Yale University Library
JEWISH HISTORY
AN ESSAY IN THE PHILOSOPHY
OF HISTORY
BY
S. M. DUBNOW
THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA
PHILADELPHIA
19X7
Copyright, 1903
By The Jewish Publication Society of America
n
printed in united states of america
PREFACE TO THE GERMAN
TRANSLATION
The author of the present essay, S. M.
Dubnow, occupies a well-nigh dominating
position in Russian-Jewish literature as
an historian and an acute critic. His
investigations into the history of the Po¬
lish-Russian Jews, especially his achieve¬
ments in the history of Chassidism, have
been of fundamental importance in these
departments. What raises Mr. Dubnow
far above the status of the professional
historian, and awakens the reader's lively
interest in him, is not so much the matter
of his books, as the manner of presen¬
tation. It is rare to meet with an histo¬
rian in whom scientific objectivity and
thoroughness are so harmoniously com¬
bined with an ardent temperament and
plastic ability. Mr. Dubnow's scientific
iv
PREFACE
activity, first and last, is a striking refu¬
tation of the widespread opinion tliat
identifies attractiveness of form in tlie
work of a scholar with superficiality of
content. Even his strictly scientific in¬
vestigations, besides offering the scholar
a wealth of new suggestions, form instruc¬
tive and entertaining reading matter for
the educated layman. In his critical es¬
says, Mr. Dubnow shows himself to be
possessed of keen psychologic insight.
By virtue of this quality of delicate per¬
ception, he aims to assign to every histor¬
ical fact its proper place in the line of
development, and so establish the bond
between it and the general history of
mankind. This psychologic ability con¬
tributes vastly to the interest aroused by
Mr. Dubnow's historical works outside of
the limited circle of scholars. There is a
passage in one of his books1 in which, in
1 In the introduction to his Eistorisclie Mittei-
lungen, Vorarbeiten zu einer Geschichte der pol-
nischrussischen Juden.
PREFACE
V
his incisive manner, he expresses his
views on the limits and tasks of historical
writing. As the passage bears upon the
methods employed in the present essay,
and, at the same time, is a characteristic
specimen of our author's style, I take the
liberty of quoting:
" The popularization of history is by no
means to be pursued to the detriment of
its severely scientific treatment. What
is to be guarded against is the notion that
tedium is inseparable from the scientific
method. I have always been of the opin¬
ion that thedulness commonly looked upon
as the prerogative of scholarly inquiries,
is not an inherent attribute. In most
cases it is conditioned, not by the nature
of the subject under investigation, but by
the temper of the investigator. Often, in¬
deed, the tediousness of a learned disqui¬
sition is intentional: it is considered one
of the polite conventions of the academic
guild, and by many is identified with sci-
vi
PREFACE
entific thoroughness and profound learn¬
ing If, in general, deadening, hide¬
bound caste methods, not seldom the cover
for poverty of thought and lack of clever¬
ness, are reprehensible, they are doubly
reprehensible in history. The history of
a people is not a mere mental discipline,
like botany or mathematics, but a living
science, a magistra vitce, leading straight
to national self-knowledge, and acting to
a certain degree upon the national char¬
acter. History is a science by the people,
for the people, and, therefore, its place is
the open forum, not the scholar's musty
closet. We relate the events of the past
to the people, not merely to a handful of
archaeologists and numismaticians. We
work for national self-knowledge, not for
our own intellectual diversion."
These are the principles that have
guided Mr. Dubnow in all his works, and
he has been true to them in the present
essay, which exhibits in a remarkably
PREFACE
vii
striking way the author's art of making
" all things seem fresh and new, impor¬
tant and attractive." New and impor¬
tant his essay undoubtedly is. The author
attempts, for the first time, a psychologic
characterization of Jewish history. He
endeavors to demonstrate the inner con¬
nection between events, and develop the
ideas that underlie them, or, to use his
own expression, lay bare the soul of Jew¬
ish history, which clothes itself with ex¬
ternal events as with a bodily envelope.
Jewish history has never before been con¬
sidered from this philosophic point of
view, certainly not in German literature.
The present work, therefore, cannot fail
to prove stimulating. As for the poet's
other requirement, attractiveness, it is
fully met by the work here translated.
The qualities of Mr. Dubnow's style, as
described above, are present to a marked
degree. The enthusiasm flaming up in
every line, coupled with his plastic, figu-
viii
PREFACE
rative style, and liis scintillating conceits,
which lend vivacity to his presentation, is
bound to charm the reader. Yet, in spite
of the racy style, even the layman will
have no difficulty in discovering that it
is not a clever journalist, an artificer of
well-turned phrases, who is speaking to
him, but a scholar by profession, whose
foremost concern is with historical truth,
and whose every statement rests upon
accurate, scientific knowledge; not a
bookworm with pale, academic blood
trickling through his veins, but a man
who, with unsoured mien, with fresh,
buoyant delight, offers the world the re¬
sults laboriously reached in his study,
after all evidences of toil and moil have
been carefully removed; who derives in¬
spiration from the noble and the sublime
in whatever guise it may appear, and who
knows how to communicate his inspira¬
tion to others.
The translator lays this book of an ac-
PREFACE ix
complished and spirited historian before
the German public. He does so in tlie
hope that it will shed new light upon Jew¬
ish history even for professional scholars.
He is confident that in many to whom
our unexampled past of four thousand
years' duration is now terra incognita, it
will arouse enthusiastic interest, and even
to those who, like the translator himself,
differ from the author in religious views,
it will furnish edifying and suggestive
reading. J. F.
PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH
TRANSLATION
The English translation of Mr. Dub-
now's Essay is based upon the author¬
ized German translation, which was made
from the original Russian. It is pub¬
lished under the joint auspices of the
Jewish Publication Society of America
and the Jewish Historical Society of
England. H. S.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
page
Preface to the German Translation iii
Introductory Note 1
I
The Range of Jewish History 3
Historical and Unhistorical Peoples
Three Groups of Nations
The "Most Historical" People
Extent of Jewish History
II
The Content of Jewish History 12
Two Periods of Jewish History
The Period of Independence
The Election of the Jewish People
Priests and Prophets
The Babylonian E le and the Scribes
The Dispersion
Jewish History and Universal History
Jewish History Characterized
III
The Significance of Jewish History 26
The National Aspect of Jewish History
The Historical Consciousness
The National Idea and National Feeling
Xii TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Significance of Jewish History—Continued
page
The Universal Aspect of Jewish History
An Historical Experiment
A Moral Discipline
Humanitarian Significance of Jewish
History
Schleiden and George Eliot
IV
The Historical Synthesis 42
Three Primary Periods
Four Composite Periods
V
The Primary or Biblical Period 46
Cosmic Origin of the Jewish Religion
Tribal Organization
Egyptian Influence and Experiences
Moses
Mosaism a Religious and Moral as well as
a Social and Political System
National Deities
The Prophets and the two Kingdoms
Judaism a Universal Religion
VI
The Secondary or Spiritual-Political Period 68
Growth of National Feeling
Ezra and Nehemiah
The Scribes
Hellenism
The Maccabees
TABLE OF CONTENTS
xiii
The Secondary or Spiritual-Political Period—
Continued page
Sadducees, Pharisees, and Essenes
Alexandrian JewB
Christianity
YII
The Tertiary Talmudio or National-Religious
Period . . . . 89
The Isolation of Jewry and Judaism
The Mishna
The Talmud
Intellectual Activity in Palestine and
Babylonia
The Agada and the Midrash
Unification of Judaism
VIII
The Gaonio Period, or the Hegemony of the
Oriental Jews (500-980) 105
The Academies
Islam
Karaism
Beginning of Persecutions in Europe
Arabic Civilization in Europe
IX
The Rabbinic-Philosophical Period, or the
Hegemony of the! Spanish Jews (980-1492) . . 114
The Spanish Jews
The Arabic-Jewish Renaissance
The Crusades and the Jews
Degradation of the Jews in Christian
Europe
xiv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Rabbinic-Philosophical Period, etc.—
Continued page
The Provence
The Lateran Council
The Kabbala
Expulsion from Spain
X
The Rabbinic-Mystical Period, or the Hege¬
mony op the German-Polish Jews (1492-1789) 134
The Humanists and the Reformation
Palestine an Asylum for Jews
Messianic Belief and Hopes
Holland a Jewish Centre
Poland and the Jews
The Rabbinical Authorities of Poland
Isolation of the Polish Jews
Mysticism and the Practical Kabbala
Chassidism
Persecutions and Morbid Piety
XI
The Modern Period op Enlightenment (The
Nineteenth Century) 157
The French Revolution
The Jewish Middle Ages
Spiritual and Civil Emancipation
The Successors of Mendelssohn
Zunz and the Science of Judaism
The Modern Movements outside of Ger¬
many
The Jew in Russia
His Regeneration
Anti-Semitism and Judophobia
TABLE OF CONTENTS
XV
XII PAG®
The Teachings op Jewish History 177
Jewry a Spiritual Community
Jewry Indestructible
The Creative Principle of Jewry
The Task of the Future
The Jew and the Nations
The Ultimate Ideal
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
What is Jewish History? In the first
place, what does it offer as to quantity and
as to quality? What are its range and
content, and what distinguishes it in these
two respects from the history of other
nations? Furthermore, what is the es¬
sential meaning, what the spirit, of Jew¬
ish History? Or, to put the question in
another way, to what general results are
we led by the aggregate of its facts, con¬
sidered, not as a whole, but genetically,
as a succession of evolutionary stages in
the consciousness and education of the
Jewish people?
If we could find precise answers to these
several questions, they would constitute a
characterization of Jewish History as ac¬
curate as is attainable. To present such a
characterization succinctly is the purpose
of the following essay.
JEWISH HISTORY
AN ESSAY IN THE PHILOSOPHY
OF HISTORY
I
The Range of Jewish History
Le peuple juif n'est pas seulement considerable par
son antiquite, mais il est encore singulier en sa duree,
qui a toujours continue depuis son origine jusqu'i
maintenant . . . S'etendant depuis les premiers
temps jusqu'aux derniers, l'histoire des juifs enferme
dans sa duree celle de toutes nos histoires.—
Pascal, Pensees, II, 7.
To make clear the range of Jewish
history, it is necessary to set down a few
general, elementary definitions by way of
introduction.
It has long been recognized that a fun¬
damental difference exists between his¬
torical and unhistorical peoples, a differ¬
ence growing out of the fact of the nat¬
ural inequality between the various ele-
4
JEWISH HISTORY
merits composing the human race. Un-
historical is the attribute applied to
peoples that have not j et broken away, or
have not departed very far, from the state
of primitive savagery, as, for instance,
the barbarous races of Asia and Africa
who were the prehistoric ancestors of
the Europeans, or the obscure, untutored
tribes of the present, like the Tartars and
the Kirghiz. Unhistorical peoples, then,
are ethnic groups of all sorts that are be¬
reft of a distinctive, spiritual individual^
ity, and have failed to display normal, in¬
dependent capacity for culture. The term
historical, on the other hand, is applied to
the nations that have had a conscious,
purposeful history of appreciable dura¬
tion ; that have progressed, stage by stage,
in their growth and in the improvement
of their mode and their views of life;
that have demonstrated mental productiv¬
ity of some sort, and have elaborated
principles of civilization and social life
THE RANGE OF JEWISH HISTORY 5
more or less rational; nations, in short,
representing not only zoologie, but also
spiritual types.1
Chronologically considered, these latter
nations, of a higher type, are usually di¬
vided into three groups: 1, the most
ancient civilized peoples of the Orient,
such as the Chinese, the Hindoos, the
Egyptians, the Chaldeans; 2, the ancient
or classic peoples of the Occident, the
Greeks and the Romans; and 3, the mod¬
ern peoples, the civilized nations of Eu¬
rope and America of the present day. The
most ancient peoples of the Orient, stand¬
ing " at the threshold of history," were
the first heralds of a religious conscious-
1" The primitive peoples that change with their
environment, constantly adapting themselves to
their habitat and to external nature, have no
history. . . . Only those nations and states belong
to history which display self-conscious action;
which evince an inner spiritual life by diversified
manifestations; and combine into an organic whole
what they receive from without, and what they
themselves originate." (Introduction to Weber's
Allgemeine Weltr/eschichte, i, pp. 16-18.)
6
JEWISH HISTORY
ness and of moral principles. In hoary
antiquity, when most of the representa¬
tives of the human kind were nothing
more than a peculiar variety of the class
mammalia, the peoples called the most
ancient brought forth recognized forms
of social life and a variety of theories of
living of fairly far-reaching effect. All
these culture-bearers of the Orient soon
disappeared from the surface of history.
Some (the Chaldeans, Phenicians, and
Egyptians) were washed away by the
flood of time, and their remnants were
absorbed by younger and more vigorous
peoples. Others (the Hindoos and Per¬
sians) relapsed into a semi-barbarous
state;and a third class (the Chinese) were
arrested in their growth, and remained
fixed in immobility. The best that the
antique Orient liad to bequeath in the
way of spiritual possessions fell to the
share of the classic nations of the West,
the Greeks and the Romans. The}' greatly
THE RANGE OF JEWISH HISTORY 7
increased the heritage by their own spir¬
itual achievements, and so produced a
much more complex and diversified civil¬
ization, which has served as the substra¬
tum for the further development of tlie
better part of mankind. Even the classic
nations had to step aside as soon as their
historical mission was fulfilled. They left
the field free for the younger nations,
with greater capability of living, which
at that time had barely worked their
way up to the beginnings of a civilization.
One after the other, during the first two
centuries of the Christian era, the mem¬
bers of this European family of nations
appeared in the arena of history. They
form the kernel of the civilized part of
mankind at the present day.
Now, if we examine this accepted clas¬
sification with a view to finding the place
belonging to the Jewish people in the
chronological series, we meet with embar¬
rassing difficulties, and finally arrive at
8
JEWISH HISTORY
the conclusion that its history cannot be
accommodated within the compass of the
classification. Into which of the three
historical groups mentioned could the
Jewish people be put? Are we to call it
one of the most ancient, one of the an¬
cient, or one of the modern nations? It
is evident that it may lay claim to the
first description, as well as to the second
and the last. In company with the most
ancient nations of the Orient, the Jewish
people stood at the "threshold of history."
It was the contemporary of the earliest
civilized nations, the Egyptians and the
Chaldeans. In those remote days it cre¬
ated and spread a religious world-idea un¬
derlying an exalted social and moral sys¬
tem surpassing everything produced in
this sphere by its Oriental contempora¬
ries. Again, with the classical Greeks and
Romans, it forms the celebrated histor¬
ical triad universally recognized as the
source of all great systems of civilization.
THE RANGE OF JEWISH HISTORY 9
Finally, in fellowship with the nations of
to-day, it leads an historical life, striding
onward in the path of progress without
stay or interruption. Deprived of polit¬
ical independence, it nevertheless contin¬
ues to fill a place in the world of thought
as a distinctly marked spiritual individ¬
uality, as one of the most active and in¬
telligent forces. How, then, are we to de¬
nominate this omnipresent people, which,
from the first moment of its historical
existence up to our days, a period of
thirty-five hundred years, has been de¬
veloping continuously. In view of this
Methuselah among the nations, whose life
is co-extensive with the whole of history,
how are we to dispose of the inevitable
barriers between " the most ancient" and
"the ancient," between "the ancient" and
" the modern " nations—the fateful bar¬
riers which form the milestones on the
path of the historical peoples, and which
the Jewish people has more than once
overstepped ?
10
JEWISH HISTORY
A definition of the Jewish people must
needs correspond to the aggregate of the
concepts expressed by the three group-
names, most ancient, ancient, and modern.
The only description applicable to it is
" the historical nation of all times," a
description bringing into relief the con¬
trast between it and all other nations of
modern and ancient times, whose histor¬
ical existence either came to an end in
days long past, or began at a date compar¬
atively recent. And granted that there
are " historical" and " unhistorical "
peoples, then it is beyond dispute that the
Jewish people deserves to be called " the
most historical " (historicissimus). If the
history of the world be conceived as
a circle, then Jewish history occupies the
position of the diameter, the line passing
through its centre, and the history of
every other nation is represented by a
chord marking off a smaller segment of
the circle. The history of the Jewish
THE RANGE OF JEWISH HISTORY 11
people is like an axis crossing the history
of mankind from one of its poles to the
other. As an unbroken thread it runs
through the ancient civilization of Egypt
and Mesopotamia, down to the present-
day culture of France and Germany. Its
divisions are measured by thousands of
years.
Jewish history, then, in its range, or,
better, in its duration, presents an
unique phenomenon. It consists of the
longest series of events ever recorded in
the annals of a single people. To sum up
its peculiarity briefly, it embraces a period
of thirty-five hundred years, and in all
this vast extent it suffers no interruption.
At every point it is alive, full of sterling
content. Presently we shall see that in
respect to content, too, it is distinguished
by exceptional characteristics.
II
The Content of Jewish History
From tlie point of view of content, or
qualitative structure, Jewish history, it
is well known, falls into two parts. The
dividing point between the two parts is
the moment in which the Jewish state
collapsed irretrievably under the blows of
the Roman Empire (70 C. E.). The first
half deals with the vicissitudes of a na¬
tion, which, though frequently at the
mercy of stronger nations, still main¬
tained possession of its territory and gov¬
ernment, and was ruled by its own laws.
In the second half, we encounter the his¬
tory of a people without a government,
more than that, without a land, a people
stripped of all the tangible accompani¬
ments of nationality, and nevertheless suc¬
cessful in preserving its spiritual unity,
CONTENT OF JEWISH HISTORY 13
its originality, complete and undimin¬
ished.
At first glance, Jewish history during
the period of independence seems to be
but slightly different from the history of
other nations. Though not without indi¬
vidual coloring, there are yet the same
wars and intestine disturbances, the same
political revolutions and dynastic quar¬
rels, the same conflicts between the classes
of the people, the same warring be¬
tween economical interests. This is only
a surface view of Jewish history. If we
pierce to its depths, and scrutinize the
processes that take place in its penetralia,
we perceive that even in the early period
there were latent within it great powers
of intellect, universal principles, which,
visibly or invisibly, determined the
course of events. We have before us not
a simple political or racial entity, but, to
an eminent degree, "a spiritual people."
The national development is based upon
14
JEWISH HISTORY
an all-pervasive religious tradition, which
lives in the soul of the people as the Sina-
itic Revelation, the Law of Moses. With
this holy tradition, embracing a luminous
theory of life and an explicit code of mo¬
rality and social converse, was associated
the idea of the election of the Jewish
people, of its peculiar spiritual mission.
