THE RENASCENCE 
 
 OF 
 
 HEBREW LITERATURE
 
 THE RENASCENCE 
 
 OF 
 
 HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 (1743-1885) 
 
 N 
 
 BY 
 
 NAHUM SLOUSCHZ 
 
 Translated from the French 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY or AMERICA 
 1909
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1909. 
 
 BY 
 THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA
 
 TRANSLATOR'S NOTE 
 
 The modern chapter in the history of Hebrew 
 literature herewith presented to English readers 
 was written by Dr. Nahum Slouschz as his thesis 
 for the doctorate at the University of Paris, and 
 published in book form in 1902. A few years 
 later (1906-1907), the author himself put his 
 Essay into Hebrew, and it was brought out as a 
 publication of the Tushlyah, under the title Korot 
 ha-Safrut ha-'Ibrit ha-Hadashah. The Hebrew 
 is not, however, a mere translation of the French 
 book. The material in the latter was revised and 
 extended, and the presentation was considerably 
 changed, in view of the different attitude toward 
 the subject naturally taken by Hebrew readers, as 
 compared with a Western public, Jewish or non- 
 Jewish. 
 
 The present English translation, which has had 
 the benefit of the author's revision, purports to be 
 a rendition from the French. But the Hebrew 
 recasting of the book has been consulted at almost 
 every point, and the Hebrew works quoted by Dr. 
 
 5
 
 TRANSLATOR'S NOTE 
 
 Slouschz were resorted to directly, though, as far 
 as seemed practicable, the translator paid regard 
 to the author's conception and Occidentalization 
 of the Hebrew passages revealed in his translation 
 of them into French. 
 
 HENRIETTA SZOLD.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 CHAPTER I 18 
 
 In Italy Moses Hayyim Luzzatto 
 CHAPTER II 29 
 
 In Germany The Meassefim 
 CHAPTER III 51 
 
 In Poland and Austria The Galician School 
 CHAPTER IV 93 
 
 In Lithuania Humanism in Russia 
 CHAPTER V 124 
 
 The Romantic Movement Abraham Mapu 
 CHAPTER VI 159 
 
 The Emancipation Movement The Realists 
 CHAPTER VII 172 
 
 The Conflict with Rabbinism Judah Leon Gordon 
 CHAPTER VIII 206 
 
 Reformers and Conservatives The Two Extremes 
 CHAPTER IX 224 
 
 The National Progressive Movement Perez Smolenskin 
 CHAPTER X 237 
 
 The Contributors to Ha-Shahar 
 CHAPTER XI 248 
 
 The Novels of Smolenskin 
 CHAPTER XII 271 
 
 Contemporaneous Literature 
 
 CONCLUSION 284 
 
 INDEX 289 
 
 7
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 It was long believed that Hebrew had no place 
 among the modern languages as a literary vehicle. 
 The circumstance that the Jews of Western coun- 
 tries had given up the use of their national lan- 
 guage outside of the synagogue was not calculated 
 to discredit the belief. The Hebrew, it was gen- 
 erally held, had once been alive, but now it be- 
 longed among the de?d languages, in the same 
 sense as the Greek and the Latin. And when from 
 time to time some new work in Hebrew, or even a 
 periodical publication, reached a library, the cata- 
 loguer classified it with theologic and Rabbinic 
 treatises, without taking the trouble to obtain in- 
 formation as to the subject of the book or the pur- 
 pose of the journal. In point of fact, in the large 
 majority of cases they were far enough removed 
 from Rabbinic controversy. 
 
 Sometimes it happened that one or another He- 
 braist was overcome with astonishment at the sight 
 of a Hebrew translation of a modern author. And 
 he stopped at that. He never went so far as to 
 
 9
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 enable himself to pass judgment upon it from the 
 critical or the literary point of view. To what 
 purpose? he would ask himself. Hebrew has been 
 dead these many centuries, and to use it is an 
 anachronism. He considered it only a curiosity of 
 literature, literary sleight of hand, nothing more. 
 
 The bare possibility of the existence of a modern 
 literature in Hebrew seemed so strange, so im- 
 probable, that the best-informed circles refused to 
 entertain the notion seriously perhaps not without 
 some semblance of a reason for their incredulity. 
 
 The history of the development of modern He- 
 brew literature, its character, the extraordinary 
 conditions fostering it, its very existence, are of a 
 sort to surprise one who has not kept in touch with 
 the internal struggles, the intellectual currents that 
 have agitated the Judaism of Eastern Europe in 
 the course of the past century. 
 
 So far from deserving a reputation for casuistry, 
 modern Hebrew literature is, if anything, distinctly 
 rationalistic in character. It is anti-dogmatic and 
 anti-Rabbinic. Its avowed aim is to enlighten the 
 Jewish masses that have remained faithful to re- 
 ligious tradition, and to interpenetrate the Jewish 
 communities with the conceptions of modern life. 
 
 Since the French Revolution the ghetto has pro- 
 
 10
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 duced valiant champions of every good cause, poli- 
 ticians, legislators, poets, who have taken part in 
 all the movements of their day. But it has also 
 given birth to a legion of men of action sprung 
 from the people and remaining with the people, 
 who, in the name of liberty of conscience and in the 
 name of science, fought the same battles upon the 
 field of traditional Judaism that the others were 
 fighting outside. 
 
 A whole school of literary humanists undertook 
 the work of emancipating the Jewish masses, and 
 pursued it for several generations with admirable 
 zeal. Hebrew became ?n excellent instrument of 
 propaganda in their hands. Thanks to their efforts, 
 the language of the prophets, inarticulate for 
 nearly two thousand years, was developed to a 
 striking degree of perfection. It was shown to 
 be a flexible medium, varied enough to serve as 
 the vehicle for any modern idea. 
 
 The great wonder is that this modern literature 
 in Hebrew made itself without teachers, without 
 patrons, without academies and literary salons, 
 without encouragement in any shape or form. Nor 
 is that all. It was impeded by inconceivable obsta- 
 cles, ranging from the fraudulence of an absurd 
 censorship to the persecution of fanatics. In such 
 
 2 11
 
 circumstances, only the purest idealism, and the 
 most disinterested, could have ventured to enter 
 the lists, and could have come off the victor. 
 
 While the emancipated Jew of the Occident re- 
 placed Hebrew by the vernacular of his adopted 
 country; while the Rabbis were distrustful of what- 
 ever is not religion; and rich patrons refused to 
 support a literature that had not the entree of good 
 society, while these held aloof, the Maskil ("the 
 intellectual ") of the small provincial town, the 
 Polish vagabond Mehabber (" author "), despised 
 and unknown, often a martyr to his conviction, 
 who devoted himself heart, soul, and might to 
 maintaining honorably the literary traditions of 
 Hebrew, he alone remained faithful to what has 
 been the true mission of the Bible language since 
 its beginnings. 
 
 It is a renewal of the ancient literary impulse 
 of the humble, the disinherited, whence first sprang 
 the Bible. It is a repetition of the phenomenon 
 of the popular prophet-orators, reappearing in 
 modern Hebrew garb. 
 
 The return to the language and the ideas of an 
 eventful past marks a decisive stage in the per- 
 turbed career of the Jewish people. It indicates 
 the re-awakening of national feeling. 
 
 12
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The history of modern Hebrew literature thus 
 forms an extremely instructive page in the history 
 of the Jewish people. It is especially interesting 
 from the point of view of social psychology, fur- 
 nishing, as it does, valuable documents upon the 
 course taken by new ideas in impregnating sur- 
 roundings that are characteristically obdurate to- 
 ward intellectual suggestions from without. The 
 century-long struggle between free-thinking and 
 blind faith, between common sense and absurdity 
 consecrated by age and exalted by suffering, reveals 
 an intense social life, a continual clashing of ideas 
 and sentiments. 
 
 It is a literature that offers us the grievous 
 spectacle of poets and writers who are constantly 
 expressing their anxiety lest it disappear with them, 
 and yet devote themselves unremittingly to its 
 cultivation, with all the ardor of despair. At their 
 side, however, we see optimistic dreamers, worthy 
 disciples of the prophets. In the midst of the ruin 
 of all that made the past glorious, and in the face 
 of the downfall of cherished hopes, they lose not 
 an iota of their faith in the future of their people, 
 in its speedy regeneration. 
 
 What we have before us is the issue of the su- 
 preme internal struggle that engaged the great 
 
 13
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 masses of the Jews torn from their moorings by 
 the disquietude of modern existence. A fervent 
 desire for a better social life took possession of all 
 minds. The conviction that the eternal people can- 
 not disappear seems to have regained ground and 
 to have been stronger than ever, and the current 
 again set in the direction of auto-emancipation. 
 
 It is the true literature of the Jewish people 
 that we are called upon to examine, the product of 
 the ghetto, the reflex of its psychic states, the ex- 
 pression of its misery, its suffering, and also its 
 hope. The people of the Bible is not dead, and in 
 its very own language we must seek the true Jewish 
 spirit, the national soul. 
 
 Let not the reader expect to find perfection of 
 form, pure art, in its often monotonous lyric 
 poetry, or its prolix, didactic novels. The authors 
 of the ghetto felt too much, suffered too much, 
 were too much under the dominance of a life of 
 misery, a semi-Asiatic, semi-mediaeval regime, to 
 have had heart for the cultivation of mere form. 
 Does the Song of Songs fall short of being a liter- 
 ary document of the first order because it does not 
 equal the dramas of Euripides in artistic complete- 
 ness? It is conceded that the proper aim of the 
 artist is art, finished and perfect art, but to the 
 
 14
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 philosopher, the social investigator, the important 
 thing is the advance of ideas. 
 
 The object of the writer in presenting this essay 
 to the public was not to presume to give a detailed 
 exposition of the development of modern Hebrew 
 literature, accomplishing itself under the most com- 
 plex of social and political conditions and in a 
 social milieu totally unknown to the public at large. 
 That would have led too far. It was not even 
 possible to give an adequate idea of all the authors 
 requiring mention within the limited frame adopted 
 perforce. Besides, nothing or almost nothing ex- 
 isted in the way of monographs that might have 
 facilitated the task. 1 
 
 1 In point of fact, all that can be cited are the following: the 
 admirable biographical essays on Mapu, Smolenskin, etc., by Reu- 
 ben Brainin ; those of S. Bernfeld on Rapoport, etc., these two crit- 
 ics writing in Hebrew; and the sketch of our subject by M. Klaus- 
 ner, in the Russian language. Besides, mention may be made of 
 an article in the Revue des Revues, by M. Ludvipol, of Paris. 
 In spite of the diversity of schools and the conditions giving rise 
 to them, which are here to be treated for the first time from the 
 point of view of a modern history of literature, the reader will 
 readily convince himself that the subject lacks neither coherence 
 nor unity. It is superfluous to say that in this first attempt at a 
 history of modern Hebrew literature, the grouping of movements 
 and schools borrowed from the Occidental literatures Is bound to 
 have only relative value. 
 
 15
 
 The aim set up by the present writer is merely 
 to follow up the various stages through which 
 modern Hebrew literature has passed, to deduce 
 and specify the general principles that have 
 moulded it, and analyze the literary and social 
 value of the works produced by the representative 
 writers of the epoch embraced. 
 
 In a word, the object is to show how Hebrew 
 poetry was emancipated from the tradition of the 
 Middle Ages under the influence of the Italian 
 humanists, 2 how it underwent a process of modern- 
 ization, and served as the model for a literary re- 
 nascence in Germany and Austria. In these two 
 countries Hebrew letters were enriched and per- 
 fected from the point of view of form as well as 
 content. Finally, due to favorable circumstances, 
 the Hebrew language captured its place as the lit- 
 erary and national language among the Jews of 
 Poland, and particularly of Lithuania. 
 
 In this progress eastward, Hebrew literature has 
 never been faithless to its mission. Two currents 
 of ideas, more or less distinct, characterize it. On 
 the one hand is the intellectual emancipation of the 
 
 s Especially Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, in his " Glory to the 
 Righteous ", published in 1743, which has been made the point of 
 departure in the present inquiry. 
 
 16
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Jewish masses, which had fallen into ignorance, 
 and, as a consequence, the conflict with prejudice 
 and Rabbinic dogmatism ; and, on the other hand, 
 the awakening of national sentiment and Jewish 
 solidarity. These two currents of ideas finally flow 
 together in contemporaneous literature, in the crea- 
 tion of the national Jewish movement in its various 
 modifications. During a period of about twenty 
 years, since 1882, the course of events has forced 
 the national emancipation of the Jewish masses 
 upon their educated leaders. By the same token, 
 Hebrew has been assigned a dominating position 
 in all vital questions agitating Judaism, and there 
 has been brought about a literary development that 
 is truly significant. 
 
 17
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 IN ITALY 
 
 MOSES HAYYIM LUZZATTO 
 
 In its precise sense, the term Renascence cannot 
 be applied to the movement that asserted itself in 
 Hebrew literature at the end of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, as little as the term Decadence can be ap- 
 plied to the epoch preceding it. 
 
 Long before Dante and Boccaccio, as far back 
 as the eleventh century, Hebrew literature, particu- 
 larly in Spain, and to a certain extent also in the 
 Provence, had reached a degree of development 
 unknown in European languages during the Middle 
 Ages. 
 
 Though the persecutions toward the end of the 
 fourteenth and the fifteenth century crushed the 
 Jewish communities in Spain and in the Provence, 
 they yet did not succeed in annihilating completely 
 the intellectual traditions of the Spanish and 
 French Jews. Remnants of Jewish science and 
 Jewish literature were carried by the refugees into 
 
 18
 
 MOSES HAYYIM LUZZATTO 
 
 the countries of their adoption, and in the Nether- 
 lands, in Turkey, even in Palestine, schools were 
 founded after a short interval. 
 
