accession of Alexander II to the throne marks a decisive moment in
+the history of the Russian empire. The fresh impetus that proceeded from
+the generous and liberal ideas encouraged by the Czar himself reached
+the ghetto. Substantial improvements in the political situation of the
+Jews the empire and the easier access to the liberal professions granted
+them, the abolition of the old order of military service and the
+suppression of the Kahal--these, joined to the expectation of an early
+civil emancipation, stirred the Jewish humanists profoundly. Startled
+out of their age-long dreams, the Jews with a modern education found
+themselves suddenly face to face with reality, and engaged in a struggle
+with the exigencies of modern life. In justice to them it must be said
+that they realized at once where their duty lay, and they were not found
+wanting.
+
+They ranged themselves on the side of the reform government, and with
+all their strength they tried to neutralize the resistance with which
+the conservative Jews met the reforms, projected or achieved. They were
+particularly active in the regions remote from the large cities, which
+had hardly been touched by the new currents. Early in the struggle, the
+creation of a Hebrew press placed an effective instrument in the hands
+of the defenders of the new order.
+
+The interest aroused among the Jews by the Crimean War suggested the
+idea of a political and literary journal in Hebrew to Eliezer Lipman
+Silberman. It was called _Ha-Maggid_ ("The Herald"), and the first
+issue appeared in 1856, in the little Prussian town of Lyck, situated on
+the Russo-Polish frontier. It was successful beyond expectation. The
+enthusiasm of the readers at sight of the periodical published in the
+holy language expressed itself in dithyrambic eulogies and a vast number
+of odes that filled its columns. The influence it exercised was great.
+It formed a meeting-place for the educated Jews of all countries and all
+shades of opinion. Besides news bearing on politics and literature, and
+philological essays, and poems more or less bombastic, _Ha-Maggid_
+published a number of original articles of great value. Its issues
+formed the link between the old masters, Rapoport and Luzzatto, and
+young Russian writers like Gordon and Lilienblum.
+
+The learned French Orientalist Joseph Halévy, later the author of an
+interesting collection of Hebrew poems, used _Ha-Maggid_ for the
+promulgation of his bold ideas on the revival of Hebrew, and its
+practical adjustment to modern notions and needs by means of the
+invention of new terms. In part, his propositions have been realized in
+our own days. To Rabbi Hirsch Kalisher and the editor, David Gordon, as
+the first promoters of the Zionist idea, _Ha-Maggid_ gave the
+opportunity, as early as 1860, of urging its practical realization, and
+due to their propaganda the first society was formed for the
+colonization of Palestine.
+
+This pioneer venture in the field of Hebrew journalism stimulated many
+others. Hebrew newspapers sprang up in all countries, varying in their
+tendencies according to their surroundings and the opinions of their
+editors. In Galicia especially, where there was no absurd censorship to
+manacle thought, Hebrew journals were published in abundance. In
+Palestine, in Austria, at one time in Paris even, periodicals were
+founded, and they created a public opinion as well as readers. But it
+was above all in Russia, in the measure in which the censorship was
+relaxed, that the Hebrew press became eventually a popular tribunal in
+the true sense of the word, with a steady army of readers at its back.
+
+Samuel Joseph Finn, an historian and a philologist of merit, published a
+review at Wilna, called _Ha-Karmel_ (1860-1880), which was devoted
+to the Science of Judaism in particular.
+
+Hayyim Selig Slonimski, the renowned mathematician, founded his journal
+_Ha-Zefirah_ ("The Morningstar") in 1872. It was issued first in
+Berlin and later in Warsaw. He himself wrote a large number of articles
+in it, in his chosen field as popularizer of the natural sciences.
+
+In Galicia, Joseph Kohen-Zedek published _Ha-Mebasser_ ("The
+Messenger") and _Ha-Nesher_ ("The Eagle"), and Baruch Werber,
+_Ha-'Ibri_ ("The Hebrew").
+
+By far outstripping all these in importance was the first Hebrew journal
+that appeared in Russia, _Ha-Meliz_ ("The Interpreter"), founded at
+Odessa in 1860, by Alexander Zederbaum, one of the most faithful
+champions of humanism. _Ha-Meliz_ became the principal organ of the
+movement for emancipation, and the spokesman of the Jewish reformers.
+
+The Hebrew press with all its shortcomings, and in spite of its meagre
+resources, which prevented it from securing regular, paid contributors,
+and left it at the mercy of an irresponsible set of amateurs, yet
+exercised considerable influence upon the Jews of Russia. [Footnote:
+Sometimes ten readers clubbed together for one subscription.]
+Unremittingly it busied itself with the spread of civilization,
+knowledge, and Hebrew literature.
+
+In the large centres, especially in the more recently established
+communities in the south of Russia, the intellectual emancipation of the
+Jews was an accomplished fact at an early day. The young people streamed
+to the schools, and applied themselves voluntarily to manual trades. The
+professional schools and the Rabbinical seminaries established by the
+government robbed the _Hedarim_ and the _Yeshibot_ of
+thousands of students. The Russian language, hitherto neglected, began
+to dispute the first place with the jargon and even the Hebrew. Wherever
+the breath of economic and political reforms had penetrated,
+emancipation made its way, and without encountering serious opposition
+on the part of traditional Judaism.
+
+Wilna, the capital of Lithuania, sorely tried by the Polish insurrection
+of 1863, and intentionally excluded by the government from the benefits
+of all administrative and political reforms, did not continue to be the
+centre of the new life of the Russian Jews, as it had been of their old
+life. The "Lithuanian Jerusalem" had put aside its sceptre, and it lay
+down for a long sleep, with dreams of the Haskalah, "twin-sister of
+faith". As Wilna has since that time witnessed no excesses of
+fanaticism, so also it has not known an intense life, the acrid
+opposition between Haskalah and religion. It remained the capital of the
+moderate, traditional attitude and religious opportunism.
+
+By way of compensation, the small country towns and the Talmudic centres
+in Lithuania put up a stubborn resistance to the new reforms. The poor
+literary folk stranded in out-of-the-way corners far removed from
+civilization were treated as pernicious heretics. Nothing could stop the
+fanatics in their persecution, and they had recourse to the extremest
+expedients. Made to believe that the reformers harbored designs against
+the fundamental principles of Judaism, the people, deluded and erring,
+thought the obscurantists right and applauded them, while they rose up
+against the modernizers as one man.
+
+The opposition between humanism and the religious fanatics degenerated
+into a remorseless struggle. The early Haskalah, the gentle, celestial
+daughter of dreamers, was a thing of the past. The educated classes,
+conscious of the support of the authorities and of the public opinion
+prevailing in the centres of enlightenment, became aggressive, and made
+a bold attack upon the course and ways of the traditionalists. They
+displayed openly, with bluntest realism, all the evils that were
+corroding the system of their antagonists. They followed the example of
+the Russian realistic literature of their day, in exposing, branding,
+scourging, and chastising whatever is old and antiquated, whatever
+mutinies against the modern spirit. Such is the character of the
+realistic literature succeeding the epoch of the romanticists.
+
+The signal was again given by Abraham Mapu, in his novel descriptive of
+the manners of the small town, '_Ayit Zabua_' ("The Hypocrite"), of
+which the early volumes appeared about the year 1860, at Wilna. In view
+of the growing insolence of the fanatics, and the urgency of the reforms
+projected by the government, the master of Hebrew romance decided to
+abandon the poetic heights to which his dreams had been soaring. He
+threw himself into the scrimmage, adding the weight of his authority to
+the efforts of those who were carrying on the combat with the
+obscurantists. Even in his historical romances, especially in the second
+of them, he had permitted his hatred against the hypocrites of the
+ghetto, disguised in the skin of the false prophet Zimri and his
+emulators, to make itself plainly visible. Now he unmasked them in full
+view of all, and without regard for the feelings of the other party.
+
+"The Hypocrite" is an ambitious novel in five parts. All the types of
+ghetto fanatics are portrayed with the crudest realism. The most
+prominent figure is Rabbi Zadok, canting, unmannerly, lewd, an
+unscrupulous criminal, covering his malpractices with the mantle of
+piety. He is the prototype of all the Tartufes of the ghetto, who play
+upon the ignorance and credulity of the people. His chief follower,
+Gadiel, is a blind fanatic, an implacable persecutor of all who do not
+share his opinions, the enemy of Hebrew literature, embittering the life
+of any who venture to read a modern publication. Devoted adherent of the
+Haskalah as he was, Mapu was not sparing of paint in blackening these
+enemies of culture.
+
+Around his central figure a large number of characters are grouped, each
+personifying a type peculiar to the Lithuanian province. The darkest
+portrait is that of Gaal, the ignorant upstart who rules the whole
+community, and makes common cause with Rabbi Zadok and his followers.
+The venality of the officials gives the heartless _parvenu_ free
+scope for his arbitrary misdeeds, and without let or hindrance he
+persecutes all who are suspected of modernizing tendencies. He is
+enveloped in an atmosphere of crime and terror. Mapu was guilty of
+overdrawing his characters; he exceeded the limits of truth. On the
+other hand, he grows more indulgent and more veracious when he describes
+the life of the humbler denizens of the ghetto.
+
+Jerahmeel, the _Batlan_, is a finished product. The _Batlan_
+is a species unknown outside of the ghetto. In a sense, he is the
+bohemian in Jewry. His distinguishing traits are his oddity and farcical
+ways. Not that he is an ignoramus--far from that. In many instances he
+is an erudite Talmudist, but his simplicity, his absent-mindedness, his
+lack of all practical sense, incapacitate him from undertaking anything,
+of whatever nature it may be. He is a parasite, and by reason of mere
+inertia he becomes attached to the enemies of progress.
+
+The _Shadhan_, the influential matrimonial agent lacking in no
+Jewish community, is painted true to life. Spiteful, cunning, witty,
+even learned, he excels in the art of bringing together the eligibles of
+the two sexes and unravelling intricate situations.
+
+The most sympathetic figure in the whole novel is the honest burgher.
+Mapu has given us the idealization of the large class of humble
+tradesmen who have been well grounded in the Talmud, who are endowed
+with an open heart for every generous feeling, and whose good common
+sense and profoundly moral character the congested condition of the
+ghetto has not succeeded in perverting.
+
+All these figures represent real individuals, living and acting. Mapu
+has without a doubt exaggerated reality, and frequently to the detriment
+of truth. Nevertheless they remain veracious types.
+
+On the other hand, he has not succeeded so well in the creation of the
+Maskilim type. The new generation, the enlightened friends of culture,
+are puppets without life, without personality, who speak and move only
+for the purpose of glorifying the "Divine Haskalah".
+
+Mapu's conception of Jewish life can be summed up in two phrases:
+_enlightened_, hence good, just, generous; _fanatic_, hence
+wicked, hypocritical, lewd, cowardly.
+
+If the novel on account of its treatment of the subject has some claims
+upon the description realistic, it has none by reason of its form. "The
+Hypocrite" suffers from all the defects of Mapu's historical romances,
+which, in the work under consideration, take on a graver aspect. The
+style of Isaiah and poetic flights do not comport well with a modern
+subject and a modern environment. Herein, again, Mapu's example became
+pernicious for his successors.
+
+When the novel is in full swing, there occurs a series of letters
+written by one of the heroes from Palestine. The enthusiasm of the
+author for the Holy Land cannot deny itself, and this unexpected Zionist
+note, in a purely modern work, reveals his soul as it really is, the
+soul of a great dreamer.
+
+It was after the appearance of Mapu's "Hypocrite", in the year 1867,
+that Abraham Bär Lebensohn published, at Wilna, his drama "Truth and
+Faith", written twenty years before, in which, also, the Tartufe of the
+ghetto plays a great part.
+
+At about the same time a young writer, Solomon Jacob Abramowitsch,
+issued his realistic novel _Ha-Abot weha-Banim_ ("Fathers and
+Sons", Zhitomir, 1868). Abramowitsch had already acquired some fame by a
+natural history (_Toledot ha-Teba'_) in four volumes, in which he
+taxed his ingenuity to create a complete nomenclature for zoology in
+Hebrew. His novel is a failure. The subject is the antagonism between
+religious fathers and emancipated sons, and the action takes place in
+Hasidic surroundings. There is nothing to betray the future master, the
+delicate satirist, the admirable painter of manners. Abramowitsch then
+turned away from Hebrew for a while, and made the literary fortune of
+the Jewish-German jargon by writing his tales of Jewish life in it, but
+about ten years ago he re-entered the ranks of the writers of Hebrew,
+and became one of the most original authors handling the sacred
+language. What distinguishes Abramowitsch from his contemporaries is his
+style. He was among the first to introduce the diction of the Talmud and
+the Midrash into modern Hebrew. The result is a picturesque idiom, to
+which the Talmudic expressions give its peculiar charm. Though it
+continues essentially Biblical, the new element in it puts it into
+perfect accord with the spirit and the environment it is called upon to
+depict. It lends itself marvellously well to the description of the life
+and manners of the Jews of Wolhynia, the province which forms the
+background of his novels.
+
+All these creators of a Hebrew realism were outstripped by the poet
+Gordon, who expresses the whole of his agitated epoch in his own person
+alone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE CONFLICT WITH RABBINISM
+
+JUDAH LEON GORDON
+
+
+Judah Leon Gordon (1830-1892) was born at Wilna, of well-to-do parents,
+who were pious and comparatively enlightened. As was customary in his
+day, he received a Rabbinical education, but at the same time he was not
+permitted to neglect the study of the Bible and the classical Hebrew. He
+was a brilliant student, and all circumstances pointed to his future
+eminence as a Talmudist. The academic address which he delivered on the
+occasion of his _Bar-Mizwah_, on his thirteenth birthday,
+proclaimed him an _'Illui_, and he was betrothed to the daughter of
+a rich burgher.
+
+His father's financial ruin caused the rupture of his engagement, and, a
+marriage being out of the question, he was left free to continue his
+studies as he would. He returned to Wilna, the first centre of the
+Haskalah in Russia. The secular literature couched in Hebrew had
+penetrated to the very synagogue, if not openly, at least by the back
+door. In secret Gordon devoured all the modern writings that fell in his
+hands. It was the time of the elder Lebensohn, when he stood at the
+summit of his fame and influence. Very soon Gordon perceived that the
+study of Hebrew is not sufficient for the equipment of a man of learning
+and cultivation. Under the guidance of an intelligent kinsman, he
+studied German, Russian, French, and Latin, one of the first Hebrew
+writers to become thoroughly acquainted with Russian literature. He
+devoted much time to the study of Hebrew philology and grammar, and he
+was justly reputed a distinguished connoisseur of the language. Both his
+linguistic researches and his new linguistic formations in Hebrew are
+extremely valuable.
+
+The muse visited him early, and by his first attempts at poetry he
+earned the good-will and favor of Lebensohn the father and the
+friendship of Lebensohn the son. In his youthful fervor, he offers
+enthusiastic admiration to the older man, and proclaims himself his
+disciple. But it was the younger poet, Micah Joseph, who exerted the
+greater influence upon him. A little drama dedicated to the memory of
+the poet snatched away in the prime of his years shows the depth and
+tenderness of Gordon's affection for him.
+
+All this time Gordon did not cease to be a student. In 1852 he passed
+his final examinations, graduating him from the Rabbinical Seminary at
+Wilna, and he was appointed teacher at a Jewish government school at
+Poneviej, a small town in the Government of Kowno. Successively he was
+transferred from town to town in the same district. Twenty years of
+wrangling with fanatics and teaching of children in the most backward
+province of Lithuania did not arrest his literary activity. In 1872 he
+was called to the post of secretary to the Jewish community of St.
+Petersburg and secretary to the recently formed Society for the
+Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia. Thenceforward his
+material needs were provided for, and he held an assured, independent
+position. Denounced in 1879 as a political conspirator, he was thrown
+into prison, with the result that he suffered considerable financial
+loss and irreparable physical injury. His innocence was established,
+and, having been set free, he became one of the editors of the journal
+_Ha-Meliz_, the Hebrew periodical with the largest circulation at
+the time. But the disease he had contracted ate away his strength, and
+he died a victim of the Russian espionage system.
+
+As was said, the young poet followed in the tracks of the two
+Lebensohns. In 1857 he published his first ambitious poem, _Ahabat
+David u-Michal_, the product of a naďve dreamer, who swears a solemn
+oath to "remain the slave of the Hebrew language forever, and consecrate
+all his life to it". [Footnote: The collected poems of Gordon appeared,
+in four volumes, in 1884, at St. Petersburg, and in six volumes, in
+1900, at Wilna.] "David and Michal" rehearses poetically the tale of the
+shepherd's love for the daughter of the king. The poet carries us back
+to Biblical times. He tells us how the daughter of Saul is enamored of
+the young shepherd summoned to the royal court to dispel the king's
+melancholy. Jealousy springs up in the heart of Saul, and he takes
+umbrage at the popularity of David. Before granting him the hand of his
+daughter, he imposes superhuman tests upon the young suitor, which would
+seem to doom him to certain death. But David emerges from every trial
+with glory, and returns triumphant. The king is mastered by consuming
+jealousy, and in his anger pursues David relentlessly. David is obliged
+to flee, and Michal is given to his rival. The friendship of David and
+Jonathan is depicted in touching words. Finally David prevails, and he
+is anointed king over Israel. He takes Michal back unto himself, love
+being stronger than the sense of injury. The shame of the past is
+forgotten. But the poor victim is never to know the joy of bearing a
+child--Michal remains barren until the last, and leads a solitary
+existence. Old and forgotten, she passes out of life on the very day of
+David's death.
+
+In this simple, pure drama, the influence of Schiller and of Micah
+Joseph Lebensohn is clearly seen. But real feeling for nature and real
+understanding of the emotion of love are lacking in Gordon. His
+descriptions of nature are a pale retracing of the pictures of the
+romanticists. Poet of the ghetto as he was, he knew neither nature at
+first hand, nor love, nor art. [Footnote: The first collection of his
+lyrics and his epic poems appeared at Wilna, in 1866, under the title
+_Shire Yehudah._] His poems of love are destitute of the personal
+note. On the other hand, in point of classic style and the modern polish
+of his verses, he outdistances all who preceded him. Lebensohn the
+younger removed from the arena, Gordon attained the first place among
+Hebrew poets.
