Chapter 8

Of other women we are told whose learning and piety inspired respect, not only in Talmudic authorities, but, more than that, in their sisters in faith. Especially in the family of Rashi (Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac), immortal through his commentaries on the Bible and the Talmud, a number of women distinguished themselves. His daughter Rachel (Bellejeune), on one occasion when her father was sick, wrote out for Rabbi Abraham Cohen of Mayence an opinion on religious questions in dispute. Rashi's two granddaughters, Anna and Miriam, were equally famous. In questions relating to the dietary laws, they were cited as authorities, and their decisions accepted as final.

Zunz calls the wife of Rabbi Joseph ben Jochanan of Paris "almost a rabbi"; and Dolce, wife of the learned Rabbi Eleazar of Worms, supported her family with the work of her hands, was a thorough student of the dietary laws, taught women on Jewish subjects, and on Sabbath delivered public lectures. She wore the twofold crown of learning and martyrdom. On December 6, 1213, fanatic crusaders rushed into the rabbi's house, and most cruelly killed her and her two daughters, Bella and Anna.

Israel having again fallen on evil times, the rarity of women writers during the next two centuries needs no explanation. In the sixteenth century their names reappear on the records, not only as Talmudic scholars, but also as writers of history in the German language. Litte of Ratisbon composed a history of King David in the celebrated "Book of Samuel," a poem in the _Nibelungen_ stanza, and we are told that Rachel Ackermann of Vienna was banished for having written a piquant novel, "Court Secrets."

These tentative efforts led the way to busy and widespread activity by Jewish women in various branches of literature at a somewhat later period, when the so-called _Judendeutsch_, also known as _Altweiberdeutsch_ (old women's German), came into general use. Rebekah Tiktiner, daughter of Rabbi Meir Tiktiner, attained to a reputation considerable enough to suggest her scholarly work to J. G. Zeltner, a Rostock professor, as the subject of an essay published in 1719. Her book, _Meneketh Ribka_, deals with the duties of woman. Edel Mendels of Cracow epitomized "Yosippon" (History of the Jews after Josephus); Bella Chasan, who died a martyr's death, composed two instructive works on Jewish history, in their time widely read; Glikel Hamel of Hamburg wrote her memoirs, describing her contemporaries and the remarkable events of her life; Hannah Ashkenasi was the author of addresses on moral subjects; and Ella Goetz translated the Hebrew prayers into Jewish-German.

Litte of Ratisbon found imitators. Rosa Fischels of Cracow was the first to put the psalms into Jewish-German rhymes (1586). She turned the whole psalter "into simple German very prettily, modestly, and withal pleasantly for women and maidens to read." The authoress acknowledges that it was her aim to imitate the rhyme and melody of the "Book of Samuel" by her famed predecessor. Occasionally her paraphrase rises to the height of true poetry, as in the first and last verses of Psalm xcvi:

"Sing to God a new song, sing to God all the land, sing to God, praise His name, show forth His ready help from day to day.... The field and all thereon shall show great joy; they will sing with all their leaves, the trees of the wood and the grove, before the Lord God who will come to judge the earth far and near. He judgeth the earth with righteousness and the nations with truth."

Rosa Fischels was followed by a succession of women writers: Taube Pan in Prague, a poetess; Bella Hurwitz, who wrote a history of the House of David, and, in association with Rachel Rausnitz, an account of the settlement of Jews in Prague; and a number of scholarly women famous among their co-religionists for knowledge of the Talmud, piety, and broad, secular culture.