 But a literary revival was possible only in Italy. 
 Elsewhere, in the backward countries of the North 
 and the East, the Jews, smarting from blows 
 recently inflicted, withdrew within themselves. 
 They took refuge in the most sombre of mysti- 
 cisms, or, at least, in dogmatism of the narrowest 
 kind. The Italian Jewish communities, thanks to 
 the more bearable conditions prevailing around 
 them, were in a position to carry on the literary 
 traditions of Jewish Spain. In Italy thinkers 
 arose, and writers, and poets. There was Azariah 
 dei Rossi, the father of historical criticism; Messer 
 Leon, the subtle philosopher; Elijah Levita, the 
 grammarian; Leon of Modena, the keen-witted 
 rationalist; Joseph Delmedigo, of encyclopedic 
 mind; the Frances brothers, both poets, who com- 
 bated mysticism; and many others too numerous 
 to mention. 1 These, together with a few stray 
 writers in Turkey and the Netherlands, imparted a 
 certain degree of distinction to the Hebrew litera- 
 ture of the sixteenth and the seventeenth century. 
 
 1 For the greater part of these writers, see Gustav Karpeles, 
 Geschichte der jiidischen Liter atur, 2 voh., Berlin, 1886. 
 
 19
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 Heirs to the Spanish traditions, they nevertheless 
 were inclined to oppose the spirit and particularly 
 the rules of Arabic prosody, which had put mana- 
 cles upon Hebrew poetry. Their efforts were di- 
 rected to the end of introducing new literary forms 
 and new concepts into Hebrew literature. 
 
 They did not meet with notable success. The 
 greater number of Jewish men of letters, whose 
 knowledge of foreign literatures was meagre, were 
 destined to remain in the thrall of the Middle 
 Ages until a much later time. As to the unlettered, 
 they preferred to make use of the vernacular, 
 which presented fewer difficulties than the Hebrew. 
 
 The task of tearing asunder the chains that 
 hampered the evolution of Hebrew in a modern 
 sense devolved upon an Italian Jew of amazing 
 talent. He became the true, the sovereign inau- 
 gurator of the Hebrew Renascence. 
 
 Moses Hayyim Luzzatto was born at Padua, 
 in 1707. He was descended from a family cele- 
 brated for the Rabbinic scholars and the writers it 
 had given to Judaism, a celebrity which it has con- 
 tinued to earn for itself down to our own day. 
 
 His education was strictly Rabbinic, consisting 
 chiefly of the study of the Talmud, under the di- 
 rection of a Polish teacher, for the Polish Rabbis 
 
 20
 
 MOSES HAYYIM LUZZATTO 
 
 had attained to a position of great esteem as early 
 as Luzzatto's day. He lost little time in initiating 
 his pupil into the mysteries of the Kabbalah, and 
 so the early childhood years of our poet were a 
 sad time spent in the stifling atmosphere of the 
 ghetto. Happily for him, it was an Italian ghetto, 
 whence secular learning had not been banished 
 completely. 
 
 While pursuing his religious studies, the child 
 became acquainted with the Hebrew poetry of the 
 Middle Ages and with the Italian literature of his 
 own time. In the latter accomplishment lies his 
 superiority to the Hebrew scholars of other 
 countries, who were shut off from every outside 
 influence, and held fast to obsolete forms and 
 ideas. 
 
 From early youth Luzzatto showed remark- 
 able aptitude for poetry. At the age of seventeen 
 he composed a drama in verse entitled " Samson 
 and Delilah ". A little later he published a work 
 on prosody, Leshon Limmudim (" The Language 
 of Learners", Mantua, 1727), and dedicated it 
 to his Polish teacher. The young man then decided 
 to break with the poetry of the Middle Ages, 
 which hampered the development of the Hebrew 
 language. His allegorical drama, Migdal l Oz 
 
 21
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 ("The Tower of Victory") , 2 inspired by the Pastor 
 fido of Guarini, was the first token of this reform. 
 Its style is marked by an elegance and vividness 
 not attained since the close of the Bible. In spite 
 of its prolixity and the absence of all dramatic 
 action, it continues to this day to make its appeal 
 to the fancy of the literary. A poetic breath ani- 
 mates it, and it is characterized by the artistic 
 taste that is one of the distinctions of its author. 
 
 It was a new world that Migdal ( Oz, by its 
 laudation of rural life, disclosed to the votaries of 
 a literature the most enlightened representatives of 
 which refused to see in the Song of Songs anything 
 but religious symbolism, so far had their apprecia- 
 tion of reality and nature degenerated. 
 
 In imitation of the pastorals of his time, though 
 it may be with more genuine feeling, Luzzatto 
 sings the praises of the shepherd's life : 
 
 " How beautiful, how sweet, is the lot of the young shepherd 
 of flocks ! Between the folds he leads his sheep, now walking, 
 now running hither and thither. Poor though he is, he is full of 
 joy. His countenance reflects the gladness of his heart. In the 
 shade of trees he reposes, and apprehends no danger. Poor 
 though he is, yet he is happy 
 
 2 Though it was widely circulated in manuscript, Migdal 'Oz 
 did not appear in print until 1837, at Leipsic, edited by M. H. 
 Letteris. 
 
 22
 
 MOSES HAYYIM LUZZATTO 
 
 " The maiden who charms his eyes, and attracts his desire, in 
 whom his heart has pleasure, returns his affection with respon- 
 sive gladness. They know naught but delight neither separation 
 nor obstacle affrights them. They sport together, they enjoy 
 their happiness, with none to disturb. When weariness steals 
 over him, he forgets his toil on her bosom; the light of her 
 countenance swiftly banishes all thought of his travail. Poor 
 though he is, yet he is happy!" (Act III, scene i.) 
 
 Alas, this call to a more natural life, after 
 centuries of physical degeneration and suppression 
 of all feeling for nature, could not be understood, 
 nor even taken seriously, in surroundings in which 
 air, sunlight, the very right to live, had been re- 
 fused or measured out penuriously. The drama 
 remained in manuscript, and did not become known 
 to the public at large. 
 
 It was Luzzatto's chief work that exercised de- 
 cisive influence on the development of Hebrew 
 literature. La-Yesharim Tehillah (" Glory to the 
 Righteous"), another allegorical drama, which 
 appeared in 1743, is considered a model of its kind 
 until this day. It introduced a new epoch, the 
 modern epoch, in the history of Hebrew literature. 
 The master stands revealed by every touch. Every- 
 thing betrays his skill the style, at once elegant, 
 significant, and precise, recalling the pure style of 
 the Bible, the fresh and glowing figures of speech,
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 the original poetic inspiration, and the thought, 
 which bears the imprint of a profound philosophy 
 and a high moral sense, and is free from all trace 
 of mystical exaggeration. 
 
 From the point of view of dramatic art, the 
 piece is not of the highest interest. The subject, 
 purely moral and didactic, gives no opportunity 
 for a serious study of character, and, as in all 
 allegorical pieces, the dramatic action is weak. 
 
 The theme was not new. Even in Hebrew and 
 before Luzzatto, it had been treated several times. 
 It is the struggle between Justice and Injustice, 
 between Truth and Falsehood. The allegorical 
 personages who take part in the action are, ar- 
 rayed on one side, Yosher (Righteousness) aided 
 by Sekel (Reason) and Mishpat (Justice), and, 
 on the other side, Sheker (Falsehood) and her 
 auxiliaries, Tarmit (Deceit), Dimyon (Imagina- 
 tion), and Taawah (Passion). The two hostile 
 camps strive together for the favor of the beautiful 
 maiden Tehillah (Glory), the daughter of Hamon 
 (the Crowd). The struggle is unequal. Imagina- 
 tion and Passion carry the day in the face of Truth 
 and Righteousness. Then the inevitable deus ex 
 machina, in this case God Himself, intervenes, and 
 Justice is again enthroned. 
 
 24
 
 MOSES HAYYIM LUZZATTO 
 
 This simple and not strikingly original frame en- 
 closes beautiful descriptions of nature and, above 
 all, sublime thoughts, which make the piece one of 
 the gems of Hebrew poetry. The predominant 
 idea of the book is to glorify God and admire the 
 " innumerable wonders of the Creator." 
 
 " All who seek will find them, in every living being, in every 
 plant, in every lifeless object, in all things on earth and in the 
 sea, in whatsoever the human eye rests upon. Happy he who 
 hath found knowledge and wisdom, happy he if their speech 
 hath fallen upon an attentive ear ! " (Act II, scene I.) 
 
 But the Creator is not capricious. Reason and 
 Truth are His attributes, and they appear in all 
 His acts. Humanity is a mob, and two opposing 
 forces contend for the mastery over it: Truth 
 with Righteousness on one side, Falsehood and 
 her ilk on the other. Each of these two forces 
 seeks to rule the crowd and prevail in triumph. 
 
 The Reason personified by the poet has nothing 
 in common with the positive Reason of the ration- 
 alists, which takes the world to be directed by 
 mechanical and immutable laws. It is supreme 
 Reason, obeying moral laws too sublimated for em- 
 powers of appreciation. How could it be other- 
 wise? Are we not the continual plaything of our 
 senses, which are incapable of grasping absolute 
 
 25
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 truths, and deceive us even about the appearance of 
 things ? 
 
 " Truly, our eyes are deluded, for eyes of flesh they are. There- 
 fore they change truth into falsehood, darkness they make light, 
 and light darkness. Lo, a small chance, a mere accident, suffices 
 to distort our view of tangible things; how much more do we 
 stray from the truth with things beyond the reach of our senses? 
 See the oars in the water. They seem crooked and twisted. Yet 
 we know them to be straight 
 
 " Verily, man's heart is like the ocean ceaselessly agitated by 
 the battling winds. As the waves roll forward and backward in 
 perpetual motion, so our hearts are stirred by never-ending pain 
 and trouble, and as our emotions sway our will, so our senses 
 suffer change within us. We see only what we desire to see, 
 hear only what we long to hear, what our imagination conjures 
 up." (Act II, scene i.) 
 
 This philosophy of externalism and of the im- 
 potence of the human mind threw the poet, be- 
 liever and devotee of the Kabbalah, into a most 
 dangerous mysticism. He continued to write for 
 some time: an imitation of the Psalms; a treatise 
 on logic, Ha-Higgayon, not without value ; another 
 treatise on ethics, Mesilat Yesharim ("The Path 
 of the Righteous ") ; and a large number of poetic 
 pieces and Kabbalistic compositions, the greater 
 part of which were never published; and this enu- 
 meration does not exhaust the tale of his literary
 
 MOSES HAYYIM LUZZATTO 
 
 achievements/ Then his powers were used up, 
 the tension of his mind increased to the last degree ; 
 he lost his moral equilibrium. The day came when 
 he strayed so far afield as to believe himself called 
 to play the role of the Messiah. The Rabbis, 
 alarmed at the gloomy prospect of a repetition of 
 the pseudo-Messianic movements which time and 
 again had shaken the Jewish world to its founda- 
 tions, launched the ban against him. His fate was 
 sealed by his ingenious imitation of the Zohar, 
 written in Aramaic, of which only fragments have 
 been preserved. Obliged to leave Italy, Luzzatto 
 wandered through Germany, and took up his abode 
 at Amsterdam. He enjoyed the gratification of be- 
 ing welcomed there by literary men among his 
 people as a veritable master. At Amsterdam he 
 wrote his last works. But he did not remain there 
 long. He went to seek Divine inspiration at Safed 
 in Palestine, the far-famed centre of the Kabbalah. 
 There he died, cut off by the plague at the age of 
 forty. 
 
 Such was the sad life of the poet, a victim of the 
 abnormal surroundings in which he lived. Under 
 more favorable conditions, he might have achieved 
 
 1 The greater part of Luzzatto's works have never been pub- 
 lished. 
 
 8 27
 
 that which would have won him universal recog- 
 nition. His main distinction is that he released 
 the Hebrew language forever from the forms and 
 ideas of the Middle Ages, and connected it with 
 the circle of modern literatures. He bequeathed 
 to posterity a model of classic poetry, which 
 ushered in Hebrew humanism, the return to the 
 style and the manner of the Bible, in the same way 
 as the general humanistic movement led the Euro- 
 pean mind back upon its own steps along the paths 
 marked out by the classic languages. No sooner 
 did his work become known in the north countries 
 and in the Orient than it raised up imitators. 
 Mendes and Wessely, leaders of literary revivals, 
 the. one at Amsterdam, the other in Germany, are 
 but the disciples and successors of the Italian poet. 
 