" And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of
priests and a holy nation" is the figurative
expression of this ideal calling. It conveys
the thought that the Israelitish people as
a whole, without distinction of rank and
regardless of the social prominence of in¬
dividuals, has been called to guide the
other nations toward sublime moral and
religious principles, and to officiate for
them, the laity as it were, in the capacity
of priests. This exalted ideal would
never have been reached, if the develop¬
ment of the Jewish people had lain along
hackneyed lines; if, like the Egyptians
and the Chaldeans, it had had an inflex-
CONTENT OF JEWISH HISTORY 15
ible caste of priests, who consider tlie
guardianship of the spiritual treasures
of the nation the exclusive privilege of
their estate, and strive to keep the mass
of the people in crass ignorance. For a
time, something approaching this condi¬
tion prevailed among the Jews. The
priests descended from Aaron, with the
Temple servants (the Levites), formed a
priestly class, and played the part of
authoritative bearers of the religious tra¬
dition. But early, in the very infancy of
the nation, there arose by the side of this
official, aristocratic hierarchy, a far
mightier priesthood, a democratic frater¬
nity, seeking to enlighten the whole na¬
tion, and inculcating convictions that
make for a consciously held aim. The
Prophets were the real and appointed
executors of the holy command enjoining
the " conversion" of all Jews into " a
kingdom of priests and a holy nation."
Their activity cannot be paralleled in the
16
JEWISH HISTORY
whole range of the world's history. They
were not priests, but popular educators
and popular teachers. They were ani¬
mated by the desire to instil into every
soul a deeply religious consciousness, to
ennoble every heart by moral aspirations,
to indoctrinate every individual with an
unequivocal theory of life, to inspire every
member of the nation with lofty ideals.
Their work did not fail to leave its traces.
Slowly but deeply idealism entered into
the very pith and marrow of the national
consciousness. This consciousness gained
in strength and amplitude century by cen¬
tury, showing itself particularly in the
latter part of the first period, after the
crisis known as " the Babylonian Exile."
Thanks to the exertions of the Soferim
(Scribes), directed toward the broadest
popularization of the Holy Writings, and
constituting the formal complement to
the work of the Prophets, spiritual activ¬
ity became an integral part of Jewish na~
CONTENT OF JEWISH HISTORY 17
tional life. In the closing centuries of
its political existence, tlie Jewish people
received its permanent form. There was
imposed upon it the unmistakable hall¬
mark of spirituality that has always iden¬
tified it in the throng of the nations. Out
ofJ,he bosom of Judaism went forth the
religion that in a short time ran its tri¬
umphant course through the whole an¬
cient world, transforming races of bar¬
barians into civilized beings. It was the
fulfilment of the Prophetical promise-
that the nations would walk in the light
of Israel.
At the very moment when the strength
and fertility of the Jewish mind reached
the culminating point, occurred a polit¬
ical revolution—the period of homeless
wandering began. It seemed as though,
before scattering the Jewish people to all
ends of the earth, the providence of his¬
tory desired to teach it a final lesson, to
take with it on its way. It seemed to
18
JEWISH HISTORY
say: "Now you may go forth. Your
character has been sufficiently tempered;
you can bear the bitterest of hardships.
You are equipped with an inexhaustible
store of energy, and you can live for cen¬
turies, yea, for thousands of years, under
conditions that would prove the bane of
other nations in less than a single century.
State, territory, army, the external at¬
tributes of national power, are for you
superfluous luxury. Go out into the world
to prove that a people can continue to
live without these attributes, solely and
alone through strength of spirit welding
its widely scattered particles into one
firm organism!"—And the Jewish people
went forth and proved it.
This " proof," adduced by Jewry at the
cost of eighteen centuries of privation and
suffering, forms the characteristic feature
of the second half of Jewish history, the
period of homelessness and dispersion.
Uprooted from its political soil, national
CONTENT OF JEWISH HISTORY 19
life displayed itself on intellectual fields
exclusively. " To think and to suffer "
became the watchword of the Jewish
people, not merely because forced upon it
bj external circumstances beyond its
control, but chiefly because it was condi¬
tioned by the very disposition of the
people, by its national inclinations. The
extraordinary mental energy that had
matured the Bible and the old writings in
the first period, manifested itself in the
second period in the encyclopedic produc¬
tions of the Talmudists, in the religious
philosophy of the middle ages, in Rabbin-
ism, in the Kabbala, in mysticism, and in
science. The spiritual discipline of the
school came to mean for the Jew what
military discipline is for other nations.
His remarkable longevity is due, I am
tempted to say, to the acrid spiritual brine
in which he was cured. In its second half,
the originality of Jewish history consists
indeed, in the circumstance that it is the
20
JEWISH HISTORY
only history stripped of every active po¬
litical element. There are no diplomatic
artifices, no wars, no campaigns, no un¬
warranted encroachments backed by
armed force upon the rights of other na¬
tions, nothing of all that constitutes the
chief content—the monotonous and for
the most part idea-less content—of many
other chapters in the history of the world.
Jewish history presents the chronicle of
an ample spiritual life, a gallery of pic¬
tures representing national scenes. Before
our eyes passes a long procession of facts
from the fields of intellectual effort, of
morality, religion, and social converse.
Finally, the thrilling drama of Jewish
martyrdom is unrolled to our astonished
gaze. If the inner life and the social and
intellectual development of a people form
the kernel of history, and politics and oc¬
casional wars are but its husk,1 then cer-
1 "History, without these (inner, spiritual ele¬
ments), is a shell without a kernel; and such is
almost all the history which is extant in the
CONTENT OF JEWISH HISTORY 21
tainly the history of the Jewish diaspora
is all kernel. In contrast with the history
of other nations it describes, not the acci¬
dental deeds of princes and generals, not
external pomp and physical prowess, but
the life and development of a whole
people. It gives heartrending expression
to the spiritual strivings of a nation
whose brow is resplendent with the thorny
crown of martyrdom. It breathes hero¬
ism of mind that conquers bodily pain. In
a word, Jewish history is history subli¬
mated.1
world." (Macaulay, on Mitford's History of
Greece, Collected Works, i, 198, ed. A. and C. Arm¬
strong and Son.)
1A Jewish historian makes the pregnant remark:
" If ever the time comes when the prophecies of
the Jewish seers are fulfilled, and nation no longer
raises the sword against nation; when the olive
leaf instead of the laurel adorns the brow of the
great, and the achievements of noble minds are fa¬
miliar to the dwellers in cottages and palaces
alike, then the history of the world will have the
same character as Jewish history. On its pages
will be inscribed, not the warrior's prowess
and his victories, nor diplomatic schemes and
triumphs, but the progress of culture and its prac¬
tical application in real life."
22
JEWISH HISTORY
In spite of the noteworthy features that
raise Jewish history above the level of the
ordinary, and assign it a peculiar place,
it is nevertheless not isolated, not severed
from the history of mankind. Rather is
it most intimately interwoven with world-
affairs at every point throughout its whole
extent. As the diameter, Jewish history
is again and again intersected by the
chords of the historical circle. The for¬
tunes of the pilgrim people scattered in
all the countries of the civilized world are
organically connected with the fortunes
of the most representative nations and
states, and with manifold tendencies of
human thought. The bond uniting them
is twofold: in the times when the powers
of darkness and fanaticism held sway, the
Jews were amenable to the "physical"
influence exerted by their neighbors in the
form of persecutions, infringements of the
liberty of conscience, inquisitions, violence
of every sort; and during the prevalence
CONTENT OF JEWISH HISTORY 23
of enliglitment and humanity, the Jews
were acted upon by the intellectual and
cultural stimulus proceeding from the
peoples with whom they entered into
close relations. Momentary aberrations
and reactionary incidents are not taken
into account here. On its side, Jewry
made its personality felt among the na¬
tions by its independent, intellectual ac¬
tivity, its theory of life, its literature, by
the very fact, indeed, of its ideal staunch¬
ness and tenacity, its peculiar historical
physiognomy. From this reciprocal rela¬
tion issued a great cycle of historical
events and spiritual currents, making the
past of the Jewish people an organic con¬
stituent of the past of all that portion
of mankind which has contributed to the
treasury of human thought.
We see, then, that in reference to con¬
tent Jewish history is unique in both its
halves. In the first " national " period,
it is the history of a people to which the
24
JEWISH HISTORY
epithet " peculiar " has been conceded, a
people which has developed under the in¬
fluence of exceptional circumstances, and
finally attained to so high a degree of
spiritual perfection and fertility that the
creation of a new religious theory of life,
which eventually gained universal su¬
premacy, neither exhausted its resources
nor ended its activity. Not only did it
continue to live upon its vast store of spir¬
itual energy, but day by day it increased
the store. In the second " lackland " half,
it is the instructive history of a scattered
people, organically one, in spite of dis¬
persion, by reason of its unshaken ideal
traditions; a people accepting misery and
hardship with stoic calm, combining the
characteristics of the thinker with those
of the sufferer, and eking out existence
under conditions which no other nation
has found adequate, or, indeed, can ever
find adequate. The account of the people
as teacher of religion—this is the content
CONTENT OF JEWISH HISTORY 25
of the first half of Jewish history; the ac¬
count of the people as thinker, stoic, and
sufferer—this is the content of the second
half of Jewish history.
A summing up of all that has been said
in this and the previous chapter proves
true the statement with which we began,
that Jewish history, in respect to its quan¬
titative dimensions as well as its qualita¬
tive structure, is to the last degree dis¬
tinctive and presents a phenomenon of
undeniable uniqueness.
Ill
The Significance of Jewish History
We turn now to the question of the
significance to be attached to Jewish his¬
tory. In view of its peculiar qualities,
what has it to offer to the present genera¬
tion and to future generations as a subject
of study and research?
The significance of Jewish history is
twofold. It is at once national and uni¬
versal. At present the fulcrum of Jewish
national being lies in the historical con¬
sciousness. In the days of antiquity, the
Jews were welded into a single united
nation by the triple agencies of state,
race, and religion, the complete array of
material and spiritual forces directed to
one point. Later, in the period of home-
lessness and dispersion, it was chiefly reli¬
gious consciousness that cemented Jewry
SIGNIFICANCE OF JEWISH HISTORY 27
into a whole, and replaced the severed
political bond as well as the dulled racial
instinct, which is bound to go on losing in
keenness in proportion to the degree of
removal from primitive conditions and
native soil. In our days, when the liberal
movements leavening the whole of man¬
kind, if they have not completely shat¬
tered the religious consciousness, have at
least, in an important section of Jewry,
effected a change in its form; wrhen ab¬
rupt differences of opinion with regard to
questions of faith and cult are asserting
their presence; and traditional Judaism
developed in historical sequence is prov¬
ing powerless to hold together the diverse
factors of the national organism,—in
these days the keystone of national unity
seems to be the historical consciousness.
Composed alike of physical, intellectual,
and moral elements, of habits and views,
of emotions and impressions nursed into
being and perfection by the hereditary
28
JEWISH HISTORY
instinct active for thousands of years, this
historical consciousness is a remarkably
puzzling and complex psychic phenome¬
non. By our common memory of a great,
stirring past and heroic deeds on the bat¬
tle-fields of the spirit, by the exalted his¬
torical mission allotted to us, by our
thorn-strewn pilgrim's path, our martyr¬
dom assumed for the sake of our princi¬
ples, by such moral ties, we Jews, whether
consciously or unconsciously, are bound
fast to one another. As Renan well
says: " Common sorrow unites men more
closely than common joy." A long chain
of historical traditions is cast about us all
like a strong ring. Our wonderful, un¬
paralleled past attracts us with magnetic
power. In the course of centuries, as
generation followed generation, similarity
of historical fortunes produced a mass of
similar impressions which have crystal¬
lized, and have thrown off the deposit that
may be called " the Jewish national soul."
SIGNIFICANCE OF JEWISH HISTORY 29
This is the soil in which, deep down, lies
imbedded, as an unconscious element, the
Jewish national feeling, and as a con¬
scious element, the Jewish national idea.
It follows that the Jewish national idea
and the national feeling connected with
it have their origin primarily in the his¬
torical consciousness, in a certain complex
of ideas and psychic predispositions.
These ideas and predispositions, the de¬
posit left by the aggregate of historical
impressions, are of necessity the common
property of the whole nation, and they
can be developed and quickened to a con¬
siderable degree by a renewal of the im¬
pressions through the study of history.
Upon the knowledge of history, then, de¬
pends the strength of the national con¬
sciousness.1
1A different aspect of the same thought is pre¬
sented with logical clearness in another publica¬
tion by our author. " The national idea and the na¬
tional feelingsays Mr. Dubnow, " must be kept
strictly apart. Unfortunately the difference be¬
tween them is usually obliterated. National feel-
30
JEWISH HISTORY
But oyer and above its national signifi¬
cance, Jewish history, we repeat, possesses
universal significance. Let us, in the
ing is spontaneous. To a greater or less degree it
is inborn in all the members of the nation as a
feeling of kinship. It has its flood-tide and its ebb¬
tide in correspondence to external conditions,
either forcing the nation to defend its nationality,
or relieving it of the necessity for self-defense. As
this feeling is not merely a blind impulse, but a
complicated psychic phenomenon, it can be sub¬
jected to a psychologic analysis. From the given
historical facts or the ideas that have become the
common treasure of a nation, thinking men, living
life consciously, can, in one way or another, derive
the origin, development, and vital force of its na¬
tional feeling. The results of such an analysis,
arranged in some sort of system, form the content
of the national idea. The task of the national idea
it is to clarify the national feeling, and give it
logical sanction for the benefit of those who can¬
not rest satisfied with an unconscious feeling.
" In what, to be specific, does the essence of our
Jewish national idea consist? Or, putting the
question in another form, what is the cement
that unites us into a single compact organism?
Territory and government, the external ties us¬
ually binding a nation together, we have long ago
lost. Their place is filled by abstract principles,
by religion and race. Undeniably these are factors
of first importance, and yet we ask the question,
do they alone and exclusively maintain the na-
SIGNIFICANCE OF JEWISH HISTORY 31
first place, examine its value for science
and philosophy. Inasmuch as it is pre¬
eminently a chronicle of ideas and spir-
tional cohesion of Jewry? No, we reply, for if we
admitted this proposition, we should by con¬
sequence have to accept the inference, that the
laxity of religious principle prevailing among free-
thinking Jews, and the obliteration of race pecu¬
liarities in the ' civilized' strata of our people,
bring in their train a corresponding! weakening, or,
indeed, a complete breaking up, of our national
foundations—which in point of fact is not the
case. On the contrary, it is noticeable that the
latitudinarians, the Hires penseurs, and the indif¬
ferent on the subject of religion, stand in the fore¬
front of all our national movements. Seeing that
to belong to it is in most cases heroism, and in
many martyrdom, what is it that attracts these
Jews so forcibly to their people? There must be
something common to us all, so comprehensive
that in the face of multifarious views and degrees
of culture it acts as a consolidating force. This
' something,' I am convinced, is the community of
historical fortunes of all the scattered parts of
the Jewish nation. We are welded together by
our glorious past. We are encircled by a mighty
chain of similar historical impressions suffered by
our ancestors, century after century pressing in
upon the Jewish soul, and leaving behind a sub¬
stantial deposit. In short, the Jewish national
idea is based chiefly upon the historical con¬
sciousness." [Note of the German trl.]
32
JEWISH HISTORY
itual movements, Jewish history affords
the philosopher or psychologist material
for observation of the most important and
useful kind. The study of other, mostly
dull chapters of universal history has led
to the fixing of psychologic or sociologic
theses, to the working out of comprehen¬
sive philosophic systems, to the determi¬
nation of general laws. Surely it follows
without far-fetched proof, that in some
respects the chapter dealing with Jewish
history must supply material of the most
original character for such theses and
philosophies. If it is true, as the last
chapter set out to demonstrate, that Jew¬
ish history is distinguished by sharply
marked and peculiar features, and refuses
to accommodate itself to conventional
forms, then its content must have an origi¬
nal contribution to make to philosophy.
It does not admit of a doubt that the study
of Jewish history would yield new propo¬
sitions appertaining to the philosophy of
SIGNIFICANCE OF JEWISH HISTORY 33
history and the psychology of nations,
hitherto overlooked by inquirers occupied
with the other divisions of universal his¬
tory. Inductive logic lays down a rule
for ascertaining the law of a phenom¬
enon produced by two or more contribu¬
tory causes. By means of what might be
called a laboratory experiment, the sev¬
eral causes must be disengaged from one
another, and the effect of each observed
by itself. Thus it becomes possible to ar¬
rive with mathematical precision at the
share of each cause in the result achieved
by several co-operating causes. This
method of difference, as it is called, is
available, however, only for a limited num¬
ber of phenomena, only for phenomena in
the department of the natural sciences.
It is in the nature of the case that mental
and spiritual phenomena, though they
may be observed, cannot be artificially
reproduced. Now, in one respect, Jewish
history affords the advantages of an ar-
34
JEWISH HISTORY
ranged experiment. The historical life
of ordinary nations, such nations as are
endowed with territory and are organized
into a state, is a complete intermingling
of the political with the spiritual element.
Totally ignorant as we are of the develop¬
ment either would have assumed, had it
been dissevered from the other, the laws
governing each of the elements singly can
be discovered only approximately. Jew¬
ish history, in which the two elements
have for many centuries been completely
disentangled from each other, presents a
natural experiment, with the advantage
of artificial exclusions, rendering possible
the determination of the laws of spiritual
phenomena with far greater scientific ex¬
actitude than the laws of phenomena that
result from several similar causes.
Besides this high value for the pur¬
poses of science, this fruitful suggestive-
ness for philosophic thought, Jewish his¬
tory, as compared with the history of
SIGNIFICANCE OF JEWISH HISTORY 35
other nations, enjoys another distinction
in its capacity to exercise an ennobling
influence upon the heart. Nothing so ex¬
alts and refines human nature as the con¬
templation of moral steadfastness, the his¬
tory of the trials of a martyr who has
fought and suffered for his convictions.
At bottom, the second half of Jewish his¬
tory is nothing but this. The effective
educational worth of the Biblical part of
Jewish history is disputed by none. It
is called " sacred " history, and he who
acquires a knowledge of it is thought to
advance the salvation of his soul. Only
a very few, however, recognize the pro¬
found, moral content of the second half
of Jewish history, the history of the dias¬
pora. Yet, by reason of its exceptional
qualities and intensely tragic circum¬
stances, it is beyond all others calculated
to yield edification to a notable degree. The
Jewish people is deserving of attention
not only in the time when it displayed its
36
JEWISH HISTORY
power and enjoyed its independence, but
as well in tlie period of its weakness and
oppression, during which it was compelled
to purchase spiritual development by con¬
stant sacrifice of self. A thinker crowned
with thorns demands no less veneration
than a thinker with the laurel wreath
upon his brow. The flame issuing from the
funeral pile on which martyrs die an he¬
roic death for their ideas is, in its way, as
awe-inspiring as the flame from Sinai's
height. With equal force, though by dif¬
ferent methods, both touch the heart, and
arouse the moral sentiment. Biblical Is¬
rael the celebrated—medieval Judah the
despised—it is one and the same people,
judged variously in the various phases
of its historical life. If Israel bestowed
upon mankind a religious theory of life,
Judah gave it a thrilling example of
tenacious vitality and power of resistance
for the sake of conviction. This unin¬
terrupted life of the spirit, this untiring
SIGNIFICANCE OF JEWISH HISTORY 37
aspiration for the higher and the better
in the domain of religious thought, phi¬
losophy, and science, this moral intrepidity
in night and storm and in despite of all
the blows of fortune—is it not an impos¬
ing, soul-stirring spectacle? The inex¬
pressible tragedy of the Jewish historical
life is unfailing in its effect upon a sus¬
ceptible heart.1 The wonderful exhibi¬
tion of spirit triumphant, subduing the
pangs of the flesh, must move every heart,
and exercise uplifting influence upon the
non-Jew no less than upon the Jew.
