Chapter 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The travellers, however, must be mentioned by name. Their itineraries were wholly dedicated to the interests of their co-religionists. The first of the line is Eldad, the narrator of a sort of Hebrew Odyssey. Benjamin of Tudela and Petachya of Ratisbon are deserving of more confidence as veracious chroniclers, and their descriptions, together with Charisi's, complete the Jewish library of travels of those early days, unless, with Steinschneider, we consider, as we truly may, the majority of Jewish authors under this head. For Jewish writers a hard, necessitous lot has ever been a storm wind, tossing them hither and thither, and blowing the seeds of knowledge over all lands. Withal learning proved an enveloping, protecting cloak to these mendicant and pilgrim authors. The dispersion of the Jews, their international commerce, and the desire to maintain their academies, stimulated a love for travel, made frequent journeyings a necessity, indeed. In this way only can we account for the extraordinarily rapid spread of Jewish literature in the middle ages. The student of those times often chances across a rabbi, who this day teaches, lectures, writes in Candia, to-morrow in Rome, next year in Prague or Cracow, and so Jewish literature is the "wandering Jew" among the world's literatures.

The fourth period, the Augustan age of our literature, closes with a jarring discord--the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, their second home, in which they had seen ministers, princes, professors, and poets rise from their ranks. The scene of literary activity changes: France, Italy, but chiefly the Slavonic East, are pushed into the foreground. It is not a salutary change; it ushers in three centuries of decay and stagnation in literary endeavor. The sum of the efforts is indicated by the name of the period, the Rabbinical, for its chief work was the development and fixation of Rabbinism.

Decadence did not set in immediately. Certain beneficent forces, either continuing in action from the former period, or arising out of the new concatenation of circumstances, were in operation: Jewish exiles from Spain carried their culture to the asylums hospitably offered them in the Orient and a few of the European countries, notably Holland; the art of printing was spreading, the first presses in Italy bringing out Jewish works; and the sun of humanism and of the Reformation was rising and shedding solitary rays of its effulgence on the Jewish minds then at work.