 28
 
 CHAPTER II 
 IN GERMANY 
 
 THE MEASSEFIM 
 
 The intellectual emancipation of the Jews in 
 Germany anticipated their political and social 
 emancipation. That is a truth generally acknowl- 
 edged. Long secluded from all foreign ideas, con- 
 fined within religious ajid dogmatic bounds, Ger- 
 man Judaism was a sharer in the physical and 
 social misery of the Judaism of Slavic countries. 
 The philosophic and tolerant ideas in vogue at the 
 end of the eighteenth century startled it somewhat 
 out of its torpor. In the measure in which those 
 ideas gained a foothold in the communities, con- 
 ditions, at least in the larger centres, took on a 
 comfortable aspect, with more or less assurance of 
 permanent well-being. The first contact of the 
 ghetto with the enlightened circles of the day gave 
 the impetus to a marked movement toward an 
 inner emancipation. Associations of Maskilim 
 ("intellectuals") were formed at Berlin, Ham-
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 burg, and Breslau. " The Seekers of the Good 
 and the Noble" (Shohare ha-Tob weha-Tushiyah) 
 should be mentioned particularly. They were com- 
 posed of educated men familiar with Occidental 
 culture, and animated by the desire to make the 
 light of that culture penetrate to the heart of the 
 provincial communities. These " intellectuals " 
 entered the lists against religious fanaticism and 
 casuistic methods, seeking to replace them by 
 liberal ideas and scientific research. Two schools, 
 headed respectively by the philosopher Mendels- 
 sohn and the poet Wessely, had their origin in this 
 movement the school of the Biurists, deriving 
 their name from the Blur? a commentary on the 
 Bible, and the school of the Meassefim, from 
 Meassef, " Collector." The former defended 
 Judaism against the enemies from without, and 
 combated the prejudices and the ignorance of the 
 Jews themselves. The Meassefim took as their 
 sphere of activity the reform of the education of 
 the young and the revival of the Hebrew language. 
 The two schools agreed that to elevate the moral 
 and social status of the Jews, it was necessary to 
 remove first the external peculiarities separating 
 
 1 A specimen of the Blur appeared at Amsterdam, in 1778, 
 under the title 'A Urn le-Terufah. 
 
 30
 
 THE MEASSEFIM 
 
 them from their fellow-citizens. A new transla- 
 tion of the Bible into literary German, undertaken 
 by Mendelssohn, was to deal the death blow to the 
 Jewish-German (judisch-deutsch] jargon, and the 
 Binr, the commentary on the Bible mentioned 
 above, produced by the co-operation of a galaxy 
 of scholars and men of culture, was expected to 
 sweep aside all mystic and allegoric interpretations 
 of the Scriptures and introduce the rational and 
 scientific method. 
 
 The results achieved by the Biurists tended be- 
 yond a doubt toward the elevation of the mass of 
 the Jews. One of these results was, as had been 
 hoped for, the dislodgment of the Jewish-German 
 by the spread of the pure German. The influence 
 wielded by the Biurists, so far from stopping with 
 the German Jews, extended to the Jewish commu- 
 nities of Eastern Europe. 
 
 In 1784-5, two Hebrew writers, Isaac Euchel 
 and Mendel Bresslau, undertook to publish a ma- 
 gazine, entitled Ha-Meassef ("The Collector"), 
 whence the name Meassefim. The enterprise was 
 under the auspices of Mendelssohn and Wessely. 
 A double aim was to be served. The periodical 
 was to promote the spread of knowledge and 
 
 31
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 modern ideas in the Hebrew language, the only 
 language available for the Jews of the ghetto; and 
 at the same time it was to promote the purification 
 of Hebrew, which had degenerated in the Rab- 
 binical schools. Its readers were to be familiarized 
 with the social and aesthetic demands of modern 
 life, and induced to rid themselves of ingrained 
 peculiarities. Besides its success in these direc- 
 tions, it must be set to the credit of Ha-Meassef, 
 that it was the first agency to gather under one 
 banner all the champions of the Haskalah 2 in the 
 several countries of Europe. It supplied the link 
 connecting them with one another. 
 
 From the literary point of view Ha-Meassef is 
 of subordinate interest. Its contributors were de- 
 void of taste. They offered their readers mainly 
 questionable imitations of the works of the German 
 romantic school. The periodical brought no new 
 talent truly worthy of the description into notice. 
 Whatever reputation its principal writers enjoyed 
 had been won before the appearance of Ha-Meas- 
 sef. They owed their fame primarily to the favor 
 acquired for Hebrew letters through the efforts of 
 
 'Properly speaking, the term Haskalah includes the notion at 
 once of humanism and humanitarianism. 
 
 32
 
 THE MEASSEFIM 
 
 Luzzatto's disciples. 3 Of the poems published in 
 Ha-Meassef but a few deserve notice, and even 
 they are nothing more than mediocre imitations of 
 didactic pieces in the style of the day, or odes 
 celebrating the splendor of contemporary kings and 
 princes. A poem by Wessely forms a rare excep- 
 tion. It extols the residents of Basle, who, in 
 1789, welcomed Jewish refugees from Alsace. 
 And if we turn from its poetry to its historical 
 contributions, we find that the biographies, as of 
 Abarbanel and Joseph Delmedigo, are hardly scien- 
 tific; they occupy themselves with external facts 
 to the neglect of underlying ideas. On the whole, 
 Ha-Meassef was an engine of propaganda and 
 polemics rather than a literary production, though 
 the campaign carried on in its pages against strait- 
 laced orthodoxy and the Rabbis did not reach the 
 degree of bitterness which was to characterize later 
 periods moderation that was due to its most 
 prominent contributors. Wessely exhorted the ed- 
 itors not to attack religiousness nor ridicule the 
 Rabbis, and Mendelssohn devoted his articles to 
 
 * Since the appearance of La-Yesharim Tehillah by Luzzatto, 
 imitations of it without number have been published, and for the 
 eighteenth century alone allegorical dramas by the dozen might 
 be enumerated. 
 
 33
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 minor points of Rabbinic practice, such as the per- 
 missibility of vaccination under the Jewish law. 
 
 The French Revolution precipitated events in 
 an unexpected way. The tone of Ha-Meassef 
 changed. It held that knowledge and liberty alone 
 could save the Jews. More aggressive toward the 
 Rabbis than before, it attacked fanaticism, and 
 gave space to trite poems, glorifying a life, for 
 instance, in which women and wine played the 
 prominent part (1790). Six years after its first 
 issue, 4 Ha-Meassef ceased to appear, not without 
 having materially advanced the intellectual eman- 
 cipation of the German Jews and the revival of 
 Hebrew as a secular language. So important was 
 this first co-operative enterprise in Hebrew letters, 
 that it imposed its name on the whole of the 
 literary movement of the second half of the eigh- 
 teenth century, the epoch of the Meassefim. 
 
 Two poets and five or six prose writers more or 
 less worthy of the name of author dominated the 
 period. 
 
 4 The first series of Ha-Meassef ran from 1784-1786 (Konigs- 
 berg), and from 1788-1790 (Konigsberg and Berlin). An addi- 
 tional volume began to appear in 1794, at Berlin and Breslau, 
 under the editorship of Lowe and Wolfsohn, and was completed 
 in 1797. The second series ran from 1809 to 1811 at Berlin, 
 Altona, and Dessau, under Shalom Hacohen. [Trl.] 
 
 34
 
 THE MEASSEFIM 
 
 Naphtali Hartwig Wessely (born at Hamburg 
 in 1725; died there in 1805) is considered the 
 prince of the poets of the time. Belonging to a 
 rather intelligent family in easy circumstances, he 
 received a modern education. Though his mind 
 was open to all the new influences, he nevertheless 
 remained a loyal adherent of his faith, and occu- 
 pied strictly religious ground until the end. He 
 devoted himself with success to the cultivation of 
 poetry, and completed the work of reform begun 
 by the Italian Luzzatto, to whom, however, he 
 was inferior in depth and originality. 
 
 Wessely's poetic masterpiece was Shire Tiferet 
 ("Songs of Glory")', or the Epic of Moses 
 (Berlin, 1789), in five volumes. This poem of 
 the Exodus is on the model of the pseudo-classic 
 productions of the Germany of his day; the influ- 
 ence of Klopstock's Messias, for instance, is 
 striking. 
 
 Depth of thought, feeling for art, and original 
 poetic imagination are lacking in Shire Tiferet. 
 Practically it is nothing more than an oratorical 
 paraphrase of the Biblical recital. The shortcom- 
 ings of his main work are characteristic of all 
 the poetry by Wessely. On the other hand, his 
 oratorical manner is unusually attractive, and his 
 
 35
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 Hebrew is elegant and chaste. The somewhat 
 labored precision of his style, taken together with 
 the absence of the poetic temperament, makes of 
 him the Malherbe of modern Hebrew poetry. He 
 enjoyed the love and admiration of his contem- 
 poraries to an extraordinary degree, and his chief 
 poem underwent a large number of editions, be- 
 coming in course of time a popular book, and re- 
 garded with kindly favor even by the, most ortho- 
 dox testimony at once to the poet's personal in- 
 fluence upon his co-religionists and the growing 
 importance of the Hebrew language. 
 
 Wessely wrote also several important works on 
 questions in Hebrew grammar and philology. The 
 chief of them is Lebanon, two parts of which ap- 
 peared, each separately, under the title Gan Na'ul 
 ("The Locked Garden ", Berlin, 1765) ; the other 
 parts never appeared in print. They bear witness 
 to their author's solid scientific attainments, and it 
 is regrettable that their value is obscured by his 
 style, diffuse to the point of prolixity. Besides, 
 Wessely contributed to the German translation of 
 the Bible, and to the commentary on the Bible, 
 both, as mentioned before, works presided over by 
 Mendelssohn, to whom he was attached by the tie 
 of admiring friendship. 
 
 36
 
 THE MEASSEFIM 
 
 Wessely's chief distinction, however, was his 
 firm character and his love of truth. His high 
 ethical qualities were revealed notably in his pam- 
 phlet Dibre Shalom wa-Emet ("Words of Peace 
 and Truth," Berlin, 1781 ), elicited by the edict of 
 Emperor Joseph II ordering a reform of Jewish 
 education and the establishment of modern schools 
 for Jews. Though well on in years, he yet did not 
 shrink from the risk of incurring the anger of the 
 fanatics. He openly declared himself in favor of 
 pedagogic innovations. With sage-like modesty 
 and mildness, the poet stated the pressing need for 
 adopting new educational methods, and showed 
 them to be by no means in opposition to the Mosaic 
 and Rabbinic conception of the Jewish faith. In 
 the name of Torat ha-Adam, the law for man as 
 such, he set forth urgent reforms which would 
 raise the prestige of the Law as well as of the Jews. 
 He hoped for civil liberty, the liberty the Jews 
 were enjoying in England and in the Netherlands. 
 However, this courageous course gained for him 
 the ban of the fanatics, the effect of which was 
 mitigated by the intervention of the Italian Rabbis 
 in favor of Wessely. On the other hand, it made 
 him the most prominent member of the Meassefim 
 circle; he was regarded as the master of the 
 Maskilim. 
 
 37
 
 Among the most distinguished of the contrib- 
 utors to Ha-Meassef is the second writer acclaimed 
 poet by popular consent. David Franco Mendes 
 (1713-1792) was born at Amsterdam, of a family 
 escaped from the Inquisition. Like most Jews of 
 Spanish origin, his family clung to the Spanish 
 language. He was the friend and disciple, and 
 likewise the imitator, of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto. 
 What was true of Eastern Europe, that the He- 
 brew language prevailed in the ghetto, and had to 
 be resorted to by all who would reach the Jewish 
 masses, did not apply to the countries of the Ro- 
 mance languages. Here Hebrew had little by little 
 been supplanted by the vernacular. Mendes, who 
 paid veritable worship to Hebrew literature, was 
 distressed to see the object of his devotion scorned 
 by his co-religionists and the productions of the 
 classic age of France preferred to it. In the pre- 
 face to his tragedy, " Athaliah's Recompense " 
 ( Gemul Athaliah, Amsterdam, 1770), he set him- 
 self the task of demonstrating the superiority of 
 the sacred language to the profane languages. Yet 
 this very tragedy, in spite of its author's protesta- 
 tions, is nothing more than a rlfacimento of 
 Racine's drama, and rather infelicitous at that, 
 though it must be admitted that Mendes' style is 
 
 38
 
 THE MEASSEFIM 
 
 of classic purity, and some of his scenes are in a 
 measure characterized by vivacity of action. His 
 other drama, " Judith ", also published at Amster- 
 dam, has no greater merit than " Athaliah's Re- 
 compense." Besides these dramas, Mendes wrote 
 several biographical sketches of the learned men of 
 the Middle Ages for Ha-Meassef. 
 
 It were far from the truth to say that Mendes 
 succeeded in rivalling the French and Italian 
 authors whom he set up as models for himself. 
 Nevertheless he was endorsed and admired by the 
 literary men of his time as the heir of Luzzatto. 
 
 An enumeration of all the writers and all the 
 scholars who, directly or indirectly, contributed to 
 the work of Ha-Meassef, would be wearisome. 
 Only those who are distinguished by some degree 
 of originality will be set down by name. 
 
 Rabbi Solomon Pappenheim (1776-1814), of 
 Breslau, was the author of a sentimental elegy, 
 Arba Kosot (" The Four Cups", Berlin, 1790). 
 The poem, inspired by Young's "Night Thoughts," 
 is remarkable for its personal note. In his plaints 
 recalling Job's, this Hebrew Werther mourns the 
 loss, not of his mistress that would not have been 
 in consonance with the spirit of the ghetto but 
 
 39
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 of his wife and his three children. The elegy came 
 near being a popular poem. Its vapid sentimen- 
 tality and its affected and exaggerated style were 
 to exercise a baneful influence upon the following 
 generations. It is the tribute paid by Hebrew 
 literature to the diseased spirit of the age. Pap- 
 penheim wrote, besides, on Hebrew philology. His 
 work, Yeri'ot Shelomoh (" The Curtains of Solo- 
 mon ") , is an important contribution to the subject. 
 
 Shalom Hacohen, the editor of a second series 
 of Ha-Meassef, published in 1809-1811 (Berlin, 
 Altona, and Dessau), deserves mention. He won 
 considerable fame by his poems and articles, which 
 appeared in the second series of Ha-Meassef and 
 in Bikkure ha-Ittim (" The First Fruits of the 
 Times"), and especially through his historical 
 drama, " Amal and Tirzah " (Rodelheim, 1812). 
 The last, a na'ively conceived piece of work, is well 
 fitted into its Biblical frame. Hacohen is one of the 
 intermediaries between the German Meassefim and 
 their successors in Poland. 5 
 
 Mendelssohn, the master admired and respected 
 
 B Another writer of the epoch, Hartwig Derenburg, whose son 
 and grandson have brilliantly carried on, in France, the literary 
 and scientific traditions of the family, was the author of a widely- 
 read allegorical drama, Yoshebe Tebel ("The Inhabitants of the 
 World", Offenbach, 1789). 
 