For non-Jews a knowledge of Jewish
history may, under certain conditions,
1" If there are ranks in suffering, Israel takes
precedence of all the nations—if the duration of
sorrows and the patience with which they are
borne ennoble, the Jews are among the aristocracy
of every land—if a literature is called rich in the
possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall
we say to a National Tragedy lasting for fifteen
hundred years, in which the poets and the actors
were also the heroes ?" (Zunz, Die synagogale
Poesie. Translation by George Eliot in " Daniel
Deronda.")
38
JEWISH HISTORY
come to have another, an humanitarian
significance. It is inconceivable that the
Jewish people should be held in execra¬
tion by those acquainted with the course
of its history, with its tragic and heroic
past.1 Indeed, so far as Jew-haters by
1As examples and a proof of the strong human¬
itarian influence Jewish history exercises upon
Christians, I would point to the relation estab¬
lished between the Jews and two celebrities of the
nineteenth century, Schleiden and George Eliot.
In his old age, the great scientist and thinker acci¬
dentally, in the course of his study of sources for
the history of botany, became acquainted with
medieval Jewish history. It filled him with ardent
enthusiasm for the Jews, for their intellectual
strength, their patience under martyrdom. Dom¬
inated by this feeling, he wrote the two admirable
sketches: "Die Bedeutung der Juden fiir Erhal-
tung und Wiederbelebung der Wissenschaften irn
Mittelalter (1876) and Die Romantik des Mar-
tyriums bei den Juden im Mittelalter "(1878).
According to his own confession, the impulse to
write them was " the wish to take at least the first
step toward making partial amends for the un¬
speakable wrong inflicted by Christians upon
Jews." As for George Eliot, it may not be gen¬
erally known that it was her reading of histories
of the Jews that inspired her with the profound
veneration for the Jewish people to which she
SIGNIFICANCE OF JEWISH HISTORY 39
profession are concerned, it is running a
risk to recommend the study of Jewish
history to them, without adding a word
of caution. Its effect upon them might
be disastrous. They might find them¬
selves cured of their modern disease, and
in the possession of ideas that would ren¬
der worthless their whole stock in trade.
Verily, he must have fallen to the zero-
point of anti-Semitic callousness who is
not thrilled through and through by the
lofty fortitude, the saint-like humility, the
trustful resignation to the will of God,
the stoic firmness, laid bare by the study
of Jewish history. The tribute of respect
cannot be readily withheld from him to
gave glowing utterance in " Daniel Deronda." (She
cites Zunz, was personally acquainted with
Emanuel Deutsch, and carried on a correspond¬
ence with Professor Dr. David Kaufmann. See
George Eliot's Life as related in her Letters and
Journals. Arranged and edited by her husband,
J. W. Cross, Vol. iii, ed. Harper and Brothers.)
Her enthusiasm prompted her, in 1879, to indite
her passionate apology for the Jews, under the
title, "The Modern Hep! Hep! Hep!"
40
JEWISH HISTORY
whom the words of the poet1 are appli¬
cable :
" To die was not his hope; he fain
Would live to think and suffer pain."
When, in days to come, the cnrtain rises
upon the touching tragedy of Jewish his¬
tory, revealing it to the astonished eye of
a modern generation, then, perhaps,
hearts will be attuned to tenderness, and
on the ruins of national hostility will be
enthroned mutual love, growing out of
mutual understanding and mutual esteem.
And who can tell—perhaps Jewish his¬
tory will have a not inconsiderable share
in the spiritual change that is to annihi¬
late national intolerance, the modern sub¬
stitute for the religious bigotry of the
middle ages. In this case, the future
task of Jewish history will prove as sub¬
lime as was the mission of the Jewish
people in the past. The latter consisted
1 Pushkin.
SIGNIFICANCE OF JEWISH HISTORY 41
in the spread of the dogma of the unity
of creation; the former will contribute in¬
directly to the realization of the not yet
accepted dogma of the unity of the human
race.
IV
The Historical Synthesis
To define the scope of Jewish history, its
content and its significance, or its place
among scientific pursuits, disposes only
of the formal part of the task we have
set ourselves. The central problem is
to unfold the meaning of Jewish history,
to discover the principle toward which
its diversified phenomena converge, to
state the universal laws and philosophic
inferences deducible from the peculiar
course of its events. If we liken history
to an organic being, then the skeleton of
facts is its body, and the soul is the spir¬
itual bond that unites the facts into a
whole, that conveys the meaning, the psy¬
chologic essence, of the facts. It becomes
our duty, then, to unbare the soul of Jew¬
ish history, or, in scientific parlance, to
THE HISTORICAL SYNTHESIS 43
construct, on the basis of the facts, the
synthesis of the whole of Jewish national
life. To this end, we must pass in review,
by periods and epochs, one after an¬
other, the most important groups of his¬
torical events, the most noteworthy cur¬
rents in life and thought that tell off the
stages in the development of Jewry and
of Judaism. Exhaustive treatment of the
philosophical synthesis of a history ex¬
tending over three thousand years is pos¬
sible only in a voluminous work. In an
essay like the present it can merely be
sketched in large outline, or painted in
miniature. We cannot expect to do
more than state a series of general prin¬
ciples substantiated by the most funda¬
mental arguments. Complete demonstra¬
tion of each of the principles must be
sought in the annals that recount the
events of Jewish history in detail.
The historical synthesis reduces itself,
then, to uncovering the psychologic proc-
44
JEWISH HISTORY
esses of national development. The ob¬
ject before us to be studied is the national
spirit undergoing continuous evolution
during thousands of years. Our task
is to arrive at the laws underlying
this growth. We shall reach our goal by
imitating the procedure of the geologist,
who divides the mass of the earth into its
several strata or formations. In Jewish
history there may be distinguished three
chief stratifications answering to its first
three periods, the Biblical period, the pe¬
riod of the Second Temple, and the Tal-
mudic period. The later periods are noth¬
ing more than these same formations com¬
bined in various ways, with now and then
the addition of new strata. Of the com¬
posite periods there are four, which ar¬
range themselves either according to he¬
gemonies, the countries in which at given
times lay the centre of gravity of the scat¬
tered Jewish people, or according to the
intellectual currents there predominant.
THE HISTORICAL SYNTHESIS 45
This, then, is our scheme:
I. The chief formations:
a) The primary or Biblical period.
b) The secondary or spiritual-political period
(the period of the Second Temple, 538
B. C. E. to 70 C. E.)
c) The tertiary or national-religious period
(the Talmudic period, 70-500).
II. The composite formations:
a) The Gaonic period, or the hegemony of
the Oriental Jews (500-980).
b) The Rabbinic-philosophical period, or the
hegemony of the Spanish Jews (980-
1492).
c) The Rabbinic-mystical period, or the ho-
gemony of the German-Polish Jews
(1492-1789).
d) The modern period of enlightenment (the
nineteenth century).
Y
The Primary or Biblical Period
In the daybreak of history, the hoary
days when seeming and reality merge in¬
to each other, and the outlines of persons
and things fade into the surrounding
mist, the picture of a nomad people, mov¬
ing from the deserts of Arabia in the di¬
rection of Mesopotamia and Western
Asia, detaches itself clear and distinct
from the dim background. The tiny tribe,
a branch of the Semitic race, bears a pe¬
culiar stamp of its own. A shepherd peo¬
ple, always living in close touch with na¬
ture, it yet resists the potent influence of
the natural phenomena, which, as a rule,
entrap primitive man, and make him the
bond-slave of the visible and material.
Tent life has attuned these Semitic no¬
mads to contemplativeness. In the endless
THE BIBLICAL PERIOD 47
variety of tlie phenomena of nature, they
seek to discover a single guiding power.
They entertain an obscure presentiment
of the existence of an invisible, universal
soul animating the visible, material uni¬
verse. The intuition is personified in the
Patriarch Abraham, who, according to
Biblical tradition, held communion with
God, when, on the open field, " he looked
up toward heaven, and counted the stars,"
or when, " at the setting of the sun, he fell
into benumbing sleep, and terror seized
upon him by reason of the impenetrable
darkness." Here we have a clear expres¬
sion of the original, purely cosmical char¬
acter of the Jewish religion.
There was no lack of human influence
acting from without. Chaldea, which the
peculiar Semitic shepherds crossed in
their pilgrimage, presented them with no¬
tions from its rich mythology and1 cos¬
mogony. The natives of Syria and Ca¬
naan, among whom in the course of time
48
JEWISH HISTORY
the Abraliamites settled, imparted to
them many of their religious views and
customs. Nevertheless, the kernel of
their pure original theory remained in¬
tact. The patriarchal mode of life, ad¬
mirable in its simplicity, continued to hold
its own within the circle of the firmly-
knitted tribe. It was in Canaan, however,
that the shepherd people hailing from
Arabia showed the first signs of approach¬
ing disintegration. Various tribal groups,
like Moab and Ammon, consolidated
themselves. They took permanent foot¬
hold in the land, and submitted with more
or less readiness to the influences exerted
by the indigenous peoples. The guardian¬
ship of the sublime traditions of the tribe
remained with one group alone, the " sons
of Jacob" or the "sons of Israel," so
named from the third Patriarch Jacob.
To this group of the Israelites composed
of smaller, closely united divisions, a
special mission was allotted; its develop-
THE BIBLICAL PERIOD
49
ment was destined to lie along peculiar
lines. The fortunes awaiting it were
distinctive, and for thousands of years
have filled thinking and believing man¬
kind with wondering admiration.
Great characters are formed under the
influence of powerful impressions, of vio¬
lent convulsions, and especially under the
influence of suffering. The Israelites early
passed through their school of suffering
in Egypt. The removal of the sons of
Jacob from the banks of the Jordan to
those of the Mle was of decisive import¬
ance for the progress of their history.
When the patriarchal Israelitish shep¬
herds encountered the old, highly com¬
plex culture of the Egyptians, crystallized
into fixed forms even at that early date,
it was like the clash between two oppos¬
ing electric currents. The pure concep¬
tion of God, of Elohim, as of the spirit in¬
forming and supporting the universe, col¬
lided with the blurred system of heathen.
50
JEWISH HISTORY
deities and crass idolatry. The simple
cult of the shepherds, consisting of a few
severely plain ceremonies, transmitted
from generation to generation, was con¬
fronted with the insidious, coarsely sen¬
sual animal worship of the Egyptians.
The patriarchal customs of the Israelites
were brought into marked contrast with
the vices of a corrupt civilization. Sound
in body and soul, the son of nature sud¬
denly found himself in unsavory surround¬
ings fashioned by culture, in which he
was as much despised as the inoffensive
nomad is by " civilized " man of settled
habit. The scorn had a practical result
in the enslavement of the Israelites by
the Pharaohs. Association with the
Egyptians acted as a force at once of at¬
traction and of repulsion. The manners
and customs of the natives could not fail
to leave an impression upon the simple
aliens, and invite imitation on their part.
On the other hand, the whole life of the
THE BIBLICAL PERIOD
51
Egyptians, their crude notions of religion,
and their immoral ways, were calculated
to inspire the more enlightened among
the Israelites with disgust. The hostility
of the Egyptians toward the " intruders,"
and the horrible persecutions in which it
expressed itself, could not but bring out
more aggressively the old spiritual oppo¬
sition between the two races. The antag¬
onism between them was the first influ¬
ence to foster the germ of Israelis nation¬
al consciousness, the consciousness of his
peculiar character, his individuality. This
early intimation of a national conscious¬
ness was weak. It manifested itself only
in the chosen few. But it existed, and
the time was appointed when, under more
favorable conditions, it would develop,
and display the extent of its power.
This consciousness it was that inspired
the activity of Moses, Israel's teacher and
liberator. He was penetrated alike by
national and religious feeling, and his de-
52
JEWISH HISTORY
sire was to impart both national and re¬
ligious feeling to liis brethren. Tlie fact
of national redemption lie connected with
the fact of religious revelation. "I am
the Lord thy God who have brought thee
forth out of the land of Egypt" was pro¬
claimed from Sinai. The God-idea was
nationalized. Thenceforth "Eternal" be¬
came the name peculiar to the God of
Israel. He was, indeed, the same Elohim,
the Creator of the world and its Guide,
Who had been dimly discerned by the
spiritual vision of the Patriarchs. At
the same time He was the special God of
the Israelitish nation, the only nation
that avouched Him with a full and un¬
divided heart, the nation chosen by God
Himself to carry out, alone, His sublime
plans.1 In his wanderings, Israel became
1 This is the true recondite meaning of the verses
Exod. vi, 2-3: "And God spake unto Moses, and
said unto him, I am the Eternal: and I appeared
unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, as
El-SJiaddai (God Almighty), but by my name
Eternal I was not known unto them."
THE BIBLICAL PERIOD
53
acquainted with the chaotic religious sys¬
tems of other nations. Seeing to what
they paid the tribute of divine adoration,
he could not but be dominated by the con¬
sciousness that he alone from of old had
been the exponent of the religious idea in
its purity. The resolution must have ri¬
pened within him to continue for all time
to advocate and cherish this idea. From
that moment Israel was possessed of a
clear theory of life in religion and moral¬
ity, and of a definite aim pursued with
conscious intent.
Its originators designed that this Israel-
itish conception of life should serve not
merely theoretically, as the basis of re¬
ligious doctrine, but also practically, as
the starting point of legislation. It was
to be realized in the daily walks of the
people, which at this very time attained
to political independence. Sublime reli¬
gious conceptions were not to be made
the content of a visionary creed, the sub-
54
JEWISH HISTORY
ject of dreamy contemplation, but, in the
form of perspicuous guiding principles,
were to control all spheres of individual
and social life. Men must beware of look¬
ing upon religion as an ideal to be
yearned for, it should be an ideal to be
applied directly, day by day, to practical
contingencies. In "Mosaism," so-called,
the religious and the ethical are inti¬
mately interwoven with the social and the
political. The chief dogmas of creed are
stated as principles shaping practical life.
For instance, the exalted idea of One God
applied to social life produces the princi¬
ple of the equality of all men before the
One Supreme Power, a principle on which
the whole of Biblical legislation is built.
The commands concerning love of neigh¬
bor, the condemnation of slavery, the obli¬
gation to aid the poor, humane treatment
of the stranger, sympathy and compassion
with every living being—all these lofty
injunctions ensue as inevitable conse-
THE BIBLICAL PERIOD
55
quences from the principle of equality.
Biblical legislation is perhaps the only
example of a political and social code
based, not upon abstract reasoning alone,
but also upon the requirements of the feel¬
ings, upon the finest impulses of the hu¬
man soul. By the side of formal right
and legality, it emphasizes, and, in a se¬
ries of precepts, makes tangible, the prin¬
ciple of justice and humanity. The Mo¬
saic law is a "propaganda by deed."
Everywhere it demands active, more than
passive, morality. Herein, in this elevated
characteristic, this vital attribute, consists
the chief source of the power of Mosaism.
The same characteristic, to be sure, pre¬
vented it from at once gaining ground in
the national life. It established itself
only gradually, after many fluctuations
and errors. In the course of the centur¬
ies, and keeping pace with the growth of
the national consciousness, it was culti¬
vated and perfected in detail.
56
JEWISH HISTORY
The conquest of Canaan wrought a rad¬
ical transformation in the life of the Is-
raelitish people. The acquiring of nation¬
al territory supplied firm ground for the
development and manifold application of
the principles of Mosaism. At first, how¬
ever, advance was out of the question.
The mass of the people had not reached
the degree of spiritual maturity requisite
for the espousal of principles constituting
an exalted theory of life. It could he un¬
derstood and represented only by a
thoughtful minority, which consisted
chiefly of Aaronites and Levites, together
forming a priestly estate, though not a
hierarchy animated by the isolating spir¬
it of caste that flourished among all the
other peoples of the Orient. The popu¬
lace discovered only the ceremonial side
of the religion; its kernel was hidden
from their sight. Defective spiritual cul¬
ture made the people susceptible to alien
influences, to notions more closely akin to
THE BIBLICAL PERIOD
57
its understanding. Kesidence in Canaan
among related Semitic tribes that liad
long before separated from the Israelites,
and adopted altogether different views
and customs, produced a far greater meta¬
morphosis in the character of the Israel¬
ites than the sojourn in Egypt. After the
first flush of victory, when the unity of
the Israelitish people had been weakened
by the particularistic efforts of several of
the tribes, the spiritual bonds confining
the nation began to relax. Political de¬
cay always brings religious defection in
its train. Whenever Israel came under
the dominion of the neighboring tribes, he
also fell a victim to their cult. This
phenomenon is throughout characteristic
of the so-called era of the Judges. It is
a natural phenomenon readily explained
on psychologic grounds. The Mosaic na¬
tional conception of the "Eternal" en¬
tered more and more deeply into the na¬
tional consciousness, and, accommodating
58
JEWISH HISTORY
itself to the limited mental capacity of
the majority, became narrower and nar¬
rower in compass—the lot of all great
ideas! The " Eternal" was no longer
thought of as the only One God of the
whole uni verse, but as the tutelar deity of
the Israelitish tribe. The idea of national
tutelar deities was at that time deeply
rooted in the consciousness of all the
peoples of Western Asia. Each nation,
as it had a king of its own, had a tribal
god of its own. The Phenicians had
their Baal, the Moabites their Kemosh,
the Ammonites their Milkom. Belief in
the god peculiar to a nation by no means
excluded belief in the existence of other
national gods. A people worshiped its
own god, because it regarded him as its
master and protecting lord. In fact, ac¬
cording to the views then prevalent, a
conflict between two nations was the con¬
flict between two national deities. In the
measure in which respect for the god of
THE BIBLICAL PERIOD
59
tlie defeated party waned, waxed the
number of worshipers of tlie god of the
victorious nation, and not merely among
the conquerors, But also among the adher¬
ents of other religions.1 These crude,
coarsely materialistic conceptions of God
gained entrance with the masses of the
Israelitish people. If Moab had his Ke-
mosh, and Ammon his Milkom, then Israel
had his "Eternal," who, after the model
of all other national gods, protected and
abandoned his " clients " at pleasure, in
1" Ye have forsaken me," says God unto Israel,
" and served other gods; wherefore I will deliver
you no more. Go and cry unto the gods which ye
have chosen: let them deliver you In the time of
your tribulations " (Judges x, 13-14). The same idea
is brought out still more forcibly in the arguments
adduced by Jephthah in his message to the king of
Ammon (more correctly, Moab), who had laid claim
to Israelitish lands: " Thou," says Jephthah,
" mayest possess that which Kemosh thy god
giveth thee to possess, but what the Lord our
God giveth us to possess, that will we possess"
(Judges xi, 24). Usually these words are taken
ironically; to me they seem to convey literal truth
rather than irony.
