Chapter 6

Not a breath of this ample spiritual development of the Jews of Arabic Spain reached the Jews living in the Christian countries of Europe. Their circumstances were too grievous, and in sombreness their inner life matched their outer estate. Their horizon was as contracted as the streets of the Jewries in which they were penned. The crusades (beginning in 1096) clearly showed the Jews of France and Germany what sentiments their neighbors cherished towards them. They were the first returns which Christianity paid the Jewish people for its old-time teaching of religion. The descendants of the "chosen people," the originators of the Bible, were condemned to torture of a sort to exhaust their spiritual heritage. Judaism suffered the tragic fate of King Lear. Was it conceivable that the horrors--the rivers of blood, the groans of massacred communities, the serried ranks of martyrs, the ever-haunting fear of the morrow--should fail to leave traces in the character of Judaism? The Jewish people realized its imminent danger. It convulsively held fast to its precious relics, clung to the pillars of its religion, which it regarded as the only asylum. The Jewish spirit again withdrew from the outer world. It gave itself up wholly to the study of the Talmud. In northern France and in Germany, Talmudic learning degenerated into the extreme of scholastic pedantry, the lot of every branch of science that is lopped off from the main trunk of knowledge, and vegetates in a heavy, dank atmosphere, lacking light and air. Rashi (1064-1105), whose genial activity began before the first crusade, opened up Jewish religious literature to the popular mind, by his systematic commentaries on the Bible and the Talmud. On the other hand, the Tossafists, the school of commentators succeeding him, by their petty quibbling and hairsplitting casuistry made the Talmudic books more intricate and less intelligible. Such being the intellectual bias of the age, a sober, rationalistic philosophy could not assert itself. In lieu of an Ibn Ezra or a Maimonides, we have Jehuda Hachassid and Eliezer of Worms, with their mystical books of devotion, _Sefer Chassidim, Rokeach_, etc., filled with pietistic reflections on the other world, in which the earth figures as a "vale of tears." Poetry likewise took on the dismal hue of its environment. Instead of the varied lyrical notes of Gabirol and Halevi, who sang the weal and woe, not only of the nation, but also of the individual, and lost themselves in psychologic analysis, there now fall upon our ear the melancholy, heartrending strains of synagogue poetry, the harrowing outcries that forced themselves from the oppressed bosoms of the hunted people, the prayerful lamentations that so often shook the crumbling walls of the medieval synagogues at the very moment when, full of worshipers, they were fired by the inhuman crusaders. A mighty chord reverberates in this poetry: _Morituri te salutant_.

One small spot there was, in the whole of Europe, in which Jews could still hope to endure existence and enjoy a measure of security. This was Southern France, or the Provence. The population of Provence had assimilated the culture of the neighboring country, Arabic Spain, and become the mediator between it and the rest of Europe. This work of mediation was undertaken primarily by the Jews. In the twelfth century several universities existed in Provence, which were frequented in great numbers by students from all countries. At these universities the teachers of philosophy, medicine, and other branches of science were for the most part Jews. The rationalistic philosophy of the Spanish Jews was there proclaimed _ex cathedra_. The Tibbonides translated all the more important works of the Jewish thinkers of Spain from Arabic into Hebrew. The Kimchis devoted themselves to grammatical studies and the investigation of the Bible. In Montpellier, Narbonne, and Lunel, intellectual work was in full swing. Rational ideas gradually leavened the masses of the Provençal population. Conscience freed from intellectual trammels began to revolt against the oppression exercised by the Roman clergy. Through the Albigensian heresy, Innocent III, founder of the papal power, had his attention directed to the Jews, whom he considered the dangerous protagonists of rationalism. The "heresy" was stifled, Provence in all her magnificence fell a prey to the Roman mania for destruction, and, on the ruins of a noble civilization, the Dominican Inquisition raged with all its horrors (1213).