 40
 
 THE MEASSEFIM 
 
 by all, contributed, as was mentioned before, only 
 minor controversial articles to Ha-Meassef. His 
 preface to the Blur and his commentary on Mai- 
 monides' treatise on logic are in good style. His 
 philosophical works, "Jerusalem" and "Phaedon," 
 translated into Hebrew by his disciples, were 
 largely instrumental in giving prevalence to the 
 idea that the Jewish people is a religious com- 
 munity rather than a nation. This circumstance 
 explains the banishment of Hebrew from the syna- 
 gogue by his less religious followers, such as David 
 Friedlander, and the attacks of Herz Homberg on 
 traditional Judaism in, his pamphlet " To the 
 Shepherds of Israel " (El Roe Yisrael). 
 
 The chief editor of Ha-Meassef, Isaac Euchel 
 (1756-1804), became known for his polemic arti- 
 cles against the superstitions and obscurantism of 
 the fanatics of the ghetto. Euchel wrote also a 
 biographical sketch of Mendelssohn, which was 
 published at Vienna in 1814. 
 
 There were also scientific writers among the 
 Meassefim. Baruch Lindau wrote a treatise on the 
 natural sciences, Reshit Limmudim (" The Ele- 
 ments of the Sciences ", Briinn, 1788), and Morde- 
 cai Gumpel Levisohn, the learned professor at the 
 University of Upsala, was the author of a series 
 
 41
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 of scientific essays in Ha-Meassef, which contrib- 
 uted greatly to its success. 
 
 Up to the time we are speaking of, Poland had 
 supplied the Jewish people with Rabbis and Tal- 
 mudists, and when the German Jews became im- 
 bued with the new spirit, their Polish brethren did 
 not lag behind. Polish authors are to be found 
 among the Meassefim, and several of them deserve 
 special notice. 
 
 Kant's brilliant disciple, the profound thinker 
 Solomon Maimon, published only his exegetical 
 works and his ingenious commentary on Maimo- 
 nides in Hebrew. Another Polish writer, Solomon 
 Dubno (1735-1813), one of the first to co-operate 
 with Mendelssohn in his Biur, was a remarkable 
 grammarian and stylist. Among other things he 
 wrote an allegorical drama and a number of poetic 
 satires. Of the latter, the " Hymn to Hypocrisy ", 
 published in Bikkure To'elet, is a finished pro- 
 duction. 
 
 Judah Ben-Zeeb (1764-1811) published in 
 Berlin a Manual of the Hebrew Language ( Tal- 
 mud Leshon 'Ibri), planned on modern lines, a 
 work contributing greatly toward spreading a 
 knowledge of philology and rhetoric among the 
 Jews. His Hebrew-German Dictionary and his 
 
 42
 
 THE MEASSEFIM 
 
 Hebrew version of Ben Sira are well known to 
 Hebraists. 
 
 Isaac Satanow (1732-1804), a Pole residing at 
 Berlin, was a curious personage, interesting alike 
 for the variety of his productions and the oddity 
 of his mental make-up. He possessed a surprising 
 capacity for assimilation. It was this that enabled 
 him to excel, whether he imitated the style of the 
 Bible or the style of mediaeval authors. Hebrew 
 and Aramaic he handled with the same ingenious 
 skill. All his works he attributed to some ancient 
 author. His collection of Proverbs, bearing the 
 name of the Psalmist Asaph (Mishle Asaph, Ber- 
 lin, 1789 and 1792, in three books), would cut a 
 respectable figure in any literature. 
 
 A few specimens of his Mishle, or maxims, 
 follow : 
 
 "Truth springs from research, justice from intelligence. The 
 beginning of research is curiosity, its essence is discernment, and 
 its goal truth and justice" (7: 5,6). 
 
 " On the day of thy birth thou didst weep, and those about thee 
 were glad. On the day of thy death thou wilt laugh, and those 
 about thee will sigh. Know then, thou wilt one day be born 
 anew to rejoice in God, and matter e will no longer hinder thee " 
 (15:5,6)- 
 
 8 A play upon words : Geshem in Hebrew means both " mat- 
 ter " and " rain." 
 
 4 43
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 "Rule thy spirit lest others rule thy body" (24:2). 
 
 " Pincers are made by means of pincers ; work is helped on by 
 work, and science by science" (34:23). 
 
 "Think not what is sweet to thy palate is sweet to thy neigh- 
 bor's palate. Not so; for many are the beautiful wives that are 
 hated by their husbands, and many the ill-featured wives that 
 are beloved " (43:6,7). 
 
 " Every living being leaves off reproducing itself in its old 
 age ; but falsehood plays the harlot even in her decrepitude. The 
 older she grows, the deeper she strikes root in the ground, the 
 more numerous becomes her lying progeny, the further does it 
 spread abroad. Her lovers multiply, and those who pay respect 
 to the old adhere to her, that her name be not wiped from the 
 face of the earth" (42:29-31). 
 
 Satanow pleaded for the language of the Mish- 
 nah as forming part of the Hebrew linguistic stock, 
 but the moment was not propitious to the reform 
 of the prevailing literary style suggested by him. 
 
 On the whole, as was intimated before, the 
 literary movement called forth by the Meassefim 
 produced nothing, or almost nothing, of permanent 
 value. The writers of this school acted the part 
 of pioneers and heralds. Being primarily icono- 
 clasts and reformers, they disappeared, with but 
 few exceptions, as soon as their task was completed 
 and the emancipation of the Jews was an accom- 
 plished fact in Western Europe. They survived 
 long enough, however, to see the movement with 
 
 44
 
 THE MEASSEFIM 
 
 which they were identified sweep away, along with 
 the traditions of the past, also the Hebrew lan- 
 guage, the only relic dear to them, the only Jewish 
 thing capable of awakening a responsive thrill in 
 their hearts. 
 
 Passionate humanists, and not very clear-sighted, 
 they permitted themselves to be dazzled by mod- 
 ernity and promises of light and liberty, and 
 forswore the ideal of the re-nationalization of 
 Israel, so placing themselves outside the fellowship 
 bond that united, by a common hope, the great 
 masses of the Jews who were still attached to their 
 faith and to their peojile. 
 
 Writers of no consequence in many cases, and of 
 no originality whatsoever, failing to recognize the 
 grandeur of Israel's past, the Meassefim despised 
 their Jewish surroundings too heartily to seek in- 
 spiration in them. For the most part they were 
 shallow imitators, second-rate translators of Schil- 
 ler and Racine. The language of the Jewish soul 
 they could not speak, and they could not formulate 
 a new ideal to take the place of the tottering tra- 
 ditions of the past and the faltering hope of a Mes- 
 sianic time. An entire generation was to pass 
 before historical Judaism came into its own again, 
 through the creation of a pure " Science of Juda- 
 
 45
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 ism " and the conception of the mission of the Jew- 
 ish people. 
 
 Nevertheless the movement called into being by 
 the Meassefim caused considerable stir. For the 
 first time the Rabbinic tradition, petrified by age 
 and ignorance, was assailed, in the sacred language 
 at that, and the attack was launched in the name of 
 science and life. For the first time the Haskalah, 
 Hebrew humanism, declared war on whatever in 
 the past trammelled the modern evolution of Juda- 
 ism. In vain the Meassefim, save the exceptional 
 few, refrained scrupulously from violent declama- 
 tion against primary dogmatic principles. In 
 vain their master Mendelssohn, contravening good 
 sense and historical Judaism, went so far as to 
 proclaim these principles sacrosanct. The secu- 
 larization of Jewish literature and Jewish life had 
 made a breach in the ghetto wall. Thereafter 
 nothing could oppose the march of new ideas. The 
 Rabbis of the period saw it clearly ; hence the stub- 
 bornness of their opposition. 
 
 Beginning with this time a new class appeared 
 among the Jews of the ghetto, the class of the 
 Maskilim, or men of lay learning and letters, a 
 class with which the Rabbis have since had to 
 reckon, with which, indeed, they have had to share 
 their authority over the people. 
 
 46
 
 THE MEASSEFIM 
 
 So far as the Hebrew language is concerned, the 
 Meassefim succeeded in purifying it and restoring 
 it to its Biblical form. Wessely and Mendes oblit- 
 erated the last vestiges of the Middle Ages, and 
 many of the litterateurs of the period bequeathed 
 models of the classic style to posterity. But the 
 return to the manner of the Bible had its disad- 
 vantages. It went to extremes, and led to the crea- 
 tion of a pompous, affected style, the Melizah, 
 which has left indelible traces in neo-Hebrew litera- 
 ture. In the effort to guard the Biblical style 
 against the Rabbinisms which had impaired the 
 elegance of the Hebrew language, the purists had 
 gone beyond the bounds of moderation. To ex- 
 press the most prosaic thought, the simplest ideas, 
 they drew upon the metaphors and the elevated 
 diction of the Bible. This rage for academic cor- 
 rectness is responsible for the reputation, not 
 merited by Hebrew literature, that it lacks origi- 
 nality, that it is no more than a jeu d'esprit, a 
 jumble of quibbling conceits. 
 
 Italian men of letters also took part in the liter- 
 ary movement of the end of the eighteenth century. 
 Two of them are worthy of mention by name. The 
 first is the poet Ephraim Luzzatto (1727-1792), 
 
 47
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 whose love sonnets, written in a sprightly style, 
 sound a lyric note. The other is Samuel Roma- 
 nelli, the author of a melodrama, much admired 
 by his contemporaries, and of a " Journey to 
 Arabia." 
 
 In France, also, especially in Alsace, there were 
 collaborators of the German Meassefim, the best 
 known among them Ensheim. Besides, France har- 
 bored the only poet of the period who can lay claim 
 to originality, but he was not of the school of the 
 Meassefim. Elie Half an Halevy (1760-1822), 
 of Paris, the grandfather of Ludovic Halevy, by 
 far surpasses the other poets of his day in poetic 
 temperament and fertility of imagination. Un- 
 luckily, we do not possess all the poems written by 
 Halevy, who, moreover, was not a very prolific 
 author. In what has come down to us his talent 
 is abundantly proved by the charm of his individual 
 style and the wealth of his images. The reader 
 feels that the breath of the Revolution has blown 
 through his pages. His " Hymn to Peace " (Shir 
 ha-Shalom), published at Paris in 1804, is the 
 apotheosis of Napoleon, whom the poet hails as 
 " liberty rescued " and " beautiful France ", the 
 home of liberty. This unique poem is character- 
 
 48
 
 THE MEASSEFIM 
 
 ized by unbounded love for France and the French, 
 the beautiful country, the free, high-mettled peo- 
 ple, bearing love of country in its heart and in its 
 hand the avenging sword, and cherishing hatred 
 against " tyranny on the throne, which had changed 
 a terrestrial Paradise into a charnel house." The 
 poet extols the dictator not only because he is a 
 " friend of victory ", but because he is at the same 
 time and still more a " friend of science." He sa- 
 lutes the victorious armies. Although they bring 
 destruction and misery in their wake, they bear 
 before them the standard of science, civilization, 
 and progress. 
 
 The cry of liberty wakened a loud echo in the 
 ghettos of even the most backward countries. He- 
 brew literature contains a number of curious me- 
 mentos, tokens of the ardent hopes which the 
 French Revolution and the Napoleonic conquests 
 evoked in the breast of the Jews, whose character 
 has little enough affinity with the rule of despotism. 
 In numerous Hebrew hymns and songs T they wel- 
 comed the armies of Napoleon as of the savior 
 Messiah. Before the first flush of joy died away, 
 
 7 To name but a few among the many: an ode by the 
 celebrated Rabbi Jacob Me'ir in Alsace, an ancestor of the 
 family of the Grand-Rabbin Zadoc Kahn ; another ode composed 
 
 49
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 the reaction set in, and their hopes were blighted. 
 The Jews relapsed into their olden social misery. 
 Nevertheless, the clash between received notions 
 and the new conceptions had contributed not a little 
 to produce a ferment of ideas and create new ten- 
 dencies in the ghetto, at last aroused from its mil- 
 lennial slumber. 
 
 at Vienna by the Polish grammarian Ben-Zeeb; and the hymns 
 sung in the synagogue at Frankfort (1807), at Hamburg (1811), 
 etc. The Revolutionary Code published at Amsterdam in 1795 
 is also worthy of mention. 
 
 60
 
 CHAPTER III 
 IN POLAND AND AUSTRIA 
 
 THE GALICIAN SCHOOL 
 
 The Polish scholars domiciled in Germany en- 
 tered, as we have seen, into the work of the Meas- 
 sefim. Presently it will appear that the movement 
 itself was transferred to Poland, where it produced 
 a much more lasting effect than elsewhere. 
 
 In the West of Europe Hebrew was destined to 
 vanish little by little, and make room for the 
 languages of the various countries. In the Slavic 
 East, on the other hand, the neo-Hebrew gained 
 and spread until it was the predominating language 
 used by writers. By and by a profane literature 
 grew up in it, which extends to our day without a 
 break. 
 