60
JEWISH HISTORY
the one case winning, in tlie other losing,
the devotion of his partisans. In times of
distress, in which the Israelites groaned
under the yoke of the alien, the enslaved
" forgot" their " conquered " " Eternal."
As they paid the tribute due the strange
king, and yielded themselves to his power,
so they submitted to the strange god, and
paid him his due tribute of devotion. It
followed that liberation from the yoke of
the stranger coincided with return to the
God of Israel, the " Eternal." At such
times the national spirit leaped into
flaming life. This sums up the achieve¬
ments of the hero-Judges. But the traces
of repeated backsliding were deep and
long visible, for, together with the reli¬
gious ideas of the strange peoples, the Is¬
raelites accepted their customs, as a rule
corrupt and noxious customs, in sharp
contrast with the lofty principles of the
Mosaic Law, designed to control social
life and the life of the individual.
THE BIBLICAL PERIOD 61
The Prophet Samuel, coming after the
unsettled period of the Judges, had only
partial success in purifying the views of
the people and elevating it out of degra¬
dation to a higher spiritual level. His
work was continued with more marked
results in the brilliant reigns of Saul,
David, and Solomon. An end was put to
the baleful disunion among the tribes,
and the bond of national tradition was
strengthened. The consolidated Israelit-
ish kingdom triumphed over its former
oppressors. The gods of the strange
peoples cringed in the dust before the all-
powerful "Eternal." But, with the divi¬
sion of the kingdom and the political rup¬
ture between Judah and Israel, the period
of efflorescence soon came to an end.
Again confusion reigned supreme, and
customs and convictions deteriorated un¬
der foreign influence. Prophets like Eli¬
jah and Elisha, feverish though their ac¬
tivity was, stood powerless before the
02
JEWISH HISTORY
rank immorality in the two states. The
northern kingdom of Israel, composed of
the Ten Tribes, passed swiftly downward
on the road to destrnction, sharing the
fate of the numberless Oriental states
whose end was inevitable by reason of
inner decay. The inspired words of the
early Israelitish Prophets, Amos, Hosea,
and Micah, their trumpet-toned reproofs,
their thrilling admonitions, died unheeded
upon the air—society was too depraved to
understand their import. It was reserved
for later generations to give ear to their
immortal utterances, eloquent witnesses
to the lofty heights to which the Jewish
spirit was permitted to mount in times
of general decline. The northern kingdom
sank into irretrievable ruin. Then came
the turn of Judah. He, too, had disre¬
garded the law of " sanctification " from
Sinai, and had nearly arrived at the point
of stifling his better impulses in the mo¬
rass of materialistic living.
THE BIBLICAL PERIOD
63
At this critical moment, on the line be¬
tween to be and not to be, a miracle came
to pass. The spirit of the people, become
flesh in its noblest sons, rose aloft. From
out of the midst of the political disturb¬
ances, the frightful infamy, and the moral
corruption, resounded the impressive call
of the great Prophets of Judah. Like a
flaming torch carried through dense dark¬
ness, they cast a glaring light upon the
vices of society, at the same time illumin¬
ating the path that leads upward to the
goal of the ethical ideal. At first the
negative, denouncing element predomin¬
ated in the exhortations of the Prophets:
unsparingly they scourged the demorali¬
zation and the iniquity, the social injus¬
tice and the political errors prevalent in
their time; they threatened divine pun¬
ishment, that is, the natural consequences
of evil-doing, and appealed to the reason
rather than the feelings of the people.
But gradually they elaborated positive
64
JEWISH HISTORY
ideals, more soul-stirring than the ideals
identified with the old religions tradition.
The Prophets were the first to touch the
root of the evil. It is clear that they real¬
ized that alien influences and the low
grade of intelligence possessed by the
masses were not the sole causes of the
frequent backsliding of the people. The
Jewish doctrine itself bore within it the
germ of error. The two chief pillars of the
old faith—the nationalizing of the God-
idea, and the stress laid upon the cult,
the ceremonial side of religion, as com¬
pared with moral requirements—were
first and foremost to be held responsible
for the flagrant departures from the spir¬
it of Judaism. This was the direction in
which reform was needed. Thereafter
the sermons of the Prophets betray every¬
where the intense desire, on the one hand,
to restore to the God-idea its original
universal character, and, on the other
hand, while strongly emphasizing the im-
THE BIBLICAL PERIOD 65
portance of morality in the religious and
the social sphere, to derogate from the
value of the ceremonial system. The
" Eternal" is no longer the national God
of Israel, belonging to him exclusively;
He becomes the God of the whole of man¬
kind, the same tflohim, Creator and Pre¬
server of the world, whom the Patriarchs
had worshiped, and to whom, being His
creatures, all men owe worship. His pre¬
cepts and His laws of morality are bind¬
ing upon all nations; they will bring sal¬
vation and blessing to all without distinc¬
tion.1 The ideal of piety consists in the
1 Two Biblical passages, the one from Deuteron¬
omy, the other from Deutero-Isaiali, afford a signal
illustration of the contrast between the religious
nationalism of the Mosaic law and the universal-
ism of the Prophets. 'Moses says to Israel: " Thou
art an holy people u. to the Lord thy God: the
Lord thy God hath c. ">sen thee to be a special
people unto himself, above all people that are
upon the face of the earth. The Lord did not set
his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were
more in number than any people: for ye were the
fewest of all people. But because the Lord loved
66
JEWISH HISTORY
profession of God and a life of rectitude.
The time will come when all nations will
be penetrated by true knowledge of God
and actuated by the noblest motives; then
will follow the universal brotherhood of
man. Until this consummation is reached,
and so long as Israel is the only nation
formally professing the one true God, and
accepting His blessed law, Israel's sole
task is to embody in himself the highest
ideals, to be an " ensign to the nations,"
to bear before them the banner of God's
law, destined in time to effect the trans-
you . . . . " (Deut. vii, 6-8). And these are the
words of the prophecy: " Listen, O isles, unto me,
and hearken, ye people, from far! The Lord hath
called me . . . and said unto me, Thou art my
servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified! But
I had thought, I have labored in vain, I have spent
my strength for nought, and in vain; yet surely my
judgment is with the Lord, and my work with
my God. For now said the Lord unto me ... It
is too light a thing that thou shouldest be my
servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to
restore the preserved of Israel: no, I will also give
thee for a light to the Gentiles, that my salvation
may reach unto the end of the earth " (Is. xlix,
1-6).
THE BIBLICAL PERIOD
67
formation of the whole of mankind. Israel
is a missionary to the nations. As such
he must stand before them as a model of
holiness and purity. Here is the origin
of the great idea of the spiritual " Messi-
anism" of the Jewish people, or, better,
its " missionism," an eternal idea, far more
comprehensive than the old idea of na¬
tional election, which it supplanted.
These sublime teachings were incul¬
cated at the moment in which Judah was
hastening to meet his fate. It had be¬
come impossible to check the natural re¬
sults of the earlier transgressions. The
inevitable happened; Babylon the mighty
laid her ponderous hand upon tiny Judah.
But Judah could not be crushed. From
the heavy chastisement the Jewish nation
emerged purified, re-born for a new life.
VI
The Secondary or Spiritual-Polit¬
ical Period
The rank and file of a people are in¬
structed by revolutions and catastrophes
better than by sermons. More quickly
than Isaiah and Jeremiah, Nebuchadnez¬
zar brought the Jews to a recognition of
their tasks. The short span of the Baby¬
lonian Exile (586-538 B. C. E.) was a per¬
iod of introspection and searching self-
examination for the people. Spiritual
forces hitherto latent came into play; a
degree of self-consciousness asserted it¬
self. The people grasped its mission. At
last it comprehended that to imitate in¬
ferior races, instead of teaching them and
making itself a model for them to follow,
was treason to its vocation in life. When
the hour of release from the Babylonian
THE SPIRITUAL-POLITICAL PERIOD 69
yoke struck, the people suddenly saw un¬
der its feet " a new earth," and to " a new
heaven" above it raised eyes dim with
tears of repentance and emotion. It re¬
newed its covenant with God. Like the
Exodus from Egypt, so the second national
deliverance was connected with a revela¬
tion. But the messages delivered by the
last Prophets—especially by "the great
unknown," the author of the latter part of
the Book of Isaiah—were too exalted,
too universal in conception, for a people
but lately emerged from a severe crisis
to set about their realization at once.
They could only illumine its path as a
guiding-star, inspire it as the ultimate
goal, the far-off Messianic ideal. Mean¬
while the necessity appeared for uniform
religious laws, dogmas, and customs, to
bind the Jews together externally as a
nation. The moralizing religion of the
Prophets was calculated to bring about
the regeneration of the individual, regard-
70
JEWISH HISTORY
less of national ties; but at that moment
tlie chief point involved was tlie nation.
It had to be established and its organiza¬
tion perfected. The universalism of the
Prophets was inadequate for the consoli¬
dating of a nation. To this end outward
religious discipline was requisite, an offi¬
cial cult and public ceremonies. Led by
such considerations, the Jewish captives,
on their return to Jerusalem, first of all
devoted themselves to the erection of a
Temple, to the creating of a visible reli¬
gious centre, which was to be the rallying
point for the whole nation.
The days of the Prophets were over.
Their religious universalism could apply
only to a distant future. In the present,
the nation, before it might pose as a
teacher, had to learn and grow spiritually
strong. Aims of such compass require
centuries for their realization. There¬
fore, the spiritual-national unification of
the people was pushed into the fore-
THE SPIRITUAL-POLITICAL PERIOD 71
ground. The place of the Prophet was
filled by the Priest and the Scribe. Zerub-
babel, Ezra, and JSTehemiali were per¬
meated by the purpose to make religion
and the cult subservient to the cause of
national union and isolation. The erec¬
tion of the Temple, the solemn service
with the singing of Psalms and the pub¬
lic reading from the " Book of the Law "
(the Pentateuch, which underwent its
final redaction at that time), the removal
of whatever might arouse the remem¬
brance of strange and heathen institu¬
tions—these were the levers of their uni¬
fying activity. At first sight this activity
might appear almost too one-sided. But
if we summon to mind a picture of the
conditions prevailing in those days, we are
forced to the conclusion that, in the in¬
terest of national restoration, a consist¬
ent course was imperative. In point of
fact, however, some of Ezra's innovations
testify to the broad-minded, reformatory
72
JEWISH HISTORY
character of this activity; as, for in¬
stance, the public reading of the Penta¬
teuch, introduced with a view to making
the people see the necessity of obtaining
detailed knowledge of the principles of
its religion, and obeying the precepts of
the Law, not blindly, but with conscious
assent. The object steadily aimed at was
the elevation of the whole body of the
people to the plane of spirituality, its
transformation, in accordance with the
Biblical injunction, into a "kingdom of
priests."
This injunction of civilizing import be¬
came the starting point of the activity of
all of Ezra's successors, of the so-called
school of the Soferim, the Scribes, those
versed in the art of writing. The political
calm that prevailed during the two cen¬
turies of the Persian supremacy (538-332
B. C. E.), was calculated to an eminent de¬
gree to promote spiritual development and
the organization of the inner life of the
THE SPIRITUAL-POLITICAL PERIOD 73
people. During tliis period, a large part of
the writings after the Pentateuch that
have been received into the Bible were
collected, compiled, and reduced to writ¬
ing. The immortal thoughts of the
Prophets clothed themselves in the vis¬
ible garb of letters. On parchment rolls
and in books they were made accessible
to distant ages. The impressive tradi¬
tions transmitted from earliest times, the
chronicles of the past of the people, the
Psalms brought forth by the religious en¬
thusiasm of a long series of poets, all were
gathered and put into literary shape with
the extreme of care. The spiritual treas¬
ures of the nation were capitalized, and
Xo this process of capitalization solely
and alone generations of men have owed
the possibility of resorting to them as a
source of faith and knowledge. Without
the work of compilation achieved by the
Soferim, of which the uninstructed are apt
to speak slightingly, mankind to-day had
74 JEWISH HISTORY
no Bible, that central snn in world-liter¬
ature.
These two centuries may fitly be called
the school-days of the Jewish nation; the
Scribes were the teachers of Jewry. In
the way of original work but little was
produced. The people fed upon the store
if spiritual food, of which sufficient had
been laid up for several generations. It
was then that the Jews first earned their
title to the name, "the People of the
Book." They made subservient to them¬
selves the two mightiest instruments of
thought, the art of writing and of reading.
Their progress was brilliant, and when
their schooling had come to an end, and
they stepped out into the broader life,
they were at once able to apply their
knowledge successfully to practical con¬
tingencies. They were prepared for all
the vicissitudes of life. Their spiritual
equipment was complete.
Nothing could have been more oppor-
THE SPIRITUAL-POLITICAL PERIOD 75
tune than this readiness to assume the
responsibilities of existence, for a time of
peril and menace was again approaching.
From out of the West, a new agent of
civilization, Hellenism, advanced upon the
East. Alexander the Great had put an
end to the huge Persian monarchy, and
brought the whole of Western Asia under
his dominion (332 B. C. E.). His generals
divided the conquered lands among them¬
selves. With all their might, the Ptole¬
mies in Egypt and the Seleucidae in Syria
hellenized the countries subject to their
rule. In the old domain of the Pharaohs,
as in Babylonia, in Phenicia, and in
Syria, the Greek language was currently
spoken, Greek ceremonies were observed,
the Greek mode of life was adopted.
Athens ceded her rights of primogeniture
to New Athens, Alexandria, capital of
Egypt, and cosmopolitan centre of the
civilized world. For a whole century
Judea played the sad part of the apple
76
JEWISH HISTORY
of discord between the Egyptian and the
Syrian dynasty (320-203 B. C. E.). By
turns she owned the sway of the Ptole¬
mies and the Seleucidae, nntil finally, in
203, she was declared a Syro-Macedonian
province. Here, as in the other parts of
their realm, the rulers devoted themselves
energetically to the dissemination of
Greek culture. Meeting with resistance,
they had resort to main force. At first,
indeed, a large part of the people permit¬
ted itself to be blinded by the " beauty of
Japheth," and promoted assimilation with
the Greeks. But when the spread of Hel¬
lenism began to threaten the spiritual
individuality of Judaism, the rest of the
nation, endowed with greater capacity of
resistance, arose and sturdily repulsed the
enemy.
Hellenism was the first gravely danger¬
ous opponent Judaism had to encounter.
It was not the ordinary meeting of two
peoples, or of two kinds of civilization.
THE SPIRITUAL-POLITICAL PERIOD 77
It was a clash between two theories of
life that stood abruptly opposed to each
other, were, indeed, mutually exclusive.
It was a duel between " the Eternal" on
the one side, and Zeus on the other—be¬
tween the Creator of the universe, the
invisible spiritual Being who had, in a
miraculous way, revealed religious and
ethical ideals to mankind, and the deity
who resided upon Olympus, who personi¬
fied the highest force of nature, consumed
vast quantities of nectar and ambrosia,
and led a pretty wild life upon Olympus
and elsewhere. In the sphere of religion
and morality, Hellene and Judean could
not come close to each other. The for¬
mer deified nature herself, the material
universe; the latter deified the Creator of
nature, the spirit informing the material
universe. The Hellene paid homage first
and foremost to external beauty and phy¬
sical strength; the Judean to inner
beauty and spiritual heroism. The Hel-
78
JEWISH HISTORY
lenic theory identified the moral with the
beautiful and the agreeable, and made
life consist of an uninterrupted series of
physical and mental pleasures. The Ju-
dean theory is permeated by the strictly
ethical notions of duty, of purity, of " holi¬
ness"; it denounces licentiousness, and
sets up as its ideal the controlling of the
passions and the infinite improvement of
the soul, not of the intellect alone, but of
the feelings as well. These differences be¬
tween the two theories of life showed
themselves in the brusque opposition in
character and customs that made the
Greeks and the Jews absolute antipodes
in many spheres of life. It cannot be
denied that in matters of the intellect,
especially in the field of philosophy and
science, not to mention art, it might have
been greatly to the advantage of the Jews
to become disciples of the Greeks. Nor
is there any doubt that the brighter as¬
pects of Hellenism would make an admir-
THE SPIRITUAL-POLITICAL PERIOD 79
able complement to Judaism. An har¬
monious blending of the Prophets with
Socrates and Plato would have produced
a many-sided, ideal Weltanschauung. The
course of historical events from the first
made such blending, which would doubt¬
less have required great sacrifices on both
sides, an impossible consummation. In
point of fact, the events were such as to
widen the abyss between the two systems.
The meeting of Judaism and Hellenism
unfortunately occurred at the very mo¬
ment when the classical Hellenes had been
supplanted by the hellenized Macedo¬
nians and Syrians, who had accepted
what were probably the worst elements of
the antique system, while appropriating
but few of the intellectual excellencies of
Greek culture. There was another
thwarting circumstance. In this epoch,
the Greeks were the political oppressors
of the Jews, outraging Jewish national
feeling through their tyranny to the same
80
JEWISH HISTORY
degree as by their immoral life they
shocked Jewish ethical feeling and Jew¬
ish chastity.
Outraged national and religious feeling
found expression in the insurrection of
the Maccabees (168 B. C. E.). The hoary
priest Mattathias and his sons fought for
the dearest and noblest treasures of Juda¬
ism. Enthusiasm begets heroism. The
Syrian-Greek yoke was thrown off, and,
after groaning under alien rule, the Per¬
sian, the Egyptian, and the Syro-Mace-
donian, for four hundred years, Judea
became an independent state. In its for¬
eign relations, the new state was secured
by the self-sacrificing courage of the first
Maccabean brothers, and from within it
was supported by the deep-sunk pillars of
the spiritual life. The rise of the three
famous parties, the Sadducees, the Phar¬
isees, and the Essenes, by no means testi¬
fies, as many would have us believe, to
national disintegration, but rather to the
THE SPIRITUAL-POLITICAL PERIOD 81
intense spiritual activity of the people
The tliree tendencies afforded opportunity
for the self-consciousness of the nation to
express itself in all its variety and force.
The unbending religious dogmatism oi
the Sadducees, the comprehensive practi¬
cal sense of the Pharisees in religious and
national concerns, the contemplative mys¬
ticism of the. Essenes, they are the most
important offshoots from the Jewish sys¬
tem as held at that time. In consequence
of the external conditions that brought
about the destruction of the Maccabean
state1 after a century's existence (165-63
1 The external causes of the downfall of the
Maccabean state, dynastic quarrels, are well
known. Much less light has been thrown upon the
inner, deeper-lying causes of the catastrophe.