In a rapid review like this of woman's achievements on the field of Jewish scholarship, the results recorded must appear meagre, owing partly to the paucity of available data, partly to the nature of the inquiry. Abstruse learning, pure science, original research, are by no means woman's portion. Such occupations demand complete surrender on the part of the student, uninterrupted attention to the subject pursued, and delicately organized woman is not capable of such absorption. Woman's perceptions are subtle, and she rests satisfied with her intuitions; while man strives to transmute his feelings, deeper than hers, into action. The external appeals to woman who comprehends easily and quickly, and, therefore, does not penetrate beneath the surface. Man, on the other hand, strives to pierce to the essence of things, apprehends more slowly, but thinks more profoundly, and tests carefully before he accepts. Hence we so rarely meet woman in the field of science, while her work in the domain of poetry and the humanities is abundant and attractive. Jewish women form no exception to the rule: a survey of Jewish poetry will show woman's share in its productions to have been considerable and of high quality. While there was little or no possibility to prosecute historic or scientific inquiry during the harrowing days of persecution, the well-spring of Jewish poetry never ran dry. Poetry followed the race into exile, and clave to it through all vicissitudes, its solacement in suffering, the holy mediatrix between its past and future. "The Orient dwells an exile in the Occident, and its tears of longing for home are the fountain-head of Jewish poetry," says a Christian scholar. And at the altar of this poetry, whose sweetness and purity sanctified home life, and spread a sense of morality in a time when brutality and corruptness were general, the women singers of Israel offered the gifts of their muse. While the culture of that time culminated in the service of love (_Minnedienst_), in woman worship, so offensive to modern taste, Jewish poetry was pervaded by a pure, ideal conception of love and womanhood, testifying to the high ethical principles of its devotees.

Judaism and Jewish poetry know naught of the sensual love so assiduously fostered by the cult of the Virgin. "Love," says a celebrated historian of literature, "was glorified in all shapes and guises, and represented as the highest aim of life. Woman's virtues, yea, even her vices, were invested with exaggerated importance. Woman became accustomed to think that she could be neither faithful nor faithless without turning the world topsy-turvy. She shared the fate of all objects of excessive adulation: flattery corrupted her. Thus it came about that love of woman overshadowed every other social force and every form of family affection, and so spent its power. The Jews were the only ones sane enough to subordinate sexual love to reverence for motherhood. Alexander Weill makes a Jewish mother say: 'Is it proper for a good Jewish mother to concern herself about love? Love is revolting idolatry. A Jewess may love only God, her husband, and her children.' Granny (_Alt-Babele_) in one of Kompert's tales says: 'God could not be everywhere, so he created mothers.' In Jewish novels, maternal love is made the basis of family life, its passion and its mystery. A Jewish mother! What an image the words conjure up! Her face is calm, though pale; a melancholy smile rests upon her lips, and her soulful eyes seem to hide in their depths the vision of a remote future."

This is a correct view. Jewish poetry is interpenetrated with the breath of intellectual love, that is, love growing out of the recognition of duty, no less ideal than sensual love. In the heart of the Jew love is an infinite force. Too mighty to be confined to the narrow limits of personal passion, it extends so as to include future generations.

Thus it happened that while in Christian poetry woman was the subject of song and sonnet, in Jewish poetry she herself sang and composed, and her productions are worthy of ranking beside the best poetic creations of each generation.

The earliest blossoms of Jewish poetry by women unfolded in the spring-like atmosphere of the Renaissance under the blue sky of Italy, the home of the immortal trio, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The first Jewish women writers of Italian verse were Deborah Ascarelli and Sara Copia Sullam, who, arrayed in the full panoply of the culture of their day, and as thoroughly equipped with Jewish knowledge, devoted their talents and their zeal to the service of their nation.

Deborah Ascarelli of Rome, the pride of her sex, was the wife of the respected rabbi Giuseppe Ascarelli, and lived at Venice in the beginning of the seventeenth century. She made a graceful Italian translation of Moses Rieti's _Sefer ha-Hechal_, a Hebrew poem written in imitation of the _Divina Commedia_, and enjoying much favor at Rome. As early as 1609, David della Rocca published a second edition of her translation, dedicating it to the charming authoress. To put the highly wrought, artificial poetry of the Hebrew Dante into mellifluous Italian verse was by no means easy. While Rieti's poetry is not distinguished by the vigor and fulness of the older classical productions of neo-Hebraic poetry, his rhythm is smooth, pleasant, and polished. Yet her rendition is admirable. Besides, she won fame as a writer of hymns in praise of the God of her people, who so wondrously rescued it from all manner of distress.