+
+In "David and Barzillai", the poet contrasts the tranquillity of the
+shepherd's life with that of the king. Gordon was happily inspired by
+the desire for outdoor life that had sprung up in the ghetto since
+Mapu's warm praise of rural scenes and pleasures, and also under the
+influence of the Jewish agricultural colonies founded in Russia. He
+shows us the aged king, crushed under a load of hardships, betrayed by
+his own son, standing face to face with the old shepherd, who refuses
+royal gifts.
+
+  "And David reigned as Israel's head,
+  And Barzillai his flocks to pasture led."
+
+The charm of this little poem lies in the description of the land of
+Gilead. It seems that in reviving the past, the Hebrew poets were often
+vouchsafed remarkable insight into nature and local coloring, which
+ordinarily was not a characteristic of theirs. The same warmth and
+historical verisimilitude is found again in _Asenath Bat-
+Potipherah_.
+
+From the same period dates the first volume of fables by Gordon,
+published at Vienna, in 1860, under the title _Mishle Yehudah_,
+forming the second part of his collected poems, and being itself divided
+into four books. It consists of translations, or, better, imitations of
+Aesop, La Fontaine, and Kryloff, together with fables drawn from the
+Midrash. The style is concise and telling, and the satire is keen.
+
+The production of these fables marks a turning-point in the work of
+Gordon. Snatched out of the indulgent and conciliatory surroundings in
+which he had developed, he found himself face to face with the sad
+reality of Jewish life in the provinces. The invincible fanaticism of
+the Rabbis, the anachronistic education given the children, who were
+kept in a state of ignorance, weighed heavily upon the heart of the
+patriot and man of intellect. It was the time in which liberal ideas and
+European civilization had penetrated into Russia under the protection of
+Czar Alexander II, and Gordon yearned to see his Russian co-religionists
+occupy a position similar to that enjoyed by their brethren in the West.
+
+
+Those envied Jews of the West had had a proper understanding of the
+exigencies of their time. They had liberated themselves from the yoke of
+Rabbinism, and had assimilated with their fellow-citizens of other
+faiths. The Russian government encouraged the spread of education among
+the Jews, and granted privileges to such as profited by the
+opportunities offered. The reformers were strengthened also by the
+support of the newly-founded Hebrew journals. Gordon threw himself
+deliberately into the _fracas_. Poetry and prose, Hebrew and
+Russian, all served him to champion the cause of the Haskalah. With him
+the Haskalah was no longer limited to the cultivation of the Hebrew
+language and to the writing of philosophical treatises. It had become an
+undisguised conflict with obscurantism, ignorance, a time-worn routine,
+and all that barred the way to culture. Since the government permitted
+the Jews to enter the social life of the country, and seeing that they
+might in the future aspire to a better lot, the Haskalah should and
+would work to prepare them for it and make them worthy of it.
+
+In 1863, after the liberation of the serfs in Russia, Gordon uttered a
+thrilling cry, _Hakizah 'Ammi!_
+
+  "Awake, O my people! How long wilt thou slumber? Lo, the night
+  has vanished, the sun shines bright. Open thy eyes, look hither
+  and thither. I pray thee, see in what place thou art, in what
+  time thou livest!...
+
+  "The land wherein we were born, wherein we live, is it not part
+  of Europe, the most civilized of all continents?...
+
+  "This land, Eden itself, behold, it is open unto thee, its sons
+  welcome thee as brother.... Thou hast but to apply thy heart to
+  wisdom and knowledge, become a public-spirited people, and speak
+  their tongue!"
+
+In another poem, the writer acclaims the dawn of a new time for the
+Jews. Their zeal to enter the liberal professions augurs well for a
+speedy and complete emancipation.
+
+We have seen how stubborn a resistance was opposed by the orthodox to
+this new phase of the Haskalah. Terror seized upon them when they saw
+the young desert the religious schools and give themselves up to profane
+studies. As for the new Rabbinical seminaries, they regarded them as
+outright nurseries of atheism.
+
+However, the government standing on the side of the reformers, the
+orthodox could not fight in the open. They entrenched themselves behind
+a passive resistance. In this struggle, as was observed above, Gordon
+occupied the foremost place. Thenceforth a single idea animated him,
+opposition to the enemies of light. His bitter, trenchant sarcasm, his
+caustic, vengeful pen, were put at the service of this cause. Even his
+historical poems quiver with his resentment. He loses no opportunity to
+scourge the Rabbis and their conservative adherents.
+
+_Ben Shinne Arayot_ ("Between the Teeth of the Lions") is an
+historical poem on a subject connected with the Judeo-Roman wars. The
+hero, Simon the Zealot, is taken captive by Titus. At the moment of
+succumbing in the arena, his eyes meet those of his beloved Martha, sold
+by the enemy as a slave, and the two expire at the same time.
+
+The poem is a masterpiece by reason of the truly poetic inspiration that
+informs it, and the deep national feeling expressed in it. But Gordon
+did not stop at that. He makes use of the opportunity to attack
+Rabbinism in its vital beginnings, wherein he discerns the cause of his
+nation's peril.
+
+  "Woe is thee, O Israel! Thy teachers have not taught thee how to
+  conduct war with skill and strategem.
+
+  "Rebellion and bravery, of what avail are they without discipline
+  and tactics!
+
+  "True, for many long centuries, they led thee, and constructed
+  houses of learning for thee--but what did they teach thee?
+
+  "What accomplished they? They but sowed the wind, and ploughed
+  the rock, drew water in a sieve, and threshed empty straw!
+
+  "They taught thee to run counter to life, to isolate thyself
+  between walls of precepts and prescriptions, to be dead on earth
+  and alive in heaven, to walk about in a dream and speak in thy
+  sleep.
+
+  "Thus thy spirit grew faint, thy strength dried up, and the dust
+  of thy scribes has sepulchred thee, a living mummy....
+
+  "Woe is thee, O Jerusalem that art lost!"
+
+Yet, though he accuses Rabbinism of all possible ills that have befallen
+the Jewish people, it does not follow that he justifies the Roman
+invasion. All his wrath is aroused against Rome, the perennial enemy of
+Judaism. In the name of humanity and justice, he pours out his scorn
+over her. The first he presents is Titus, "the delight of mankind",
+preparing brilliant but sanguinary spectacles for his people, and
+revelling in the sight of innocent blood shed in the gladiators' arena.
+Then he arraigns Rome herself, "the great people who is mistress of
+three-quarters of the earth, the terror of the world, whose triumph can
+know no limit now that she has carried off the victory over a people
+destined to perish, whose territory can be covered in a five hours'
+march". And finally his Jewish heart is revolted by "the noble matrons
+followed by their servants, whose tender soul is about to take delight
+in the bloody sights of the arena".
+
+_Bi-Mezulot Yam_ ("In the Depths of the Sea") revives a terrible
+episode of the exodus of the Jews from Spain (1492). The refugees
+embarked on pirate vessels, where they were exploited pitilessly. The
+cupidity of the corsairs is insatiable. After despoiling the Jews of all
+they own, they sell them as slaves or cast them into the water. This is
+the lot that threatens to overtake a group of exiles on a certain ship.
+But the captain falls in love with the daughter of a Rabbi, a maiden of
+rare beauty. To rescue her companions, she pretends to yield to the
+solicitations of the captain, who promises to land the passengers safe
+and sound on the coast. He keeps his word, but the girl and her mother
+must stay with him. At a distance from the coast, the two women, with
+prayers to God upon their lips, throw themselves into the sea, to save
+the girl from having to surrender herself to the desires of the corsair.
+It is one of the most beautiful of Gordon's poems. Indignation and grief
+inspire such words as these:
+
+  "The daughter of Jacob is banished from every foot of Spanish
+  soil. Portugal also has thrust her out. Europe turns her back
+  upon the unfortunates. She grants them only the grave, martyrdom,
+  hell. Their bones are strewn upon the rocks of Africa. Their
+  blood floods the shores of Asia.... And the Judge of the world
+  appeareth not! And the tears of the oppressed are not avenged!"
+
+What revolts the poet above all is the thought that the downtrodden
+victims will never have their revenge--all the crimes against them will
+go unpunished:
+
+  "Never, O Israel, wilt thou be avenged! Power is with thy
+  oppressors. What they desire they accomplish, what they do,
+  prospereth.... Spain--did her vessels not set forth and discover
+  the New World, the day thou wast driven out a fugitive and
+  outlaw? And Portugal, did she not find the way to the Indies? And
+  in that far-off country, too, she ruined the land that welcomed
+  thy refugees. Yea, Spain and Portugal stand unassailed!"
+
+But if vengeance is withheld from the Jews, implacable hatred takes
+possession of all hearts, and never will it be appeased.
+
+  "Enjoin it upon your children until the end of days. Adjure your
+  descendants, the great and the little, never to return to the
+  land of Spain, reddened with your blood, never again to set foot
+  upon the Pyrenean peninsula!"
+
+The despair, the grief of the poet are concentrated in the last stanzas,
+telling how the maiden and her mother throw themselves into the water:
+
+  "Only the Eye of the World, silently looking through the clouds,
+  the eye that witnesseth the end of all things, views the ruin of
+  these thousands of beings, and it sheds not a single tear."
+
+His last historical poem, "King Zedekiah in Prison", dates from the
+period when the poet's skepticism was a confirmed temper of mind.
+According to Gordon, the ruin of the Jewish State was brought about by
+the weight given to moral as compared with political considerations. He
+no longer contents himself with attacking Rabbinism, he goes back to the
+very principles of the Judaism of the prophets. These are the ideas
+which he puts into the mouth of the King of Judah, the captive of
+Nebuchadnezzar. He makes him the advocate of the claims of political
+power as against the moralist pretensions of the prophets.
+
+The king passes all his misfortunes in review, and he asks himself to
+what cause they are attributable.
+
+  "Because I did not submit to the will of Jeremiah? But what was
+  it that the priest of Anathoth required of me to do?"
+
+No, the king cannot concede that "the City would still be standing if
+her inhabitants had not borne burdens on the Sabbath day".
+
+The prophet proclaims the rule of the letter and of the Law, supreme
+over work and war, but can a people of dreamers and visionaries exist a
+single day?
+
+The king does not stop at such rebellious thoughts. He remembers all too
+well the story of Saul and Samuel--how the king was castigated for
+having resisted the whims of the prophets.
+
+"Thus the seers and prophets have always sought to crush the kings in
+Israel", he maintains.
+
+  "Alas! I see that the words of the son of Hilkiah will be
+  fulfilled without fail. The Law will stand, the kingdom will be
+  ruined. The book, the word--they will succeed to the royal
+  sceptre. I foresee a whole people of scholars and teachers,
+  degenerate folk and feeble."
+
+This amazing view, so disconcerting to the prophet-people, Gordon held
+to the very end. And seeing that the Law had killed the nation, and a
+cruel fatality dogged the footsteps of the people of the Book, would it
+not be best to free the individuals from the chains of the faith and
+liberate the masses from the minute religious ceremonial that has
+obstructed their path to life? This was the task Gordon set himself for
+the rest of his days.
+
+In a poem inscribed to Smolenskin, the editor of _Ha-Shahar_
+("Daybreak"), on the occasion of the periodical's resuming publication
+after an interval, the poet poured forth his afflicted soul, and pointed
+out the aim he had decided to pursue:
+
+  "Once upon a time I sang of love, too, and pleasure, and
+  friendship; I announced the advent of days of joy, liberty, and
+  hope. The strings of my lyre thrilled with emotion....
+
+  "But yonder comes _Ha-Shahar_ again, and I shall attune my
+  harp to hail the break of day.
+
+  "Alas, I am no more the same, I know not how to sing, I waken
+  naught but grief. Disquieting dreams trouble my nights. They show
+  me my people face to face.... They show me my people in all its
+  abasement, with all its unprobed wounds. They reveal to me the
+  iniquity that is the source of all its ills.
+
+  "I see its leaders go astray, and its teachers deceiving it. My
+  heart bleeds with grief. The strings of my lyre groan, my song is
+  a lament.
+
+  "Since that day I sing no more of joy and solace; I hope no more
+  for the light, I wait no more for liberty. I sing only of bitter
+  days, I foretell everlasting slavery, degradation, and no end.
+  And from the strings of my lyre tears gush forth for the ruin of
+  my people.
+
+  "Since that day my muse is black as a raven, her mouth is filled
+  with abuse, from her tongue drops complaint. She groans like the
+  Bat-Kol upon Mount Horeb's ruins. She cries out against the
+  wicked shepherds, against the sottish people.
+
+  "She recounts unto God, unto all the human kind, the degrading
+  miseries of a hand-to-mouth existence, of the soul that pierces
+  to the depths of evil."
+
+But the patriotism of the poet carries the day over his discouragement:
+
+  "From pity for my people, from compassion, I will tell unto its
+  shepherds their crimes, unto its teachers the error of their
+  ways."
+
+Will he succeed in his purpose? Is not all hope lost? No matter, he at
+least will do his duty until the end:
+
+  "From every part of the Law, from every retreat of the people, I
+  shall gather together all vain teachings, all the poisonous
+  vipers, wherever they may be, and in the sight of all suspend
+  them like a banner. Let the wounded look upon them, perhaps they
+  will be cured--perhaps there is still healing for their ills,
+  perhaps there is still life in them!"
+
+The poet kept his word. In a series of satires, fables, and epistles, he
+reveals the moral plagues that eat into the fabric of Jewish society in
+the Slav countries. He gives a realistic description, at once accurate
+and subjective, of an extraordinary _milieu_, lacking plausibility
+though it existed and defied all opposition. Gordon descended to the
+innermost depths of the people's soul, he knew its profoundest secrets.
+He caught the spirit of the peculiar manners of the ghetto and
+reproduced them with unfailing fidelity. Also he knew all the dishonor
+of some of the persons who ruled its society, and he sounded their mean,
+crafty brains. His heart was filled with indignation at the painful
+spectacle he himself bodied forth, and he suffered the misfortunes of
+his people.
+
+His poetic manner changed with the new direction taken by his mind. He
+was no more an artist for art's sake. Classical purity ceased to
+interest him. What he pursued above all things was an object which can
+be reached only by struggle and propaganda. His style became more
+realistic. He saturated it with Talmudic terms and phrases, thus
+adapting it more closely to the spirit of the scenes and things and acts
+he was occupied with, and making it the proper medium for the
+description of a world that was Rabbinical in all essential points. But
+Gordon never went to excess in the use of Talmudisms; he always
+maintained a just sense of proportion. It requires discriminating taste
+to appreciate his style, now delicate and now sarcastic, by turns
+appealing and vehement. Here Gordon displayed the whole range of his
+talent, all his creative powers. The language he uses is the genuine
+modern Hebrew, a polished and expressive medium, yielding in naught to
+the classical Hebrew.
+
+The social condition of the Jewish woman, the saddest conceivable in the
+ghetto, inspired the first of Gordon's satires. The poem is entitled
+"The Dot on the I", or, more literally, "The Hanger of the Yod" (_Kozo
+shel Yod_).
+
+  "O thou, Jewish Woman, who knows thy life! Unnoticed thou
+  enterest the world, unnoticed thou departest from it.
+
+  "Thy heart-aches and thy joys, thy sorrows and thy desires spring
+  up within thee and die within thee.
+
+  "All the good things of this life, its pleasures, its enjoyments,
+  they were created for the daughters of the other nations. The
+  Jewish woman's life is naught but servitude, toil without end.
+  Thou conceivest, thou bearest, thou givest suck, thou weanest thy
+  babes, thou bakest, thou cookest, and thou witherest before thy
+  time."
+
+  "Vain for thee to be dowered with an impressionable heart, to be
+  beautiful, gentle, intelligent!"
+
+  "The Law in thy mouth is turned to foolishness, beauty in thee is
+  a taint, every gift a fault, all knowledge a defect.... Thou art
+  but a hen good to raise a brood of chicks!"
+
+It is vain for a Jewish woman to cherish aspirations after life, after
+knowledge--nothing of all this is accessible to her.
+
+  "The planting of the Lord wastes away in a desert land without
+  having seen the light of the sun...."
+
+  "Before thou becomest conscious of thy soul, before thou knowest
+  aught, thou art given in marriage, thou art a mother."
+
+  "Before thou hast learnt to be a daughter to thy parents, thou
+  art a wife, and mother to children of thine own."
+
+  "Thou art betrothed--knowest thou him for whom thou art destined?
+  Dost thou love him? Yea, hast thou seen him?--Love! Thou unhappy
+  being! Knowest thou not that to the heart of a Jewish woman love
+  is prohibited?"
+
+  "Forty days before thy birth, thy mate and life companion was
+  assigned to thee." [1]
+
+  "Cover thy head, cut off thy braids of hair. Of what avail to
+  look at him who stands beside thee? Is he hunchbacked or one-
+  eyed? Is he young or old? What matters it? Not thou hast chosen,
+  but thy parents, they rule over thee, like merchandise thou
+  passest from hand to hand."
+
+[Footnote 1: According to popular belief, it is decided forty days
+before its birth to whom a child will be married.]
+
+Slave to her parents, slave to her husband, she is not permitted to
+taste even the joys of motherhood in peace. Unforeseen misfortunes
+assail her and lay her low. Her husband, without an education, without a
+profession, often without a heart, finds himself suddenly at odds with
+life, after having eaten at the table and lodged in the house of his
+wife's parents for a number of years following his marriage, as is
+customary among the Jews of the Slavic countries. If no chance of
+success presents itself soon, he grows weary, abandons his wife and
+children, and goes off no one knows whither, without a sign of his
+whereabouts, and she remains behind, an _'Agunah_, a forsaken wife,
+widowed without being a widow, most unfortunate of unfortunate
+creatures.
+
+  "This is the history of all Jewish women, and it is the history
+  of Bath-shua the beautiful."
+
+Bath-shua is a noble creature, endowed by nature with all fine
+qualities--she is beautiful, intelligent, pure, good, attractive, and an
+excellent housekeeper. She is admired by everybody. Even the miserable
+_Parush_, the recluse student, conceals himself behind the railing
+that divides the women's gallery from the rest of the synagogue, to
+steal a look at her. Alas, this flower of womankind is betrothed by her
+father to a certain Hillel, a sour specimen, ugly, stupid, repulsive.