These are possibly to be sought in the priestly-
political dualism of the Judean form of govern¬
ment. The ideal of a nation educated by means
of the Bible was a theocratic state, and the first
princes of the Maccabean house, acting at once as
regents and as high priests, in a measure reached
this ideal. But the attempts of other nations had
demonstrated conclusively enough that a dualistic
82
JEWISH HISTORY
B. C. E.), the Pharisee tendency, which
had proved itself the best in practice,
won the upper hand. When Jndea was
held fast in the clutches of the Roman
eagle, all hope of escape being cut off, the
far-seeing leaders of the people gained
+he firm conviction that the only trust¬
worthy support of the Jewish nation lay
in its religion. They realized that the
preservation of national unity could be
effected only by a consistent organization
of the religious law, which was to envelop
and shape the whole external life of the
people. This explains the feverish activ-
form of government cannot maintain itself per¬
manently. Sooner or later one of the two elements,
the priestly or the secular, is bound to prevail
over the other and crush it. In the Judean
realm, with its profoundly religious trend, the
priestly element obtained the ascendency, and
political ruin ensued. The priestly-political re¬
treated before the priestly-national form of gov¬
ernment. Though the religious element was pow¬
erless to preserve the state from destruction, we
shall see that it has brilliantly vindicated its ability
to keep the nation intact.
THE SPIRITUAL-POLITICAL PERIOD 83
ity of the early creators of the Mishna, of
Hillel, Shammai, and others, and it inter¬
prets also the watchword of still older
fame, " Make a fence about the Law." If
np to that moment religions usage in its
development had kept abreast of the re¬
quirements of social and individual life,
the requirements out of which it had
grown forth, it now became a national
function, and its further evolution ad¬
vanced with tremendous strides. For the
protection of the old "Mosaic Laws," a
twofold and a threefold fence of new legal
ordinances was erected about them, and
the cult became more and more compli¬
cated. But the externals of religion did
not monopolize all the forces. The moral
element in the nation was promoted with
equal vigor. Hillel, the head of the Phar¬
isee party, was not a legislator alone, he
was also a model of humane principles
and rare moral attainments.
While Judaism, in its native country
84
JEWISH HISTORY
was striving to isolate itself, and was seiz¬
ing upon all sorts of expedients to insure
this end, it readily entered into relations,
outside of Judea, with other systems of
thought, and accepted elements of the
classical culture. Instead of the violent
opposition which the Palestinian Juda¬
ism of the pre-Maccabean period, that is,
the period of strife, had offered to Hellen¬
ism, the tendency to make mutual conces¬
sions, and pave the way for an understand¬
ing between the two theories of life, as¬
serted itself in Alexandria. In the capital
city of the hellenized world the Jews
constituted one of the most important ele¬
ments of culture. According to Momm-
sen, the Jewish colony in Alexandria was
not inferior, in point of numbers, to the
Jewish population of Jerusalem, the me¬
tropolis. Influenced by Greek civiliza¬
tion, the Jews in turn exercised decisive
influence upon their heathen surround¬
ings, and introduced a new principle of
THE SPIRITUAL-POLITICAL PERIOD 85
development into the activity of the cul¬
tivated classes. The Greek translation of
the Biblical writings formed the connect¬
ing link between Judaism and Hellenism.
The " Septuaginta," the translation of
the Pentateuch, in use since the third cen¬
tury before the Christian era, had ac¬
quainted the classical world with Jewish
views and principles. The productions
of the Prophets and, in later centuries, of
the other Biblical authors, translated and
spread broadcast, acted irresistibly up¬
on the spirit of the cultivated heathen,
and granted him a glimpse into a world
of hitherto unknown notions. On this soil
sprang up the voluminous Judeo-Hellenic
literature, of which but a few, though
characteristic, specimens have descended
to us. The intermingling of Greek phil¬
osophy with Jewish religious conceptions
resulted in a new religio-philosophic doc¬
trine, with a mystic tinge, of which Philn
is the chief exponent. In Jerusalem, Ju
86
JEWISH HISTORY
daism appeared as a system of practical
ceremonies and moral principles; in Alex¬
andria, it presented itself as a complex
of abstract symbols and poetical allegor¬
ies. The Alexandrian form of Judaism
might satisfy the intellect, bnt it could
not appeal to the feelings. It may have
made Judaism accessible to the cultivated
minority, to the upper ten thousand with
philosophic training; for the masses of the
heathen people Judaism continued unin¬
telligible. Yet it was pre-eminently the
masses that were strongly possessed by
religious craying. Disappointed in their
old beliefs, they panted after a new belief,
after spiritual enlightenment. In the de¬
caying classical world, which had so long
filled out life with materialistic and in¬
tellectual interests, the moral and reli¬
gious feelings, the desire for a living faith,
for an active inspiration, had awakened,
and was growing with irresistible force.
Then, from deep out of the bosom of
THE SPIRITUAL-POLITICAL PERIOD 87
Judaism, there sprang a moral, religious
doctrine destined to allay the burning
thirst for religion, and bring about a re¬
organization of the heathen world. The
originators of Christianity stood wholly
upon the ground of Judaism. In their
teachings were reflected as well the
lofty moral principles of the Pharisee
leader as the contemplative aims of the
Essenes. But the same external circum¬
stances that had put Judaism under the
necessity of choosing a sharply-defined
practical, national policy, made it impos¬
sible for Judaism to fraternize with the
preachers of the new doctrine. Judaisn^
in fact, was compelled to put aside en¬
tirely the thought of universal missionary
activity. Instead, it had to devote its-
powers to the more pressing task of guard¬
ing the spiritual unity of a nation whose
political bonds were visibly dropping
away.
For just then the Jewish nation, gory
88
JEWISH HISTORY
with its own blood, was struggling in the
talons of the Roman eagle. Its sons
fought heroically, without thought of selt
When, finally, physical strength gave out,
their spiritual energy rose to an intenser
degree. The state was annihilated, the
nation remained alive. At the very mo¬
ment when the Temple was enwrapped in.
flames, and the Eoman legions flooded
Jerusalem, the spiritual leaders of Jewry
sat musing, busily casting about for a
means whereby, without a state, without
a capital, without a Temple, Jewish unity
might be maintained. And they solved
the difficult problem.
VII
Jhe Tertiary Talmudic or National-
Religious Period
The solution of the problem consisted
chiefly in more strictly following out the
process of isolation. In a time in which
the worship of God preached by Judaism
was rapidly spreading to all parts of the
classical world, and the fundamental prin¬
ciples of the Jewish religion were steadily
gaining appreciation and active adher¬
ence, this intense desire for seclusion may
at first glance seem curious. But the phe¬
nomenon is perfectly simple. A foremost
factor was national feeling, enhanced to a
tremendous degree at the time of the de¬
struction of Jerusalem. Lacking a polit¬
ical basis, it was transferred to religious
soil. Every tradition, every custom, how¬
ever insignificant, was cherished as a jew¬
el. Though without a state and without
90
JEWISH HISTORY
territory, tlie Jews desired to form a na¬
tion, if only a spiritual nation, complete in
itself. They considered themselves then
as before the sole guardians of the law of
God. They did not believe in a speedy
fulfilment of the prophetical promise con¬
cerning " the end of time" when all na¬
tions would be converted to God. A
scrupulous keeper of the Law, Judaism
would not hear of the compromises that
heathendom, lately entered into the bos¬
om of the faith, claimed as its due consid¬
eration. It refused to sacrifice a single
feature of its simple dogmatism, of its
essential ceremonies, such as circumcision
and Sabbath rest. Moreover, in the per¬
iod following close upon the fall of the
Temple, a part of the people still nursed
the hope of political restoration, a hope
repudiating in its totality the proclama¬
tion of quite another Messianic doctrine.
The delusion ended tragically in Bar
THE TALMUDIC PERIOD
91
Kochba's hapless rebellion (135 0. E.),
whose disastrous issue cut off tlie last
remnant of hope for the restoration of an
" earthly kingdom." Thereafter the ideal
of a spiritual state was replaced by the
ideal of a spiritual nation, rallying about
a peculiar religious banner. Jewry grew
more and more absorbed in itself. Its se¬
clusion from the rest of the world became
progressively more complete. Instinct
dictated this course as an escape from the
danger of extinction, or, at least, of stag¬
nation. It was conscious of possessing
enough vitality and energy to live for it¬
self and work out its own salvation. It
(had its spiritual interests, its peculiar
ideals, and a firm belief in the future. It
constituted an ancient order, whose pat¬
ent of nobility had been conferred upon
it in the days of the hoary past by the
Lord God Himself. Such as it was, it
could not consent to ally itself with parve¬
nus, ennobled but to-day, and yesterday
92
JEWISH HISTORY
still bowing down before " gods of silver
and gods of gold." This white-haired old
man, with a stormy past full of experi¬
ences and thought, would not mingle
with the scatter-brained crowd, would
not descend to the level of neophytes dom¬
inated by fleeting, youthful enthusiasm.
Loyally this weather-bronzed, inflexible
guardian of the Law stuck to his post—
the post entrusted to him by God Himself
—and, faithful to his duty, held fast to
the principle j'y suis, j'y reste.
As a political nation threatened by its
neighbors seeks support in its army, and
provides sufficient implements of war, so
a spiritual nation must have spiritual
weapons of defense at its command. Such
weapons were forged in great numbers,
and deposited in the vast arsenal called
the Talmud. The Talmud represents a
complicated spiritual discipline, enjoining
unconditional obedience to a higher in¬
visible power. Where discipline is con-
THE TALMUDIC PERIOD 93
cerned, questions as to the necessity for
one or another regulation are out of place.
Every regulation is necessary, if only be¬
cause it contributes to the desired end,
namely, discipline. Let no one ask, then,
to what purpose the innumerable religious
and ritual regulations, sometimes reach
ing the extreme of pettiness, to what pur¬
pose the comprehensive code in which
every step in the life of the faithful is
foreseen. The Talmudic religious provi¬
sions, all taken together, aim to put the
regimen of the nation on a strictly uni¬
form basis, so that everywhere the Jew
may be able to distinguish a brother in
faith by his peculiar mode of life. It is
a uniform with insignia, by which soldiers
of the same regiment recognize one an¬
other. Despite the vast extent of the
Jewish diaspora, the Jews formed a well-
articulated spiritual army, an invisible
" state of God " (civitas dei). Hence these
" knights of the spirit," the citizens of this
94
JEWISH HISTORY
invisible state, had to wear a distinct uni¬
form, and be governed by a suitable code
of armv regulations.
As a protection for Jewish, national
unity, which, was exposed to the greatest
danger after the downfall of the state,
there arose and developed, without aiiy
external influence whatsoever, an extraor¬
dinary dictatorship, unofficial and spirit¬
ual. The legislative activity of all the
dictators—such as, Eabbi Jochanan ben
Zakkai, Rabbi Aldba, the Hillelites, and
the Shammaites—was formulated in the
Mishna, the " oral law," which was the
substructure of the Talmud. Their activ¬
ity had a characteristic feature, which
deserves somewhat particularized de¬
scription. The laws were not laid down
arbitrarily and without ceremony. In
order to possess binding force, they re¬
quired the authoritative confirmation to
be found in the Mosaic Books. From
these, whether by logical or by forced in-
THE TALiMUDIC PERIOD
95
terpretation of the holy text, its words,
or, perchance, its letters, they had to be
derived. Each law, barring only the ori¬
ginal " traditions," the Halacha le-Moshe
mi-Sinai, was promulgated oyer the su¬
preme signature, as it were, that is, with
the authentication of a word from the
Holy Scriptures. Or it was inferred from
another law so authenticated. The elab¬
oration of every law was tEus connected
with a very complicated process of
thought, requiring both inductive and de¬
ductive reasoning, and uniting juridical
interpretation with the refinements of
casuistry. This legislation was the be¬
ginning of Talmudic science, which from
that time on, for many centuries, grow¬
ing with the ages, claimed in chief part
the intellectual activity of Jewry. The
schools and the academies worked out a
system of laws at once religious and prac¬
tical in character, which constituted, in
turn, the object of further theoretic study
96
JEWISH HISTORY
in the same schools and academies. In
the course of time, however, the means
became the end. Theoretic investigation
of the law, extending and developing to
the furthest limits, in itself, without ref¬
erence to its practical value, afforded sat¬
isfaction to the spiritual need. The re¬
sults of theorizing often attained the
binding force of law in practical life, not
because circumstances ordered it, but
simply because one or another academy,
by dint of logic or casuistry, had estab¬
lished it as law. The number of such
deductions from original and secondary
laws increased in geometric progression,
and practical life all but failed to keep
up with the theory. The " close of the
Mishna," that is, its reduction to writing,
had no daunting effect upon the zeal for
research. If anything, a new and strong
impetus was imparted to it. As up to
that time the text of the Holy Scriptures
had been made the basis of interpreta-
THE TALMUDIC PERIOD
9T
tion, giving rise to the most diverse infer¬
ences, so the rabbis now began to use the
law book recently canonized as a new
basis of interpretation, and to carry its
principles to their utmost consequences.
In this way originated first the "Pales¬
tinian Gemara." Later, when the Patri¬
archate in Palestine was stripped of its
glory by persecutions, and, in conse¬
quence, the centre of activity had to be
transferred from the Talmud academies
of Palestine to those of Babylonia, su¬
preme place and exclusive dominion were
obtained by the "Babylonian Gemara,"
put into permanent form about the year
500 C. E., a gigantic work, the result of
two hundred years of mental labor.
This busy intellectual activity was as
comprehensive as it was thoroughgoing.
Talmudic legislation, the Halacha, by no
means confines itself to religious prac¬
tices, extensive as this field is. It em¬
braces the whole range of civil and social
98
JEWISH HISTORY
life. Apart from the dietary laws, tlie
regulations for tlie festivals and the di¬
vine service, and a mass of enactments
for the shaping of daily life, the Talmud
elaborated a comprehensive and fairly
well-ordered system of civil and criminal
law, which not infrequently bears favor¬
able comparison with the famous rationi
scripice of the Romans. While proceeding
with extreme rigor and scrupulousness in
ritual matters, the Talmud is governed in
its social legislation by the noblest hu¬
manitarian principles. Doubtless this
difference of attitude can be explained by
the fact that religious norms are of very
much greater importance for a nation
than judicial regulations, which concern
themselves only with the interests of the
individual, and exercise but little influ¬
ence upon the development of the national
spirit.
The most sympathetic aspects of the
Jewish spirit in that epoch are revealed
THE TALMUDIC PERIOD 99
in the moral and poetic elements of the
Talmud, in the Agada. They are the
receptacles into which the people poured
all its sentiments, its whole soul. They
are a clear reflex of its inner world, its
feelings, hopes, ideals. The collective
work of the nation and the trend of his¬
tory have left much plainer traces in the
Agada than in the dry, methodical Ha-
lacha. In the Agada the learned jurist
and formalist appears transformed into
a sage or poet, conversing with the
people in a warm, cordial tone, about the
phenomena of nature, history, and life.
The reader is often thrown into amaze¬
ment by the depth of thought and the
loftiness of feeling manifested in the Aga¬
da. Involuntarily one pays the tribute
of reverence to its practical wisdom, to
its touching legends pervaded by the
magic breath of poesy, to the patriarchal
purity of its views. But these pearls are
not strung upon one string, they are not
100
JEWISH HISTORY
arranged in a complete system. They are
imbedded here and there, in gay variety,
in a vast mass of heterogeneous opinions
and sentiments naive at times and at
times eccentric. The reader becomes
aware of the thoughts before they are
consolidated. They are still in a fluid, mo¬
bile state, still in process of making. The
same vivacious, versatile spirit is revealed
in the Midrashim literature, directly con¬
tinuing the Agada up to the end of the
middle ages. These two species of Jew¬
ish literature, the Agada and the Mi¬
drashim, have a far greater absolute
value than the Halacha. The latter is
an official work, the former a national pro¬
duct. Like every other special legislation,
the Halacha is bound to definite condi¬
tions and times, while the Agada con¬
cerns itself with the eternal verities. The
creations of the philosophers, poets, and
moralists are more permanent than the
work of legislators.
THE TALMTJDIC PERIOD 101
Beautiful as the Agada is, and with all
its profundity, it lacks breadth. It rests
wholly on the national, not on a universal
basis. It would be vain to seek in it for
the comprehensive universalism of the
Prophets. Every lofty ideal is claimed
as exclusively Jewish. So far from bridg¬
ing over the chasm between Israel and
the other nations, knowledge and moral¬
ity served to widen it. It could not be
otherwise, there was no influx of air from
without. The national horizon grew more
and more contracted. The activities of
the people gathered intensity, but in the
same measure they lost in breadth. It
was the only result to be expected from
the course of history in those ages. Let
us try to conceive what the first five cent¬
uries of the Christian era, the centuries
during which the Talmud was built up,
meant in the life of mankind. Barbar¬
ism, darkness, and elemental outbreaks
of man's migratory instincts, illustrated
102
JEWISH HISTORY
by the " great migration of races," are
characteristic features of those centuriee.
It was a wretched transition period be¬
tween the fall of the world of antique cul¬
ture and the first germinating of a new
Christian civilization. The Orient, the
centre and hearth of Judaism, was
shrouded in impenetrable darkness. In
Palestine and in Babylonia, their two
chief seats, the Jews were surrounded by
nations that still occupied the lowest
rung of the ladder of civilization, that
had not yet risen above naive mysticism
in religion, or continued to be immersed
in superstitions of the grossest sort.
In this abysmal night of the middle
ages, the lamp of thought was fed and
guarded solely and alone by the Jews. It
is not astonishing, then, that obliviouu
of the other nations they should have
dispensed light only for themselves.
Furthermore, the circumstance must be
considered that, in the period under di»-
THE TALMUDIC PERIOD 103
cussion, the impulse to separate from
Judaism gained ground in the Christian
world. After the Council of Nicaea,
after Constantine the Great had estab¬
lished Christianity as the state-church,
the official breach between the Old Testa¬
ment and the New Testament partisans
became unavoidable.
Thus the Jews, robbed of their political
home, created a spiritual home for them¬
selves. Through the instrumentality of the
numberless religious rules which the Tal¬
mud had laid down, and which shaped the
life of the individual as well as that of the
community, they were welded into a
firmly united whole. The Jewish spirit—
national feeling and individual mental ef¬
fort alike—was absorbed in this pursuit
of unification. Head, heart, hands, all
human functions of the Jew, were brought
under complete control and cast into fixed
forms, by these five centuries of labor.
With painful exactitude, the Talmud pre-
104
JEWISH HISTORY
scribed ordinances for all the vicissitudes
of life, yet, at the same time, offered suf¬
ficient food for brain and lieart. It was
at once a religion and a science. The
Jew was equipped with all the necessa¬
ries. He could satisfy his wants from his
own store. There was no need for him
to knock at strange doors, eyen though
he had thereby profited. The consequen¬
ces of this attitude, positive as well as
negative consequences, asserted them¬
selves in the further course of Jewish
history.
vm
The Gaonic Period, or the Hegemony
of the Oriental Jews (500-980)
With the close of the Talmud, at the
beginning of the sixth century, the fever¬
ish intellectual activity abated. The
Jewish centre of gravity continued in
Babylonia. In this country, in which the
Jewish race had heard its cradle song at
the dawn of existence, and later on Ju-
dwa capta had sat and wept remembering
Zion, Judaism, after the destruction of
the second Temple and hundreds of years
of trials, was favored with a secure asy¬
lum. In the rest of the diaspora, persecu¬
tion gave the Jews no respite, but in Baby¬
lonia, under Persian rule, they lived for
some centuries comparatively free from
molestation. Indeed, they enjoyed a
measure of autonomy in internal affairs,
106
JEWISH HISTORY
under a chief who was entitled Exilarch.