 From the sixteenth century on, the Jewry of 
 Poland, isolated in destiny and in political consti- 
 tution, comprised the greater part of the Jewish 
 people. The agglomerations of Jews in Poland, 
 originating in many different countries, and fused 
 
 51
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 into one mass, enjoyed a large measure of au- 
 tonomy. Their fortunes were governed and their 
 life regulated by a political and religious organi- 
 zation administered by the Rabbis and the repre- 
 sentatives of the Kahal, the " community." This 
 organization formed a sort of theocratic state 
 known as " The Synod of the Four Countries " 
 (Poland, Little Poland, Little Russia, and, later, 
 Lithuania, with its autonomous synod). Consti- 
 tuting almost the whole of the Third Estate of a 
 country three times the size of France, the Jews 
 were not only merchants, but also, and more par- 
 ticularly, artisans, workingmen, and even farmers. 
 They were a people apart, distinct from the others. 
 The restricted ghettos and small communities of 
 the Occident widened out, in Poland, into prov- 
 inces with cities and towns peopled by Jews. The 
 Thirty Years' War, which had cast a large number 
 of German Jews into Poland, produced the effect 
 of giving a definite constitution to this social organ- 
 ism. The new-comers quickly attained to control- 
 ling influence in the Jewish communities, and suc- 
 ceeded in foisting their German idiom upon the 
 older settlers. One of their distinguishing traits 
 was that they pushed the study of the Law to the 
 utmost. The Talmud schools in Poland and the 
 
 52
 
 THE GALICIAN SCHOOL 
 
 Polish Rabbis soon acquired a reputation unas- 
 sailed in the whole of the Diaspora. Despised and 
 maltreated by the Polish magnates, condemned, by 
 reason of a never-ceasing stream of immigration 
 and the meagre resources of the country, to a bitter 
 struggle for existence, the Jews of Poland centred 
 all their ambition in the study of the Law, and con- 
 soled themselves with the Messianic hope. Empty 
 casuistry and dry dogmatism sufficed for the intel- 
 lectual needs of the most enlightened. A piety 
 without limit, the rigorous and minute observance 
 of Rabbinical prescriptions, and a cult com- 
 pounded of traditional and superstitious practices 
 accumulated during many- centuries, filled the void 
 left in their minds by the wretched life of the 
 masses. To satisfy the cravings of the heart, they 
 had the homilies of the Maggidim ("preachers "), 
 a sort of popular instruction based on sacred texts, 
 tricked out with Talmudic narratives, mystic allu- 
 sions, and a variety of superstitions. 
 
 By the dreadful insurrection of the Cossacks in 
 the Ukraine, half a million of Jews lost their lives. 
 The terror that followed the uprising during the 
 latter part of the seventeenth and the first half of 
 the eighteenth century threw the Jewish population 
 of the southern provinces into sad confusion. At 
 
 53
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 that moment the Hasidim l with their Oriental 
 fatalism, and their worship of the Zaddik 
 ("Saint"), whom they revered as a wonder- 
 worker, appeared upon the scene and won the Jews 
 of a large part of Poland to their standard. Then 
 there ensued a period of moral and intellectual 
 degradation, which coincided precisely with the 
 epoch in which the civilizing influence of the Meas- 
 sefim was uppermost in Germany. 
 
 The reforms of Emperor Joseph II planned for 
 the Jews in the part of Poland annexed by Austria, 
 especially the extension of compulsory military 
 service to them, were looked upon by the ignorant 
 masses as a dire misfortune. They rebelled against 
 every change, and placed no belief in the promises 
 made by the authorities to better their condition. 
 They were terrorized by the severity of the meas- 
 ures taken against them, and, impotent to carry on 
 a struggle against authority, they threw themselves 
 into the arms of Hasidism, which preached the 
 merging of self in a mystic solidarity. This meant 
 
 1 Literally, the " pious." A sect founded in Wolhynia in the 
 second half of the eighteenth century, the adherents of which, 
 though they remained faithful to the Rabbinic law, placed piety, 
 mystic exaltation, and a worship of holy men in opposition to the 
 study of the Talmud and the dogmatism of the Rabbis. 
 
 54
 
 THE GALICIAN SCHOOL 
 
 the cessation of all growth, social as well as reli- 
 gious. Superstition established itself as sovereign 
 mistress, and the end was the utter degeneration 
 of the Austrian-Polish section of Jews. 
 
 In order to guard against the danger with which 
 the spread of the new sect was fraught, and en- 
 lighten at least the more intelligent of the people, 
 the intellectual Jews of Poland took up the work 
 of the Meassefim, and constituted themselves the 
 champions of the Haskalah, the liberal movement. 
 They became thus the lieutenants of the Austrian 
 government. By and by their activity assumed 
 importance, and in time modern schools were estab- 
 lished and literary circles were formed in the 
 greater part of the villages of Galicia. 
 
 Even into Russian Poland the campaign against 
 obscurantism was carried, by men like Tobias 
 Feder and David Samoscz ; the former the author 
 of an incisive pamphlet against Hasidism, as well 
 as numerous philological and poetical publications; 
 the latter a prolific writer, the author of a collec- 
 tion of poems entitled Resise ha-Melizah (" Drops 
 of Poetry", 1798). 
 
 The movement was aided and abetted by rich 
 and influential Jews. Joseph Perl, the founder of 
 a modern school and several other educational in- 
 
 55
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 stitutions, is a typical representative of these friends 
 and patrons of progress. 2 
 
 Ha-Meassef was succeeded by a progeny of pe- 
 riodical literature, scientific and literary. After 
 the Bikkure ha-Ittim ("The First Fruits of the 
 Times"), edited by Shalom Hacohen, Vienna, 
 1820-1831, came the Kerem Hemed ("The De- 
 licious Vineyard "), edited by Goldenberg, at Tar- 
 nopol, 1833-1842; the Ozar Nehmad ("The 
 Delightful Treasure"), edited by Blumenfeld; 
 He-Haluz (" The Pioneer "), founded in 1853 by 
 Erter, together with Schorr, the witty writer and 
 bold reformer; Kokebe Yizhak (" The Stars of 
 Isaac"), edited by I. Stern, at Vienna, 1850-1863; 
 Bikkure ha-Shanah (" The First Fruits of the 
 Year", 1844); Peri To'elet ("Successful La- 
 bor", 1821-1825); "Jerusalem", 1845; "Zion", 
 1842; Ha-Zefirah ("The Morningstar " ) , 1824; 
 Yeshurun. 1847, etc - These collections of essays 
 
 2 Perl was the author of a parody on Hasidism, published 
 anonymously under the title Megalle Temirin (" The Revealer 
 of Mysteries"). A monograph upon parodies, a literary form 
 widely cultivated in Hebrew, which was long a desideratum has 
 recently been written by Dr. Israel Davidson ("Parody in Jew- 
 ish Literature", New York, Columbia University Press, 1908). 
 The Hebrew parody is distinguished particularly for its adapta- 
 tion of the Talmudic language to modern customs and questions. 
 
 56
 
 THE GALICIAN SCHOOL 
 
 are of a much more serious character than ever Ha- 
 Meassef attained to. As a rule they display more 
 originality and more scientific depth. 
 
 To attract the intelligent among the Polish Jews, 
 permeated as they were with deep knowledge of 
 Rabbinic literature, more was needed than witty 
 sallies and childish conceits in an affected style. 
 The appeal had to be made to their reason, to 
 their convictions, their constant longing for intel- 
 lectual occupation. Their minds could be turned 
 away from a most absurd mysticism only by setting 
 a new ideal before them, calculated to engage feel- 
 ings and attract hearts yearning for consolation, 
 and left unsatisfied by the pursuit of the Law, the 
 nourishment given to all who thought and studied 
 in the ghetto. 
 
 Two men, the most eminent of the Jewish hu- 
 manists in Austrian Poland, succeeded in meeting 
 the spiritual needs of their compatriots. The 
 Rabbi Solomon Jehudah Rapoport, one of the 
 
 It was made the vehicle of polemics and of ridicule, as in the 
 case of Perl's pamphlet, or of satire on social conditions, as in the 
 " Treatise of Commercial Men ", which appeared at Warsaw, 
 and the " Treatise America ", published at New York, etc. Fre- 
 quently it was meant merely to divert and amuse, as, for instance, 
 Hakundus, Wilna, 1827, and numerous editions of the "Treatise 
 Purim." 
 
 57
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW .LITERATURE 
 
 founders of the Science of Judaism, the pursuit 
 that was to replace Rabbinic scholasticism, and the 
 philosopher Nahman Krochmal, the promoter of 
 the idea of the " mission of the Jewish people ", 
 a substitute for the mystic, religious ideal they 
 were the two who transformed the literary move- 
 ment inaugurated in Germany into a permanent 
 influence. 
 
 Solomon Jehudah Rapoport ( 1790-1867), called 
 " the father of the Science of Judaism ", was 
 born at Lemberg of a family of Rabbis. His 
 studies were purely Rabbinic, but his alert mind 
 grasped every opportunity of acquiring other 
 knowledge, and in this incidental way he became 
 familiar first with French and then with German. 
 The influence of the philosopher Krochmal, with 
 whom he came in close personal contact, shaped his 
 career as a writer and a scholar. In 1814, at Lem- 
 berg, he wrote, in Hebrew, a description of the city 
 of Paris and the Isle of Elba, to satisfy the curiosity 
 which the events of the time had aroused in the 
 Polish ghetto. In imitation of Mendes, whose 
 writings exercised some influence upon him, he 
 'later published a translation of Racine's " Esther " 
 (Bikkure ha-'Ittim, 1827), and of a number 
 
 58
 
 THE GALICIAN SCHOOL 
 
 of Schiller's poems. But he did not stop at 
 that. His profound study of the Jewish scholars 
 and poets of the Middle Ages turned his mind to 
 historical investigations. In the Bikkure ha-Ittim 
 and the Kerem Hemed he published a series of 
 biographical and literary studies, in which he shows 
 himself to be possessed of large critical sense and 
 keen judgment. In its sobriety and precision his 
 style has not been excelled. These studies of his 
 gave new direction to the eager minds of the age. 
 As a result, Jost, Zunz, and Samuel David Luz- 
 zatto devoted themselves to the thorough examina- 
 tion of the Judaism of the Middle Ages. The 
 outcome was a new science, the Science of Judaism. 
 
 Rapoport published also a pamphlet against 
 the Hasidim and their wonder-working Rabbis, 
 and various articles on the necessity of promoting 
 knowledge and civilization among the Jews. In 
 this way he brought upon himself the hatred of 
 the fanatics. Appointed Rabbi at Tarnopol at the 
 instigation of Perl, the patron of Jewish science, 
 he was forced to leave the city by the intrigues of 
 the Hasidim. He went to Prague, to become 
 Rabbi in that important community, and there he 
 ended his days. 
 
 The disciple and successor of the German Meas- 
 5 69
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 sefim, Rapoport inherited from them the conviction 
 which characterized the Jewish Maskil, that sci- 
 ence alone and modern civilization can raise the 
 intellectual level and improve the political situation 
 of his co-religionists. All his life he fought for the 
 Haskalah. He loved knowledge with disinterested 
 devotion, and not merely because it was an instru- 
 ment to promote the political emancipation of the 
 Jews. The work of assimilation set on foot in the 
 Occident, he realized, was not applicable in the 
 East of Europe, and would even be useless there. 
 No vain illusions on the subject possessed him. He 
 was very much wrought up against such religious 
 reforms in Judaism as, he believed, would inevi- 
 tably split the people into sects, and sow the seed 
 of disunion and indifference to national institu- 
 tions. This appears strikingly in his campaign 
 against Schorr, the editor of He-Haluz, and 
 Judah Mises, and especially in his pamphlet Toka- 
 hat Megullah ("Public Reproach"), which ap- 
 peared in Frankfort in 1846. To those who fal- 
 tered, having lost faith in the future of Judaism, 
 Rapoport addresses himself in several of his writ- 
 ings, especially in the introduction to " Esther ", 
 holding up his own ideals before them. Love of 
 my nation, he says in effect, is the cornerstone of 
 
 60
 
 THE GALICIAN SCHOOL 
 
 my existence. This love alone has the power to 
 confirm my faith, for the national sentiment of the 
 Jew and his religion are closely linked with each 
 other. And not only this national sentiment and 
 this religion are inconceivable the one without the 
 other, but a third factor is joined with them so in- 
 timately as to be indispensable it is the Holy 
 Land. 
 
 The desire to explain rationally the Jew's love 
 for his ancient land suggested to Rapoport, long 
 before Buckle and Lazarus, the theory of the in- 
 fluence of climate on the psychology of nations. In 
 his sketch of Rabbi Hao-anel (Bikkure ha-'Ittim, 
 1832), he explains the psychologic traits of the 
 Jewish people by the fact that they resided in a 
 temperate climate and in a country situated be- 
 tween Asia and Africa. Thence was derived the 
 tendency to maintain equilibrium between feeling 
 and reason which characterizes the Jew. Under 
 favorable conditions, and if the Roman conquest 
 had not intervened, the Jews would have reached 
 the highest degree of this equilibrium, and become 
 a model nation. That is why Palestine is the poli- 
 tical and spiritual fatherland of the Jew, the only 
 country in which his genius can develop untram- 
 melled; that is why Palestine is so indissolubly 
 
 61
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 attached to the destinies of Israel, and is so dear 
 to every Jewish heart. But even in the exile, " in 
 the darkness of the Middle Ages, the Jews were 
 the sole bearers of light and knowledge ".' This 
 is what Rapoport strove to demonstrate in his 
 works on the scholars of the Middle Ages, and in 
 his Talmudic encyclopedia, 'Erek Millin (Prague, 
 1852), which, unfortunately, was not finished. 
 
 In this fashion Rapoport, who did not hesitate 
 to write on Bible criticism in Hebrew, the first to 
 use the ancient language for the purpose, endeav- 
 ored to reconcile the reason of a modern mind with 
 the faith and the Messianic hope of an orthodox 
 Rabbi. 
 
 It is a significant phenomenon that the Science 
 of Judaism, the ideal meant to replace the dry 
 study of the Law, and fill the void left in the Jew- 
 ish mind by the course of recent developments, 
 took firm hold upon the Polish Jews, the very body- 
 guard of Rabbinism, of which, in point of fact, it 
 is but a modern and rational transformation. 
 