"Let other poets of victory's trophies tell, Thy song will e'er thy people's praises swell,"

says a Jewish Italian poet enchanted by her talent.

A still more gifted poetess was Sara Copia Sullam, a particular star in Judah's galaxy.[32] The only child of a wealthy Venetian at the end of the sixteenth century, she was indulged in her love of study, and afforded every opportunity to advance in the arts and sciences. "She revelled in the realm of beauty, and crystallized her enthusiasm in graceful, sweet, maidenly verses. Young, lovely, of generous impulses and keen intellectual powers, her ambition set upon lofty attainments, a favorite of the muses, Sara Copia charmed youth and age."

These graces of mind became her misfortune. An old Italian priest, Ansaldo Ceba, in Genoa, published an Italian epic with the Esther of the Bible as the heroine. Sara was delighted with the choice of the subject. It was natural that a high-minded, sensitive girl with lofty ideals, stung to the quick by the injustice and contumely suffered by her people, should rejoice extravagantly in the praise lavished upon a heroine of her nation. Carried away by enthusiasm she wrote the poet, a stranger to her, a letter overflowing with gratitude for the pure delight his poem had yielded her. Her passionate warmth, betraying at once the accomplished poetess and the gifted thinker, did not fail to fascinate the old priest, who immediately resolved to capture this beautiful soul for the church. His desire brought about a lively correspondence, our chief source of information about Sara Copia. Her conversion became a passion with the highstrung priest, taking complete possession of him during the last years of his life. He brought to bear upon her case every trick of dialectics and flattery at his command. All in vain. The greatest successes of which he could boast were her promise to read the New Testament, and her consent to his praying for her conversion. Sara's arguments in favor of Judaism arouse the reader's admiration for the sharpness of intellect displayed, her poetic genius, and her intimate acquaintance with Jewish sources as well as philosophic systems.

Ansaldo never abandoned the hope of gaining her over to Christianity. Unable to convince her reason, he attacked her heart. Though evincing singular love and veneration for her old admirer, Sara could not be moved from steadfast adherence to her faith. She sent him her picture with the words: "This is the picture of one who carries yours deeply graven on her heart, and, with finger pointing to her bosom, tells the world: 'Here dwells my idol, bow before him.'"

With old age creeping upon him with its palsy touch, he continued to think of nothing but Sara's conversion, and assailed her in prose and verse. One of his imploring letters closes thus:

"Life's fair, bright morn bathes thee in light, Thy cheeks are softly flushed with youthful zest. For me the night sets in; my limbs Are cold, but ardent love glows in my breast."

Sara having compared his poems with those of Amphion and Orpheus, he answered her:

"To Amphion the stones lent ear When soft he touched his lute; And beasts came trooping nigh to hear When Orpheus played his flute.

How long, O Sara, wilt thou liken me To those great singers of the olden days? My God and faith I sought to give to thee, In vain I proved the error of thy ways. Their song had charms more potent than my own, Or art thou harder than a beast or stone?"

The query long remained unanswered, for just then the poetess was harassed by many trials. Serious illness prostrated her, then her beloved father died, and finally she was unjustly charged by the envious among her co-religionists with neglect of Jewish observances, and denial of the divine origin of the Law. She found no difficulty in refuting the malicious accusation, but she was stung to the quick by the calumnious attack, the pain it inflicted vanishing only in the presence of a grave danger. Balthasar Bonifacio, an obscure author, in a brochure published for that purpose, accused her of rejecting the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, a most serious charge, which, if sustained, would have thrown her into the clutches of the Inquisition. In two days she wrote a brilliant defense completely exonerating herself and exposing the spitefulness of the attack, a masterful production by reason of its vigorous dialectics, incisive satire, and noble enthusiasm for the cause of religion. Together with some few of her sonnets, this is all that has come down to us of her writings. She opened her vindication with the following sonnet:

"O Lord, Thou know'st my inmost hope and thought, Thou know'st whene'er before Thy judgment throne I shed salt tears, and uttered many a moan, 'Twas not for vanities that I besought. O turn on me Thy look with mercy fraught, And see how envious malice makes me groan! The pall upon my heart by error thrown Remove; illume me with Thy radiant thought. At truth let not the wicked scorner mock, O Thou, that breath'dst in me a spark divine. The lying tongue's deceit with silence blight, Protect me from its venom, Thou, my Rock, And show the spiteful sland'rer by this sign That Thou dost shield me with Thy endless might."

Sara's vindication was complete. Her friend Ceba was kept faithfully informed of all that befell her, but he was absorbed in thoughts of her conversion and his approaching end. He wrote to her that he did not care to receive any more letters from her unless they announced her acceptance of the true faith.

After Ansaldo's death, we hear nothing more about the poetess. She died at the beginning of 1641, and the celebrated rabbi, Leon de Modena, composed her epitaph, a poetic tribute to one whose life redounded to the glory of Judaism.

Our subject now carries us from the luxuriant south to the dunes of the North Sea. Holland was the first to open the doors of its cities hospitably to the three hundred thousand Jews exiled from Spain, and its busy capital Amsterdam became the centre whither tended the intelligent of the Marranos, fleeing before the Holy Inquisition. Physicians, mathematicians, philologists, military men, and diplomats, poets and poetesses, took refuge there. Among the poetesses,[33] the most prominent was Isabella Correa, distinguished for wit as well as poetic endowment, the wife of the Jewish captain and author, Nicolas de Oliver y Fullano, of Majorca. One of her contemporaries, Daniel de Barrios, says that "she was an accomplished linguist, wrote delightful letters, composed exquisite verses, played the lute like a _maestro_, and sang like an angel. Her sparkling black eyes sent piercing darts into every beholder's heart, and she was famed for beauty as well as intellect." She made a noble Spanish translation of _Pastor Fido_, the most popular Italian drama of the day, and published a volume of poems, also in Spanish. Antonio dos Reys sings her praises:

"_Pastor Fido!_ no longer art thou read in thy own tongue, since Correa, Faithfully rendering thy song, created thee anew in Spanish forms. A laurel wreath surmounts her brow, Because her right hand had cunning to strike tones from the tragic lyre. On the mount of singers, a seat is reserved for her, Albeit many a Batavian voice refused consent. For, Correa's faith invited scorn from aliens, And her own despised her cheerful serenity. Now, with greater justice, all bend a reverent knee to Correa, the Jewess, Correa, who, it seems, is wholly like Lysia."

Donna Isabella Enriquez, a Spanish poetess of great versatility, was her contemporary. She lived first in Madrid, afterwards in Amsterdam, and even in advanced age was surrounded by admirers. At the age of sixty-two, she presented the men of her acquaintance with amulets against love, notwithstanding that she had spoken and written against the use of charms. For instance, when an egg with a crown on the end was found in the house of Isaac Aboab, the celebrated rabbi at Amsterdam, she wrote him the following:

"See, the terror! Lo! the wonder! Basilisk, the fabled viper! Superstition names it so. Look at it, I pray, with calmness, 'Twas thy mind that was at fault. God's great goodness is displayed here; He, I trow, rewards thy eloquence In the monster which thou seest: All this rounded whole's thy virtue, Wisdom's symbol is the crown!"

Besides Isabella Correa and Isabella Enriquez, we have the names, though not the productions, of Sara de Fonseca Pina y Pimentel, Bienvenida Cohen Belmonte, and Manuela Nunes de Almeida. They have left but faint traces of their work, and fancy can fill in the sketch only with conjectures.