(Resh-Galutha). The Law and the word
of God went forth from Babylonia for
the Jews of all lands. The Babylonian
Talmud became the authoritative code for
the Jewish people, a holy book second only
to the Bible. The intellectual calm that
supervened at the beginning of the sixth
century and lasted until the end of the
eighth century, betrayed itself in the
slackening of independent creation,
though not in the flagging of intellectual
activity in general. In the schools and
academies of Pumbeditha, ISTahardea,
and Sura, scientific work was carried on
with the same zest as before, only this
work had for its primary object the sift¬
ing and exposition of the material heaped
up by the preceding generations. This
was the province of the Sabureans and
the Geonim, whose relation to the Tal¬
mud was the same as that of the Scribes
(the Soferim) of the Second Temple to
THE GAONIC PERIOD
107
the Bible (see above, ch. vi). In the later
period, as in tlie earlier, the aim was the
capitalization of the accumulated spirit¬
ual treasures, an undertaking that gives
little occasion for movement and life, but
all the more for endurance and industry.
This intellectual balance was destroyed
by two events: the appearance of Islam
and the rise of Karaism. Islam, the sec¬
ond legitimate offspring of Judaism, was
appointed to give to religious thought in
the slumbering Orient the slight impulse
it needed to start it on its rapid career of
sovereign power. Barely emancipated
from swaddling clothes, young Hotspur
at once began to rage. He sought an
outlet for his unconquerable thirst for
action, his lust for world-dominion. The
victorious religious wars of the followers
of Allah ensued. This foreign movement
was not without significance for the fate
of the Jews. They were surrounded no
longer by heathens but by Mohammedans,
108
JEWISH HISTORY
who believed in the God of the Bible, and
through the mouth of their prophet con¬
ferred upon the Jews the honorable ap¬
pellation of " the People of the Book." In
the eighth century the wars ceased, and
the impetuous energy of the rejuvenated
Orient was diverted into quieter channels.
The Bagdad Khalifate arose, the peace¬
ful era of the growth of industry, the
sciences, and the arts was inaugurated.
Endowed with quick discernment for
every enlightening movement, the Jews
yielded to the vivifying magic of young
Arabic culture.
Partly under the influence of the Ara¬
bic tendency to split into religio-philo-
sophic sects, partly from inner causes,
Karaism sprang up in the second half of
the eighth century. Its active career be¬
gan with a vehement protest against the
Talmud as the regulator of life and
thought. It proclaimed the creators of
this vast encyclopedia to be usurpers of
THE GAONIC PERIOD 109
spiritual power, and urged a return to the
Biblical laws in their unadulterated sim¬
plicity. The weakness of its positive prin¬
ciples hindered the spread of Karaism,
keeping it forever within the narrow lim¬
its of a sect and consigning it to stagna¬
tion. What gave it vogue during the first
century of its existence was its negative
strength, its violent opposition to the Tal¬
mud, which aroused strenuous intellec¬
tual activity. For a long time it turned
Judaism away from its one-sided Talmud-
ic tendency, and opened up new avenues
of work for it. True to their motto:
" Search diligently in the Holy Scrip¬
tures," the adherents of Karaism applied
themselves to the rational study of the
Bible, which had come to be, among the
Talmudists, the object of casuistic in¬
terpretation and legendary adornment.
By the cultivation of grammar and lex¬
icography as applied to the Biblical the¬
saurus of words, they resuscitated the
110
JEWISH HISTORY
Hebrew language, which, ousted by the
Aramaic dialect, had already sunk into
oblivion. By the same means they laid
the foundation of a school of rejuvenated
poetry. In general, thought on religious
and philosophic subjects was promoted
to a higher degree by the lively discus¬
sions between them and the Talmudists.
By imperceptible steps Talmudic Juda¬
ism, influenced at once by the enlightened
Arabs and the protesting Karaites, de¬
parted from the " four ells of the Ha-
lacha," and widened its horizon. Among
the spiritual leaders of the people arose
men who occupied themselves not only
with the study of the Talmud but also
with a rational exegesis of the Bible, with
philology, poetry, philosophy. The great
Gaon Saadiah (892-942) united within
himself all strands of thought. Over and
above a large number of philological and
other writings of scientific purport, • he
created a momentous religio-philosophic
THE GAONIO PERIOD 111
system, with the aim. to clarify Judaism
and refine religions conceptions. He was
an encyclopedic thinker, a representative
of the highest Jewish culture and of
Arabic culture as well—he wrote his
works in Arabic by preference. In this
way Jewish thought gained ground more
and more in the Orient. It was in the
West, however, that it attained soon
after to the climax of its development.
Gradually the centre of gravity of
Jewry shifted from Asia Minor to West¬
ern Europe. Beginning with the sixth
centuiy, the sparsely sown Jewish popula¬
tion of Occidental Europe increased rap¬
idly in numbers. In Italy, Byzantium,
France, and Yisigothic Spain, important
Jewish communities were formed. The
medieval intolerance of the Church,
though neither so widespread nor so vio¬
lent as it later became, suffered its first
outbreak in that early century. The per¬
secutions of the Jews by the Yisigothic
112
JEWISH HISTORY
kings of Spain and the Bisliops Avitus of
Clermont and Agobard in France (sixth to
the ninth century) were the prelude to the
more systematic and the more "Bloody cru¬
elties of subsequent days. The insignifi¬
cant numbers of the European Jews and
the insecurity of their condition stood in
the way of forming an intellectual centre
of their own. They were compelled to
acknowledge the spiritual supremacy of
their Oriental brethren in faith. With the
beginning of the tenth century the situa¬
tion underwent a change. Arabic civiliza¬
tion, which had penetrated to Spain in
previous centuries, brought about a radi¬
cal transformation in the character of the
country. The realm of the fanatic Visi¬
goths, half barbarous and wholly averse
to the light of progress, changed into the
prosperous and civilized Khalifate of the
Ommeyyades. Thither the best forces of
Oriental Jewry transferred themselves.
With the growth of the Jewish popula-
THE GAONIC PERIOD
113
tion in Arabic Spain and the strength¬
ening of its communal organization, the
spiritual centre of the Jewish people
gradually established itself in Spain. The
academies of Sura and Pumbeditha yield¬
ed first place to the high schools of Cor¬
dova and Toledo.
The Jewry of the East resigned the na¬
tional hegemony to the Jewry of the
West. The Geonim withdrew in favor of
the Rabbis. After centuries of seclusion,
the Jewish spirit once more asserted it¬
self, and enjoyed a period of efflorescence.
The process of national growth became
more complex, more varied.
IX
The Rabbinic-Philosophical Period,
or the Hegemony of the Spanish
Jews (980-1492)
The five centuries marked at their be¬
ginning by the rise of Arabic-Jewish civ¬
ilization in Spain and at their end by the
banishment of the Jews from Spain (980-
1492), offer the Jewish historian an
abundance of culture manifestations and
intellectual movements so luxuriant that
it is well-nigh impossible to gather them
up in one formula. The monotony for¬
merly prevailing in Jewish national life,
both in its external and in its internal re¬
lations, was succeeded by almost gaily
checkered variety. Swept along by the
movement towards enlightenment that
dominated their surroundings, the Jews
of Arabic Spain threw themselves into
RABBINIC-PHILOSOPHICAL PERIOD 115
energetic work in all the spheres of life
and thought. While they had political
ground more or less firm under their feet,
and for the most part enjoyed peace and
liberty, the Jews in the Christian lands
of Europe stood upon yolcanic soil, every
moment threatening to swallow them up.
Exposed constantly to persecutions, they
lived more or less isolated, and devoted
themselves to one-sided though intense
intellectual activity. Sombre shadows
and streaks of bright light alternate with
each other in this period. In its second
half, the clouds massed themselves heav¬
ily upon the darkening horizon. Even the
"privileged" Spanish Jews suffered an
untoward change in their affairs at the
beginning of the thirteenth century: grad¬
ually they were withdrawn from under
the sovereignty of the Arabs, and made
subject to the power of the Catholic mon-
archs. They became thenceforward the
equal partners of their brethren in faith.
116
JEWISH HISTORY
in the rest of Europe. All without dis¬
tinction had a share in the spiritual mar¬
tyrdom which is the greenest bayleaf in
the crown of Jewish history. To think
and to suffer became the watchword of
the whole nation.
At first, as we have said, a consider¬
able portion of the Jewish people en¬
joyed the happy possibility of thinking.
This was during the classical epoch of the
Arabic-Jewish Renaissance, which pre¬
ceded the Italian Renaissance by four
centuries. There is a fundamental dif¬
ference between the two Renaissance per¬
iods: the earlier one was signalized by a
re-birth of the sciences and of philosophy,
the later one pre-eminently of the arts
and of literature. The eleventh and
twelfth centuries marked the meridian
of the intellectual development of medi¬
eval Judaism. As once, in Alexandria, the
union of Judaic with Hellenic culture
brought in its train a superabundance of
RABBINIC-rHILOSOPHICAL PERIOD 117
new ideas of a universal character, so
again tlie amalgamation, on Spanish soil,
of Jewish culture with Arabic gave rise
to rich intellectual results, more lasting
and fruitful than the Alexandrian, inas¬
much as, in spite of their universal
character, they did not contravene the
national spirit. The Jewish people
dropped its misanthropy and its leaning
toward isolation. The Jews entered all
sorts of careers: by the side of influential
and cultivated statesmen, such as Chasdai
ibn Shaprut and Samuel Hanagid, at the
courts of the Khalifs, stood a brilliant
group of grammarians, poets, and philos¬
ophers, like Jonah ibn Ganach, Solomon
Gabirol, and Moses ibn Ezra. The phil¬
osophic-critical scepticism of Abraham
ibn Ezra co-existed in peace and har¬
mony with the philosophic-poetic enthusi¬
asm of Jehuda Halevi. The study of
medicine, mathematics, physics, and as¬
tronomy went hand in hand with the
118 JEWISH HISTORY
study of the Talmud, which, though it
may not have occupied the first place
with the Spanish Jews of this time, by
no means disappeared, as witness
the compendium by Alphassi. Unusual
breadth and fulness of the spiritual life
is the distinction of the epoch. This vari¬
ety of mental traits combined in a mar¬
velous union to form the great personal¬
ity of Maimonides, the crown of a glorious
period. With one " Strong Hand," this
intellectual giant brought order out of the
Talmudic chaos, which at his word was
transformed into a symmetrical, legal sys¬
tem; with the other, he " guided the Per¬
plexed" through the realm of faith and
knowledge. For rationalistic clarity and
breadth of view no counterpart to the re-
ligio-philosophic doctrine which he form¬
ulated can be found in the whole
extent of medieval literature. The main
feature of the philosophy of Maimon¬
ides and of the systems based upon it
RABBINIC-PHILOSOPHICAL PERIOD 119
is rationalism, not a dry, scholastic, ab¬
stract rationalism, but a living rational¬
ism, embracing the whole field of the
most exalted psychic phenomena. It is
not philosophy pure and simple, but re¬
ligious philosophy, an harmonization,
more or less felicitous, of the postulates
of reason with the dogmas of faith. It is
reason mitigated by faith, and faith reg¬
ulated by reason. In the darkness of the
middle ages, when the Romish Church
impregnated religion with the crudest
superstitions, going so far as to forbid its
adherents to read the Bible, and when the
greatest philosopher representatives of
the Church, like Albertus Magnus, would
have rejected offhand, as a childish fancy
or, indeed, as an heretical chimera, any
attempt to rescue the lower classes of the
people from their wretched state of spir¬
itual servitude—in a time like this, the
truly majestic spectacle Is presented of
a philosophy declaring war on supersti-
120
JEWISH HISTORY
tion, and setting out to purify the reli¬
gious notions of the people.
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 circumstan¬
ces were too grievous, and in sombreness
their inner life matched their outer es¬
tate. Their horizon was as contracted
as the streets of the Jewries in which
they were penned. The crusades (be¬
ginning in 1096) clearly showed the Jews
of France and Germany what sentiments
their neighbors cherished towards them.
They were the first returns which Chris¬
tianity paid the Jewish people for its old-
time teaching of religion. The descend¬
ants of the " chosen people," the origina¬
tors of the Bible, were condemned to tor¬
ture 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,
IiABBlNIC-FHILOSOrHICAL PERIOD 121
the groans of massacred communities,
the serried ranks of martyrs, the ever-
haunting fear of the morrow—should
fail to leave traces in the char¬
acter of Judaism? The Jewish people
realized its imminent danger. It convul¬
sively held fast to its precious relics,
clung to the pillars of its religion, which
it regarded as the only asylum. The Jew¬
ish 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 de¬
generated into the extreme of scholastic
pedantry, the lot of every branch of sci¬
ence 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 com¬
mentaries on the Bible and the Talmud.
122
JEWISH HISTORY
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 be¬
ing the intellectual bias of the age, a so¬
ber, 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, Ro-
Jceach, 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 en¬
vironment. 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 them¬
selves in psychologic analysis, there now
fall upon our ear the melancholy, heart¬
rending strains of synagogue poetry, the
harrowing outcries that forced them-
RABBINIC-PHILOSOPHICAL PERIOD 123
selves 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 Pro¬
vence 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 fre¬
quented in great numbers by students
from all countries. At these universities
the teachers of philosophy, medicine,
124
JEWISH HISTORY
and otlier branches of science were
for the most part Jews. The rationalis¬
tic philosophy of the Spanish Jews
was there proclaimed ex cathedra. The
Tibbonides translated all the more im¬
portant works of the Jewish thinkers of
Spain from Arabic into Hebrew. The
Kimchis devoted themselves to gramma¬
tical 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 Provencal population. Con¬
science freed from intellectual trammels
began to revolt against the oppression ex¬
ercised by the Roman clergy. Through
the Albigensian heresy, Innocent III,
founder of the papal power, had his at¬
tention 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,
RABBINIC-PHILOSOPHICAL PERIOD 125
and, on tlie ruins of a noble civilization,
the Dominican Inquisition raged with, all
its horrors (1213).
Thenceforward the Catholic Church de¬
voted herself to a hostile watch upon the
Jews. Either she persecuted them di¬
rectly through her Inquisition, or indi¬
rectly 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 fol-
126
JEWISH HISTORY
lowed by dearly purchased permission to
return, by renewed restrictions, persecu¬
tions, and oppressions—these were the
measures that characterized the treat¬
ment of the Jews in France until their
final expulsion (1394). In Germany the
Jews were not so much hated as despised.
They were servi camera?, serfs of the
state, and as such had to pay oppressive
taxes. Besides, they were limited to the
meanest trades and to usury and ped¬
dling. 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 resplend¬
ent they were with spiritual light, what
exalted virtues, what lofty heroism they
harbored! In those gloomy, tumbledown
Jew houses, intellectual endeavor was at
RABBINIC-PHILOSOPHICAL PERIOD 127
white heat. The torch of faith blazed
clear in them, and on the pure domestic
hearth played a gentle flame. In the ab¬
ject, dishonored son of the Ghetto was
hidden an intellectual giant. In his nerve¬
less 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 diauntlessness
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,"
128
JEWISH HISTORY
he did not yield, did not purchase life
by disgraceful treason. With invincible
courage he put his head under the execu¬
tioner's axe, and breathed forth his he¬
roic 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 Cath¬
olic 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 under¬
went a calamitous change. The kings
and the upper ten thousand were, indeed,
favorably disposed toward them. At
RABBINIC-PHILOSOPHICAL PERIOD 129
tlie courts of Castile and Aragon, the
Jews were actiye 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 terri¬
fic 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 re¬
spects he stood above the rabble pursu¬
ing him, above its very leaders, the cler¬
ics. 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
130
JEWISH HISTORY
of the previous age, a mystical tendency
appeared in literature. The Kabbala,
with its mist-shrouded symbolism, so
grateful to the feelings and the imagina¬
tion, chimed in better than rationalistic
philosophy with the depressed humor un¬
der which the greater part of the Jews
were then laboring. Another force an¬
tagonistic to rationalistic philosophy was
the Rabbinism transplanted from France
and Germany. The controversy between
Eabbinism and philosophy, which dragged
itself through three-quarters of a century
(1232-1305), ended in the formal triumph
of Rabbinism. However, philosophic activ¬
ity 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 Rabbin¬
ism, Asheri, Rashba, Isaac ben Sheshet,
loomed up the philosophers, Gersonides
(Ralbag), Kreskas, and Albo, and a long
line of Kabbalists, beginning with Nach-
RABBINIC-PHILOSOPHICAL PERIOD 131
manides and Moses de Leon, the compiler
of the Zohar, and ending with the anony¬
mous authors of the mysterious "Kana
and Pelia."
The times grew less and less propitious.
Catholicism steadily gained ground in
Spain. The scowling Dominican put for¬
ward his claim upon the Jewish soul with
vehement emphasis, and made every ef¬
fort 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 con¬
version methods of the Dominican monk
were of a most insinuating kind—he usu¬
ally began with a public religious dispu¬
tation. Unfortunately, the Jews were ex¬
perts in the art of debate, and too often
by their bold replies covered the self-suffi¬
cient dignitaries of Borne with confusion.
The Jews should have known, from bitter
experience, that such boldness would not
be passed over silently. From sumptuous
132
JEWISH HISTORY
debating hall to Dominican prison and
scaffold was but a sliort step. In 1391,
one of these worthy soul-catchers, Bish¬
op Ferdinando Martinez, set the fanatical
mob of Seville on the Jews, and not with¬
out 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 unchal¬
lenged supremacy in the Pyrenean Pen¬
insula. On the ruins of the enlightened
culture of the Arabs, Ferdinand the Cath¬
olic and Isabella of Castile reared the re¬
actionary government of medieval Rome.
The Inquisition was introduced (1480).
Torquemada presided as high priest over
RABBINIC-PHILOSOPHICAL, PERIOD 133
tlie rites attending tlie human sacrifices.