Thenceforward the Catholic Church devoted herself to a hostile watch upon the Jews. Either she persecuted them directly through her Inquisition, or indirectly through her omnipotent influence on kings and peoples. In the hearts of the citizens of medieval Europe, the flame of religious hatred was enkindled, and religious hatred served as a cloak for the basest passions. Jewish history from that time on became a history of uninterrupted suffering. The Lateran Council declared the Jews to be outcasts, and designed a peculiar, dishonorable badge for them, a round patch of yellow cloth, to be worn on their upper garment (1215). In France the Jews became by turns the victims of royal rapacity and the scapegoats of popular fanaticism. Massacres, confiscations, banishments followed by dearly purchased permission to return, by renewed restrictions, persecutions, and oppressions--these were the measures that characterized the treatment of the Jews in France until their final expulsion (1394). In Germany the Jews were not so much hated as despised. They were _servi camerae_, serfs of the state, and as such had to pay oppressive taxes. Besides, they were limited to the meanest trades and to usury and peddling. They were shut up in their narrow Jewries, huddled in wretched cabins, which clustered about the dilapidated synagogue in a shamefaced way. What strange homes! What gigantic misery, what boundless suffering dumbly borne, was concealed in those crumbling, curse-laden dwellings! And yet, how resplendent they were with spiritual light, what exalted virtues, what lofty heroism they harbored! In those gloomy, tumbledown Jew houses, intellectual endeavor was at white heat. The torch of faith blazed clear in them, and on the pure domestic hearth played a gentle flame. In the abject, dishonored son of the Ghetto was hidden an intellectual giant. In his nerveless body, bent double by suffering, and enveloped in the shabby old cloak still further disfigured by the yellow wheel, dwelt the soul of a thinker. The son of the Ghetto might have worn his badge with pride, for in truth it was a medal of distinction awarded by the papal Church to the Jews, for dauntlessness and courage. The awkward, puny Jew in his way was stronger and braver than a German knight armed cap-a-pie, for he was penetrated by the faith that "moves mountains." And when the worst came to the worst, he demonstrated his courage. When his peaceful home was stormed by the bestialized hordes of Armleder, or the drunken bands of the Flagellants, or the furious avengers of the "Black Death," he did not yield, did not purchase life by disgraceful treason. With invincible courage he put his head under the executioner's axe, and breathed forth his heroic spirit with the enthusiastic cry: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One."

At length the turn of the Spanish Jews arrived. For the unbroken peace they had enjoyed, they had to atone by centuries of unexampled suffering. By degrees, the Arabs were forced out of the Pyrenean Peninsula, and the power they had to abdicate was assumed by the Catholic kings of Castile and Aragon. In 1236 occurred the fall of Cordova, the most important centre of Arabic Jewish culture. Thereafter Arab power held sway only in the province of Granada. The fortunes of the Spanish Jews underwent a calamitous change. The kings and the upper ten thousand were, indeed, favorably disposed toward them. At the courts of Castile and Aragon, the Jews were active as ministers, physicians, astronomers. But the people, incited by the propaganda of the clerics, nursed frightful hatred against the Jews, not only as "infidels," but also as intellectual aristocrats. The rage of the populace was the combustible material in the terrific explosions that occurred periodically, in the bloody saturnalia of the Pastouraux (1320), in the Black Death riots (1348), in the massacre of Seville (1391).

Dire blows of fortune were unable to weigh down the Spanish Jew, accustomed to independence, as they did the German Jew. He carried his head proudly on high, for he was conscious that in all respects he stood above the rabble pursuing him, above its very leaders, the clerics. In spite of untoward fate his mental development proceeded, but inevitably it was modified by the trend of the times. By the side of the philosophic tendency of the previous age, a mystical tendency appeared in literature. The Kabbala, with its mist-shrouded symbolism, so grateful to the feelings and the imagination, chimed in better than rationalistic philosophy with the depressed humor under which the greater part of the Jews were then laboring. Another force antagonistic to rationalistic philosophy was the Rabbinism transplanted from France and Germany. The controversy between Rabbinism and philosophy, which dragged itself through three-quarters of a century (1232-1305), ended in the formal triumph of Rabbinism. However, philosophic activity merely languished, it did not cease entirely; in fact, the three currents for some time ran along parallel with one another. Next to the pillars of Rabbinism, Asheri, Rashba, Isaac ben Sheshet, loomed up the philosophers, Gersonides (Ralbag), Kreskas, and Albo, and a long line of Kabbalists, beginning with Nachmanides and Moses de Leon, the compiler of the Zohar, and ending with the anonymous authors of the mysterious "Kana and Pelia."