+But he knows the Talmud by heart, folio by folio, and to say that is to
+say everything. The marriage comes off in due time, the young couple eat
+at the table of Bath-shua's parents for three years, and two children
+spring from the union.
+
+The wife's father loses his fortune, and Hillel must earn his own
+livelihood. Incapable as he is, he finds nothing to do, and he goes to
+foreign parts to seek his fortunes. Never is he heard of again. Bath-
+shua remains behind alone with her two children. By painful toil, she
+earns her bread with unfailing courage. All the love of her rich nature
+she pours out upon her children, whom by a supreme effort she dresses
+and adorns like the children of the wealthy.
+
+Meantime a young man by the name of Fabi makes his appearance in the
+little town. He is the type of the modern Jew, educated and intelligent,
+and he is handsome and generous besides. He begins by taking an interest
+in the young woman, and ends by falling in love with her. Bath-shua does
+not dare believe in her happiness. But an insurmountable obstacle lies
+in the path of their union. Bath-shua is not divorced from her husband,
+and none can tell whether he is dead or alive. Energetically Fabi
+undertakes to find the hiding-place of the faithless man. He traces him,
+and bribes him to give his wife a divorce. The official document,
+properly drawn up and attested by a Rabbinical authority, is sent to
+her. Hillel embarks for America, and his vessel suffers shipwreck.
+
+Finally, it would seem, Bath-shua will enjoy the happiness she has amply
+merited. Alas, no! In the person of Rabbi Wofsi, fortune plays her
+another trick. This Rabbi is a rigid legalist, the slightest of slips
+suffices to render the divorce invalid. According to certain
+commentators the name Hillel is spelled incorrectly in the document.
+After the _He_ a _Yod_ is missing! Thus is the happiness
+glimpsed by Bath-shua shattered forever!
+
+Her fate is not unique--the Bath-shuas are counted by the legion in the
+ghetto. And there are other fates no less poignant caused by reasons no
+less futile.
+
+In another poem, _Ashakka de-Rispak_ ("The Shaft of the Wagon",
+meaning "For a Trifle"), the poet tells how the peace of a household was
+undermined on account of a barley grain discovered by accident in the
+soup at the Passover meal, which must be free from every trace of
+fermented food. Brooding over the incident and filled with remorse for
+having served the doubtful soup to her family, the poor woman runs to
+the Rabbi, who decides that she has, indeed, caused her family to eat
+prohibited food, and the dishes in which it was prepared and served must
+be broken, they cannot be used, they may not even be sold. But the
+husband, a simple carter, does not accept the decision tranquilly. He
+vents his anger upon the woman. The peace of the house is troubled, and
+finally the man repudiates his wife.
+
+The poet fulminates against the Rabbis and their narrow, senseless
+interpretations of texts.
+
+  "Slaves we were in the land of Egypt.... And what are we now? Do
+  we not sink lower from year to year? Are we not bound with ropes
+  of absurdities, with cords of quibbles, with all sorts of
+  prejudices?... The stranger no longer oppresses us, our despots
+  are the progeny of our own bodies. Our hands are no longer
+  manacled, but our soul is in chains."
+
+In the last of his great satires, "The Two Joseph-ben-Simons", Gordon
+gives a sombre and at the same time lofty picture of the manners of the
+ghetto, an exact description of the wicked, arbitrary domination
+exercised by the _Kahal_, and an idealization of the Maskil,
+powerless to prevail single-handed in the combat with combined
+reactionary forces. A young Talmudist, devotee of the sciences and of
+modern literature, is persecuted by the fanatics. Unable to resist the
+seductions of his alien studies, he is forced to expatriate himself. He
+goes to Italy, to the University of Padua, whither the renown of Samuel
+David Luzzatto has attracted many a young Russian Jew eager for
+knowledge. There he pursues both Rabbinical and medical courses.
+
+His efforts are crowned with success, and he dreams of returning to his
+country and consecrating his powers to the amelioration of the material
+and moral condition of his brethren. In his mind's eye he sees himself
+at the head of his community, healing souls and bodies, redressing
+wrongs, introducing reforms, breathing a new spirit into the dry bones
+and limbs of Judaism. Hardly has he set foot upon the soil of his native
+town when he is arrested and thrown into prison. The Kahal had made out
+a passport in his name for the cobbler's son, a degraded character, a
+highway robber and sneak thief, and charged with murder. Now the true
+Joseph ben Simon is to expiate the crime of the other. It is vain for
+him to protest his innocence. The president of the Kahal, before whom he
+is arraigned, declares there is no other Joseph ben Simon, and he is the
+guilty one.
+
+The little town is described minutely. We are on the public square, the
+market place, the dumping ground of all the offal and dirt, whence an
+offensive odor rises in the nostrils of the passer-by. Facing this
+square is the synagogue, a mean, dilapidated building. "Mud and filth
+detract from holiness", but the Lord takes no offense, "He thrones too
+high to be incommoded by it". The greatest impurity, however, a moral
+infection, oozes from the little chamber adjoining the synagogue--the
+meeting-room of the Kahal. That is the breeding place of crime and
+injustice. Oppression and venality assert themselves there with
+barefaced impudence. The Kahal keeps the lists relating to military
+service; it makes out the passports, and the whole town is at its mercy.
+It offers the hypocrite of the ghetto the opportunity of exercising his
+fatal power. There the widow is despoiled, and the orphans are abused.
+Together with the unfortunates who have dared aspire to the light, the
+fatherless are delivered to the recruiting agent as substitutes for the
+sons of the wealthy. It is the domain over which reigns the venerated
+Rabbi, powerful and fear-inspiring, Shamgar ben Anath, a stupid and
+uncouth upstart.
+
+The life of sacrifices and privations led by the Jewish students who go
+abroad in search of an education, inspires Gordon with one of the most
+beautiful passages in his poem. In the true sense of the word, these
+young men are loyal to Jewish traditions. They are the genuine
+successors of those who formerly braved hunger and cold upon the benches
+of the _Yeshibot_.
+
+  "How strong it is, the desire for knowledge in the hearts of the
+  youth of Israel, the crushed people! It is like the fire, never
+  extinguished, burning upon the altar!...
+
+  "Stop upon the highways leading to Mir, Eisheshok, and Wolosin.
+  [1] See yon haggard youths walking on foot! Whither lead their
+  steps? What do they seek?--Naked they will sleep upon the floor,
+  and lead a life of privation.
+
+  "It is said: 'The Torah is given to him alone who dies for her!'"
+
+[Footnote 1: Lithuanian towns well-known for their Talmudic academies.]
+
+And here is the modern counterpart:
+
+  "Go to no matter what university in Europe: the lot of the young
+  Jewish strangers is no better.... The Russians are  proud
+  of the fame of a Lomonossoff, the son of a poor moujik who became
+  a luminary in the world of science. How numerous are the
+  Lomonossoffs of the Jew alley!..."
+
+And then the poet, in an access of patriotism, cries out:
+
+  "And what, in fine, art thou, O Israel, but a poor _Bahur_
+  among the peoples, eating one day with one of them, another day
+  with the other!...
+
+  "Thou hast kindled a perpetual lamp for the whole world. Around
+  thee alone the world is dark, O People, slave of slaves,
+  desperate and despised!"
+
+With this poem we bring to a close the analysis of Gordon's satires. It
+shows at their best the dreams, the aspirations, the struggles of the
+Maskilim, in their opposition to the aims of the reactionaries and the
+moral and material confusion in which Slavic Judaism wallowed.
+
+The same order of ideas is presented in the greater part of the original
+pieces in his "Little Fables for Big Children". They are written in a
+vivid, pithy style. The delicate, bantering criticism and the deep
+philosophy with which they are impregnated put these fables among the
+finest productions of Hebrew literature.
+
+To the same period as the fables belong the several volumes of tales
+published by Gordon, _Shene Yomim we-Laďlah Ehad_ ("Two Days and
+One Night"), _'Olam ke-Minhago_ ("The World as It is"), and later
+the first part of _Kol Kitbe Yehudah_ ("Collected Writings of
+Gordon"). They also relate to the life and manners of the Jews of
+Lithuania, and the struggle of the modern element with the old. Gordon
+as story teller is inferior to Gordon as poet. Nevertheless his prose
+displays all the delicacy of his mind and the precision of his
+observations. At all events, these tales of his are not a negligible
+quantity in Hebrew literature.
+
+The reaction which set in about 1870, after a period of social reforms
+and unrealized hopes, affected the poet deeply. The government put
+obstacles in the forward march of the Jews, the masses remained steeped
+in fanaticism, and the men of light and leading themselves fell short of
+doing their whole duty. Disillusioned, he cherished no hope of anything.
+He could not share the optimism of Smolenskin and his school. For an
+instant he stops to look back over the road travelled. He sees nothing,
+and in anguish he asks himself:
+
+  "For whom have I toiled all the years of my prime?
+
+  "My parents, they cling to the faith and to their people, they
+  think of nothing but business and religious observances all day
+  long; they despise knowledge, and are hostile to good sense....
+
+  "Our intellectuals scorn the national language, and all their
+  love is lavished upon the language of the land.
+
+  "Our daughters, charming as they are, are kept in absolute
+  ignorance of Hebrew....
+
+  "And the young generation go on and on, God knows how far and
+  whither ... perhaps to the point whence they will never return."
+
+He therefore addresses himself to a handful of the elect, amateurs, the
+only ones who do not despise the Hebrew poet, but understand him and
+approve his ways:
+
+  "To you I bring my genius as a sacrifice, before you I shed my
+  tears as a libation.... Who knows but I am the last to sing of
+  Zion, and you the last to read the Zion songs?"
+
+This pessimistic strain recurs in all the later writings of Gordon. Even
+after the events of 1882, when revived hatred and persecution had thrown
+the camp of the emancipators into disorder, and the most ardent of the
+anti-Rabbinic champions, like Lilienblum and Braudes, had been driven to
+the point of raising the flag of Zionism, Gordon alone of all was not
+carried along with the current. His skepticism kept him from embracing
+the illusions of his friends converted to Zionism.
+
+All his contempt for the tyrants, and his compassion for his people
+unjustly oppressed, he puts into his poem _Ahoti Ruhamah_, which is
+inscribed "to the Honor of the Daughter of Jacob violated by the Son of
+Hamor."
+
+  "Why weepest thou, my afflicted sister?
+
+  "Wherefore this desolation of spirit, this anguish of heart?
+
+  "If thieves surprised thee and ravished thy honor, if the hand of
+  the malefactor has prevailed against thee, is it thy fault, my
+  afflicted sister?
+
+  "Whither shall I bear my shame?
+
+  "Where is thy shame, seeing thy heart is pure and chaste? Arise,
+  display thy wound, that all the world may see the blood of Abel
+  upon the forehead of Cain. Let the world know, my afflicted
+  sister, how thou art tortured!
+
+  "Not upon thee falls the shame, but upon thy oppressors.
+
+  "Thy purity has not been sullied by their polluting touch....
+  Thou art white as snow, my afflicted sister."
+
+Almost the poet seems to regret his efforts of other days to bring the
+Jews close to the Christians.
+
+  "What of humiliation hath befallen thee is a solace unto me. Long
+  I bore distress and injustice, violence and spoliation; yet I
+  remained loyal to my country; for better days I hoped, and
+  submitted to all. But to bear thy shame, my afflicted sister, I
+  have no spirit more."
+
+But what was to become of it all? Whither were the Jews to turn? The
+Palestine of the Turk has not too many attractions for the poet. He
+still believes in the existence of a country somewhere "in which the
+light shines for all human beings alike, in which man is not humiliated
+on account of his race or his faith." Thither he invites his brethren to
+go and seek an asylum, "until what day our Father in heaven will take
+pity on us and return us to our ancient mother."
+
+It was the agitated time in which Pinsker sent forth his manifesto,
+"Auto-Emancipation", and Gordon dedicated his poem, "The Flock of the
+Lord", to him.
+
+  "What are we, you ask, and what our life? Are we a people like
+  those around us, or only members of a religious community? I will
+  tell you: We are neither a people, nor a brotherhood, we are but
+  a flock--the holy flock of the Lord God, and the whole earth is
+  an altar for us. Thereon we are laid either as burnt offerings
+  sacrificed by the other peoples, or as victims bound by the
+  precepts of our own Rabbis. A flock wandering in the waste
+  desert, sheep set upon on all sides by the wolves.... We cry out--
+  in vain! We utter laments--none hears! The desert shuts us in on
+  all sides. The earth is of copper, the heavens are of brass.
+
+  "Not an ordinary flock are we, but a flock of iron. We survive
+  the slaughter. But will our strength endure forever?
+
+  "A flock dispersed, undisciplined, without a bond--we are the
+  flock of the Lord God!"
+
+Not that the idea of a national rebirth displeased the poet. Far from
+it. Zionism cannot but exercise a charm upon the Jewish heart. But he
+believed the time had not yet arrived for a national regeneration.
+According to his opinion, there was a work of religious liberation to be
+accomplished before the reconstruction of the Jewish State could be
+thought of. He defended this idea in a series of articles published in
+_Ha-Meliz_, of which he was the editor at that time.
+
+The last years of his life were tragic, pathetic. With a torn heart he
+sat by and looked upon the desperate situation into which the government
+had put millions of his brethren. To this he alludes in his fable
+"Adoni-bezek", which we reproduce in its entirety, to give a notion of
+Gordon as a fabulist:
+
+  "In a sumptuous palace, in the middle of a vast hall, perfumed,
+  and draped with Egyptian fabrics, stands a table, and upon it are
+  the most delicious viands. Adoni-bezek is dining. His attendants
+  are standing each in his place--his cupbearer, the master baker,
+  and the chief cook. The eunuchs, his slaves, come and go;
+  bringing every variety of dainty dishes, and the flesh of all
+  sorts of beasts and birds, roasted and stewed.
+
+  "On the floor, insolent dogs lie sprawling, their jaws agape,
+  panting to snap up the bones and scraps their master throws to
+  them.
+
+  "Prostrate under the table are seventy captive kings, with their
+  thumbs and big toes cut off. To appease their appetite they must
+  scramble for the scraps that drop under the table of their
+  sovereign lord.
+
+  "Adoni-bezek has finished his repast, and he amuses himself with
+  throwing bones to the creatures under the table. Suddenly there
+  is a hubbub, the dogs bark, and yap at their human neighbors, who
+  have appropriated morsels meant for them.
+
+  "The wounded kings complain to the master: O king, see our
+  suffering and deliver us from thy dogs. And Adoni-bezek's answer
+  is: But it is you who are to be blamed, and they are in the
+  right. Why do you do them wrong?
+
+  "With bitterness the kings make reply:
+
+  "O king, is it our fault if we have been brought so low that we
+  must vie with your dogs and pick up the crumbs that drop from
+  your table? Thou didst come up against us and crush us with thy
+  powerful hand, thou didst mutilate us and chain us in these
+  cages. No longer are we able to work or seek our sustenance. Why
+  should these dogs have the right to bite and bark? O that the
+  just--if still there are such men in our time--might rise up! O
+  that one whose heart has been touched by God might judge between
+  ourselves and those who bite us, which of us is the hangman and
+  which the victim?"
+
+Toward the end of his days the poet was permitted to enjoy a great
+gratification. The Jewish notabilities of the capital arranged a
+celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his activity as a writer.
+At the reunion of Gordon's friends on this occasion it was decided to
+publish an _édition de luxe_ of his poetical works. A final
+optimistic note was forced from his heart, deeply moved by this
+unexpected tribute. He recalled the vow once made by him, always to
+remain loyal to Hebrew, and he recounted the vexations and
+disappointments to which the poet is exposed who chooses to write in a
+dead language doomed to oblivion. Then he addressed a salutation to the
+young "of whom we had despaired, and who are coming back, and to the
+dawn of the rebirth of the Hebrew language and the Jewish people."
+
+However, Gordon never entered into the national revival with full faith
+in its promises. Until the end he remained the poet of misery and
+despair.
+
+The death of Smolenskin elicited a last disconsolate word from him. It
+may be considered the ghetto poet's testament. He compared the great
+writer to the Jewish people, and asked himself:
+
+  "What is our people, and what its literature?
+  A giant felled to the ground unable to rise.
+  The whole earth is its sepulchre.
+  And its books?--the epitaph engraved upon its tomb-stone...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+REFORMERS AND CONSERVATIVES
+
+THE TWO EXTREMES
+
+
+Though Gordon was the most distinguished, he was not the only
+representative of the anti-Rabbinic school in the neo-Hebrew literature.
+The decline of liberalism in official state circles, and the frustration
+of every hope of equality, had their effect in reshaping the policy
+pursued by educated Jews. Up to this time they had cherished no desire
+except for external emancipation and to assimilate with their neighbors
+of other faiths. Liberty and justice suddenly removed from their
+horizon, they could not but transfer their ambition and their activity
+to the inner chambers of Judaism. Other circumstances contributed to the
+result. The economic changes affecting the bourgeoisie and the influence
+exercised by the realism and the utilitarian tendencies of the Russian
+literature of the time had not a little to do with the modified aims
+cherished in the camp of the Maskilim. Jews of education living in
+Galicia or in the small towns of Russia, who had the best opportunity of
+penetrating to the intimate life of the people and knowing its day by
+day misery, could and did make clear, how helpless the masses of the
+Jews were in the face of the moral and economic ruin that menaced them,
+and how serious an obstacle religious restrictions and ignorance placed
+in the way of any change in their condition. And therefore they made it
+their object to extol practical, thoroughgoing reforms.
+
+In religion, they demanded, with Gordon, the abolition of all
+restrictions weighing upon the people, and a radical reform of Jewish
+education.
+
+In practical life, they were desirous of turning the attention of their
+brethren to the manual trades, to the technical professions, and to
+agriculture. Besides, it was their purpose to extend modern primary
+instruction and bring it within the reach of considerably larger
+circles.
+
+The government viewed these efforts with a favorable eye, and under its
+protection the Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews in
+Russia was formed, with headquarters at St. Petersburg. Thus supported,
+the educated could carry on their propaganda in the open, and throw
+light into the remotest corners of the country. The Hebrew press, though
+still in its infancy, co-operated with them zealously in furthering
+their beneficent purposes.