Ad gloriam ecclesice, the whole of Spain
was illuminated. Everywhere the funer¬
al 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 tor¬
ture 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-Mysticae Period, or
the Hegemony of the German-
Polish Jews (1492-1789)
The expulsion from Spain was a stun¬
ning 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 con¬
tinued in unmitigated brutality for the
Jews. If anything, the life of the Jews
had become more unendurable than be¬
fore. What, indeed, had the much-
vaunted modern age to offer them? In
the ranks of the humanistic movement
Reuchlin alone stood forth prominently
THE RABBINIC-MYSTICAL PERIOD 135
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 man¬
ners. The conflict raging in the bosom
of the Church and setting her own chil¬
dren by the ears, was yet insufficient to
divert her maternal care from her ce un¬
believing" stepchildren. In Spain and
Portugal, stakes continued to burn two
centuries longer for the benefit of the
Marranos, the false Christians. In Ger-
136
JEWISH HISTORY
many and Austria, the Jews were kept
in tlie same condition of servitude as be¬
fore. Their economic circumstances were
appalling. They were forced to emigrate
en masse to Poland, which offered the ad¬
herents 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 ex-
THE RABBINIC-MYSTICAL PERIOD 137
claimed: " How can you call Ferdinand of
Aragon a wise king, tlie 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 Eu¬
ropean courts in retaliation for the brutal
tortures inflicted upon his people. With
the generosity of a Maecenas, he assem¬
bled Jewish scholars and poets, and sur¬
rounded himself with a sunlit atmosphere
of intellectuality and talent. All other
Jewish communities looked up to that of
Constantinople. Now and again its rab¬
bis played the part of Patriarchs of the
synagogue. To this commanding posi¬
tion the rabbis of Palestine especially
were inclined to lay claim. They even
attempted to restore the Patriarchate,
138
JEWISH HISTORY
and the famous controversy between Ja¬
cob Berab and Levi ben Cliabib regard¬
ing 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 Guadal¬
quivir, 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 memor¬
ies 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
THE RABBINIC-MYSTICAL PERIOD 139
was seized by torturing thirst for political
resurrection. Such melancholy feelings
and vehement outbursts found expres¬
sion 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 Jew¬
ish spirit. It vanquished the heart of the
learned Joseph Karo, who had brought
Rabbinism to its climax by the compil¬
ation 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 Is¬
rael. He sealed his faith in his prophecy
with death at the stake (1532). The Mar-
ranos beyond the Pyrenees and the un¬
fortunate Jews of Italy, who, in the second
half of the sixteenth century had to bear
the brunt of papal fanaticism, on the in-
l-i-0
JEWISH HISTORY
crease since tlie Reformation, were kept
in a state of constant excitement by this
Messianic doctrine, with its obscure stir¬
rings of hope. A mournful national feel¬
ing pervades the Jewish literature of the
time. Recollections of torments endured
enflamed all hearts. A series of chron¬
icles 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 strong¬
est bond of spiritual union. The papal
index librorum proTiibitorum was impo¬
tent in the face of the all-pervading pro¬
paganda 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 succeed-
THE RABBINIC-MYSTICAL PERIOD 141
ed 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 devel¬
opment in culture and industry, and
granted an asylum to the persecuted and
abandoned of all countries. By the thous¬
ands the harassed Ghetto sons, especially
the Marranos from Spain and Portugal,
migrated to Holland. Amsterdam be¬
came a second Cordova. The intellectual
life was quickened. Freedom from re¬
straint tended to break down the national
exclusivism of the Jew, and intercourse
with his liberal surroundings varied his
mental pursuits. Rabbinism, the Kabba-
la, philosophy, national poetry—they all
liad their prominent representatives in
Holland. These manifold tendencies
were united in the literary activity of
Manasseh ben Israel, a scholar of exten¬
sive, though not intensive, encyclopedic
attainments. Free thought and religioue
142
JEWISH HISTORY
rationalism were embodied in Uriel Acos-
ta. To a still liiglier degree they were
illustrated in the theory of life expounded
by the immortal author of the " Theolo-
gico-Political Tractate " (1640-1677). This
advanced state of culture in Holland did
not fail to react upon the neighboring
countries. Under the impulse of enthu¬
siasm for the Bible Puritan England un¬
der Cromwell opened its portals to the
Jews. In Italy, in the dank atmosphere
of rabbinical dialectics and morbid mys¬
ticism, 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 in-
THE RABBINIC-MYSTICAL PERIOD 143
adequate substitute for Spain, if only for
tlie reason that but a tiny fraction of the
Jews liad found shelter in either. The
Jewish national centre must perforce
coincide with the numerical centre of the
dispersed people, in which, moreover, con¬
ditions must grant Jews the possibility of
living undisturbed in closely compacted
masses, and of perfecting a well-knit or¬
ganization of social and individual life.
Outside of Spain these conditions were
fulfilled only by Poland, which gradually,
beginning with the sixteenth century, as¬
sumed the hegemony over the Jewry of
the world. This marks the displacement
of the Sephardic (Spanish, in a broader
sense, Romanic) element, and the suprem¬
acy of the Ashkenazic (German-Polish)
element.
Poland had been a resort for Jewish
immigrants from Germany since the out¬
break of the Crusades, until, in the six¬
teenth century, it rose to the position of
144
JEWISH HISTORY
a Jewish centre of the first magnitude.
As the merchant middle class, the Jews
were protected and advanced by the
kings and the Szlachta. The consequent
security of their position induced so rapid
a growth of the Jewish element that in
a little while the Jews of Poland out¬
numbered those of the old Jewish settle¬
ments in Occidental Europe. The numer¬
ous privileges granted the Jews, by Bol-
eslaus of Kalish (1246), Kasimir the
Great (1347-1370), Witowt (1388), Kasi¬
mir TV (1447), and some of their succes¬
sors, fortified their position in the extend¬
ed territory covered by Poland, Lithua¬
nia, and the Ukraine. Their peculiar cir¬
cumstances in Poland left an impress up¬
on their inner life. An intense mental
activity was called forth. This activity
can be traced back to German beginnings,
though at the same time it is made up of
many original elements. For a space
Rabbinism monopolized the intellectual
THE RABBINIC-MYSTICAL PERIOD 145
endeavors of the Polish Jews. The rabbi
of Cracow, Moses Isserles, and the rabbi
of Ostrog, Solomon Luria (d. 1572), dis¬
puted first place with the foremost rab¬
binical authorities of other countries.
Their decisions and circular letters re¬
garding religious and legal questions
were accorded binding force. Associates
and successors of theirs founded Talmud
academies throughout the country, and
large numbers of students attended them.
Commentators upon the Talmud and ex¬
pounders of classical works in Jew¬
ish theological literature appeared in
shoals. Jewish printing establishments
in Cracow and Lublin were assiduous ia
turning out a mass of writings, which,
spread the fame of the Polish rabbis to
the remotest communities. The large
autonomy enjoyed by the Polish, and Lith¬
uanian Jews conferred executive power
upon rabbinical legislation. The Kahal,
or Jewish communal government, to a cer-
146
JEWISH HISTORY
tain degree invested with judicial and ad¬
ministrative competence, could not do
without tlie guiding hand of the rabbis
as interpreters of the law. The guild of
rabbis, on their side, chose a " college of
judges," with fairly extensive jurisdiction,
from among their own members. The
organization of the Rabbinical Conferen¬
ces, or the " Synods of the Four Coun¬
tries," formed the keystone of this intri¬
cate social-spiritual hierarchy. The com¬
prehensive inner autonomy and the sys¬
tem of Talmud academies (Yeshiboth)
that covered the whole of Poland re¬
mind one of the brilliant days of the
Exilarchate and the Babylonia of the Ge-
onim. One element was lacking, there
was no versatile, commanding thinker
like Saadia Gaon. Secular knowledge
and philosophy were under the ban in
Poland. Rabbinism absorbed the whole
output of intellectual energy. As little
as the Poles resembled the Arabs of the
THE RABBINIC-MYSTICAL PERIOD 147
" golden age," did the Polish Jews resem¬
ble their brethren in faith in the Orient
at Saadia's time or in the Spain of Gabirol
and Maimonides. Isolation and clannish-
ness were inevitable in view of the char¬
acter of the Christian environment and
the almost insuperable barriers raised
between the classes of Polish society. But
it was this exclusiveness that gave pecu¬
liar stability and completeness to the life
of the Jew as an individual and as a
member of Jewish society, and it was the
same exclusiveness that afforded oppor¬
tunity for the development of a sharply
defined culture, for its fixation to the
point of resisting violent shocks and be¬
yond the danger point of extinction
through foreign invasion.
The fateful year 1648 formed a turning
point in the history of the Polish Jews,
as in the history of the countries belong¬
ing to the Polish crown. The Cossack
butcheries and wars of extermination of
148
JEWISH HISTORY
1648-1658 were tlie same for the Polish.
Jews that the Crusades, the Black Death,
and all the other occasions for carnage
had been for the Jews of Western Europe.
It seemed as though history desired to
avoid the reproach of partiality, and
hastened to mete out even-handed justice
by apportioning the same measure of woe
to the Jews of Poland as to the Jews of
Western Europe. But the Polish Jews
were prepared to accept the questionable
gift from the hands of history. They had
mounted that eminence of spiritual stabil¬
ity on which suffering loses the power to
weaken its victim, but, on the contrary,
endues him with strength. More than
ever they shrank into their shell. They
shut themselves up more completely in
their inner world, and became morally
dulled against the persecutions, the bitter
humiliations, the deep scorn, which their
surroundings visited upon them. The
Polish Jew gradually accustomed himself
THE RABBINIC-MYSTICAL PERIOD 149
to his pitiable condition. He hardly knew
that life might be other than it was. That
the Polish lord to whom he was a means
of entertainment might treat him with
a trace of respect, or that his neighbors,
the middle class merchant, the German
guild member, and the Little Russian
peasant, might cherish kindly feelings
toward him, he could not conceive as a
possibility. Seeing himself surrounded
by enemies, he took precautions to fortify
his camp, not so much to protect himself
against hostile assaults from without—
they were inevitable—as to paralyze the
disastrous consequences of such assaults
in his inner world. To compass this
end he brought into play all the means
suggested by his exceptional position be¬
fore the law and by his own peculiar so¬
cial constitution. The Kahal, the auton¬
omous rabbinical administration of com¬
munal affairs, more and more assumed
the character of an inner dictatorship.
150
JEWISH HISTORY
Jewish society was persistently kept un¬
der the discipline of rigid principles. In
many affairs the synagogue attained the
position of a court of final appeal. The
people were united, or rather packed, into
a solid mass by purely mechanical pro¬
cesses—by pressure from without, and by
drawing tight a noose from within. Be¬
sides this social factor tending to consol¬
idate the Jewish people into a separate
union, an intellectual lever was applied to
produce the same result. Rabbinism em¬
ployed the mystical as its adjutant. The
one exercised control oyer all minds, the
other oyer all hearts. The growth of
mysticism was fostered both by the un¬
fortunate conditions under which the
Polish Jews endured existence and by the
Messianic movements which made their
appearance among the Jews of other
countries.
In the second half of the seventeenth
century, mysticism reached its zenith in
THE RABBINIC-MYSTICAL PERIOD 151
Turkey, the country in which had stood
the cradle of the "practical Kabbala."
The teachings of Ari, Vital, and the
school established by them spread like
"wildfire. Messianic extravagances intox¬
icated the baited and persecuted people.
In Smyrna appeared the false Messiah,
Sabbatai Zebi. As by magic he attracted
to himself a tremendous company of ad¬
herents in the East and in the West. For
a quarter of a century (1650-1676), he kept
the Jewish communities everywhere in a
state of quivering suspense.
The harassed people tossed to and fro
like a fever patient, and raved about po¬
litical re-birth. Its delirious visions still
further heated its agitated blood. It
came to its senses but slowly. Not even
the apostasy and death of Sabbatai Zebi
sufficed to sober all his followers. Un¬
der the guise of a symbolic faith in a
Messiah, many of them, publicly or se¬
cretly, continued the propaganda for his
doctrines.
152
JEWISH HISTORY
This propaganda prepared the fertile
soil from which, in tlie eighteenth cent¬
ury, shot np Messianic systems, tending
to split Judaism into sects. Nowhere did
the mystical teachings evoke so ready a
response as in Poland, the very centre of
Judaism. At first an ally of the rabbin¬
ical school, mysticism grown passionate
and uncontrollable now and again acted
as the violent opponent of Rabbinism.
Secret devotion to the Sabbatian doc¬
trines, which had made their home in Po¬
land, sometimes led to such extremes in
dogma and ethics that the rabbis could
not contain themselves. Chayyim Ma-
lach, Judah Chassid, and other Galician
mystics, in the second decade of the eigh¬
teenth century brought down upon them¬
selves a rabbinical decree of excommuni¬
cation. The mystical tendency was the
precursor of the heretical half-Christian
sect of Frankists, who ventured so far as
to lift a hand against the fundamentals
THE RABBINIC-MYSTICAL PERIOD 153
of Judaism: they rejected tlie Talmud in
favor of the Zohar (1756-1773). At the
same time a much more profound move¬
ment, instinct with greater vitality, made
its appearance among the Polish-Jewish
masses, a movement rooted in their social
and spiritual organization. The wretched,
debased condition of the average Jew,
conjoined with the traditions of the Kab-
bala and the excrescences of Rabbinism,
created a foothold for Chassidic teaching.
Chassidisin replaced Talmudic ratiocin¬
ation by exalted religious sentiment. By
the force of enthusiasm for faith, it drew
its adherents together into a firmly welded
unit in contrast with Rabbinism, which
sought the same goal by the aid of the
formal law. Scenting danger, the rab¬
binical hierarchy declared war upon the
Kabbala. Emden opposed Eibesehtitz,
the Polish Sabbatians and Frankists were
fought to the death, the Wilna Gaon or¬
ganized a campaign against the Chassi-
154
JEWISH HISTORY
dim. Too late! Rabbinism was too old,
too arid, to tone down the impulsive out¬
breaks of passion among the people. In
their religious exaltation the masses were
looking for an elixir. They were languish¬
ing, not for light to illumine the reason,
but for warmth to set the heart aglow.
They desired to lose themselves in ecstat¬
ic self-renunciation. Ohassidism and its
necessary dependence upon the Zaddik
offered the masses the means of this for-
getfulness of self through faith. They
were the medium through which the
people saw the world in a rosy light, and
the consequences following upon their
prevalence were seen in a marked intensi¬
fication of Jewish exclusiveness.
The same aloofness characterizes th«
Jews of the rest of the eighteenth cent¬
ury diaspora. Wherever, as in Germany,
Austria, and Italy, Jews were settled in
considerable numbers, they were separ¬
ated from their surroundings by forbid-
THE RABBINIC-MYSTICAL PERIOD 155
ding Ghetto walls. On the whole, no dif¬
ference is noticeable between conditions
affecting Jews in one country and those
in another. Everywhere they were merely
tolerated, everywhere oppressed and hu¬
miliated. The bloody persecutions of the
middle ages were replaced By the burden
of the exceptional laws, which in prac¬
tice degraded the Jews socially to an in¬
ferior race, to citizens of a subordinate
degree. The consequences were uniformly
the same in all countries: spiritual isola¬
tion and a morbid religious mood. Dur¬
ing the first half of the " century of rea¬
son," Jewry presented the appearance of
an exhausted wanderer, heavily dragging
himself on his way, his consciousness
clouded, his trend of thought obviously
anti-rationalistic. At the very moment
in which Europe was beginning to realize
its medieval errors and repent of them,
and the era of universal ideals of human¬
ity was dawning, Judaism raised barri-
156
JEWISH HISTORY
cades between itself and the world at
large. Elijah. Gaon and Israel Besht
were the contemporaries of Voltaire and
Rousseau. Apparently there was no pos¬
sibility of establishing communication
between these two diametrically opposed
worlds. But history is a magician. Not
far from the Poland enveloped in medi¬
eval darkness, the morning light of a
new life was breaking upon slumbering
Jewry in German lands. New voices
made themselves heard, reverberating
like an echo to the appeal issued by the
" great century " in behalf of a spiritual
and social regeneration of mankind.
XI
The Modern Period of Enlight¬
enment
(The Nineteenth Century)
Two phenomena signalized the begin¬
ning of the latest period in Jewish his¬
tory: the lofty activity of Mendelssohn
and the occurrence of the great French
Revolution. The man stands for the spir¬
itual emancipation of the Jews, the move¬
ment for their political emancipation. At
bottom, these two phenomena were by
no means the ultimate causes of the social
and spiritual regeneration of the Jewish
people. They were only the products of
the more general causes that had effected
a similar regeneration in all the peoples
of Western Europe. The new currents,
the abandonment of effete intellectual and
social forms, the substitution of juster
158
JEWISH HISTORY
and more energetic principles, the protest
against superstition and despotism—all
these traits had a common origin, the re¬
suscitation of reason and free thought,
which dominated all minds without ask¬
ing whether they belonged to Jew or to
Christian. It might seem that the reju¬
venation of the Jews had been consum¬
mated more rapidly than the rejuvenation
of the other peoples. The latter had had
two centuries, the period elapsing since
the middle ages, that is, the period be¬
tween the Reformation and the great Rev¬
olution, in which to prepare for a more
rational and a more humane conduct of
life. As for the Jews, their middle ages
began much later, and ended later, almost
on the eve of 1789, so that the revolution
in their minds and their mode of life had
to accomplish itself hastily, under the ur-
gence of swiftly crowding events, by the
omission of intermediate stages. But it
must be taken into consideration that long
THE PERIOD OF ENLIGHTENMENT 159
before, in the Judeo-Hellenic and in the
Arabic-Spanisli period, the Jews had
passed through their " century of rea¬
son." In spite of the intervening ages of
suffering and gloom, the faculty of as¬
similating new principles had survived.
For the descendants of Philo and Mai-
monides the rationalistic movement of the
eighteenth century was in part a repeti¬
tion of a well-known historical process.
They had had the benefit of a similar
course of studies before, and, therefore,
had no need to cram on the eve of the
final examination.
In point of fact, the transformation in
the life of the Jews did take place with
extraordinary swiftness. It was hastened
in France by the principles of the Kevo-
lution and the proclamation of the civil
equality of Jews with the other citizens.
In Germany, however, it advanced upon
purely spiritual lines. Mendelssohn and
Lessing, the heralds of spiritual reform,
160
JEWISH HISTORY
who exposed old prejudices, carried on
their labors at a time in whicli the Jews
still stood beyond the pale of the law, a
condition which it did not occur to Fred¬
erick II, " the philosopher upon the
throne," to improve. A whole generation
was destined to pass before the civil
emancipation of the German Jews was ac¬
complished. Meantime their spiritual
emancipation proceeded apace, without
help from the ruling powers. A time so
early as the end of the eighteenth century
found the German Jews in a position to
keep step with their Christian fellow-
citizens in cultural progress. Enlight¬
ened Jews formed close connections with
enlightened Christians, and joined them
in the universal concerns of mankind as
confederates espousing the same funda¬
mental principles. If they renounced
some of their religious and national tra¬
ditions, it was by no means out of com¬
plaisance for their neighbors. They were
THE PERIOD OF ENLIGHTENMENT 161
guided solely and alone by those universal
principles that forced non-Jews as well
as Jews to reject many traditions as in¬
compatible with reason and conscience.
Non-Jews and Jews alike yielded, them¬
selves up to the fresh inspiration of the
time, and permitted themselves to be car¬
ried along by the universal transforming
movement. Mendelssohn himself, circum¬
spect and wise, did not move off from re¬
ligious national ground. But the. gener¬
ation after him abandoned his position for
that of universal humanity, or, better,
German nationality. His successors in¬
toxicated themselves with deep draughts
of the marvelous poetry created by the
magic of Goethe and Schiller. They per¬
mitted themselves to be rushed, along by
the liberty doctrines of 1789, they plunged
head over heels into the vortex of roman¬
ticism, and took an active part in the con¬
spicuous movements of Europe, political,
social, and literary, as witness Borne,
Heine, and their fellow-combatants.