The times grew less and less propitious. Catholicism steadily gained ground in Spain. The scowling Dominican put forward his claim upon the Jewish soul with vehement emphasis, and made every effort to drag it into the bosom of the alone-saving Church. The conversion of the Jews would have been a great triumph, indeed, for Catholicism militant. The conversion methods of the Dominican monk were of a most insinuating kind--he usually began with a public religious disputation. Unfortunately, the Jews were experts in the art of debate, and too often by their bold replies covered the self-sufficient dignitaries of Rome with confusion. The Jews should have known, from bitter experience, that such boldness would not be passed over silently. From sumptuous debating hall to Dominican prison and scaffold was but a short step. In 1391, one of these worthy soul-catchers, Bishop Ferdinando Martinez, set the fanatical mob of Seville on the Jews, and not without success. Terrorized by the threat of death, many accepted Catholicism under duress. But they became Christians only in appearance; in reality they remained true to the faith of their fathers, and, in secret, running the risk of loss of life, they fulfilled all the Jewish ordinances. This is the prologue to the thrilling Marrano tragedy.

Finally, the moment approached when gloomy Catholicism attained to unchallenged supremacy in the Pyrenean Peninsula. On the ruins of the enlightened culture of the Arabs, Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella of Castile reared the reactionary government of medieval Rome. The Inquisition was introduced (1480). Torquemada presided as high priest over the rites attending the human sacrifices. _Ad gloriam ecclesiae_, the whole of Spain was illuminated. Everywhere the funeral pyres of the Inquisition flared to the skies, the air was rent by the despairing shrieks of martyrs enveloped in flames or racked by tortures, the prisons overflowed with Marranos,--all instruments of torture were vigorously plied.

At last the hour of redemption struck: in 1492 all Jews were driven from Spain, and a few years later from Portugal. Jewish-Arabic culture after five centuries of ascendency suffered a sudden collapse. The unhappy people again grasped its staff, and wandered forth into the world without knowing whither.

X

THE RABBINIC-MYSTICAL PERIOD, OR THE HEGEMONY OF THE GERMAN-POLISH JEWS (1492-1789)

The expulsion from Spain was a stunning blow. The hoary martyr people which had defied so many storms in its long life was for a moment dazed. The soil of Europe was quaking under its feet. At the time when the medieval period had formally come to a close for Occidental Christendom, and the modern period had opened, the middle ages continued in unmitigated brutality for the Jews. If anything, the life of the Jews had become more unendurable than before. What, indeed, had the much-vaunted modern age to offer them? In the ranks of the humanistic movement Reuchlin alone stood forth prominently as the advocate of the Jews, and he was powerless before the prejudices of the populace. The Reformation in Germany and elsewhere had illuminated the minds of the people, but had not softened their hearts. Luther himself, the creator of the Reformation, was not innocent of hating the followers of an alien faith. The Jews especially did not enjoy too great a measure of his sympathies. The wars growing out of the Reformation, which in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries devastated Europe in the name of religion, were not calculated to favor the spread of tolerance and milder manners. The conflict raging in the bosom of the Church and setting her own children by the ears, was yet insufficient to divert her maternal care from her "unbelieving" stepchildren. In Spain and Portugal, stakes continued to burn two centuries longer for the benefit of the Marranos, the false Christians. In Germany and Austria, the Jews were kept in the same condition of servitude as before. Their economic circumstances were appalling. They were forced to emigrate _en masse_ to Poland, which offered the adherents of their faith a comparatively quiet life, and by and by was invested with the Jewish hegemony. Some of the smaller states and independent towns of Italy also afforded the Jews an asylum, though one not always to be depended upon. A group of hard-driven Spanish exiles, for instance, under the leadership of Abarbanel had found peace in Italy. The rest had turned to Turkey and her province Palestine,