 Yet this new science, founded on the study of 
 Israel's glorious past, and warmly welcomed by 
 the intellectual and the cultivated in Western 
 Europe, could not entirely satisfy the intelligent in
 
 THE GALICIAN SCHOOL 
 
 Polish Jewry. In an environment wholly Jewish, 
 having no reason to nurse illusive hopes of immi- 
 nent assimilation with their neighbors, from whom 
 they were divided by every possible circumstance, 
 beginning with moral notions and ending with pol- 
 itical fortune, the Polish Jews resigned themselves 
 to a sort of Messianic mysticism. But the mystic's 
 explanation of the phenomenon of the existence of 
 Judaism also failed to satisfy their yearnings. 
 What they sought was a warrant in reason itself 
 justifying the permanence of Judaism and its 
 future. The arguments set forth by Maimonides 
 and Jehudah Halevi contained no appeal for the 
 modern soul. A philosopher was needed, one who 
 should solve the problem of the existence of the 
 Jewish people and its proper sphere from the van- 
 tage-ground of authoritative knowledge. Such a 
 philosopher arose in Galicia itself. 
 
 Nahman Krochmal (1785-1840), the origi- 
 nator of the idea of the " mission of the Jewish 
 people ", was born at Brody. His chief work, 
 published posthumously through the efforts of 
 Zunz, the Moreh Nebuke ha-Zeman (" The Guide 
 of the Perplexed of Modern Times"), is the 
 most original piece of philosophic writing in 
 modern Hebrew. Krochmal led the sad life of 
 
 63
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 the Polish-Jewish scholar void of pleasures and 
 filled to overflowing with privation and suffer- 
 ing. His whole time was consecrated to Jew- 
 ish science. He led a retired life, and while he 
 lived nothing of his was published. On account 
 of the precarious state of his health, he never left 
 the small town in which he was born. However, 
 his house became the foregathering place of the 
 votaries of Jewish science. Especially young men 
 eager to learn came from everywhere to sit at the 
 feet of the master. The influence which he thus 
 exerted during his life was reinforced and perpetu- 
 ated after his death by the publication of the 
 " Guide of the Perplexed of Modern Times ", in 
 1851, at Lemberg. 
 
 The studies contained in this work, for the most 
 part unfinished sketches, form a curious collection. 
 Limitations of space forbid more than a summary 
 of its contents, and an analysis of its chief princi- 
 ples. 
 
 The need of finding a philosophic explanation 
 of Divine existence forced Hegel to formulate the 
 axiom, that reason alone constitutes the reality of 
 things, and absolute truth is to be found in the 
 union of the subjective and the objective the sub- 
 jective corresponding to the concrete state of every 
 
 64
 
 THE GALICIAN SCHOOL 
 
 being, that is, matter, which forms his actual rea- 
 son, and the objective corresponding to his ab- 
 stract state, that is, the idea, which forms his 
 absolute reason. 
 
 On this Hegelian axiom of actual reason and 
 absolute reason, Krochmal builds up his ingenious 
 system of the philosophy of Jewish history. He 
 is the first Jewish scholar who views Judaism, not 
 as a distinct and independent entity, but as a part 
 of the whole of civilization. At the same time, 
 while it is attached to the civilized world, it is dis- 
 tinguished by qualities peculiar to itself. It leads 
 the independent existence of a national organism 
 similar to all others, but it also aspires to an abso- 
 lute, spiritual expression, consequently to universal- 
 ism. The result of this double aspect is that while 
 Jewish nationality forms the element peculiar to 
 the Jewish people, its civilization, its intellect are 
 universal, and detach themselves from its peculiar 
 national life. Hence it comes that Jewish culture 
 is essentially spiritual, ideal, and tends to promote 
 the perfection of the human kind. Krochmal in 
 this way arrives at the following three conclusions : 
 
 i. The Jewish nation is like the phoenix, con- 
 stantly arising to new life from its ashes. It com- 
 prises within itself the three elements of Hegel's 
 
 65
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 triad: the idea, the object, and the intelligence. 
 The successive resurrections of the Jewish people 
 follow an ascendant progression, which tends to- 
 ward the spiritually absolute. Starting as a polit- 
 ical organism, it soon developed into a dogmatic- 
 ally religious sect, only to be transformed into a 
 spiritual entity. Krochmal though he does not 
 say it explicitly sees in religion only a passing 
 phenomenon in the history of the Jewish people, 
 exactly as its political existence was but a temporary 
 phase. 
 
 2. The Jewish people presents a double aspect 
 to the observer. It is national in its particularism, 
 or its concrete aspect, and universal in its spiritual- 
 ism. The national genius of all other peoples of 
 antiquity was narrowly particularistic. That is 
 why they were submerged. Only the Jewish proph- 
 ets conceived of the absolutely and universally 
 spiritual and of moral truth, and therein lies the 
 secret of the continued existence of the Jewish 
 people. 
 
 3. With Hegel Krochmal * admits that the re- 
 sultants from the historical development of a peo- 
 
 8 See chapters IX, XVI, and others; also M. Bernfeld, Da at 
 Elohim (" The Knowledge of God ") ; and M. Landau, Die Bibel 
 und der Hegelianismus (Dissertation). 
 
 66
 
 THE GALICIAN SCHOOL 
 
 pie form the quintessence of its existence. But 
 what he does not believe is that the essential ele- 
 ment in the existence of a people is the resultant. 
 The process of historical evolution is in itself an 
 adequate reason for its existence. More rational 
 than Hegel himself, Krochmal thus avoids the con- 
 tradiction which follows from the mystical defi- 
 nition of existence in the Hegelian system. 
 
 For the German metaphysician, existence is the 
 interval between not being and being, that is, the 
 period of becoming. Krochmal simply eliminates 
 this more or less materialistic notion of the in- 
 terval. He substitutes the moral effects produced 
 incidentally to the course of historic action, for the 
 idea of effects posterior to the same action, the 
 effects called the resultants. The more or less 
 materialistic manner in which historic action de- 
 velops replaces with him the idea of the transition 
 period, the period of becoming, as a mysterious 
 intermediary between actual reason and absolute 
 reason. 
 
 Proceeding from these axioms, Krochmal, at a 
 time in which Folkerpsychologie and sociology 
 were embryonic sciences, explains the phenomena 
 of Jewish history as well as the phenomena of the 
 religious and spiritual evolution of mankind, and 
 does it with remarkable originality and profundity. 
 
 67
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 Krochmal's ideas produced an effect not to be 
 exaggerated upon the intelligent among the Polish 
 Jews, who had thrown off the trammels of dogma- 
 tism and mystic hope, but were in a hesitating 
 state of mind, casting about for the reason of their 
 very existence as Jews. His book offered them an 
 explanation, based on modern science and yet in 
 accord with their Jewish essence as revealed by 
 history and therefore satisfying to their national 
 pride. 
 
 Thus Krochmal opened up a way for the seekers 
 after enlightenment in future generations. On the 
 ideas of the master, his successors built up their 
 conceptions of the Jewish people. Abraham 
 Mapu, the father of the historical novel in He- 
 brew, drew his inspiration from the " Guide ",* 
 and in our days the well-known essayist Ahad ha- 
 'Am has seized upon certain of Krochmal's prin- 
 ciples, notably the importance to be attached to 
 the spiritual element in the life of the Jewish 
 people. 
 
 These two leaders, Rapoport and Krochmal, 
 stimulated a whole school of writers, whose works 
 
 4 R. Brainin, in his biography of Mapu, p. 64, Warsaw, 
 1900-
 
 THE GALICIAN SCHOOL 
 
 established the fortune of the Hebrew language 
 in Galicia. With more or less originality, all de- 
 partments of literature and science were cultivated. 
 
 Very soon, however, the times ceased to be pro- 
 pitious to serene thinking and investigation of the 
 past. Hasidism, triumphant, having conquered 
 the whole of Russian-Poland, threatened to crush 
 all thought and reason at the very time in which the 
 Kulturkampf was battering at the gates of the 
 Polish ghetto. Rapoport, we have seen, contended 
 with Hasidism in a witty pamphlet. After him, 
 there appeared a satirist of great talent, who waged 
 pitiless war with ijs partisans and with all the 
 powers of darkness. 
 
 Isaac Erter, of Przemysl (1792-1841), was the 
 friend and disciple of Krochmal. An infant prod- 
 igy, he spent all the years of his early childhood 
 in the exclusive study of the Law. When he was 
 thirteen years old, his father married him to a girl 
 of eighteen, whom he had not set eyes upon before 
 the day of their marriage. She did not live long. 
 Erter went on with his Rabbinic studies, and mar- 
 ried a second time. A lucky chance brought him 
 in contact with a Maskil who led him to the study 
 of Hebrew grammar, and he became a devotee of 
 the Haskalah. Encouraged by Rapoport and 
 
 69
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 Krochmal, with whom he had entered into rela- 
 tions, he published his first satire on Hasidism. It 
 evoked considerable comment. Persecuted by the 
 fanatics on account of it, he could not continue to 
 follow his vocation as teacher of Hebrew. He was 
 obliged to quit his native city, and he went to 
 Brody, where the circle of Maskilim welcomed 
 him with delight. Otherwise his life at Brody was 
 full of hardships. His wife, as courageous as she 
 was intelligent, urged him to equip himself for 
 some serious profession. Accordingly, at the age 
 of thirty-three, he went to Buda-Pesth to study 
 medicine, and five years later he returned to Brody 
 fortified with his diploma as a physician. There- 
 after he occupied an independent position, and he 
 could dare wage uncompromising warfare with 
 obscurantism and the mystics. He published nu- 
 merous articles in the periodicals of the day. After 
 his death, they were collected by the poet Letteris 
 in one volume bearing the^ title Ha-Zofeh le-Bet 
 Yisrael (" The Watchman for the House of 
 Israel"). 
 
 Erter as satirist and critic of morals is a writer 
 of the first order. For vivacity, his style, at once 
 incisive and elegant, may be compared with that 
 of his contemporaries Heine and Borne. He pos- 
 
 70
 
 THE GALICIAN SCHOOL 
 
 sesses not a few traits in common with these two 
 writers. More serious and positive than Heine, 
 he pursues a steady aim in his satires. Tears 
 mingle with his laugh, and if he castigates, it is 
 in order to chasten. More original and more poetic 
 than Borne, he thinks clearly and to the point, and 
 the effect of his thought is in no way impaired by 
 his stilted mannerisms. Without bias or passion, 
 and with fine irony, he rallies the Hasidim on their 
 baneful superstitions, their worship of angels and 
 demons. He criticises the ignorance and narrow- 
 mindedness of the Rabbis, and scourges the shabby 
 vanity of the comrnunal representatives. 
 
 Animated by the desire to spread truth and 
 culture among his co-religionists, he does not direct 
 his attacks against the fanatics alone. He is 
 equally bold in driving home the truth with the 
 " moderns " of the ghetto, the " intellectuals ", 
 boastful of their diplomas, who seek their own 
 profit, and do nothing to further the welfare of the 
 people in general. Corresponding to the number 
 of articles he wrote is the number of arrows shot 
 into the very heart of the backward system im- 
 posed upon the Jews of his country. He is the 
 first Hebrew poet who dared expose the social 
 evils honeycombing the curious surroundings, full 
 
 71
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 of contrasts and naivete, amid which his people 
 lived. This he did in a series of startling descrip- 
 tions. After the fashion of Cervantes, he employs 
 ridicule to kill off the Rabbi and murder the mystic. 
 
 Erter deserves a place in the first rank of the 
 champions of civilization among the Jews. 
 
 Galicia gave birth also to a lyric poet of some 
 distinction. MeTr Halevi Letteris (1815-1871) 
 was a learned philologist, but his chief literary 
 excellencies he displayed as a poet. Like Rapo- 
 port's, his maiden effort was a translation of the 
 Biblical dramas of Racine. His workmanship was 
 exact and beautiful. He was a productive writer, 
 and his activity expressed itself in every sort of 
 literary form. He left upward of thirty volumes 
 in prose and verse. 5 His Hebrew version of Faust, 
 published at Vienna, is a masterpiece in point of 
 style, and it gained him conspicuous renown. He 
 ventured upon a bold departure from Goethe's 
 work. Desiring to transfer the dramatic action to 
 soil wholly Jewish, he substituted for Faust a 
 Gnostic Rabbi of the Talmud, Elisha ben Abuyah, 
 surnamed Aher ("Another"). This change 
 
 His poetry was collected in one volume, and published at 
 Vienna, under the title Tofes Kinnor we- U gab (" Master of the 
 Lyre and the Cithern"). 
 
 72
 
 THE GALICIAN SCHOOL 
 
 necessitated a number of others, which were far 
 from being advantageous to the Hebrew version. 
 
 The prose of Letteris is heavy. It lacks grace 
 and naturalness, qualities possessed by the greater 
 number of his contemporaries in Russia. It should, 
 however, be set down to his credit that, unlike 
 many others, he never showed any inclination to 
 sacrifice clearness of thought to elegance of style. 
 
 By way of compensation, his poetry, from the 
 point of view of style and versification, is raised 
 beyond adverse criticism. It merits the description 
 classic. His numerous translations from modern 
 poets prove the facility with which the ancient 
 language can be handled by a master. But, having 
 acknowledged the superiority of his style, the liter- 
 ary critic has said all there is to be said in praise 
 of his work. The breath of poesy, the tone of 
 personal inspiration, the gift of fancy, are on the 
 whole lacking. His most original poems are noth- 
 ing more than an echo of the romantic school. 
 