+
+The most determined group of the anti-religious propagandists was at
+Brody in Galicia. Thence emanated the influences that operated in
+Russia, and thence _He-Haluz_ ("The Pioneer"), founded by Erter and
+Schorr in 1853, and published at Lemberg, carried on a brilliant
+campaign against religious superstitions, shrinking not even from
+attacks upon the Biblical tradition itself. The boldest of the
+contributors to _He-Haluz_, not counting its valiant editor, was
+Abraham Krochmal, the son of the philosopher. A scholar and subtle
+thinker, he introduced Biblical criticism into Hebrew literature. In his
+books as well as in his articles in _He-Haluz_ and in _Ha-
+Kol_, the latter edited by Rodkinson, he goes so far as to dispute
+the Divine character of the Bible, and he demands radical reforms in
+Judaism. [Footnote: _Ha-Ketab weha-Miktab_ ("Writing and the
+Scriptures"), Lemberg, 1875; _'lyyun Tefillah_ ("Reflections on
+Prayer"), Lemberg, 1885, etc.] His writings gave the signal for a
+considerable stir and expression of opinion. Even the most moderate
+among the orthodox could not remain tranquil in the presence of such
+blasphemous views. They put Krochmal outside of the pale of Judaism,
+together with all scholars occupied with Bible criticism, among them
+Geiger, who had exerted great influence upon the school of reformers
+writing in Hebrew.
+
+In Lithuania things did not go so far. The hard conditions of existence
+there were not propitious to the rise of a purely scholarly school or to
+theoretic discussion. Scientific centres were entirely wanting, and the
+censor permitted no trifling with the subject of religion. A new
+movement, realistic and utilitarian in the main, began to take shape,
+first in the form of a protest against the unsubstantial ideals of the
+Hebrew press and Hebrew literature. In 1867, Abraham Kowner, an ardent
+controversialist, published his _Heker Dabar_ ("A Word of
+Criticism"), and his _Zeror Perahim_ ("A Bouquet of Flowers"), in
+which he takes the press and the writers severely to task for indulging
+in rhetoric and futile scintillations, instead of occupying themselves
+with the real exigencies of life. In the same year, Abraham Jacob
+Paperna published his essay in literary criticism, and the young
+Smolenskin, in an article appearing at Odessa, attacked Letteris for his
+artificial, insincere translation of Goethe's _Faust_ into Hebrew.
+On all sides there blew a fresh breath of realism, and the critical
+spirit was abroad.
+
+The most characteristic exponent of this reforming movement was Moses
+Löb Lilienblum, a native of the Government of Kowno. Endowed with a
+temperate, logical mind, untroubled by an excess of sentimentality,
+Lilienblum, one of those deliberate, puritanic scholars that constitute
+the glory of Lithuanian Talmudism, was at once hero and actor in the
+intense drama performed in the Russian ghetto, which he himself
+described as the "Jewish tragi-comedy".
+
+He began his literary career with an article entitled _Orhot ha-
+Talmud_ ("The Paths of the Talmud"), and published in _Ha-Meliz_
+in 1868. Here, as well as in the articles following it, he does not
+depart from established tradition. In the very name of the spirit of the
+Talmud, he demands religious reforms and the abolition of the
+restrictions that make daily life burdensome. These excessive
+requirements, he urges, were heaped up by the Rabbis subsequent to the
+full development of the Law, and in opposition to its spirit. The young
+scholar showed himself to be a zealous admirer of the Talmud, and with
+clinching logic he proves that the Rabbis of later times, in asserting
+its immutability, had distinctly deviated from the principles of the
+Law, the fundamental idea of which was the harmonizing of "Law and
+Life". The wrath aroused by such articles can easily be imagined.
+Lilienblum was an _Apikoros_, the "heretic" _par excellence_
+of the Lithuanian ghetto. The young writer had to undergo a series of
+outrageous persecutions and acts of vengeance inflicted by the fanatics,
+especially the Hasidim, of his town. He tells the story in detail in his
+autobiography, _Hattot Neurim_ ("The Sins of Youth"), published at
+Vienna, in 1876, one of the most noteworthy productions of modern Hebrew
+literature. With the logical directness of a _Mitnagged_ [1], and
+the cruel, sarcastic candor of a wasted existence, Lilienblum probes and
+exposes the depths of his tortured conscience, at the same time
+following up inexorably the steps which remove the free-thinker from the
+faithful believer, without, however, reaching a real or positive result--
+in the spirit at once of Rousseau and Voltaire. [Footnote 1: Literally,
+"one who is opposed" [to the mystical system of Hasidism]; a
+protestant, a Puritan.] As he himself says:
+
+  "It is a drama essentially Jewish, because it is a life without
+  dramatic effect, without extraordinary adventure. It is made up
+  of torment and suffering, all the more grievous as they are kept
+  hidden in the recesses of one's heart...."
+
+Better than any one else he knows the cause of these ills. Like Gordon,
+he holds that the Book has killed the Man, the dead letter has been
+substituted for feeling.
+
+  "You ask me, O reader", he says with bitterness, "who I am, and
+  what my name is?--Well, then, I am a living being, not a Job who
+  has never existed. Nor am I one of the dead in the valley of
+  bones brought back to life by the prophet Ezekiel, which is only
+  a tale that is told. But I am one of the living dead of the
+  Babylonian Talmud, revived by the new Hebrew literature, itself a
+  dead literature, powerless to bring the dead to life with its
+  dew, scarcely able to transport us into a state between life and
+  death. I am a Talmudist, a believer aforetimes, now become an
+  unbeliever, no longer clinging to the dreams and the hopes which
+  my ancestors bequeathed to me. I am a wreck, a miserable wretch,
+  hopeless unto despair...."
+
+And he narrates the incidents of his childhood, the period of the
+_Tohu_, of chaos and confusion, the days of study, misery,
+superstition. He recalls the years of adolescence, his premature
+marriage, his struggle for a bare existence, his wretched life as a
+teacher of the Talmud, panting under the double yoke of a mother-in-law
+and a rigid ceremonial. Then comes his introduction to Hebrew
+literature. His conscience long refuses assent, but stern logic
+triumphs, and the result is that all the ideas that have been his
+guiding principles crumble into dust one by one. Negation replaces
+faith. The terrible conflict begins with a whole town of formalists, who
+declare him outside of the community of Israel,--a pitiless conflict, in
+which he is supported half-heartedly by two or three of the strong-
+minded. The publication of his first article, on the necessity of
+reforms in religion, increases the fury of the people against him, and
+his ruin is determined. Had there not been intervention from the
+outside, he would have been delivered to the authorities to serve in the
+army, or denounced as a dangerous heretic. And yet the so-called heretic
+cursed by every mouth had proceeded so short a distance on the path of
+heterodoxy that he still entertained scruples about carrying a book from
+one house to another on the Sabbath!
+
+This naďve soul, in which all sorts of feelings had long before begun to
+stir obscurely, was aroused to full consciousness by the reading of
+Mapu's works. Casual acquaintance with an intelligent woman made his
+heart vibrate with notes unknown until then. Life in his native town
+became intolerable, and he left it for Odessa, the El Dorado of all
+ghetto dreamers. Again disillusionment was his lot. He who was ready to
+undergo martyrdom for his ideas, this champion of the Haskalah, his
+heart famishing for knowledge and justice, was not long in discerning,
+with his penetrating, perspicacious mind, that he had not yet reached
+the best of modern worlds. With bitterness he notes that the Jews of the
+south of Russia, "where the Talmud is cut out of practical life, if they
+are more liberal than the others, are yet not exempt from stupid
+superstitions." He notes that the Hebrew literature so dear to his heart
+is excluded from the circles of the intellectual. He sees that egotistic
+materialism has superseded the ideal aspirations of the ghetto. He
+discovers that feeling has no place in modern life, and tolerance, the
+loudly vaunted, is but a sound. When he ventures to put his complaints
+into words, he is treated as a "religious fanatic" by people who have no
+interest beyond their own selfish pleasures and the satisfaction of
+their material cravings. He is deeply affected by what he observes and
+notes. In the presence of the egotistic indifference of the emancipated
+Jews, he is shaken in his firmest convictions, and he admits with
+anguish that the ideal for which he has fought and sacrificed his life
+is but a phantom. Under the stress of such disappointment he writes
+these lines:
+
+  "In very truth, I tell you, never will the Jewish religion be in
+  accord with life. It will sink, or, at best, it will remain the
+  cherished possession of the limited few, as it is now in the
+  Western countries of Europe.... Practical reality is in
+  opposition to religion. Now I know that we have no public on our
+  side; and actual life with its great movements produces its
+  results without the aid of literature, which even in our people
+  is an effective influence only with the simple spirits of the
+  country districts. The desire for life and liberty, the
+  prevalence of charlatanism on the one side, and on the other the
+  abandoning of religious studies in favor of secular studies, will
+  have baleful consequences for the Jewish youth, even in
+  Lithuania."
+
+This whole period of our author's life is characterized by similar
+regrets--he mourns over days spent in barren struggles and over the
+follies of youth.
+
+  "To-day I finished writing my autobiography, which I call 'The
+  Sins of Youth'. I have drawn up the balance-sheet of my life of
+  thirty years and one month, and I am deeply grieved to see that
+  the sum total is a cipher. How heavily the hand of fortune has
+  lain upon me! The education I received was the reverse of
+  everything I had need of later. I was raised with the idea of
+  becoming a distinguished Rabbinical authority, and here I am a
+  business man; I was raised in an imaginary world, to be a
+  faithful observer of the Law, shrinking back from whatever has
+  the odor of sin, and the very things I was taught crush me to
+  earth now that the imaginary man has disappeared in me; I was
+  raised to live in the atmosphere of the dead, and here I am cast
+  among people who lead a real life, in which I am unable to take
+  my part; I was raised in a world of dreams and pure theory, and I
+  find myself now in the midst of the chaos of practical life, to
+  which I am driven by my needs to apply myself, though my brain
+  refuses to leave the old ruts and substitute practice for
+  speculation. I am not even equipped to carry on a discussion with
+  business men discussing nothing but business. I was raised to be
+  the father of a family, in the sphere chosen for me by my father
+  in his wisdom.... How far removed my heart is from all such
+  things...!
+
+  "I weep over my shattered little world which I cannot restore!"
+
+The regrets of Lilienblum over the useless work attempted by Hebrew
+literature betray themselves also in his pamphlet in verse, _Kehal
+Refaďm_ ("The Assembly of the Dead"). The dead are impersonated by
+the Hebrew periodicals and reviews.
+
+Later, a novelist of talent, Reuben Asher Braudes, resumed the attempt
+to harmonize theory and practice, in his great novel, "Religion and
+Life". The hero, the young Rabbi Samuel, is the picture of Lilienblum.
+From the point of view of art, it is one of the best novels in Hebrew
+literature. Life in the rural districts, the austere idealism of the
+enlightened, the superstitions of the crowd, are depicted with
+extraordinary clearness of outline. [Footnote: _Ha-Dat weha-
+Hayyim_, Lemberg, 1880. Another long novel by Braudes is called
+_Shete ha-Kezawot_ ("The Two Extremes"), published in 1886, wherein
+he extols the national revival and religious romanticism.] The novel ran
+in _Ha-Boker Or_ (1877-1880), and was never completed--a
+counterpart of its hero. Had not Lilienblum, too, stopped in the middle
+of the road?
+
+The crisis that occurred in the life of Lilienblum, torn from his ideal
+speculations in a provincial town, and forced into contact with an
+actuality that was as far as possible away from solving the problem of
+harmonizing religion and life, was the typical fate of all the educated
+Jews of the period. Lilienblum and his followers gave themselves up to
+regrets over the futile work of three generations of humanists, who,
+instead of restoring the ghetto to health, had but hastened its utter
+ruin. The ideal aspirations of the Maskilim had been succeeded by a
+gross utilitarianism without an ideal. What disquieted the soul of the
+Maskil in the decade from 1870 to 1880 is expressed in the concluding
+words of "The Sins of Youth":
+
+  "The young people are to work at nothing and think of nothing but
+  how to prepare for their own life. All is forbidden, wherefrom
+  they cannot derive direct profit--they are permitted only the
+  study of sciences and languages, or apprenticeship to a trade.
+
+  "The youth who break away from the laborious study of the Talmud,
+  throw themselves with avidity into the study of modern
+  literature. This headlong course has been in vogue with us about
+  a century. One generation disappears, to make place for the next,
+  and each generation is pushed forward by a blind force, no one
+  knows whither...!
+
+  "It is high time for us to throw a glance backward--to stop a
+  moment and ask ourselves: Whither are we hastening, and why do we
+  hasten?"....
+
+However, the gods did not forsake the ghetto. If Gordon and, with more
+emphasis, Lilienblum predicted the ruin of all the dreams of the ghetto,
+it was because, having been wrenched from the life of the masses and out
+of traditional surroundings, they judged things from a distance, and
+permitted themselves to be influenced by appearances. Blinded by their
+bias, they saw only two well-defined camps in Judaism--the moderns,
+indifferent to all that constitutes Judaism, and the bigots, opposed to
+what savors of knowledge, free-thinking, and worldly pleasure. They made
+their reckoning without the Jewish people. The humanist propaganda was
+not so empty and vain as its later promoters were pleased to consider
+it. The conservative romanticism of a Samuel David Luzzatto and the
+Zionist sentiments of a Mapu had planted a germinating seed in the heart
+of traditional Judaism itself. It is conceded that we cannot resort for
+evidence to such old romanticists as Schulman, who in the serenity of
+their souls gave little heed to the campaign of the reformers, though it
+is nevertheless a fact that they contributed to the diffusion of
+humanism and of Hebrew literature by their works, which were well
+received in orthodox circles. Our contention is better proved by Rabbis
+reputed orthodox, who devoted themselves with enthusiasm to the
+cultivation of Hebrew literature. Without renouncing religion, they
+found a way of effecting the harmonization of religion and life. In
+point of fact, humanism of a conservative stripe reached its zenith at
+the precise moment when the realists, deceived by superficial
+appearances, were predicting the complete breaking up of traditional
+Judaism.
+
+The chief representatives of the reform press were _He-Haluz_,
+_Ha-Meliz_, and later on _Ha-Kol_ ("The Voice"), and by their
+side the views of the conservatives were defended in _Ha-Maggid_,
+_Ha-Habazzelet_ ("The Lily"), published at Jerusalem, and
+especially _Ha-Lebanon_, appearing first at Paris and then at
+Mayence. In _Ha-Maggid_, beginning with the year 1871, the editor,
+David Gordon, supported by the assenting opinion of his readers, carried
+on an ardent campaign for the colonization of Palestine as the necessary
+forerunner of the political revival of Israel.
+
+A Galician thinker, Fabius Mises, published, in 1869, an article in
+_Ha-Meliz_, entitled _Milhemet ha-Dat_ ("The Wars of the
+Faith"), in which he wards off the attacks upon the Jewish religion by
+the anti-Rabbinical school. He proves it to be a reasonable religion,
+and a national religion _par excellence_. In his poems, Mises
+assails Geiger for the religious reforms urged by him, and he opposes
+also the school of _He-Haluz_ in the name of the national
+tradition. Later on Mises published an important history of modern
+philosophy in Hebrew.
+
+Michael Pines, a writer in _Ha-Lebanon_, and the opponent of
+Lilienblum, was the protagonist of the conservative party in Lithuania.
+His chief work, _Yalde Ruhi_ ("The Children of My Spirit"),
+appeared in 1872 at Mayence. It may be considered the literary
+masterpiece on the conservative side, the counterstroke to Lilienblum's
+"Sins of Youth". It is a defense of traditional Judaism, and is instinct
+with an intuitive philosophy and with deep faith. Pines makes a closely
+reasoned claim for the right of the Jewish religion to exist in its
+integrity. Without being a fanatic, he believes, with Samuel David
+Luzzatto, that the religion of the Jew on its poetic side is the
+peculiar product of the Jewish national genius--that the religion, and
+not the artificial legal system engrafted upon it, is the essential part
+of Judaism. The ceremonies and the religious practices are necessary for
+the purpose of maintaining the harmony of the faith, "as the wick is
+necessary for the lamp". This harmony, reacting at once upon feeling and
+morality, cannot be undone by the results of science, and therefore the
+Jewish religion is eternal in its essence. The religious reforms
+introduced by the German Rabbis have but had the effect of drying up the
+springs of poetry in the religion, and as for the compromise between
+faith and life, extolled and urged by Lilienblum, it is only a futile
+phrase. Of what use is it, seeing that the religious feel no need of it,
+but on the contrary take delight in the religion as it stands, which
+fills the void in their soul?
+
+Pines did not share the pessimistic fears of the realists of his time. A
+true conservative, he believed in the national rebirth of the people of
+Israel, and, a romantic Jew, he dreamed of the realization of the
+humanitarian predictions of the prophets. Judaism to him is the pure
+idea of justice, "and every just idea ends by conquering the whole of
+humanity".
+
+Extremes meet. There is one point in common between Lilienblum, the last
+of the humanists, the disillusioned skeptic, and Pines, the optimist of
+the ghetto. Both maintained that the action of the humanists was
+inefficacious, and the compromise between religion and life a vain
+expedient. Nevertheless, there was no possibility of bringing the two to
+stand upon the same platform. While the humanists, in abandoning the
+perennial dreams of the people, had separated themselves from its moral
+and religious life, and thus cut away the ground from under their own
+feet, the romantic conservatives paid no attention to the demands of
+modern life, the currents of which had loosed the foundations of the old
+world, and were threatening to carry away the last national breastwork.
+
+A synthesis was needed to merge the two currents, the humanist and the
+romantic, and lead the languishing Haskalah back to the living sources
+of national Judaism. This was the task accomplished by Perez Smolenskin,
+the leader of the national progressive movement.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE NATIONAL PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT
+
+PEREZ SMOLENSKIN
+
+
+Perez Smolenskin was born, in 1842, at Monastryshchina, a little market
+town near Mohilew. His father, a poor and an unfortunate man, who was
+not able to support his wife and six children successfully, was forced
+to leave his family on account of a slanderous accusation brought
+against him by a Polish priest. The mother, a plucky woman of the
+people, supported herself by hard work, in spite of which it was her
+ambition to make Rabbis of her boys. At length the father joined his
+family again, and a period of comparative prosperity set in.