For a time, indeed, the Jewish spiritual centre was located in Turkey. What Europe, old, Christian, and hardhearted, refused the Jews, was granted them by Turkey, young, Mussulman, and liberal. On hearing of the banishment of the Jews from Spain, Sultan Bajazet exclaimed: "How can you call Ferdinand of Aragon a wise king, the same Ferdinand who has made his land poor and enriched ours?" His amazement characterizes the relation of Turkey to the Jews of the day. The one-time Marrano, Joseph Nassi, rose to be a considerable dignitary at the court of Sultan Selim (1566-1580). Occasionally he succeeded, by diplomatic means, in wreaking vengeance upon European courts in retaliation for the brutal tortures inflicted upon his people. With the generosity of a Maecenas, he assembled Jewish scholars and poets, and surrounded himself with a sunlit atmosphere of intellectuality and talent. All other Jewish communities looked up to that of Constantinople. Now and again its rabbis played the part of Patriarchs of the synagogue. To this commanding position the rabbis of Palestine especially were inclined to lay claim. They even attempted to restore the Patriarchate, and the famous controversy between Jacob Berab and Levi ben Chabib regarding the _Semicha_ is another evidence of the same assertive tendency. Among the Spanish exiles settled in the Holy Land a peculiar spiritual current set in. The storm-tossed wanderers, but now returned to their native Jordan from the shores of the blood-stained Tagus and Guadalquivir, were mightily moved at the sight of their ancestral home. Ahasuerus, who on his thorn-strewn pilgrim's path had drained the cup of woe to the dregs, suddenly caught sight of the home of his childhood razed level with the ground. The precious, never-to-be-forgotten ruins exhaled the home feeling, which took possession of him with irresistible charm. Into his soul there flowed sweet memories of a golden youth, past beyond recall. The impact of these emotions enkindled passionate "longing for Zion" in the heart of the forlorn, homeless martyr. He was seized by torturing thirst for political resurrection. Such melancholy feelings and vehement outbursts found expression in the practical Kabbala, originating with Ari (Isaac Luria) and his famous Safed school. A mystical belief in the coming of Messiah thenceforward became one of the essential elements of the Jewish spirit. It vanquished the heart of the learned Joseph Karo, who had brought Rabbinism to its climax by the compilation of his celebrated ritual code, the Shulchan Aruch. With equal force it dominated the being of Solomon Molcho, the enthusiastic youth who, at one time a Marrano, on his public return to Judaism proclaimed the speedy regeneration of Israel. He sealed his faith in his prophecy with death at the stake (1532). The Marranos beyond the Pyrenees and the unfortunate Jews of Italy, who, in the second half of the sixteenth century had to bear the brunt of papal fanaticism, on the increase since the Reformation, were kept in a state of constant excitement by this Messianic doctrine, with its obscure stirrings of hope. A mournful national feeling pervades the Jewish literature of the time. Recollections of torments endured enflamed all hearts. A series of chronicles were thus produced that record the centuries of Jewish martyrdom--_Jocha-sin, Shebet Jehuda, Emek ha-Bacha_, etc. The art of printing, even then developed to a considerable degree of perfection, became for the dispersed Jews the strongest bond of spiritual union. The papal _index librorum prohibitorum_ was impotent in the face of the all-pervading propaganda for thought and feeling carried on by the printing press.

After Palestine and Turkey, Holland for a time became the spiritual centre of the scattered Jews (in the seventeenth century). Holland was warmly attached to the cause of liberty. When it succeeded in freeing itself from the clutches of fanatical Spain and her rapacious king, Philip II, it inaugurated the golden era of liberty of conscience, of peaceful development in culture and industry, and granted an asylum to the persecuted and abandoned of all countries. By the thousands the harassed Ghetto sons, especially the Marranos from Spain and Portugal, migrated to Holland. Amsterdam became a second Cordova. The intellectual life was quickened. Freedom from restraint tended to break down the national exclusivism of the Jew, and intercourse with his liberal surroundings varied his mental pursuits. Rabbinism, the Kabbala, philosophy, national poetry--they all had their prominent representatives in Holland. These manifold tendencies were united in the literary activity of Manasseh ben Israel, a scholar of extensive, though not intensive, encyclopedic attainments. Free thought and religious rationalism were embodied in Uriel Acosta. To a still higher degree they were illustrated in the theory of life expounded by the immortal author of the "Theologico-Political Tractate" (1640-1677). This advanced state of culture in Holland did not fail to react upon the neighboring countries. Under the impulse of enthusiasm for the Bible Puritan England under Cromwell opened its portals to the Jews. In Italy, in the dank atmosphere of rabbinical dialectics and morbid mysticism, great figures loom up--Leon de Modena, the antagonist of Rabbinism and of the Kabbala, and Joseph del Medigo, mathematician, philosopher, and mystic, the disciple of Galileo.

These purple patches were nothing more than the accidents of a transition period. The people as a whole was on the decline. The Jewish mind darted hither and thither, like a startled bird seeking its nest. Holland or Turkey was an inadequate substitute for Spain, if only for the reason that but a tiny fraction of the Jews had found shelter in either. The Jewish national centre must perforce coincide with the numerical centre of the dispersed people, in which, moreover, conditions must grant Jews the possibility of living undisturbed in closely compacted masses, and of perfecting a well-knit organization of social and individual life. Outside of Spain these conditions were fulfilled only by Poland, which gradually, beginning with the sixteenth century, assumed the hegemony over the Jewry of the world. This marks the displacement of the Sephardic (Spanish, in a broader sense, Romanic) element, and the supremacy of the Ashkenazic (German-Polish) element.