 Nevertheless, there is a certain simple charm 
 diffused through some of his verses, especially 
 those in which he pours out his sorrowful Jewish 
 heart. His Zionist poems are perfect expressions 
 of the national spirit. One of them, the very best 
 his muse has produced, has been almost universally 
 
 73
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 accepted as the national hymn. It is called Yonah 
 Homiah (" The Plaintive Dove "). The dove is 
 the symbol for Israel used by the prophetical 
 writers of the Bible. Her mournful cooing voices 
 the grief of the Jewish people driven forth from 
 its native land and forsaken by its God. 
 
 " ' Alas for my affliction ! I must roam about abandoned since 
 I left the shelter in the cleft of my rock. Around me rages the 
 storm, alone and forsaken I fly to the forest to seek safety in its 
 thickets. My Friend has abandoned me ! His anger was kindled, 
 because faithless to Him I permitted the stranger to seduce me, 
 and now my enemies harry me without respite. Since my Friend 
 deserted me, my eyes have been overflowing with tears. Without 
 Thee, O my Glory, what care I for life? Better to dwell in the 
 shadow of death than wander o'er the wide world. For the 
 oppressed death is as a brother in adversity. 
 
 "'Yonder two birds are billing and cooing, and tasting of the 
 sweets of love. They live at ease ensconced in the branches of 
 the trees, nestling amid green olive vines and garlands of flow- 
 ers. I, only I, am exiled ! Where shall I find a refuge ? My 
 rock-shelter is hedged about with prickly thorns and thistles. 
 .... E'en the wild birds of prey mate happily, only I, poor 
 mourning dove, alone among all beings alive, dwell apart. E'en 
 those who gorge themselves with innocent blood live tranquil in 
 their home eyries. Alas ! only the righteous must weep, only the 
 poor are stripped of all hope! .... 
 
 " ' Return, then, my Life, my Breath ! Return, my Comforter ! 
 Hear my bitter wail of woe, lead me back to my home. Have 
 pity on my loneliness! Restore Thy love to me, bring me once 
 
 74
 
 THE GALICIAN SCHOOL 
 
 again to the cleft of my rock, and let me hide myself in the 
 shadow of Thy wings.' 
 
 " Such moaning and dull wailing, my ear caught in the night, 
 when the fields and the woods were bathed in Divine peace; and 
 hearing the plaintive voice of the mourning dove, my soul knew 
 it to be the voice of the bitter woe of the daughter of my 
 people ! " 
 
 Other writers and translators in large numbers 
 added to the lustre of Galicia as a centre of He- 
 brew literature. The most important among them 
 is Samson Bloch, the author of a geography of the 
 world, including a sentimental description of Pales- 
 tine, written in oratorical style. Joseph Efrati 
 (1820) wrote an historical drama, Meluhat Shaiil 
 ("The Royalty of Saul"), which deserves men- 
 tion for its fine conception. And Judah Mises, in 
 his two works, Tekunat ha-Rabbanim (" Charac- 
 terization of the Rabbis"), and Kinat ha-Emet 
 (" The Zeal for Truth "), opposed Rabbinic tra- 
 dition and the authorities of the Middle Ages. 
 His antiquated rationalism called forth the severe 
 reproaches of Rapoport. Nevertheless he stirred 
 up a grave controversy, which gave rise to a series 
 of consequences extending down to the literary 
 warfare begun by the collection Ha-Roeh u-Me- 
 bakker (" The Seer and the Searcher "), published 
 
 6 76
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 by Bodek and Fischmann, in which the works of 
 Zunz, S. D. Luzzatto, and Jost are criticised. 
 
 At this point ceases the dominance of the lit- 
 terateurs of Austrian Poland. The centre of liter- 
 ary activity was thereafter transferred to Russia 
 permanently. Hasidism was about to take com- 
 plete possession of Galicia, and Hebrew literature, 
 confined to a few small circles, was never again to 
 reach there the heights which it had occupied in 
 the days of Rapoport and Krochmal. 
 
 Though the centre of the Hebrew literary move- 
 ment during the earlier half of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury lay in Galicia, yet the Jews elsewhere had a 
 share in it. In almost all the Slav countries as 
 well as in the Occident, in Germany, in Holland, 
 and especially in Italy, Hebrew was cultivated 
 both by scholars and literary men. Some of the 
 works of Zunz, Geiger, Jellinek, and Frankel, for 
 instance, were published in Hebrew. 
 
 At Amsterdam, out of a whole school of littera- 
 teurs, but one name can be selected for special 
 mention, that of the poet and scholar Samuel 
 Mulder (1789-1862). Besides being active as the 
 editor of several collections of essays, and writing 
 remarkable historical studies, he was the composer 
 
 76
 
 THE GALICIAN SCHOOL 
 
 of poems very much admired by his contempo- 
 raries. Most of them appeared in the Bikkure 
 To'elet ("Useful First Fruits"), which he pub- 
 lished at Amsterdam, in 1820, under the auspices 
 of the Maskilim society To'elet. The Talmudic 
 narrative about the seduction of the celebrated 
 wife of Rabbi Mei'r, forms the subject of an excel- 
 lent poem, entitled " Beruriah ", on the fickleness 
 of women. 
 
 In Germany it was chiefly the discussion evoked 
 by the movement for religious reforms (1840- 
 1860) that created a literature in Hebrew. To 
 cite an instance, there'was the fiery pamphlet Or 
 Nogah (" The Bright Light "), by E. Lieberman, 
 a masterpiece in point of style and as a satire upon 
 the orthodox party, together with the replies of the 
 Rabbis and the men of letters. It is curious to read 
 pleas, in Hebrew, for the abolition of the Hebrew 
 language, and against the maintenance of Jewish 
 nationality. Abraham Geiger sided with the ex- 
 treme reformers, while Frankel and Zunz insisted 
 upon the necessity of retaining Hebrew as the 
 language of worship. Another remarkable pam- 
 phlet directed against religious reforms in Judaism 
 must be singled out for mention, that written by 
 Mei'r Israel Bresselau, entitled Hereb Nokemet 
 
 77
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 Nekam Berit (" The Avenging Sword of the 
 Covenant "). 
 
 Moses Mendelsohn, of Hamburg, a German 
 Harizi both in the character of his work and by 
 reason of his position as a straggler of the Meas- 
 sefim, was a disciple and imitator of Wessely. His 
 Makamat Pene Tebel ("The Face of the World", 
 Amsterdam, 1870) contain literary reminiscences. 
 
 Among the contributors to the periodical litera- 
 ture published in Galicia, Judah Jeiteles, of Prague 
 (1773-1838), should be mentioned as a writer of 
 epigrams, models of their kind.' 
 
 The following one is addressed to Tirzah: 
 
 " She is as beautiful as the moon, radiant as the sun ; her whole 
 being resembles the two heavenly luminaries. The maiden lav- 
 ishes her gifts upon the whole world, and like the two orbs she 
 rules both day and night." 
 
 Jeiteles also carried on a sharp pamphlet war 
 against Hasidism. 7 
 
 Hungary, whose Jews had the same customs and 
 characteristics as the Jews of Poland, gave birth 
 
 'Bene ha-Ne'urim ("Youth"), Prague, 1821. 
 
 T Like the Vienna and the Brody of that day, Prague also had 
 its literary centres. Among its Hebrew men of letters was Gabriel 
 Sudfeld, the father of the celebrated author Max Nordau, and 
 himself the author of a drama and of an exegetical work, which 
 appeared in 1850. 
 
 78
 
 THE GALICIAN SCHOOL 
 
 to one poet of real merit. Solomon Levinsohn, of 
 Moor (1789-1822), was brought up in orthodox 
 surroundings, and had to contend against all sorts 
 of obstacles, spiritual and material. He triumphed 
 over them, and became a scholar of serious attain- 
 ments and a poet of distinction. Besides his his- 
 torical studies, in German, he wrote an excellent 
 geography of Palestine, in Hebrew, under the title 
 Mehkere Erez (" Investigations of the Land"), 
 published at Vienna in 1819. His poetical treatise 
 Melizat Yeshurun (a Hebrew rhetoric), also pub- 
 lished at Vienna, in 1846, is a master work, both 
 as a treatise on rhetoric and as poetic literature. 
 The introductory poem, on " Poetic Eloquence ", 
 an apotheosis of poetry and belles lettres, is one of 
 the finest ever written in Hebrew. The poet dis- 
 plays a rich imagination, his figures of speech are 
 clear-cut and telling, and his style is remarkable 
 for its classic quality. An unhappy love affair 
 terminated his days before his genius reached the 
 period of full flowering.' 
 
 The literary movement of the first half of the 
 nineteenth century did not succeed in making itself 
 
 * Simon Bacher, the father of the scholar Wilhelm Bacher, also 
 won a name as an eloquent poet. 
 
 79
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 felt among the masses. It failed to call forth a 
 national literature of even a slight degree of origi- 
 nality. The Maskilim of Galicia fell into the same 
 mistake as their predecessors in Germany. In con- 
 stituting themselves the champions of humanism 
 in Poland, in a community thoroughly religious, 
 and affected by modern conceptions only superfi- 
 cially, they should not have attached the undue im- 
 portance they did to arguments addressed to reason. 
 Their appeal should have been directed to the feel- 
 ings of their co-religionists. They labored under 
 the delusion that positive reasoning could carry 
 conviction to a people immersed in mystical specu- 
 lation, crushed by the double yoke of ceremonial- 
 ism and an inferior social position, and sustained 
 only by the Messianic hope of a glorious future. 
 If Galician humanism never spread beyond the 
 small circles of the literary, it was only what might 
 have been expected. It could not become a popular 
 movement. Neither the depth of thinkers like 
 Rapoport and Krochmal, nor the biting satire 
 of an Erter, nor the Zionistic lyricism of a 
 Letteris, had force enough to cry a halt to the 
 Hasidim and impede their dark work. In point of 
 fact, the newer ideas all but failed to make an im- 
 pression on the most independent of the young 
 
 80
 
 THE GALICIAN SCHOOL 
 
 Rabbis. They were affrighted by the religious de- 
 cadence in evidence in Germany, and they took a 
 rather determined stand in opposition to the spread 
 of a secular literature in Hebrew." As a result, 
 we shall see a steady decline in the position of the 
 Hebrew litterateur in Poland, and a decrease in the 
 number of Hebrew publications. The Mehabber 
 makes his appearance as a type the vagabond 
 author who offers his own writings for sale, fairly 
 forcing them on unwilling purchasers. No more 
 eloquent index is needed to the state of a struggling 
 literature. 
 
 ^ 
 
 It is questionable whether the work of the Gali- 
 cian Maskilim would not have been doomed to 
 perpetual sterility, with no hope of ever making an 
 impression on the Jewish masses, if an Italian 
 writer had not appeared on the scene, who pos- 
 sessed the Jewish feeling that was lacking in his 
 predecessors. In Samuel David Luzzatto general 
 culture and genuine breadth of mind were united 
 with Jewish loyalty raised to the highest pitch. 
 
 "Cases might be cited besides that of the learned friend of 
 Rapoport, Jacob Samuel Bick, referred to by Bernfeld in his 
 biography of Rapoport, p. 13. He deserted from the humanist 
 camp, in which his Jewish feeling was left unsatisfied, and took 
 refuge in Hasidism. 
 
 81
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 He succeeded in discovering the formula by which 
 modern culture can be brought to the religious 
 without wounding their Jewish sensibilities. The 
 life and work of so remarkable a personage deserve 
 more than passing mention. 
 
 After a rather long period of inactivity in He- 
 brew letters in Italy, a new literary and scientific 
 school sprang into being during the first half of 
 the nineteenth century. It participated with not- 
 able success in the movement of the north. The 
 celebrated critic, Isaac Samuel Reggio (1784- 
 1854), an independent thinker, exercised enormous 
 influence upon his contemporaries by his publica- 
 tions in the history of literature and his bold arti- 
 cles on religious reform. His chief work, " The 
 Law and Philosophy ", which appeared in Vienna 
 in 1827, is an attempt at harmonizing the Jewish 
 Law with science. 
 
 The best known of the poets were Joseph 
 Almanzi 10 (1790-1860) and Rachel Morpurgo. 
 Almanzi's poems were published in two collections, 
 one entitled Higgayon be-Kitinor (" The Lyric 
 Harp"), and Nezem Zahab ("Ornament of 
 Gold"). 
 
 10 The reader is referred to the anthology of the Italian poets 
 of the period, published by Abraham Baruch Piperno, under the 
 title Kol 'Uffab ("The Voice of the Harp", Leghorn, 1846). 
 
 82
 
 THE GALICIAN SCHOOL 
 
 Rachel Morpurgo (1790-1860), a kinswoman 
 of the Luzzatto family, left a collection of poems 
 on various subjects, entitled 'Ugab Rahel (" The 
 Harp of Rachel"), a carefully prepared edition 
 of which was published by the scholar Vittorio 
 Castiglioni. It is a curious document in the history 
 of Hebrew literature. The language of the poetess 
 is essentially Biblical, her style sprightly and origi- 
 nal, and her thought is dominated by a fine serenity 
 of soul and unwavering faith in the Messianic 
 future of Israel. 
 
 The following sonnet was inspired by the demo- 
 cratic revolution of 1848, which shook modern 
 society to its very foundations, and in which the 
 Jews were largely and deeply interested : 
 
 " He who bringeth low the proud, hath brought low all the 
 kings of the earth, .... He hath sent disaster and ruin into the 
 fortified cities, and sated with blood their cringing defenders. 
 
 " All, both young and old, gird on the sword, greedier for prey 
 than the beasts of the forest; they all cry for liberty, the wise 
 and the boors ; the fury of the battle rages like the billows of the 
 stormy sea 
 
 " Not thus the servants of God, the valiant of His host. They 
 do battle day and night with their evil inclinations. Patiently 
 they bear the yoke of their Rock, and increase cometh to their 
 strength. My Friend is like a hart, like a sportive gazelle. 
 