+
+The first care of the returned father was to look to the education of
+his two sons, Leon and Perez. The latter showed unusual ability. At the
+age of four he began the study of the Pentateuch, at five he had been
+introduced to the Talmud. These studies absorbed him until his eleventh
+year. Then, like all the sons of the ghetto desirous of an education, he
+left his father and mother, and betook himself to the _Yeshibah_ at
+Shklow. The journey was made on foot, and his only escort was the
+blessing of his mother. The lad's youth proved no obstacle to his
+entering the Talmud academy, nor to his acquiring celebrity for industry
+and attainments. His brother Leon, who had preceded him to Shklow,
+initiated him in the Russian language, and supplied him with modern
+Hebrew writings. Openhearted and lively, he set prejudice at defiance,
+and maintained friendly relations with a certain intellectual who was
+reputed a heretic, an acquaintanceship that contributed greatly to the
+mental development of young Perez. The dignified burghers who were
+taking turns in supplying him with his meals, alarmed at his aberration
+from the straight path, one after another withdrew their protection from
+him. Black misery clutched him. He was but fourteen years old, and
+already he had entered upon a life of disquiet and adventure. His story
+is the Odyssey of an erring son of the ghetto. Repulsed by the
+_Mitnaggedim_, he sought help with the Hasidim. He was equally ill-
+fitted for their life. Their uncouth mystical exaltation, the absurdity
+of their superstitions, and their hypocrisy drove him to exasperation.
+He cast himself into the whirl of life, became assistant to a cantor at
+a synagogue, and then teacher of Hebrew and Talmud. The whole gamut of
+precarious employments open to a scholar of the ghetto he ran up and
+down again. His restless spirit and the desire to complete his education
+carried him to Odessa. There he established himself, and there years of
+work and endeavor were passed. He acquired the modern languages, his
+mind grew broader, and he gave up religious practices once for all,
+always remaining attached to Judaism, however.
+
+In 1867 appeared his first literary production, the article against
+Letteris, who at that time occupied the position of an incontestable
+authority, in which Smolenskin permits himself to pass severe and
+independent criticism upon his Hebrew adaptation of Goethe's
+_Faust_. In the Odessa period falls also the writing of the first
+few chapters of his great novel, _Ha-To'eh be-Darke ha-Hayyim_ ("A
+Wanderer Astray on the Path of Life"). [Footnote: A complete edition of
+the novels and articles by Smolenskin appeared recently at St.
+Petersburg and Wilna, published by Katzenelenbogen.] But his free spirit
+could not adapt itself to the narrowness and meanness of the literary
+folk and the editors of periodicals. He determined to leave Russia for
+the civilized Occident, the promised land in the dreams of the Russian
+Maskilim, beautified by the presence of Rapoport and Luzzatto. His first
+destination was Prague, the residence of Rapoport, then Vienna, and
+later he pushed his way to Paris and London. Everywhere he studied and
+made notes. A sharp-eyed observer, he sought to probe European affairs
+as well as Occidental Judaism to their depths. He established relations
+with Rabbis, scholars, and Jewish notables, and finally he was in a
+position to appraise at close range the liberty he had heard vaunted so
+loudly, and the religious reforms wished for so eagerly by the
+intelligent of his own country. He soon had occasion to see the reverse
+of the medal, and his disenchantment was complete. Regretfully he came
+to the conclusion that the modern emancipation movement had brought the
+Jewish spirit in the Occident to the point at which the Western Jew was
+turned away from the essence of Judaism. Form had taken the place of
+substance, ceremonial the place of religious and national sentiment.
+Heartsick over such disregard of the past, indignant at the indifference
+displayed by modern Jews toward all he held dear, young Smolenskin
+resolved to break the silence that was observed in the great capitals of
+Europe respecting all things Jewish and carry the gospel of the ghetto
+to the "neo-Gentiles".
+
+The first shaft was delivered in Vienna, where he began the publication
+of his review _Ha-Shahar_ ("Daybreak"). Almost without means, but
+fired by the wish to work for the national and moral elevation of his
+people, the young writer laid down the articles of his faith:
+
+  "The purpose of _Ha-Shahar_ is to shed the light of
+  knowledge upon the paths of the sons of Jacob, to open the eyes
+  of those who either have not beheld knowledge, or, beholding,
+  have not understood in value, to regenerate the beauty of the
+  Hebrew language, and increase the number of its devotees.
+
+  "... But when the eyes of the blind begin to open slowly, and
+  they shake off the sluggish slumber in which they have been sunk
+  since many years, then there is still another class to be dealt
+  with--those who, having tasted of the fruit of the tree of
+  knowledge, intentionally close their eyes to our language, the
+  only possession left to us that can bring together the hearts of
+  Israel and make one nation of it all over the earth.... Let them
+  take warning! If my hand is against the bigots and the hypocrites
+  who hide themselves under the mantle of the truth, ... it will be
+  equally unsparing of the enlightened hypocrites who seek with
+  honeyed words to alienate the sons of Israel from their ancestral
+  knowledge...."
+
+War to mediaeval obscurantism, war to modern indifference, was the plan
+of his campaign. _Ha-Shahar_ soon became the organ of all in the
+ghetto who thought, felt, and fought,--the spokesman of the nationalist
+Maskilim, setting forth their demands as culture bearers and patriots.
+
+At a time when Hebrew literature consisted mainly of translations or
+works of minor significance, Smolenskin had the boldness to announce
+that the columns of his periodical would be open to writers of original
+articles only. The era of the translator and the vapid imitator had come
+to a close. A new school of original writers stepped upon the boards,
+and little by little the reading public accustomed itself to give
+preference to them.
+
+And at a time when disparagement of the national element in Judaism had
+been carried to the furthest excess, Smolenskin asserted Judaism's right
+to exist, in such words as these:
+
+  [The wilfully blind] "bid us to be like all the other nations,
+  and I repeat after them: Let us be like all the other nations,
+  pursuing and attaining knowledge, leaving off from wickedness and
+  folly, and dwelling as loyal citizens in the lands whither we
+  have been scattered. Yes, let us be like all the other nations,
+  unashamed of the rock whence we have been hewn, like the rest in
+  holding dear our language and the glory of our people. It is not
+  a disgrace for us to believe that our exile will once come to an
+  end, ... and we need not blush for clinging to the ancient
+  language with which we wandered from people to people, in which
+  our poets sang and our seers prophesied when we lived at ease in
+  our own land, and in which our fathers poured out their hearts
+  when their blood flowed like water in the sight of all.... They
+  who thrust us away from the Hebrew language meditate evil against
+  our people and against its glory!"
+
+The reputation of _Ha-Shahar_ was firmly established by the
+publication of Smolenskin's great novel _Ha-To'eh be-Darke ha-
+Hayyim_ in its columns. In this as in the rest of his works, he is
+the prophet denouncing the crimes and the depravity of the ghetto, and
+proclaiming the revival of national dignity.
+
+Smolenskin permitted himself to be thwarted by nothing in the execution
+of his bold designs, neither by the meagreness of his material resources
+nor by the animosities which his fearless course did not fail to arouse
+among literary men.
+
+In 1872, Smolenskin published, at Vienna, his masterpiece _'Am
+'Olam_ ("The Eternal People"), which became the platform of the
+movement for national emancipation. Noteworthy from every point of view,
+this work shows him to have been an original thinker and an inspired
+poet, a humanist and at the same time a patriot. He is full of love for
+his people, and his faith in its future knows no limits. He demonstrates
+convincingly that true nationalism is not incompatible with the final
+realization of the ideal of the universal brotherhood of men. National
+devotion is but a higher aspect of devotion to family. In nature we see
+that, in the measure in which the individuality of a being is distinct,
+its superiority and its independence are increased. Differentiation is
+the law of progress. Why not apply the law to human groups, or nations?
+
+The sum total of the qualities peculiar to the various nations, and the
+various ways in which they respond to concepts presented to them from
+without, these constitute the life and the culture of mankind as a
+whole. While admitting that the historical past of a people is an
+essential part of its existence, he believes it to be a still more
+urgent necessity for every people to possess a present ideal, and
+entertain national hopes for a better future. Judaism cherishes the
+Messianic ideal, which at bottom is nothing but the hope of its national
+rebirth. Unfortunately, the modern, unreligious Jew denies the ideal,
+and the orthodox Jew envelops it in the obscurity of mysticism.
+
+The last chapter of "The Eternal People", called "The Hope of Israel",
+is pervaded by magnificent enthusiasm. For the first time in Hebrew,
+Messianism is detached from its religious element. For the first time, a
+Hebrew writer asserts that Messianism is the political and moral
+resurrection of Israel, _the return to the prophetic tradition_.
+
+Why should the Greeks, the Roumanians, desire a national emancipation,
+and Israel, the people of the Bible, not?... The only obstacle is the
+fact that the Jews have lost the notion of their national unity and the
+feeling of their solidarity.
+
+This conviction as to the existence of a Jewish nationality, the
+national emancipation dreamed by Salvador, Hess, and Luzzatto,
+considered a heresy by the orthodox and a dangerous theory by the
+liberals, had at last found its prophet. In Smolenskin's enthusiastic
+formulation of it, the ideal was carried to the masses in Russia and
+Galicia, superseding the mystical Messianism they had cherished before.
+
+Smolenskin's combative spirit did not allow him to rest at that. The
+idea of national regeneration was in collision with the theory, raised
+to a commanding position by Mendelssohn and his school, that Judaism
+constitutes a religious confession. In a series of articles ("A Time to
+Plant, and a Time to Pluck up that which is Planted"), [Footnote: _Ha-
+Shahar_, 1875-6.] he deals with the Mendelssohnian theory.
+
+Proceeding from history and his knowledge of Judaism, he proves that the
+Jewish religion is not a rigid block of unalterable notions, but rather
+a body of ethical and philosophical teachings constantly undergoing a
+process of evolution, and changing its aspect according to the times and
+the environment. If this doctrine is the quintessence of the national
+genius of the Jew, it is nevertheless accessible, in theory and in
+practice, to whosoever desires access. It is not the dogmatic and
+exclusive privilege of a sacerdotal caste.
+
+This is the rationale of Smolenskin's opposition to the religious
+dogmatism of Mendelssohn, who had wished to confine Judaism inside of
+the circle of Rabbinic law without recognizing its essentially
+evolutionary character. Maimonides himself is not spared by Smolenskin,
+for it was Maimonides who had set the seal of consecration upon logical
+dogmatism. The less does he spare the modern school of reformers.
+Religious reforms, he freely admits, are necessary, but they ought to be
+spontaneous developments, emanations from the heart of the believers
+themselves, in response to changes in the times and social relations.
+They ought not to be the artificial product of a few intellectuals who
+have long broken away from the masses of the people, sharing neither
+their suffering nor their hopes. If Luther succeeded, it was because he
+had faith himself. But the modern Jewish reformers are not believers,
+therefore their work does not abide. It is only the study of the Hebrew
+language, of the religion of the Jew, his culture, and his spirit that
+is capable of replacing the dead letter and soulless regulations by a
+keen national and religious sentiment in harmony with the exigencies of
+life. The next century, he predicted, would see a renewed, unified
+Judaism.
+
+This is a summing up of the ideas which brought him approval and
+endorsement from all sides, but also, and to a greater degree,
+opposition and animosity, the latter from the old followers of the
+German humanist movement. One of them, the poet Gottlober, founded, in
+1876, a rival review, _Ha-Boker Or_, in which he pleaded the cause
+of the school of Mendelssohn. But the new periodical, which continued to
+appear until 1881, could neither supplant _Ha-Shahar_, nor diminish
+Smolenskin's ardor. Other obstacles of all sorts, and the difficulties
+raised by the Russian censor, were equally ineffectual in halting the
+efforts of the valiant apostle of Jewish nationalism. He was assured the
+cooperation of all independent literary men, for Smolenskin had never
+posed as a believer in dogmatic religion or as its defender. On the
+contrary, he waged constant war with Rabbinism. He was persuaded that an
+untrammelled propaganda, bold speech issuing from a knowledge of the
+heart of the masses and their urgent needs, would bring about a natural
+and peaceable revolution, restoring to the Jewish people its free
+spirit, its creative genius, and its lofty morality. It mattered little
+to him that the young had ceased to be orthodox: in case of need,
+national feeling would suffice to maintain Israel. At this point, it
+appears, Smolenskin excelled Samuel David Luzzatto and his school as a
+free-thinker. The Jewish people is to him the eternal people
+personifying the prophetic idea, realizable in the Jewish land and not
+in exile. The liberalism displayed by Europe toward the Jews during a
+part of the nineteenth century is in his opinion but a transient
+phenomenon, and as early as 1872 he foresaw the recrudescence of anti-
+Semitism.
+
+This conception of Jewish life was welcomed by the educated as a
+revelation. The distinction of the editor of _Ha-Shahar_ is that he
+knew how to develop the ideas enunciated by the masters preceding him,
+how to carry them to completion, and render them accessible to the
+people at large. He revealed a new formula to them, thanks to which
+their claims as Jews were no longer in contradiction with the demands of
+modern times. It was the revenge taken by the people speaking through
+the mouth of the writer. It was the echo of the cry of the throbbing
+soul of the ghetto.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE CONTRIBUTORS TO HA-SHAHAR
+
+
+_Ha-Shahar_ soon became the centre of a hot crusade against
+obscurantism. The propaganda it carried on was all the more effectual as
+it opposed an out-of-date Judaism in the name of a national
+regeneration, the deathless ideal of the Jewish people. While admitting
+the principle that reforms are necessary, provided they are reasonable
+and slowly advanced, in agreement with the natural evolution of Judaism
+and not in opposition to its spirit, Smolenskin's review at the same
+time constituted itself the focus of a bold campaign against the kind of
+religious reform introduced by the moderns.
+
+Whoever thought, felt, suffered, and was alive to the new ideas,
+hastened to range himself under the banner of the Hebrew review during
+its eighteen years of a more or less regular existence, the occasional
+interruptions being due to lack of funds. Its history forms an important
+chapter in that of Hebrew literature. Smolenskin possessed the art of
+stimulating well-tried powers, and discovering new talent and bringing
+it forward. The school of _Ha-Shahar_ may almost be looked upon as
+the creation of his strong hand. Gordon, it is true, published the best
+of his satires in _Ha-Shahar_, and Lilienblum pursued his reform
+purposes in its columns, _'Olam ha-Tohu_ ("The World of Chaos"),
+his ringing criticism of "The Hypocrite", being among the articles
+written by him for it, in which he casts upon Mapu's work the light of
+the utilitarian realism borrowed from the Russian writers of his time,
+and exposes it as a naďve, unreal conception of Jewish life. Though
+these two veterans gave him their support, the larger number of the
+collaborators of Smolenskin made their first appearance in the world of
+letters under his auspices, and it was due to his influence that German
+and Austrian scholars returned to the use of Hebrew. On the other hand,
+the co-operation of eminent professors, such as Heller, David Müller,
+and others, contributed not a little to the success of _Ha-Shahar_.
+
+
+The Galician novelist Mordecai D. Brändstätter is properly reckoned
+among the best of the contributors to the review. His novels, a
+collected edition of which appeared in 1891, are of distinguished
+literary interest. Brandstätter is the painter of the customs and
+manners of the Galician Hasidim, whom he rallies with kindliness that
+yet has a keen edge, and with perfect artistic taste. Almost he is the
+only humorist of the time. His style is classic without going to
+extremes. He often makes use of the Talmudic jargon peculiar to
+Rabbinical scholars, whom he has the skill to transfer to his canvas
+down to their slightest gestures and mannerisms. But he does not
+restrain his wit in showing up the ridiculous side of the moderns as
+well. His best-known novels, which have been translated into Russian and
+into German, are "Doctor Alfasi", "Mordecai Kisowitz", "The Beginning
+and the End of a Quarrel", etc. Brändstatter also wrote satires in
+verse. He has not a few points of resemblance to the painter of Galician
+Jewish manners in German, Karl Emil Franzos.
+
+Solomon Mandelkern, the erudite author of a new Biblical Concordance,
+hailing from Dubno (1846-1902), was an inspired poet. His historical
+pieces, his satires, and his epigrams, published for the most part in
+_Ha-Shahar_, have finish and grace. In his Zionist poems, he gives
+evidence of an enlightened patriotism. His popularity he gained by a
+detailed history of Russia (_Dibre Yeme Russia_) in three volumes,
+published at Wilna, in 1876, and a number of other works, all written in
+a pure, Biblical style at once beautiful and lively.
+
+Jehudah Löb Levin (born in 1845), surnamed Yehallel, another poet who
+was an habitual contributor to _Ha-Shahar_, owes his fame to the
+fervent realism of his poems, which, however, suffer from pompousness
+and prolixity. His first appearance in the review was with a collection
+of poems, _Sifte Renanot_ ("The Lips of Song"), in 1867. A long,
+realistic poem of his, _Kishron ha-Ma'aseh_ ("The Value of Work"),
+in which he extols the unrivalled place of work in the universe, also
+was published in _Ha-Shahar_. In this poem, as well as in his prose
+articles, he ranged himself with Lilienblum in demanding a reshaping of
+Jewish life on an utilitarian, practical basis.
+
+The criticism of Jewish customs and manners was brilliantly done by M.
+Cahen and Ben-Zebi, to mention only two among the many journalists of
+talent. The "Letters from Mohilew" by the former testify to the
+impartiality and independence, not only of the author, but also of the
+editor who accepted them for his periodical. Ben-Zebi wrote "Letters
+from Palestine", in which he depicts the ways of the rapacious notables
+of the old school in his country.
+
+Science, historical and philosophical, found a sure welcome in _Ha-
+Shahar_. Smolenskin knew how to arouse the interest of the educated
+in these branches, which had been neglected by writers of Hebrew in
+Russia. Besides such well-known names as Chwolson, the eminent
+professor, Harkavy, the indefatigable explorer of Jewish history in the
+Slav countries, and Gurland, the learned chronicler of the persecutions
+of the Jews in Poland, it is proper to make mention of David Kahana, one
+of the most eminent of the scientific contributors to _Ha-Shahar_,
+a scholar of distinction, who has succeeded in throwing light upon the
+obscure epoch of the false Messiahs and on the origin of Hasidism.