162
JEWISH HISTORY
The excitement soon evaporated. When
the noise of the liberty loye-feasts had
subsided, when the cruel reaction (after
1814) had settled heavily upon the Eu¬
rope of the nineteenth century, and God's
earth had again become the arena of
those agents of darkness whom dreamers
had thought buried forever beneath the
ruins of the old order, then the German
Jews, or such of them as thought, came to
their senses. The more intelligent Jew¬
ish circles realized that, in devotion to
the German national movement, they
had completely neglected their own
people. Yet their people, too, had needs,
practical or spiritual, had its peculiar na¬
tional sphere of activity, circumscribed,
indeed, by the larger sphere of mankind's
activities as by a concentric circle, but
by no means merged into it. To atone
for their sin, thinking Jews retraced their
steps. They took in hand the transform¬
ing of Jewish inner life, the simplification
THE PERIOD OF ENLIGHTENMENT 163
of the extremely complicated Jewish, ritu¬
al, the remodeling of pedagogic methods,
and, above all, the cultivation of the ex¬
tended fields of Jewish science, whose
head and front is Jewish historical re¬
search in all its vastness and detail.
Heine's friend, Zunz, laid the cornerstone
of Jewish science in the second decade of
the nineteenth century. His work was
taken up by a goodly company of zealous
and able builders occupied for half a cen¬
tury with the task of rearing the proud
edifice of a scientific historical literature,
in which national self-consciousness was
sheltered and fostered. At the very
height of this reforming and literary ac¬
tivity, German Jewry was overwhelmed
by the civil emancipation of 1848. Again
a stirring movement drew them into sym¬
pathy with a great general cause, but this
time without drawing them away from
Jewish national interests. Cultural and
civil assimilation was accomplished as an
164
JEWISH HISTORY
inner compelling necessity, as a natural
outcome of living. But spiritual assimil¬
ation, in tlie sense of a merging of Juda¬
ism in foreign elements, was earnestly re¬
pudiated by the noblest representatives
of Judaism. It was their ideal that uni¬
versal activity and national activity
should be pursued to the prejudice of
neither, certainly not to the exclusion of
one or the other, but in perfect harmony
with each other. In point of fact, it may
be asserted that, in spite of a frequent
tendency to go to the one or the other
extreme, the two currents, the universal
and the national, co-exist within Ger¬
man Jewry, and there is no fear of their
uniting, they run parallel with each other.
The Jewish genius is versatile. Without
hurt to itself it can be active in all sorts
of careers: in politics and in civil life, in
parliament and on the lecture platform,
in all branches of science and departments
of literature, in every one of the chambers
THE PERIOD OF ENLIGHTENMENT 165
of mankind's intellectual laboratory. At
the same time it has its domestic hearth,
its national sanctuary; it has its sphere
of original work and its self-conscious¬
ness, its national interests and spiritual
ideals rooted in the past of the Jeiw. By
the side of a Lassalle, a Lasker, and a
Marx towers a Riesser, a Geiger, a Graetz.
The leveling process unavoidably connect¬
ed with widespread culture, so far from
causing spiritual desolation in German
Judaism, has, on the contrary, furnished
redundant proof that even under present
conditions, so unfavorable to what is in¬
dividual and original, the Jewish people
has preserved its vitality to the full.
An analogous movement stirred the
other countries of Western Europe—
France, Italy, and England. The politi¬
cal emancipation of the Jews was accom¬
plished earlier in them than in Germany.
The reconstruction of the inner life, too,
proceeded more quietly and regularly,
166
JEWISH HISTORY
without leaps and bounds, and religious
reform established itself by degrees. Yet
even here, where the Jewish contingent
was insignificant, the spiritual physiog¬
nomy of the Jews maintained its typical
character. In these countries, as in Ger¬
many, the Jew assimilated European
culture with all its advantages and its
drawbacks. He was active on diplomatic
fields, he devoted himself to economic
investigations, he produced intellectual
creations of all kinds—first and last he
felt himself to be a citizen of his country.
None the less he was a loyal son of the
Jewish people considered as a spirit¬
ual people with an appointed task. Cre-
mieux, Beaconsfield, Luzzatti are counter¬
balanced by Salvador, Frank, Munk, Beg-
gio, and Montefiore. All the good qual¬
ities and the shortcomings distinctive of
the civilization of modern times adhere
to the Jew. But at its worst modern civil¬
ization has not succeeded in extinguish-
THE PERIOD OF ENLIGHTENMENT 167
ing the national spirit in Jewry. The na¬
tional spirit continues to live in the
people, and it is this spirit that quickens
the people. Tttie genius of Jewish his¬
tory, as in centuries gone by, holds watch
over the sons of the "eternal people"
scattered to all ends of the earth. West-
European Jewry may say of itself, with¬
out presumption: Cogito ergo sum.
Russian Jewry, the Jewry that had
been Polish, and that is counted by the
millions, might, if necessary, prove its
existence by even more tangible marks
than Occidental Jewry. To begin with,
the centre of gravity of the Jewish nation
lies in Russia, whose Jews not only out¬
number those of the rest of Europe, but
continue to live in a compact mass. Be¬
sides, they have preserved the original
Jewish culture and their traditional phy¬
siognomy to a higher degree than the
Jews of other countries. The develop¬
ment of the Russian Jews took a course
168
JEWISH HISTORY
very different from tliat of the Jews of
tlie West. This difference was conditioned
by the tremendous contrast between Bus-
sian culture and West-European culture,
and by the change which the external
circumstances of Jews outside of Bussia
underwent during the modern period.
The admission of the Polish provinces in¬
to the Eussian Empire at the end of the
eighteenth century found the numerous
Jewish population in an almost medieval
condition, the same condition in which
the non-Jewish population of Eussian Po¬
land was at that time. The Polish re¬
gime, as we saw above, had isolated the
Jews alike in civil and spiritual relations.
The new order did not break down the
barriers. The masses of Jews cooped up
in the " Pale of Settlement" were strong
only by reason of their inner unity, their
firmly established patriarchal organiza¬
tion. The bulwark of Kabbinism and the
citadel of Chassidism protected them
THE PERIOD OF ENLIGHTENMENT 169
against alien influences. They guarded
their isolation jealously. True to the law
of inertia, they would not allow the priv¬
ilege of isolation to be wrested from
them. They did not care to step beyond
the ramparts. Why, indeed, should the
Jews have quitted their fortress, if out¬
side of their walls they could expect noth¬
ing but scorn and blows? The unfortun¬
ates encaged in the sinister Pale of Set¬
tlement could have been lured out of their
exclusive position only by complete civil
emancipation combined with a higher de¬
gree of culture than had been attained by
Kussian society, an impossible set of cir¬
cumstances in the first half of the nine¬
teenth century. The legislative measures
of the time, in so far as they relate to
the Jews, breathe the spirit of police sur¬
veillance rather than of enlightenment
and humanity. To civilizing and intel¬
lectual influences from without the way
was equally barred. Yet all this watch-
170
JEWISH HISTORY
fulness was of no avail. Nothing could
prevent the liberty principles espoused
by the Jews of Western Europe from
being smuggled into the Pale, to leaven
the sad, serried masses. A sluggish pro¬
cess of fermentation set in, and culmin¬
ated in the literary activity of Isaac Beer
Levinsohn and of the Wilna reformers of
the second and fourth decades of the nine¬
teenth century. They were the harbingers
of approaching spring.
When spring finally came (after 1855),
and the sun sent down his genial rays
upon the wretched Jewry of Russia, life
and activity began to appear at once, es¬
pecially in the upper strata. As in Ger¬
many, so in Russia spiritual emancipation
preceded political emancipation. Still
shorn almost entirely of the elementary
rights of citizens, the Russian Jews nev¬
ertheless followed their ideal prompt¬
ings, and participated enthusiastically in
the movement for enlightenment which
THE PERIOD OF ENLIGHTENMENT 171
at that time held tlie noblest of the Rus¬
sians enthralled. In a considerable por¬
tion of the Russian Jewish community a
process of culture regeneration began, an
eager throwing off of outworn forms of
life and thought, a swift adoption of hu¬
mane principles. Jewish young men
crowded into the secular schools, in which
they came in close contact with their
Christian contemporaries. Influenced by
their new companions, they gave them¬
selves up to Russian national movements,
often at the cost of renunciation of
self. Some of them, indeed, in one-sided
aspiration strove to become, not Russians,
but men. The influence exercised by liter¬
ature was more moderate than that of the
schools. Rabbinic and Chassidistic liter¬
ature, on the point of dying out as it was,
abandoned the field to the literature of en¬
lightenment in the Hebrew language, a
literature of somewhat primitive charac¬
ter. It consisted chiefly of naive novels
172
JEWISH HISTORY
and of didactic writings of publicists, and
lacked the solid scientific and historical
element that forms the crown of Western
Jewish literature. It is indisputable, how¬
ever, that it exerted an educational influ¬
ence. Besides, it possesses the merit of
having resuscitated one of the most valu¬
able of Jewish national possessions, the
Hebrew language in its purity, which in
Russia alone has become a pliant instru¬
ment of literary expression. A still great¬
er field was reserved for the Jewish-Rus¬
sian literature that arose in the " sixties."
It was called into being in order to pre¬
sent a vivid and true picture of the social
and spiritual interests of the Jews. Pro¬
ceeding from discussions of current polit¬
ical topics, this literature gradually wid¬
ened its limits so as to include Jewish his¬
tory, Jewish science, and the portrayal of
Jewish life, and more and more ap¬
proached the character of a normal Eu¬
ropean literature. All this was in the
THE PERIOD OF ENLIGHTENMENT 173
making, and the most importantwwork had
not yet begun. The lower strata of the
people had not been touched by the fresh
air. In time, if all had gone well, they,
too, would have had their day. And if
the minority of the Jewish people in the
West in a short span of time brought
forth so many notable workers in so many
departments of life and thought, how
much superior would be the culture
achievements of the Eastern majority!
How vigorously the mighty mental forces
latent in Russian Jewry would develop
when their advance was no longer ob¬
structed by all sorts of obstacles, and;
they could be applied to every sphere of
political, social, and intellectual life!
Nothing of all this came to pass; ex¬
actly the opposite happened. Not only
were the barriers in the way of a pros¬
perous, free development of Jewry not
removed, but fresh hindrances without
number were multiplied. Some spectre
174
JEWISH HISTORY
of the middle ages, some power of dark¬
ness, put brakes upon the wheel of his¬
tory. It first appeared in the West, un¬
der the name anti-Semitism, among the
dregs of European society. But in its
earliest abode it was and is still met with
an abrupt rebuff on the part of the most
intelligent circles, those whom even the
present age of decadence has not succeed¬
ed in robbing of belief in lofty moral
ideals. Anti-Semitism in the West is in
anima vili. Its cult is confined to a cer¬
tain party, which enjoys a rather scan¬
dalous reputation. But there are countries
in which this power of darkness, in the
coarser form of Judophobia,1 has cast its
baleful spell upon the most influential
members of society and upon the press.
There it has ripened noxious fruit.
Mocking at the exalted ideals and the
ethical traditions of religious and think¬
ing mankind, Judophobia shamelessly
1 As anti-Semitism is called in Russia.
THE PERIOD OF ENLIGHTENMENT 175
professes the dogma of misanthropy. Its
propaganda is bringing about the moral
ruin of an immature society, not yet con¬
firmed in ethical or truly religious prin¬
ciples. Upon its victims, the Jews, it has
the same effect as the misfortunes of the
middle ages, which were meted out to our
hoary people with overflowing measure,
and against which it learnt to assume an
armor of steel. The recent severe trials
are having the same result as the perse¬
cutions of former days: they do not weak¬
en, on the contrary, they invigorate the
Jewish spirit, they spur on to thought,
they stimulate the pulse of the people.
" The hammer shivers glass,
But iron by its blows is forged." 1
The historical process Jewry has un¬
dergone repeatedly, it must undergo once
again. But now, too, in this blasting
time of confusion and dispersion, of daily
torture and the horrors of international
1 Pushkin.
176
JEWISH HISTORY
conflict, " the keeper of Israel slumbereth
not and sleepeth not." Tlie Jewish, spirit
is on the alert. It is ever purging and
tempering itself in the furnace of suffer¬
ing. The people which justly bears the
name of the veteran of history withdraws
and falls into a revery. It is not a nar¬
row-minded fanatic's flight from the
world, but the concentrated thought of a
mourner. Jewry is absorbed in contem¬
plation of its great, unparalleled past.
More than ever it is now in need of the
teachings of its past, of the moral sup¬
port and the prudent counsels of its his¬
tory, its four thousand years of life
crowded with checkered experiences.
XII
The Teachings op Jewish History
Let us return now to the starting point
of our discussion, and endeavor to estab¬
lish the thoughts and lessons to be de¬
duced from the course of Jewish history.
Above all, Jewish history possesses the
student with the conviction that Jewry
at all times, even in the period of polit¬
ical independence, was pre-eminently a
spiritual nation, and a spiritual nation it
continues to be in our own days, too.
Furthermore, it inspires him with the
belief that Jewry, being a spiritual en¬
tity, cannot suffer annihilation: the body,
the mold, may be destroyed, the spirit is
immortal. Bereft of country and dis¬
persed as it is, the Jewish nation lives,
and will go on living, because a creative
principle permeates it, a principle that
178
JEWISH HISTORY
is the root of its being and an indigenous
product of its history. This principle
consists first in a sum of definite religious,
moral, or philosophic ideals, whose expon¬
ent at all times was the Jewish people,
either in its totality, or in the person of
its most prominent representatives. Next,
this principle consists in a sum of histor¬
ical memories, recollections of what in
the course of many centuries the Jewish
people experienced, thought, and felt, in
the depths of its being. Finally, it con¬
sists in the consciousness that true Juda¬
ism, which has accomplished great things
for humanity in the past, has not yet
played out its part, and, therefore, may
not perish. In short, the Jewish people
lives because it contains a living soul
which refuses to separate from its in¬
tegument, and cannot be forced out of it
by heavy trials and misfortunes, such as
would unfailingly inflict mortal injury
upon less sturdy organisms.
TEACHINGS OF JEWISH HISTORY 179
This self-consciousness is the source
from which the suffering Jewish soul
draws comfort. History speaks to it con¬
stantly through the mouth of the great
apostle who went forth from the midst of
Israel eighteen hundred years ago: " Call
to remembrance the former days, in
which, after ye were enlightened, ye en¬
dured a great conflict of sufferings;
partly, being made a gazing-stock both by
reproaches and afflictions; and partly, be¬
coming partakers with them that were so
used. . . . Cast not away therefore your
boldness, which hath great recompense
of reward" (Epistle to the Hebrews, x,
32 34, 35).
Jewish history, moreover, arouses in
the Jew the desire to work unceasingly
at the task of perfecting himself. To
direct his attention to his glorious past,
to the resplendent intellectual feats of
his ancestors, to their masterly skill in
thinking and suffering, does not lull him
180
JEWISH HISTORY
to sleep, does not awaken a dullard's com¬
placency or hollow self-conceit. On the
contrary, it makes exacting demands up¬
on him. Jewish history admonishes the
Jews: "Noblesse oblige. The privilege
of belonging to a people to whom the
honorable title of the ( veteran of history'
has been conceded, puts serious responsi¬
bilities on your shoulders. You must de¬
monstrate that you are worthy of your
heroic past. The descendants of teachers
of religion and martyrs of the faith dare
not be insignificant, not to say wicked.
If the long centuries of wandering and
misery have inoculated you with faults,
extirpate them in the name of the exalted
moral ideals whose bearers you were com¬
missioned to be. If, in the course of
time, elements out of harmony with your
essential being have fastened upon your
mind, cast them out, purify yourselves.
In all places and at all times, in joy and
and in sorrow, you must aim to live for
TEACHINGS OF JEWISH HISTORY 181
the higher, the spiritual interests. But
never may you deem yourselves perfect.
If you become faithless to these sacred
principles, you sever the bonds that unite
you with the most vital elements of your
past, with the first cause of your national
existence."
The final lesson to be learned is that in
the sunny days of mankind's history,
in which reason, justice, and philanthrop¬
ic instinct had the upper hand, the Jews
steadfastly made common cause with the
other nations. Hand in hand with them,
they trod the path leading to perfection.
But in the dark days, during the reign of
rude force, prejudice, and passion, of
which they were the first victims, the
Jews retired from the world, withdrew in¬
to their shell, to await better days. Union
with mankind at large, on the basis of the
spiritual and the intellectual, the goal set
up by the Jewish Prophets in their sub¬
lime vision of the future (Isaiah, ch. ii,
182
JEWISH HISTORY
and. Micah, ck. iv), is the ultimate ideal
of Judaism's noblest votaries. Will their
radiant hope ever attain to realization?
If ever it should be realized,—and it is
incumbent upon us to believe that it will,
—not a slight part of the merits involved
will be due to Jewish history. We have
adverted to the lofty moral and human¬
itarian significance of Jewish history in
its role as conciliator. With regard to
one-half of Jewish history, this concilia¬
tory power is even now a well-established
fact. The first part of Jewish history,
the Biblical part, is a source from which,
for many centuries, millions of human be¬
ings belonging to the most diverse de¬
nominations have derived instruction,
solace, and inspiration. It is read with
devotion by Christians in both hemi¬
spheres, in their houses and their temples.
Its heroes have long ago become types,
incarnations of great ideas. The events
it relates serve as living ethical formulas.
TEACHINGS OF JEWISH HISTORY 183
But a time will come—perhaps it is not
very far off—when the second half of
Jewish history, the record of the two
thousand years of the Jewish people's
life after the Biblical period, will be ac¬
corded the same treatment. This latter
part of Jewish history is not yet known,
and many, in the thrall of prejudice, do
not wish to know it. But ere long it will
be known and appreciated. For the
thinking portion of mankind it will be
a source of uplifting moral and philosoph¬
ical teaching. The thousand years' mar¬
tyrdom of the Jewish people, its unbrok¬
en pilgrimage, its tragic fate, its teachers
of religion, its martyrs, philosophers,
champions, this whole epic will in days
to come sink deep into the memory of
men. It will speak to the heart and the
conscience of men, not merely to their
curious mind. It will secure respect for
the silvery hair of the Jewish people, a
people of thinkers and sufferers. It will
184
JEWISH HISTORY
dispense consolation to the afflicted, and
by its examples of spiritual steadfastness
and self-denial encourage martyrs in their
devotion. It is our firm conviction that
the time is approaching In which the
second half of Jewish history will be to
the noblest part of tKinlcing humanity
what its first half has long been to be¬
lieving humanity, a source of sublime
moral truths. In this sense, Jewish his¬
tory in its entirety is the pledge of the
spiritual union between the Jews and the
rest of the nations.
YALE
YALE UNIVERSITY
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