After these Marrano poetesses, silence fell upon the women of Israel for a whole century--a century of oppression and political slavery, of isolation in noisome Ghettos, of Christian scorn and mockery. The Jews of Germany and Poland, completely crushed beneath the load of sorrow, hibernated until the gentle breath of a new time, levelling Ghetto walls and heralding a dawn when human rights would be recognized, awoke them to activity and achievement.

Mighty is the spirit of the times! It clears a way for itself, boldly pushing aside every stumbling-block in the shape of outworn prejudices and decaying customs. A century dawned, the promise of liberty and tolerance flaming on its horizon, to none so sweet as to the Jew. Who has the heart to cast the first stone upon a much-tried race, tortured throughout the centuries, for surrendering itself to the unwonted joy of living, for drinking deep, intoxicating draughts from the newly discovered fount of liberty, and, alas! for throwing aside, under the burning sun of the new era, the perennial protection of its religion? And may we utterly condemn the daughters of Israel, the "roses of Sharon," and "lilies of the valleys," "unkissed by the dew, lost wanderers cheered by no greeting," who, now that all was sunshine, forgot their people, and disregarded the sanctity of family bonds, their shield and their refuge in the sorrow and peril of the dark ages?

With emotion, with pain, not with resentment, Jewish history tells of those women, who spurned Judaism, knowing only its external appearance, its husk, not its essence, high ethical principles and philosophical truths--of Rahel Varnhagen, Henriette Herz, Regina Froehlich, Dorothea Mendelssohn, Sarah and Marianne Meyer, Esther Gad, and many others, first products of German culture in alliance with Jewish wit and brilliancy.

Rahel Levin was the foster-mother of "Young Germany," and leader in the woman's emancipation movement, so fruitful later on of deplorable excesses. Rahel herself never overstepped the limits of "_das Ewig-Weibliche_." No act of hers ran counter to the most exalted requirements of morality. Her being was pervaded by high seriousness, noble dignity, serene cheerfulness. "She dwelt always in the Holy of holies of thought, and even her most daring wishes for herself and mankind leapt shyly heavenwards like pure sacrificial flames." Nothing more touching can be found in the history of the human heart than her confession before death: "With sublime rapture I dwell upon my origin and the marvellous web woven by fate, binding together the oldest recollections of the human race and its most recent aspirations, connecting scenes separated by the greatest possible intervals of time and space. My Jewish birth which I long considered a stigma, a sore disgrace, has now become a precious inheritance, of which nothing on earth can deprive me."[34]

The fact is that Rahel Levin was a great woman, great even in her aberrations, while her satellites, shining by reflected light, and pretending to perpetuate her spirit, transgressed the bounds of womanliness, and opened wide a door to riotous sensuality. Certain opponents of the woman's emancipation movement take malicious satisfaction in rehearsing that it was a Jewess who inaugurated it, prudently neglecting to mention that in the list of Rahel's followers, not one Jewish name appears.

The spirit of Judaism and with it the spirit of morality can never be extinguished. They may flag, or vanish for a time, but their restoration in increased vigor and radiance is certain; for, they bear within themselves the guarantee of a future. Henriette Herz, the apostate daughter of Judaism chewing the cud of Schleiermacher's sentimentality and Schlegel's romanticism, had not yet passed away when England produced Jewish women whose deeds were quickened by the spirit of olden heroism, who walked in the paths of wisdom and faith, and, recoiling from the cowardice that counsels apostasy, would have fought, if need be, suffered, and bled, for their faith. What answer but the blush of shame mantling her cheek could the proud beauty have found, had she been asked by, let us say, Lady Judith Montefiore, to tell what it was that chained her to the ruins of the Jewish race?

Lady Montefiore truly was a heroine, worthy to be named with those who have made our past illustrious, and her peer in intellect and strength of character was Charlotte Montefiore, whose early death was a serious loss to Judaism as well as to her family. Her work, "A Few Words to the Jews by one of themselves," containing that charming tale, "The Jewel Island," displays intellectual and poetic gifts.