+
+Dr. Solomon Rubin's ingenious philosophical studies on the origin of
+religions and the history of ancient peoples were also for the most part
+published in _Ha-Shahar_. Lazarus Schulman, the author of humorous
+tales, wrote a painstaking analysis of Heine for Smolenskin's
+periodical. Other contributors to the scientific department were Joshua
+Lewinsohn, Schorr, Jehiel Bernstein, Moses Ornstein, Dr. Kantor, and Dr.
+A. Poriess, the last of whom was the author of an excellent treatise on
+physiology in Hebrew. The productions of these writers did more for the
+spread of enlightenment than all the exhortations of the reformers.
+
+Of litterateurs, the novelist Braudes, and the poets Menahem M. Dolitzki
+and Zebi Schereschewsky, etc., made their first appearance in the
+columns of _Ha-Shahar_.
+
+The impetus issuing from _Ha-Shahar_ was visible on all fields of
+Judaism. The number of Hebrew readers increased considerably, and the
+interest in Hebrew literature grew. The eminent scholar I. H. Weiss
+published his five-volume History of Tradition (_Dor Dor we-
+Doreshaw_) in Hebrew (Vienna, 1883-1890). Though it was a purely
+scientific work, laying bare the successive steps in the natural
+development of Rabbinic law, it produced a veritable revolution in the
+attitude of the orthodox of the backward countries.
+
+As was mentioned above, Gottlober founded his review, _Ha-Boker
+Or_, in 1876, to ensure the continuity of the humanist tradition and
+defend the theories of the school of Mendelssohn. The last of the
+followers of German humanism rallied about it,--Braudes published his
+principal novel "Religion and Life" in it,--and it also attracted the
+last representatives of the _Melizah_, like Wechsler (_Ish
+Naomi_), who wrote Biblical criticism in an artificial, pompous
+style.
+
+This artificiality, fostered in an earlier period by the _Melizim_,
+had by no means disappeared from Hebrew literature. Its most popular
+devotees in the later day of which we are speaking were, besides Kalman
+Schulman, A. Friedberg, who wrote a Hebrew adaptation of Grace Aguilar's
+tale, "The Vale of Cedars", published in 1876, and Ramesh, the
+translator of "Robinson Crusoe."
+
+Translations continued to enjoy great vogue, and it was vain for
+Smolenskin, in the introduction to his novel _Ha-To'eh be-Darke ha-
+Hayyim_, to warn the public against the abuses of which translators
+were guilty. The readers of Hebrew sought, besides novels, chiefly works
+on the natural sciences and on mathematics, especially astronomy. Among
+the authors of original scientific books, Hirsch Rabinowitz should be
+given the first place, as the writer of a series of treatises on
+physics, chemistry, etc., which appeared at Wilna, between the years
+1866 and 1880. After him come Lerner, Mises, Reifmann, and a number of
+others.
+
+The period was also prolific in periodicals representing various
+tendencies. At Jerusalem appeared _Ha-Habazzelet_, _Sha'are
+Ziyyon_ ("The Gates of Zion"), and others. On the American side of
+the Atlantic, the review _Ha-Zofeh be-Erez Nod_ ("The Watchman in
+the Land of the Wanderer") reflected the fortunes and views of the
+educated among the immigrants in the New World. Even the orthodox had
+recourse to this modern expedient of periodicals in their endeavor to
+put up a defense of Rabbinism. The journal _Ha-Yareah_ ("The
+Moon"), and particularly _Mahazike ha-Dat_ ("The Pillars of the
+Faith"), both issued in Galicia, were the organs of the faithful in
+their opposition to humanism and progress. _Ha-Kol_, the journal
+founded by Rodkinson (1876-1880), with reform purposes, played a rôle of
+considerable importance in the conflict between the two parties.
+
+Already tendencies were beginning to crop up radically different from
+any Judaism had betrayed previously. In 1877, when Smolenskin was
+publishing his weekly paper _Ha-Mabbit_ ("The Observer"), Freiman
+founded the first Socialistic journal in Hebrew, _Ha-Emet_ ("The
+Truth"). It also appeared in Vienna. And, again, S. A. Salkindson, a
+convert from Judaism, the author of admirable translations of "Othello"
+(1874) and "Romeo and Juliet" (1878), both published through the
+endeavors of Smolenskin, brought out the Hebrew translation of an epic
+wholly Christian in character, Milton's "Paradise Lost". It was a sign
+of the times that this work of art was enjoyed and appreciated by the
+educated Hebrew public in due accordance with its literary merits.
+
+The clash of opinions and tendencies encouraged by the authority and the
+tolerance of Smolenskin was fruitful of results. _Ha-Shahar_ had
+made itself the centre of a synthetic movement, progressive and
+national, which was gradually revealing the outline of its plan and
+aims. The reaction caused by the unexpected revival of anti-Semitism in
+Germany, Austria, Roumania, and Russia, had levelled the last ruins of
+German humanism in the West, and had put disillusionment in the place of
+dreams of equality in the East. Whoever remained faithful to the Hebrew
+language and to the ideal of the regeneration of the Jewish people,
+turned his eyes toward the stout-hearted writer who ten years earlier
+had predicted the overthrow of all humanitarian hopes, and had been the
+first to propose the practical solution of the Jewish problem by means
+of national reconstruction.
+
+Smolenskin's fame had by this time transcended the circle of his readers
+and those interested in Hebrew literature. The _Alliance Israélite
+Universelle_ entrusted to him the mission of investigating the
+conditions of the life of the Roumanian Jews. During his stay in Paris,
+Adolphe Crémieux, the tireless defender of the oppressed of his race,
+agreed, in conversation with him, that only those who know the Hebrew
+language, hold the key to the heart of the Jewish masses, and, Crémieux
+continued, he would give ten years of his life to have known Hebrew.
+[Footnote: Brainin, in his admirable "Life of Smolenskin", Warsaw, 1897,
+p. 58; _Ha-Shahar_, X, 532.]
+
+The war of 1877 between Russia and Turkey, and the nationalistic
+sentiments it engendered everywhere in Eastern Europe, awakened a
+patriotic movement among the Jewish youth who had until then resisted
+the idea of national emancipation. A young student in Paris, a native of
+Lithuania, Eliezer Ben-Jehudah, published two articles in _Ha-
+Shahar_, in 1878, in which, setting aside all religious notions, he
+urged the regeneration of the Jewish people on its ancient soil, and the
+cultivation of the Biblical language.
+
+In 1880, Smolenskin, who had undertaken a new and complete edition of
+his works in twenty-four volumes, at Vienna, went on a tour through
+Russia. Great was his joy when he noted the results produced by his own
+activity, and saw that he had gained the affection and approval of all
+enlightened classes of Jews. Under the influence of _Ha-Shahar_, a
+new generation had grown up, free and nevertheless loyal to its nativity
+and to the ideal of Judaism. Smolenskin's journey resembled a triumphal
+procession. The university students at St. Petersburg and Moscow
+arranged meetings in honor of the Hebrew writer, at which he was
+acclaimed the master of the national tongue, the prophet of the
+rejuvenation of his people. In the provincial districts, similar scenes
+were enacted, and Smolenskin saw himself the object of honors never
+before accorded a Hebrew author. He returned to Vienna, encouraged to
+pursue the task he had assumed, and full of hope for the future.
+
+It was the eve of the cataclysm foretold by the editor of _Ha-
+Shahar_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE NOVELS OF SMOLENSKIN
+
+
+Smolenskin owed his vast popularity and his influence on his
+contemporaries only in part to his work as a journalist. What brought
+him close to the people were his realistic novels, which occupy the
+highest place in modern Hebrew literature.
+
+Smolenskin's first piece of fiction, _Ha-Gemul_ ("The Recompense"),
+was published at Odessa, in 1868, on a subject connected with the Polish
+insurrection. Save its realistic style, there was nothing about it to
+betray the future novel writer of eminence.
+
+It was said above, that Smolenskin wrote the early chapters of his
+_Ha-To'eh_ while at Odessa, and, also, he planned another novel
+there, "The Joy of the Hypocrite". When he proposed working out the
+latter for publication in _Ha-Meliz_, the editor rejected the idea
+disdainfully, saying that he preferred translations to original stories,
+so little likely did it seem that realistic writing could be done in
+Hebrew. Once he had his own organ, _Ha-Shahar_, Smolenskin wrote
+and published novel after novel in it, beginning with his _Ha-To'eh
+be-Darke ha-Hayyim_. In _Ha-Shahar_ it appeared in three parts.
+Later it came out in book form, in four volumes. It is the first work of
+the Hebrew realistic school worthy of being classed as such.
+
+As Cervantes makes his hero Don Quixote pass through all the social
+strata of his time, so the Hebrew novelist conducts his wanderer, Joseph
+the orphan, through the nooks and corners of the ghetto. He introduces
+him to all the scenes of Jewish life, he displays before his eyes all
+its customs and manners, he makes him a witness to all its
+superstitions, fanaticism, and sordidness of every kind, a physical and
+social abasement that has no parallel. A faithful observer, an
+impressionist, an unemphatic realist, he discloses on every page
+misunderstood lives, extravagant beliefs, movements, evils, greatnesses,
+and miseries, of which the civilized world had not the slightest
+suspicion. It is the Odyssey of the ghetto adventurer, the life and
+journeyings of the author himself, magnified, and enveloped in the
+fictitious circumstances in which the hero is placed, a human document
+of the greatest significance.
+
+Joseph, the orphan, whose father, persecuted by the Hasidim,
+disappeared, and whose mother died in abject misery, is received into
+the house of his uncle, the same brother of his father who had caused
+the father's ruin. Abused by a wicked aunt and driven by an irresistible
+hankering after a vagabond life, he runs away from his foster home.
+First he is picked up by a band of rascally mendicants, then he becomes
+an inmate in the house of a _Baal-Shem_, a charlatan wonder-worker,
+and thus a changeful existence leads him to traverse the greater part of
+Jewish Russia. In a series of photographic pictures, Smolenskin
+reproduces in detail the ways and exploits of all the bohemians of the
+ghetto, from the beggars up to the peripatetic cantors, their moral
+shortcomings, their spitefulness, and their insolence. Impelled by the
+wish to acquire an education, and perhaps also put a roof over his head,
+Joseph finally enters a celebrated _Yeshibah_. It is the salvation
+of the young tramp. He is given food, he sleeps on the school benches,
+and he is rescued from military service. But soon, having incurred
+disfavor by his frankness, and especially because he is discovered
+reading secular books, in which he is initiated by one of his fellow-
+students, he is obliged to leave the Yeshibah. By the skin of his teeth
+he escapes being packed off to the army as a soldier. He takes refuge
+with the Hasidim, and has the good fortune to find favor in the eyes of
+the _Zaddik_ ("Saint") himself.
+
+But very soon he revolts against the equivocal transports of the saintly
+sect. In his wanderings, Joseph doubtless meets with good people,
+disinterested idealists, simple men and women of the rank and file,
+Rabbis worthy of the highest praise, enthusiastic intellectuals, but the
+ordinary life of the ghetto, abnormal and narrow, disgusts him
+completely. He departs to seek a freer life in the West. Passing through
+Germany without stopping, he goes on to London. Everywhere he makes
+Jewish society the object of study, and everywhere he suffers
+disillusionment. _Ha-To'eh_ is a veritable encyclopedia of Jewish
+life at the beginning of the second half of the nineteenth century.
+
+As a work of fiction, the novel cannot bear inspection. It is a
+succession of fantastic, sometimes incoherent events, an artificial
+complex of personages appearing on the scene at the will of the author,
+and acting like puppets on wires. The miraculous abounds, and the
+characters are in part exaggerated, in part blurred.
+
+On the other hand, it is an incomparable work taken as a panorama of
+realistic scenes, not always consecutive scenes, but always absolutely
+true to life--a gallery of pictures of the ghetto.
+
+Joseph is a painter, a realist first and last, and an impressionist
+besides. Looking at the lights and shadows of his picture, we feel that
+what we see is not all pure, spontaneous art. Like Auerbach and like
+Dickens, he is a thinker, a teacher. A true son of the ghetto, he
+preaches and moralizes. Sometimes he goes too far in his desire to
+impress a lesson. The reader perceives too clearly that the author has
+not remained an indifferent outsider while writing his novel. It is
+evident that his heart is torn by contradictory emotions--pity,
+compassion, scorn, anger, and love, all at once.
+
+In point of style also the novel is a realistic piece of work.
+Smolenskin does not resort to Talmudisms, like Gordon and Abramowitsch,
+but, also, he takes care not to indulge in too many Biblical metaphors.
+This sometimes necessitates circumlocutions, and on the whole his
+oratorical manner leads to prolixity, but his prose always remains pure,
+flowing, and precise in the highest degree.
+
+To illustrate Smolenskin's way of writing, and all the peculiarity of
+the social life he depicts, we cannot do better than translate a few
+passages from his novel dealing with characteristic phases of ghetto
+life.
+
+Joseph is narrating his adventures and the impressions of his daily
+routine. The following is his striking description of the _Heder_,
+the well-known primary school of the ghetto, when his uncle first enters
+him there as a pupil:
+
+  "When I say house, let not the reader imagine a stone structure.
+  What he would see is a small, low building, somewhat like a dog's
+  kennel, built of thin boards, rotten at that. The thatch that
+  covers it by way of roof hangs down to the ground, and yet it
+  cannot keep off the rain, for the goats browsing in the
+  neighborhood have munched off half of it to satisfy their
+  appetite. Within there is a single room covered with black soot,
+  the four walls garnished with spider-webs, and the floor paved
+  with mortar. On the eastern wall hangs a large sheet of paper
+  with the inscription, 'Hence blows the breath of life', which not
+  many visitors will believe, because, instead of a quickening
+  breath, pestilential odors enter by the window and offend the
+  nostrils of those whose olfactory nerve has not lost all
+  sensitiveness.... On the opposite wall, to the west, appear the
+  words, 'A memorial unto the destruction of the Temple'. To this
+  day I do not know what there was to commemorate the fall of the
+  Holy Place. The rickety rafters? Or were the little creatures
+  swarming all over the walls to remind one of 'the foxes that walk
+  upon the mountain of Zion'?
+
+  "A huge stove occupies one-fourth of the room-space. Between the
+  stove and the wall, to the right, is a bed made up ready for
+  use, and on the other side a smaller one full of straw and hay,
+  and without bed-covers. Opposite to it stands a large deal table
+  tattoed with marks that are the handiwork of the _Melammed_.
+  With his little penknife, which was never out of his hands, he
+  would cut them into the wood all the time he was teaching us--
+  figures of beasts and fowl, and queer words....
+
+  "Around this table about ten boys were sitting, some conning the
+  Talmud and others the Bible. One of the latter, seated at the
+  right of the teacher, was reading aloud, in a sing-song voice,
+  the section of the Pentateuch assigned for the following Sabbath
+  in the synagogue, and his cantillation blended with the crooning
+  of the teacher's wife as she sat by her baby's bed, ... but every
+  now and then the master's voice rose and drowned the sounds of
+  both, as the growl of the thunder stifles the roar of the waves.
+
+  "... The teacher was hideous to behold. He was short of stature
+  and thin, his cheeks were withered looking, his nose long and
+  aquiline. His two _Peot_ [1] were raven black and hung down
+  like ropes by the side of his face. Old as he was, his cheeks
+  showed only tufts of beard here and there, on account of his
+  habit of plucking the hairs out one by one when he was absorbed
+  in thought, not to mention those plucked out by his wife without
+  the excuse of thinking. His black cap shone like a buttered roll,
+  his linen shirt was neither an Egyptian nor a Swiss fabric, and
+  his chest, overgrown with long black hair, always showed bare
+  through the slit of his unbuttoned shirt. His linen trousers had
+  been white once upon a time, but now they were picturesquely
+  variegated from the dust and soot clinging to them, and by the
+  stains added by his young hopeful, when he sat and played on his
+  knees, by way of contributing his share to the glory in which his
+  father was resplendently arrayed.... His _Zizzit_ hung down
+  to his bare feet. When my uncle entered the house, the teacher
+  jumped up and ran hither and thither, seeking his shoes, but he
+  could not find them. My uncle relieved him from his embarrassment
+  by presenting me, with the words, 'Here is a new pupil for you!'
+  Calming down, the teacher resumed his seat, and when we
+  approached him, he tapped me on my cheek, saying, 'What hast thou
+  learnt, my son?' All the pupils opened their mouth and eyes in
+  amazement, and looked at me with envy. These many days, since
+  they themselves were entered as new pupils in the school, they
+  had not heard such gentle words issue from the mouth of the
+  teacher...."
+
+[Footnote 1: See Lev. XIX, 27.]
+
+This odd school prepared the child of the ghetto in very deed for the
+life and the struggle for existence awaiting him. In the next higher
+school, the Yeshibah, the _alma mater_ of the Rabbinical student,
+the happenings were no less curious.
+
+The young people in those strange colleges, for the most part precocious
+urchins, fall into classes, which, however, are not sharply divided off
+from one another. Day and night they sit bent over the huge folios of
+the Rabbis, occupied constantly with the study of the Law. Their meals
+are furnished them by the humble people of the town, often under
+deplorable conditions, and, on the whole, the life they lead is misery
+not untinged with humiliation. Such are the student years of the future
+Rabbis. And yet this bohemian existence is not destitute of picturesque
+elements and attractive features. Frequently it is at the Yeshibah that
+the young man for the first time finds sincere friends for whom he forms
+a lasting attachment, and they become his trusted advisers. It is a mob
+of young people, enthusiastic and impetuous, yet among them is found the
+aristocracy of the ghetto, those endowed with extraordinary intellectual
+gifts, and the devotion displayed by some of them to Talmudic knowledge
+is absolutely sublime.
+
+Smolenskin paints a characteristic Yeshibah scene enacted by these
+embryonic Talmudists:
+
+  "It is a strange spectacle that meets the eye of the observer on
+  his first visit to the women's gallery in the Yeshibah [at
+  nightfall]. He finds it suddenly transformed into a gathering-
+  place for merchants. The boys who have bread or money, try their
+  hands at trafficking, and those who have neither bread nor money,
+  try theirs at theft, and a large group of those who loathe the
+  one pursuit as well as the other, sit apart and entertain each
+  other with the wonderful exploits of brigands, and giants, and
+  witches, and devils, and evil spirits, who are abroad at night to
+  affright human beings, and the dead who leave their graves to
+  terrify the wicked or cure the sick with grass of the field, and
+  many more such tales that delight the heart and soul of the
+  listeners. Such things have I myself seen even while the
+  afternoon and the evening prayers were going on below. I heard
+  confused sounds. One would cry out, 'Who wants bread?' And
+  another would sing out in reply, 'Who has bread to sell? Who has
+  bread to sell?'--'Here is bread!'--'Will you take a penny for
+  it?'--'Two pennies, and no less!'--'Some one has stolen my bread!
+  Who stole my bread?'--' My bread is first-class! Come and buy!'--
+  'But I haven't a red copper!'--'All right, give me a pledge!'--
+  'You may have my troubles as a pledge, you old curmudgeon!'--
+  'Here are two pennies, give me the bread!'--'Get out, I was ahead
+  of you!'--'I insist upon my rights, I was the first.'--'Why, I
+  handed my money over long ago, it is my bread.'--'You stole my
+  bread.'--'You lie, it's my bread!'--'You're a liar, a thief, a
+  robber!'--'The devil take you, you hound!'--'Wait a moment, and
+  I'll show you my teeth, if I'm a hound!'
+
+  "And so the words fly from mouth to mouth in the women's gallery,
+  and cuffs and blows are not rare things, either, and not one of
+  the boys remembers that the congregation below is at prayers.
+  They go on trafficking and telling tales undisturbed, until the
+  end of the service, and then they return to their seats, every
+  boy to his own at the long tables, which are lighted each of them
+  by a single candle for its whole length. A dispute breaks out as
+  to where the candle is to stand. First one draws it up to
+  himself, and then another wrests it from his hand and sets it
+  next to his own book, and finally all decide to measure the
+  table. One of the boys takes off his belt, and ascertains the
+  breadth of the table and its length, and the candle is put in the
+  exact centre. The quarrel is settled, and the students begin to
+  drawl the text before them, and what they did the whole livelong
+  day, they continue to do at night.
+
+  "Then one of them says, 'I sold my bread for two pennies'.--
+  'And I bought an apple for one penny and a cake for half a
+  penny', returns another.--'Darkness swallow up the monitor! He
+  doesn't give us enough candles to light up the dark!'--'The devil
+  take him!'--'A plague on him!'--'I am going on a visit home at
+  Passover.'--'Sarah the widow lent me three pennies.'
+
+  "While the boys talk thus over their open books, their bodies are
+  swaying to and fro like reeds in a pond, and their voices rise
+  and fall in the same sing-song in which they con their texts, all
+  to deceive the monitor, who, hearing the usual drawl and seeing
+  the rocking bodies, believes the students to be busy at their
+  tasks. But little by little, they forget and drop out of their
+  recitative into the ordinary conversational tone.--'Tell me,
+  Zabualean [the pupils are called by their native town in the
+  Yeshibah], don't you think it's about time for the angel of death
+  to come and carry off our monitor? Or is he going to live
+  forever?'--'I pray to God to afflict his body with such ills that
+  he cannot come to the Yeshibah. Then we should have rest. I take
+  good care not to ask for his death. Another would take his place,
+  and there's no telling whether he would not be worse. If pain
+  keeps him abed, we shall have a respite.'--'But aren't you
+  committing a sin, cursing a deaf man?' interposes one of the
+  boys, indignantly.--'Look at that Azubian! A saint, isn't he?
+  Proof enough that he has seven sins hidden in his heart!' retorts
+  the Zabualean.--'No need of any such proof! Why, this very
+  Azubian could not resist the tempter, and is hard at work
+  studying Russian. That's as bad as bad can be, you don't have to
+  search out hidden sins.'--'I at least am not perverting the
+  right,' the Azubian flings out, 'because the Talmud itself says
+  that the law of the land is law, but you are committing an actual
+  sin against the Torah in cursing....' The sentence was never
+  finished, for the monitor had been standing behind the table
+  observing the boys for some time, and when he saw the excitement
+  of the Azubian,--being deaf, he could not hear what he said,--he
+  threw himself upon him, and, seizing him by the ear, shook him as
+  violently as his strength permitted, crying, 'You wretches, you
+  rebels, there, that's for you!' and he beat another boy with his
+  fists, and struck a third upon his cheeks.--'The monitor has
+  rained profuse kisses upon the Azubian for defending him!' one of
+  the boys paraphrased Proverbs, [1] drawling in the approved sing-
+  song, and keeping his eyes fixed upon his book. The others burst
+  into loud laughter at the sally. Even those who were still
+  smarting from the monitor's blows could not restrain themselves
+  and joined in. 'Are you making fun of me? You're not afraid?'
+  thundered the monitor, in towering rage, turning this way and
+  that, uncertain whom to select as the first victim of his heavy
+  hand. Before he could collect his wits, one of the boys yelled,
+  'Rabbi Isaac, Rabbi Isaac, the candles!'--It worked like a
+  conjurer's charm upon a serpent. In an instant the monitor turned
+  and ran to his room and searched it. Seeing no one there, he sank
+  into his chair, and groaned: 'Wicked, depraved children! Those
+  gallows-birds, I'll mangle their flesh, and flay the skin from
+  their bones!' and he kept on mumbling to himself in this strain,
+  until sleep fell upon his eyelids shaded by long eyebrows white
+  as snow, and his head dropped into his hands resting upon the
+  table.
+
+  "As soon as he slept, the boys resumed their talk, and my friend
+  continued to tell me about life in the Yeshibah.... 'Do you think
+  that the Yeshibah students are guileless youths who have never
+  dropped their mother's apron strings? If you do, you are vastly
+  mistaken. They are up to all the tricks, and the dullest among
+  them can show a thing or two to the best of the rich boys. You
+  will do well to observe their ways and learn from them.'--'I
+  shall try to walk in their footsteps.'....
+
+  "Then I went out to get my supper. On returning I found the
+  greater part of the boys had gone to sleep, and almost all the
+  candles were out. Only a few of the students were sitting
+  together and talking. I sought out my friend, and discovered him
+  lying upon one of the tables in the women's gallery, but he was
+  still awake. 'Why don't you look for a place to lie down in?' he
+  asked me.--'I shall lie here next to you,' I replied.--' No, you
+  can't do that. Here each boy has a place in which he always
+  sleeps; he never changes about. Go down to the men's hall and
+  look for an unoccupied spot. If you find a table, so much the
+  better. If not, you must be satisfied with a bench.'--I did as he
+  advised. I found a long table in the men's hall, but hardly was I
+  stretched out upon it when a boy took me by the scruff of my neck
+  and shook me, saying: 'Get out, this is my place! And all the
+  tables here are taken by boys who came to the Yeshibah long ahead
+  of you. You must look for another place.'
+
+  "Not very much pleased, I slipped down from the table, and lay on
+  the bench. But I could not go to sleep. I was not accustomed to
+  the narrow board, nor to sleep without a bed-cover, and the
+  little and big insects that swarmed in the cracks of the wood
+  came forth from their nests and tickled me all over my body. But
+  there was nothing to do, and I lay there in discomfort until all
+  the lights were extinguished. Only one light of all burnt the
+  whole night, the _Ner tamid_, and under it sat two students,
+  the 'watchers' [whose duty it was to continue at their task until
+  morning, so that the study of the Law might not be interrupted
+  day or night]."
+
+[Footnote 1: XXVII, 6.]
+
+A life full of excitement, of which the above is a specimen, was not
+likely to displease so adventurous a spirit as Joseph's. When all is
+said, the Yeshibah provided a living for the young people, not
+overabundant, it is true, but at least they were relieved of material
+cares. The pious middle class Jews, and even the poor, considered it
+their duty to supply the needs of the young Talmudists, and the ambition
+of the latter was satisfied by the general good feeling that prevailed
+in their favor. For the aristocracy among the Jews, whose minds had not
+yet been stimulated by the new ideas, the Yeshibah was the home of all
+the virtues, the school in which the ideal was pursued, and lofty dreams
+were dreamed.
+
+In another novel, "The Joy of the Hypocrite," which appeared in Vienna,
+in 1872, Smolenskin extols the idealism of his hero Simon, a product of
+the Yeshibah:
+
+  "Who had implanted in the mind of Simon the ideal of justice and
+  the sublime word? Who had kindled in his soul the sacred flame,
+  love of truth and research? Verily, he had found all these in the
+  Yeshibah. Glory and increase be to you, ye holy places, last
+  refuges of Israel's real heritage! From your portals came forth
+  the elect destined from birth to be the light of their people and
+  breathe new life into the dry bones."
+
+Even during the period of the _Behalah_ ("Terror") the Yeshibah
+remained unscathed, beyond the reach of misery and baseness. The venal
+jobbers, who, with the assistance of the Kahal, delivered the sons of
+the poor to the army in order to shield the rich, did not dare invade
+the Rabbinical schools. Like the Temple in ancient times, the
+_Yeshibot_ offered a sure refuge. Whenever these sanctuaries were
+imperilled, national sentiment was aroused, and the threatened
+encroachments upon the last national treasure were resisted with bitter
+determination, for the idealism of the people of the ghetto, their hope
+and their faith, were enshrined there.
+
+Joseph forfeited the privilege of sanctuary residing in the Yeshibah on
+the day he was taken redhanded, in the act of reading a profane book.
+Religious fanaticism had never proceeded with so much rigor as during
+the reign of terror following upon the disorganization of the social
+life of the Jews by the authorities, and the triumphant assertion of
+arbitrary power. Nevertheless, even at this disheartening juncture, the
+Rabbinical schools were the asylum of whatever of ideal or sublime there
+remained in Israel.
+
+They furnished all the champions of humanism and the preachers and
+disseminators of civilization. In them Joseph met the generous comrades
+who introduced him to the Haskalah, and awakened love for the noble and
+the good in him, and boundless devotion to his people.
+
+Hard as flint toward the inefficient leaders, without pity for the
+hypocrites and the fanatics, the heart of Joseph yet pulsated with love
+for the Jewish masses. Their unsympathetic surroundings and the
+persecutions to which they were exposed but increased his compassion for
+the straying flock of his people. In the general degradation, he
+succeeded in rising to moral heights, and so could set himself up for an
+impartial judge. He did not permit himself to be carried away by the
+sadness of the moment, though he did not remain indifferent to it, and
+his heart bled at the thought of his people's sufferings. In the human
+desert, in which he delighted to disport himself, he discovered noble
+characters, lofty sentiments, generous friendships, and, above all,
+lives devoted entirely to the pursuit of the ideal undeterred by any
+obstacle.
+
+One after the other he presents the idealists of the ghetto to the
+reader. There is, first of all, Jedidiah, the common type of the Maskil,
+working zealously for culture, spreading truth and light in all the
+circles he can reach, dreaming of a Judaism, just, enlightened, exalted.
+Then there are the ardent young apostles, like that noble friend of
+Joseph, Gideon, most enlightened and most tolerant of Maskilim. In the
+measure in which Gideon detests fanaticism, he loves the people. He
+loves the masses with the heart of a patriot and the soul of a prophet.
+He loves them exactly as they are, with their beliefs, their simple
+faith, their poor, submissive lives, their ambitions as the chosen
+people, and their Messianic hope, to which he himself clings, though in
+a way less mystical than theirs. Thrilling, patriotic exaltation
+pervades the chapter on "The Day of Atonement." There Smolenskin appears
+as a genuine romanticist.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such in outline are the features of this chaotic, superb novel, which,
+in spite of its faults of technique, remains to this day the truest and
+the most beautiful product of neo-Hebrew literature.
+
+Ten years after finishing it, the author added a fourth part, which, on
+the whole, is nothing but an artificial collection of letters relating
+only indirectly to the main story. Joseph takes us with him through the
+Western lands, and then to Russia, whither he returns. In France and in
+England, he deplores the degeneracy of Judaism, attributing it to the
+ascendency of the Mendelssohnian school, and he foresees the approach of
+anti-Semitism. In Russia, he notes the prevalence of economic misery in
+frightful proportions, especially in the small rural towns, while in the
+large centres he regrets to see that the communities use every effort to
+imitate Occidental Judaism with all its faults. The overhasty culture of
+the Russian Jews, weakly correlated with the economic and political
+conditions under which they lived, was bound to bring on the breaking up
+of the passive idealism which constituted their chief strength.
+
+The novel _Keburat Hamor_ ("The Burial of the Ass") is the most
+elaborate and the most finished of Smolenskin's works. It describes the
+time of the "Terror" and the domination of the Kahal. The hero, Hayyim
+Jacob, is a wag, but pleasantries are not always understood in the
+ghetto, and he is made to pay for them. His practical jokes and his
+small respect for the notables of the community, whom he dares to defy
+and poke fun at, are his ruin.
+
+He was scarcely more than a child when he was guilty of unprecedented
+conduct. Wrapped in blue drapery, like a corpse risen from the grave,
+and spreading terror wherever he appeared, he made his way one evening
+into the room in which cakes were stored for the next day's annual
+banquet of the _Hebrah Kadisha_ ("Holy Brotherhood"), the all-
+powerful society, organized primarily to perform the last rites and
+ceremonies for the dead, to which the best Jews of a town belong. He got
+possession of all the dainty morsels, and made away with them. It was an
+unpardonable crime, high treason against saintliness. An inquiry was
+ordered, but the culprit was not discovered.
+
+In revenge, the Brotherhood ordained the "burial of an ass" for the
+nameless criminal, and the verdict was recorded in the minutes of the
+society.
+
+The incorrigible Hayyim Jacob continues to perpetrate jokes, and the
+Kahal decides to surrender him to the army recruiting officer. Warned
+betimes, he is able to make good his escape. He returns to his native
+town later on under an assumed name, imposes upon everybody by his
+scholarship, and marries the daughter of the head of the community. But
+his natural inclinations get the upper hand again. Meantime, he has
+confided the tale of his youthful tricks to his wife. She is disturbed
+by what she knows, she cannot endure the idea of the unparalleled
+punishment that awaits her husband should he be identified, for to
+undergo the "burial of an ass" is the supremest indignity that can be
+offered to a Jew. The body of the offender is dragged along the ground
+to the cemetery, and there it is thrown into a ditch made for the
+purpose behind the wall enclosing the grounds. But was not her father
+the head of the community? Could he not annul the verdict? She discloses
+the secret to him, and the effect is to fill him with instantaneous
+rage: What! to that wicked fellow he has given his daughter, to that
+heretic! He wants to force him to give up his wife, but no more than the
+husband will the woman listen to any such proposal. Hayyim Jacob
+succeeds in ingratiating himself with his father-in-law, though by fraud
+and only for a short time. After that, one persecution after another is
+inflicted upon him, and he succumbs.
+
+So much for the background upon which the novelist has painted his
+scenes, authentic reproductions from the life of the Jews in Russia. The
+character of Hayyim Jacob stands out clear and forceful. His wife Esther
+is the typical Jewish woman, loyal and devoted unto death, of
+irreproachable conduct under reverses of fortune, and braving a world
+for love of her husband. The prominent characters of the ghetto are
+drawn with fidelity, though the colors are sometimes laid on too thick.
+The author has been particularly happy in re-creating the atmosphere of
+the ghetto, with its contradictions and its passions, the specialized
+intellectuality which long seclusion has forged for it, and its odd,
+original conception of life.
+
+Smolenskin goes to the Yeshibah for the subject of one of his novels,
+_Gemul Yesharim_ ("The Recompense of the Righteous"). The author
+describes the part played by the Jewish youth in the Polish
+insurrection. The ingratitude of the Poles proves that the Jews have
+nothing to expect from others, and they should count only upon their own
+resources.
+
+_Gaon we-Sheber_ ("Greatness and Ruin") is a collection of
+scattered novelettes, some of which are veritable works of art.
+
+_Ha-Yerushah_ ("The Inheritance") is the last of Smolenskin's great
+novels. It was first published in _Ha-Shahar_, in 1880-81. Its
+three volumes are full of incoherencies and long drawn out arguments.
+The life of the Jews of Odessa, however, and of Roumania, is well
+depicted, and also the psychologic stages through which the older
+humanists pass, deceived in their hopes, and groping for a return to
+national Judaism.
+
+Smolenskin's last novel, _Nekam Berit_ ("Holy Vengeance", _Ha-
+Shahar_, 1884), is wholly Zionistic. It was the author's swan song.
+Not long after its completion, an illness carried him off.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The novels of Smolenskin are a series of social documents and
+propagandist writings rather than works of pure art. Their chief defects
+are the incoherence of the action, the artificiality of the
+_dénouement_, their simplicity in all that concerns modern life, as
+well as their excessive didactic tendencies and the long-winded style of
+the author. Most of these defects he shares with such writers as
+Auerbach, Jokai, and Thackeray, with whom he may be placed in the same
+class. In passing judgment, it must be borne in mind that the Hebrew
+writer's life was one prolonged and bitter struggle for bare existence,
+his own and _Ha-Shahar's_, for the periodical never yielded him any
+income. Only his idealism and the consciousness of the useful purpose he
+was serving sustained him in critical moments. These circumstances
+explain why his works bear the marks of hasty production. However that
+may be, since he gave them to the Jewish world, his novels have, even
+more than his articles, exercised unparalleled influence upon his
+readers.
+
+In a word, the life of the Russian ghetto, its misery and its passions,
+the positive and the negative types of that vanishing world, have been
+set down in the writings of Smolenskin with such power of realism and
+such profound knowledge of conditions that it is impossible to form a
+just idea of Russo-Polish Judaism without having read what he has
+written.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+CONTEMPORANEOUS LITERATURE
+
+
+The years 1881-1882 mark off a distinct era in the history of the Jewish
+people. The revival of anti-Semitism in Germany, the unexpected renewal
+of persecutions and massacres in Russia and Roumania, the outlawing of
+millions of human beings, whose situation grew less tenable from day to
+day in those two countries--such were the occurrences that disconcerted
+the most optimistic.
+
+In the face of the precipitate exodus of crazed masses of the people and
+the urgency of decisive action, the old disputes between humanists and
+nationalists were laid aside. There could be but one choice between
+impossible assimilation with the Slav people on the one hand, and the
+idea, on the other hand, of a national emancipation divested of its
+mystical envelope and supplied with a territory as a practicable basis.
+All the Hebrew-writing authors were agreed that the time had passed for
+wrangling over a divergence of opinions. It was imperative that all
+forces should range themselves on the side of action. Even a skeptic
+like Gordon issued at that time, among many things like it, his
+thrilling poem: "We were a people, and we will a people be--with our
+young and with our old will we go!"
+
+But whither? Some decided for America with the Western philanthropists,
+others, with Smolenskin, declared absolutely in favor of Palestine, the
+country of the Jew's perennial dreams.
+
+Academic discussions of such questions are futile. It may safely be left
+to time and experience to decide between the two currents of opinion. As
+early as 1880, the young dreamer Ben-Jehudah, inspired with the idea of
+reviving the Hebrew as a national language, left Paris and established
+himself at Jerusalem. And from Lithuania came the romantic conservative
+Pines, forsaking the distinguished position he occupied there, in order
+to give his aid in the elevation of the Jews of Palestine. The tracks
+made by these two pioneers issuing from opposite camps were soon trodden
+by the followers of important movements.
+
+A select circle of four hundred university students, indignant at the
+humiliating position into which they had been forced, thundered forth an
+appeal that resounded throughout the length and breadth of Jewish
+Russia: _Bet Ya'akob, leku we-nelekah_ ("O House of Jacob, come ye
+and let us walk"). The practical result was the organization of the
+group BILU, the first to leave for Palestine and establish a colony
+there. [Footnote: Is. II, 5. BILU are the initials of the four words of
+the Hebrew sentence quoted above.] This nucleus was enlarged by the
+accession of hundreds of middle class burghers and of the educated, and
+thus Jewish colonization was a permanently assured fact in the Holy
+Land.
+
+The surprising return of the younger generation, who had wholly broken
+with Judaism, this first step toward the actual realization of the
+Zionist dream, has had most important consequences for the renascence of
+Hebrew literature. As for the educated element that had never, at least
+in spirit, left the ghetto, men like Lilienblum, Braudes, and others,
+whose later activity, a propaganda for economic reforms and instruction
+in manual trades, had almost ceased to have a reason for continuing,--as
+for them, their adhesion to Zionism could not be long delayed. And even
+outside of the ghetto a voice was heard, the authoritative voice of Dr.
+Leon Pinsker, announcing his support of the philo-Palestinian movement,
+as it was then called. In his brochure "Auto-Emancipation", the learned
+physician of Odessa, one of the old guard of staunch humanists, declares
+that the disease of anti-Semitism is a chronic affection, incurable as
+long as the Jews are in exile. There is but one solution for the Jewish
+question, the national regeneration of the Jews upon their ancient soil.
+
+A new dawn began to break upon the horizon of the Jewish people. Hebrew
+literature was stimulated as never before, and the enthusiasm of the
+writers incorporated itself in the spirited proposals of Moses Eismann,
+Professor Schapira, and a number of others. In this sudden blossoming of
+patriotic ideas, excesses were inevitable. A chauvinistic reaction was
+not long in setting in. The religious reformers were attacked, they were
+accused of hindering a fusion of diverse parties in Judaism whose
+cordial agreement was indispensable to the success of the new movement.
+
+Smolenskin alone was irreproachable. He who had never acknowledged the
+benefits of assimilation, had no need now to go to extremes. He remained
+faithful to his patriotic ideal, without renouncing any of his
+humanitarian and cultural aspirations. The activity he displayed was
+feverish. Now that he no longer stood alone in the defense of his ideas,
+he redoubled his efforts with admirable energy--encouraging here,
+exhorting there. But he was coming to the end of his strength, exhausted
+by a life of struggle and wretchedness, by long overtaxing of his
+physical and mental powers. He died in 1885, in the vigor of his years,
+cut off by disease. The whole of Jewry mourned at his grave. And _Ha-
+Shahar_ soon ceased to exist.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the extinction of _Ha-Shahar_ we arrive at the end of the task
+we have set ourselves, of following up a phase of literary evolution.
+Modern Hebrew literature, for a century the handmaiden of one
+preponderating idea, the humanist idea in all its various applications,
+henceforth enters upon a new phase of its development. Led back by
+Smolenskin to its national source, stripped of every religious element,
+and imposed by the force of circumstances upon the masses and the
+educated alike, as the link uniting them thenceforth for the furtherance
+of the same patriotic end, it has again taken its place as the language
+of the Jewish people. It has ceased to serve as the mere mediator
+between Rabbinism and modern life. It is become an end in itself, an
+important factor in the life of the Jews. It is no longer a parasite
+flourishing at the expense of orthodoxy, from which it has for a century
+been luring away successive generations of the best of the young men,
+who, however, once emancipated, hastened to abandon that to which they
+owed their enlightenment. It has become the receptacle of the national
+literature of the Jewish people.
+
+In 1885, when the distinguished editor of _Ha-Zefirah_, Nahum
+Sokolow, undertook the publication of the great literary annual, _He-
+Asif_ ("The Collector"), the success he achieved went beyond the
+wildest expectations. The edition ran up to seven thousand copies. It
+was followed by other enterprises of a similar character, notably
+_Keneset Yisraël_ ("The Assembly of Israel"), published by Saul
+Phinehas Rabbinowitz, the learned historian.
+
+In 1886, the journalist, Jehudah Löb Kantor, encouraged by the vogue
+acquired by the Hebrew language, founded the first daily paper in it,
+_Ha-Yom_ ("The Day"), at St. Petersburg. The success of this organ
+induced _Ha-Meliz_ and _Ha-Zefirah_ to change into dailies. A
+Hebrew political press thus came into being, and it has contributed
+tremendously to the spread of Zionism and culture. Even the Hasidim, who
+had until then remained contumacious toward modern ideas, were reached
+by its influence. It was, however, the Hebrew language that profited
+most by the development of journalism in it. The demands of daily life
+enriched its vocabulary and its resources, completing the work of
+modernization.
+
+In Palestine, the need felt for an academic language common to the
+children of immigrants from all countries was a great factor in the
+practical rehabilitation of Hebrew as the vernacular. Ben-Jehudah was
+the first to use it in his home, in intercourse with the members of his
+family and his household, and a number of educated Jews followed his
+example, not permitting any other to be spoken within their four walls.
+In the schools at Jerusalem and in the newly-established colonies, it
+has become the official language. A recoil from the Palestinian movement
+was felt in Europe and in America, and a limited number of circles were
+formed everywhere in which only Hebrew was spoken. The journal _Ha-
+Zebi_ ("The Deer"), published by Ben-Jehudah, became the organ of
+Hebrew as a spoken language, which differs from the literary language
+only in the greater freedom granted it of borrowing modern words and
+expressions from the Arabic and even from the European languages, and by
+its tendency to create new words from old Hebrew roots, in compliance
+with forms occurring in the Bible and the Mishnah. Here are a couple of
+examples of this tendency: The Hebrew word _Sha'ah_ means "time",
+"hour". To this word the modern Hebrew adds the termination _on_,
+making it _Sha'on_, with the meaning "watch", or "clock". The verb
+_darak_, in Biblical Hebrew "to walk", gives rise in the modern
+language to _Midrakah_, "pavement."
+
+The spread of the language and the increase in the number of readers
+together produced a change in the material condition of the writers.
+Their compensation became ampler in proportion, the consequence of which
+was that they could devote themselves to work requiring more sustained
+effort, and what they produced was more finished in detail. With the
+founding of the publishing society _Ahiasaf_, and more particularly
+the one called _Tushiyah_, due to the energy of Abraham L. Ben-
+Avigdor, a sympathetic writer, Hebrew was afforded the possibility of
+developing naturally, in the manner of a modern language.
+
+There was a short interval of non-production, caused by the brutality
+and sadness of unexpected events, but literary creativeness recovered
+quickly, and manifested itself, with growing force, in varied and
+widespread activity worthy of a literature that had grown out of the
+needs of a national group. On the field of poetry, there is, first of
+all, Constantin Shapiro, the virile lyricist, who knew how to put into
+fitting words the indignation and revolt of the people against the
+injustice levelled against them. His "Poems of Jeshurun" published in
+_He-Asif_ for 1888, alive with emotion and patriotic ardor, as well
+as his Haggadic legends, must be put in the first rank. After him comes
+Menahem M. Dolitzki, the elegiac poet of Zionism, the singer of sweet
+"Zionides." [Footnote: Poems published in New York, in 1896.] Then a
+young writer, snatched away all too early, Mordecai Zebi Manne, who was
+distinguished for his tender lyrics and deep feeling for nature and art.
+[Footnote: His works appeared in Warsaw in 1897.] And, finally, there is
+Naphtali Herz Imber, the song-writer of the Palestinian colonies, the
+poet of the reborn Holy Land and the Zionist hope. [Footnote: Poems
+published at Jerusalem in 1886.]
+
+Among the latest to claim the attention of the public, the name of
+Hayyim N. Bialik [1] ought to be mentioned, a vigorous lyricist and an
+incomparable stylist, and of S. Tchernichovski, [2] an erotic poet, the
+singer of love and beauty, a Hebrew with an Hellenic soul. [Footnote 1:
+Poems published at Warsaw In 1902.] [Footnote 2: Poems published at
+Warsaw in 1900-2.] These two, both of them at the beginning of their
+career, are the most brilliant in a group of poets more or less well
+known.
+
+Again, there are two story-writers that are particularly prominent,
+Abramowitsch, the old favorite, who, having abandoned Hebrew for a brief
+period in favor of jargon, returned to enrich Hebrew literature with a
+series of tales, poetic and humorous, of incomparable originality and in
+a style all his own. [Footnote: Collected Tales and Novels, Odessa,
+1900.] The second one is Isaac Löb Perez, the symbolist painter of love
+and misery, a charming teller of tales and a distinguished artist.
+[Footnote: Works, in ten volumes, Hebrew Library of _Tushiyah_,
+1899-1901.]
+
+Of novelists and romancers, in prose and in verse, Samuely may be
+mentioned, and Goldin, Berschadsky, Feierberg, J. Kahn, Berditchevsky,
+S. L. Gordon, N. Pines, Rabinovitz, Steinberg, and Loubochitzky, to name
+only a few among many. Ben-Avigdor is the creator of the young realist
+movement, through his psychologic tales of ghetto life, particularly his
+_Menahem ha-Sofer_ ("Menahem the Scribe"), wherein he opposes the
+new chauvinism.
+
+Among the masters of the _feuilleton_ are the subtle critic David
+Frischmann, translator of numerous scientific books; the writer of
+charming _causeries_, A. L. Levinski, author of a Zionist Utopia,
+"Journey to Palestine in the Year 5800", published in _Ha-Pardes_
+("Paradise"), in Odessa; and J. H. Taviow, the witty writer.
+
+On the field of thought and criticism, the most prominent place belongs
+to Ahad ha-'Am, the first editor of the review _Ha-Shiloah_, a
+critic who often drops into paradoxes, but is always original and bold.
+[Footnote: Collected Essays, published at Odessa in 1885, and at Warsaw
+in 1901.] He is the promoter of "spiritual Zionism", the counterstroke
+dealt to the practical, political movement by Messianic mysticism
+clothed in a somewhat more rational garb than its traditional form. He
+has a fine critical mind and is an acute observer, as well as a
+remarkable stylist.
+
+To Ahad ha-'Am we may oppose Wolf Jawitz, the philosopher of religious
+romanticism, the defender of tradition, and one of the regenerators of
+Hebrew style. [Footnote: _Ha-Arez_, published at Jerusalem in 1893-
+96; "History of the Jews", published at Wilna, 1898-1902, etc.] Between
+these two extremes, there is a moderate party, the foremost
+representative of which is Nahum Sokolow, the popular and prolific
+editor of _Ha-Zefirah_, prominent at once as a writer and a man of
+action. Dr. S. Bernfeld also deserves mention, as the admirable
+popularizer of the Science of Judaism, and an excellent historian, the
+author of a history of Jewish theology recently published at Warsaw.
+
+Among the latest claimants of public attention is M. J. Berditchevsky,
+author of numerous tales bordering upon the decadent, but not wholly
+bare of the spirit of poetry. David Neumark takes rank as a thinker.
+Philology is worthily represented by Joshua Steinberg, author of a
+scientific grammar on original lines, not yet known to the scholars of
+Europe, and translator of the Sibylline books. [Footnote: _Ma'arke
+Leshon Eber_ ("The Principles of the Hebrew Language"), Wilna, 1884,
+etc.] Fabius Mises has published a history of modern philosophy in
+Europe, and J. L. Katzenelenson is the author of a treatise on anatomy
+and of a number of literary works acceptable to the public. Then there
+are Leon Rabinovich, editor of _Ha-Meliz_, David Yellin, Lerner, A.
+Kahana, and others.
+
+The history of modern literature has found a worthy representative in
+the person of Reuben Brainin, a master of style, himself the author of
+popular tales. His remarkable studies of Mapu, Smolenskin, and other
+writers, are conceived and executed according to the approved methods of
+modern critics. They have done good work in refining the taste and
+aesthetic feeling of the Hebrew-reading public.
+
+All these, and a number of others, have given the Hebrew language an
+assured place. To their original works must be added numberless
+translations, text books, and editions of all sorts, and then we can
+form a fair idea of the actual significance of Hebrew in its modern
+development. In the number of publications, it ranks as the third
+literature in Russia, the Russian and the Polish being the only ones
+ahead of it, and no estimate of the influence it wields can afford to
+leave out of account its vogue in Palestine, Austria, and America.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+A glance at modern Hebrew literature as a whole reveals a striking
+tendency in its development, at once unexpected and inevitable. The
+humanist ideal, which stood sponsor at its rebirth, bore within itself a
+germ of dissolution. For national and religious aims it desired to
+substitute the idea of liberty and equality. Sooner or later it would
+have had to end in assimilation. During the course of a whole century,
+from the appearance of the first issue of _Ha-Meassef_, in 1784-5,
+until the cessation of _Ha-Shahar_, in 1885, Hebrew literature
+offers the spectacle of a constant conflict between the humanist ideals
+and Judaism. In spite of obstacles of every kind, and in spite of the
+dangerous rivalry of the European languages, the rivalry of the Jewish-
+German itself, the Hebrew language has given proof of persistent
+vitality, and displayed surprising power of adaptation to all sorts of
+circumstances and all departments of literature, and widely separated
+countries have been the scene of its development. So far as the earliest
+humanists had planned, the Hebrew language was to serve only as an
+instrument of propaganda and emancipation. Thanks to the efforts of
+Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, Mendes, and Wessely, it rose for a brief moment
+to the rank of a truly literary medium, very soon, however, to make way
+for the languages of the various countries, while it receded to the
+narrow confines provided by the Maskilim. Its final destiny was to be
+decided in Slav lands. In Galicia, it gave birth, in the domain of
+philosophy, to the ideal of the "mission of the Jewish people", and to
+the "science of Judaism." But for the great mass of the Jews remaining
+faithful to the Messianic ideal, what was of greatest significance was
+the national and religious romanticism expounded by Samuel David
+Luzzatto.
+
+Lithuania, with its inexhaustible resources, moral and intellectual,
+became the stronghold of Hebrew. In its double aspect as a humanistic
+and a romantic force, Hebrew literature bounded forward on new paths
+with the lustiness of youth. Before long, under the impetus of social
+and economic reforms, the Hebrew writers declared war upon a Rabbinical
+authority that rejected every innovation, and was opposed to all
+progress. To meet the issue, the realistic literature came forward,
+polemic and destructive in character. A pitiless combat ensued between
+the humanists and Rabbinism, and the consequences were fateful for the
+one party as well as the other. Rabbinism felt that its very essence had
+been shaken, and that it was destined to disappear, at least in its
+traditional form. Humanism, on the other side, startled out of its
+dreams of justice and equality, lost ground, inch by inch, by reason of
+having broken with the national hope of the people. The attempt made by
+some writers to bring about the harmonization of religion and life
+turned out a lamentable miscarriage. The antagonism between the literary
+folk and the mass of believers ended in the breaking up of the whole
+literature created by the humanists. At that moment the progressive
+national movement made its appearance with Smolenskin, and supplied
+Hebrew literature with a purpose and its civilizing mission.
+
+The predominant note of contemporary Hebrew literature is the Zionist
+ideal stripped of its mystical envelopes. It may be asserted that the
+Messianic hope in this new form is in the act of producing a
+transformation in Polish Hasidic surroundings, identical with that
+achieved by humanism in Lithuania. The rabid opposition offered to
+Hebrew literature by the Hasidim suffices to confirm this
+prognostication of a dreaded result.
+
+Also beyond the boundaries of the Slav countries, in the distant Orient,
+the Hebrew lion is gaining territory, from Palestine to Morocco, and
+wherever his foot treads, culture springs up and national regeneration.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Deep down in the sorely tried soul of the Jewish masses, there reposes a
+fund of idealism, and ardent faith in a better future unshaken by time
+or disappointments. Defraud them of the millennial ideal which sustains
+their courage, which is the very cornerstone of their existence, and you
+surrender them into the power of a dangerous despair, you push them into
+the arms of the demoralization that lies in wait everywhere, and in some
+countries has already come out in the open.
+
+Hebrew literature, faithful to its Biblical mission, has within it the
+power of replenishing the moral resources of the masses and making their
+hearts thrill with enthusiasm for justice and the ideal. It is the focus
+of the rays vivifying all that breathes, that struggles, that creates,
+that hopes within the Jewish soul.
+
+To misunderstand this moral bearing of the renascence of the Hebrew
+language is to fail to know the very life of the better part of Judaism
+and the Jew.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Literary creation is now at its full blossom, and the ferment of ideas
+instilled from all sides is so powerful that an abundant harvest may be
+expected.
+
+And that Bible language which has given humanity so many glorious pages,
+which has but now, thanks to the humanists, added a new page, is it
+destined in very truth to be born anew, and become once more the
+language of the national culture of the whole of the Jewish people? It
+would be rash to reply with a categorical affirmative.
+
+What has been proved in the foregoing pages is, we believe, that it
+exists, and is developing both as a literary and a spoken language; that
+it has shown itself to be the equal of the modern languages; that it is
+capable of giving expression to all thoughts and all forms of human
+activity; and, finally, that it is accomplishing a work of culture and
+emancipation. The expansion of the language of the prophets taking place
+under our eyes is a fact that cannot but fascinate every mind interested
+in the mysterious evolution of the destinies of mankind in the direction
+of the ideal.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Renascence of Hebrew Literature
+(1743-1885), by Nahum Slouschz
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