 "He will sound the great trumpet to summon the Deliverer; 
 83
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 the righteous Sprout shall grow forth from the earth. Their 
 Rock will soothe their pain, He will repair every breach. The 
 Lord reigneth, and the earth rejoiceth aloud." 
 
 Rachel's finest poem is without a doubt the one 
 named 'Emek 'Akor ("The Dark Valley") in 
 which she affirms her steadfast faith in the truths 
 and consolations of religion : 
 
 " O dark valley, covered with night and mist, how long wilt 
 thou keep me bound with thy chains? Better to die and abide 
 under the shadow of the Almighty, than sit desolate in the seeth- 
 ing waters." 
 
 " I discern them from afar, the hills of eternity, their ever- 
 enduring summits clothed with garlands of bloom. O that I 
 might rise on wings like the eagle, fly upward with my eyes, and 
 raise my countenance and gaze into the heart of the sun ! 
 
 " O Heaven, how beautiful are thy paths, they lead to where 
 liberty reigneth ever. How gentle the zephyrs wafted over thy 
 heights, who hath words to tell ? " 
 
 The same mystic note struck by Rachel Mor- 
 purgo recurs in the works of other Italian writers 
 of the time. It distinguishes them strikingly from 
 their contemporaries in Galicia and Russia, who 
 proclaim themselves almost without exception the 
 followers of a relentless rationalism. 
 
 Unquestionably the most original of all these 
 writers, and the one who occupied the most promi- 
 
 84
 
 THE GALICIAN SCHOOL 
 
 nent and influential place, is Samuel David Luz- 
 zatto (1800-1865). He was born at Triest, the 
 son of a carpenter, a poor man, but none the less 
 educated and respected. The childhood years of 
 Luzzatto were passed in poverty and study. He 
 emerged a conqueror from the struggle for life 
 and knowledge. As early as 1829 he was ap- 
 pointed rector of the Rabbinical Seminary at 
 Padua. Thereafter he could devote himself with- 
 out hindrance to science and the education of dis- 
 ciples, many of whom became celebrated. 
 
 Luzzatto's learning was vast in extent and as 
 thorough. Besides, ke possessed literary taste and 
 modern culture. In his southern temperament, 
 feeling had the upper hand of reason. He was an 
 indefatigable worker, his mind was always actively 
 alert. Versed alike in philology, archaeology, 
 poetry, and philosophy, he was productive in each 
 of these departments, without ever laying himself 
 open to the charge of mediocrity. He was the 
 creator of the Science of Judaism in the Italian 
 language, but above all he was a Hebrew writer. 
 
 He published excellent editions of the Hebrew 
 masters of the Middle Ages, for the first time 
 bringing to the doors of readers, scholarly readers 
 as well as others, the works of such poets as Jehu- 
 
 85
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 dah Halevi (Prague, 1840). The notes in these 
 editions of his are ingenious and scientific. His 
 own verses and poems are wholly devoid of in- 
 spiration and fancy, but in form and style they are 
 irreproachable. 11 His prose is vigorous and pre- 
 cise, at the same time preserving some of the Ori- 
 ental charm native to the Hebrew. 
 
 His chief distinction is that he was a romantic 
 Jew. His patriotic heart was chilled by the attacks 
 upon the Jewish religion and upon Jewish national- 
 ism by the German and Galician humanists. He 
 was hostile to rationalism, and opposed it all his 
 life. In his sight, science, the importance of which 
 he in no degree denied, was yet not equal in value 
 to religious feeling. This alone, he held, is able 
 to establish morality in a position of supremacy. 
 
 S. Bernfeld, in his sketch of Rapoport," con- 
 siders it a surprising anachronism that this roman- 
 ticist, this Jewish Chateaubriand, should have ap- 
 peared on the scene at the very moment of the 
 triumph of rationalism in Hebrew letters every- 
 where. Luzzatto was the first among Hebrew 
 
 humanists to claim the right of existence not only 
 
 / 
 
 11 Kinnor Na'im ("The Sweet Lyre"), Vienna, 1825, and 
 others. 
 "Warsaw and Berlin, 1899. 
 
 86
 
 THE GALICIAN SCHOOL 
 
 for Jewish nationality, but also for the Jewish re- 
 ligion in its integrity. 
 
 " A people in possession of a land of its own can maintain 
 itself, even without a religion of its own. But the Jewish people, 
 dispersed in all four corners of the earth, can maintain itself 
 only by virtue of its attachment to its faith. And if, heaven 
 forbid, it should cease to believe in revelation, it must inevitably 
 
 be assimilated with the other peoples The science of 
 
 Judaism, with which some scholars u are at present occupying 
 themselves in Germany, cannot preserve Judaism. It is not an 
 object in itself to them. When all is said, Goethe and Schiller 
 are more important to these gentlemen, and much dearer to them, 
 than all the prophets and all the Rabbis of the Talmud. They 
 pursue the Science of Judaism pretty much as others study 
 Egyptology or Assyriology, or the lore of Persia. They are 
 inspired by a love of science, by the desire for personal renown, 
 or, at best, by the intention to attach glory to the name of Israel, 
 and they extol certain old works for the purpose of hastening 
 the first redemption, that is, the political emancipation of the 
 Jews. But this Science of Judaism has no stability. It cannot 
 survive the emancipation of the Jews, or the death of those who 
 studied the Torah and believed in God and Moses before they 
 took lessons of Eichhorn and his disciples." 
 
 " The true Science of Judaism, the science which will last as 
 long as time itself, is that which is founded on the faith ; which 
 endeavors to understand the Bible as a Divine work, and the his- 
 tory of a peculiar people whose lot has been peculiar; which, 
 
 13 Jost, in his " History of the Jewish People ", etc. 
 87
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 finally, dwells upon those moments in the various epochs of Jew- 
 ish history when the innate genius of Judaism wages a conflict 
 with the genius of humanity in general, as it lies in wait without, 
 and how the Divine spirit of Judaism mastered the spirit of hu- 
 manity throughout all the centuries. For the day on which the 
 positions shall be reversed, and the spirit of humanity shall 
 remain in possession of the field, that day will be the last in the 
 life of the people of Israel." 
 
 This conception of the providential role assigned 
 to Israel is the point at which the Italian romanti- 
 cist meets Krochmal, wide apart though their 
 starting-places are. At bottom both do but in- 
 terpret the ancient notion of the Divine selection 
 of Israel and of a " chosen people ". But while 
 Krochmal regards religion as a fleeting phase in 
 the existence of the nation, for Luzzatto religion 
 is an essential element in Judaism, a view not un- 
 like Bossuet's. However, it does not lead him 
 astray. He still tries to harmonize faith with the 
 demands of the modern spirit. The Jewish re- 
 ligion is in his opinion the moral doctrine par excel- 
 lence. Like Heine he takes the world to be domi- 
 nated by two opposite forces, Hellenism and He- 
 braism. Justice, truth, the good, and self-abnega- 
 tion, whatever appertains to these is Jewish. The 
 beautiful, the rational, the sensuous, is Attic. Luz- 
 zatto does not hesitate to criticise the masters of 
 
 88
 
 THE GALICIAN SCHOOL 
 
 the Middle Ages rather sharply, chief among them 
 Maimonides, who attempted the impossible when 
 he endeavored to harmonize science and faith, 
 reason and feeling, Moses and Aristotle. These 
 are the irreconcilable oppositions in human life. 
 
 " Science does not make us happy ; the highest morality alone 
 is capable of conferring true happiness upon us, and spiritual 
 peace. And this morality is to be found not with Aristotle, but 
 only with the prophets of Israel. 
 
 " The happiness of the Jewish people, the people of morality, 
 does not depend upon its political emancipation, but upon its 
 faith and its morality. The French and German Rabbis of the 
 Middle Ages, simple-minded and uncultured, but pious and sin- 
 cere, are preferable to the speculative minds of Spain, whose 
 arguing and rhetoric warped their judgment." 
 
 Such ideas as these involved Luzzatto in dis- 
 cussions and polemics with the greater number of 
 his friends, the German Jewish scholars, whose 
 views were far removed from his. He defied his 
 contemporaries, as he attacked the masters of the 
 Middle Ages. In one of his letters he goes to the 
 length of asserting, that while Jost and his col- 
 leagues were engaged in what they believed to be 
 the useful work of defending Judaism against its 
 enemies, they were in reality doing it more harm 
 than these same enemies. The latter tended to 
 
 89
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 preserve the Jewish people as a nation apart, while 
 the rationalistic criticism of the former, directed 
 against the Jewish religion, burst the bonds that 
 hold the nation together, and hasten its dissolution. 
 
 " When, my dear German scholars ", he cries out vehemently, 
 " when will the Lord open your eyes ? How long will you fail 
 to understand that, carried away by the general current, you are 
 permitting national feeling to become extinct and the language of 
 our ancestors to fall into desuetude, and are thus preparing the 
 way for the triumphant invasion of Atticism .... So long as 
 you do not teach that the Good is not that which is visible to the 
 eyes, but that which is felt within the heart, and that the pros- 
 perity of our people is not dependent upon civil emancipation, 
 but upon the love of a man for his neighbor, .... their hearts 
 will not be possessed with zeal for God." 1( 
 
 Luzzatto has no fondness for dry dogmatism, 
 nor for detailed prohibitions and Rabbinic contro- 
 versies. He is too modern for that, too much of a 
 poet. What he loves is the poetry of religion. 
 He is attracted by its moral elevation. Like Jehu- 
 dah Halevi, the sentimental philosopher whose suc- 
 cessor he is, Luzzatto feels and thinks in the pecul- 
 iar fashion that distinguishes the intuitive minds 
 among the Jews. He loves his native country, and 
 this love appears clearly in his writings, yet, at the 
 
 "Letters, I, No. 267, p. 660. 
 
 90
 
 THE GALICIAN SCHOOL 
 
 same time, they all, whether in prose, as in his 
 Letters, or in verse, as in the Kinnor Nairn, sound 
 a Zionistic note. 
 
 Luzzatto became the founder of a school. 
 Writers of our own day, like Vittorio Castiglioni, 
 Eude Lolli, and others, draw upon the works of 
 the master as a source, and they acknowledge it 
 openly. His philological and linguistic works, the 
 Bet ha-Ozar among others, have inestimable value, 
 and his Letters, published by Graber in five vol- 
 umes, the edition from which most of the passages 
 cited have been taken, abundantly prove his influ- 
 ence on his contemporaries. 
 
 He was a master and a prophet, a gracious and 
 brilliant exponent of the Renascence of Hebrew 
 literature, which had been inaugurated by one of 
 his ancestors, another Luzzatto. 
 
 A century of efforts and uninterrupted labor had 
 wrought the resurrection of the Hebrew language. 
 After it had been transformed into a modern 
 tongue, in touch with all departments of thought, 
 the sole remaining task was to make it acceptable 
 to the masses of the orthodox Jews, and use it as 
 an effective instrument of social and religious eman- 
 cipation. This task became easy of accomplish- 
 
 91
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 ment because Luzzatto knew how to direct the 
 mind of his contemporaries. He found the key to 
 the heart of the masses. 
 
 A message in verse addressed to him by a young 
 Lithuanian poet, in 1857," gives an eloquent inter- 
 pretation of the sentiment felt for the Italian 
 maestro by the devotees of a budding school of 
 literature : 
 
 " From the icy north country, where the flowers and the sun 
 endure but a few short moons, these halting lines speed with their 
 greeting away from the hoar frost, to the eloquent sage in the 
 southland, enthroned among the wise and extolled by the pious 
 to the gentle guide whose heart burns, like the sun of his own 
 fair land, with love for the people whence he was hewn, and 
 for the tongue of the Jews." 
 
 The " icy north country " was Lithuania, in 
 which the literary movement had just effected a 
 triumphal entry, bringing with it the light of sci- 
 ence, and the young poet was Judah Leon Gordon, 
 destined to become the greatest Jewish poet of the 
 nineteenth century. 
 
 Here we arrive at the end of the first part of our 
 essay, devoted in particular to Hebrew literature 
 in Western Europe. For its future we must look 
 to the East. 
 
 "Poems, by J. L. Gordon, St. Petersburg, 1884, I, p. 125. 
 92
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 IN LITHUANIA 
 
 HUMANISM IN RUSSIA 
 
 We are in the Jewish country, perhaps the only 
 Jewish country in the world. 1 
 
 The last to participate in the intellectual move- 
 ment of European Judaism, the Lithuanian Jews 
 start into view, in the second half of the seven- 
 teenth century, as a peculiar social organism, clearly 
 marked as such from its first appearance. The 
 Rabbis and scholars of Lithuania acquired fame 
 without a struggle, and its Rabbinical schools 
 quickly became the busy centres of Talmudic 
 research. 
 
 The destinies of the Jewish population of Lithu- 
 ania, so different in character from that of Poland 
 proper, were ruled absolutely by the " Synod of 
 the Four Countries ", with Brest, and afterwards 
 Wilna, as headquarters. 
 
 1 See Slouschz, Massa be-Lita ("Journey through Lithuania"), 
 Jerusalem, 1899. 
 
 93
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 The revolutions and upheavals to which is due 
 the social and religious decadence of the Polish 
 Jews during the eighteenth century, barely touched 
 this forsaken corner of the earth. Even the Cos- 
 sack invasion dealt leniently with Lithuania, if the 
 city of Wilna is excepted, and its early annexation 
 by Russia saved the province from the anarchy and 
 excitement which agitated Poland during its latter 
 days. 
 
 Left to their fate, neglected by the authorities, 
 and forming almost the whole of the urban popu- 
 lation, the Jews of Lithuania, in the full glare of 
 the eighteenth century, were in all essentials an 
 autonomous community with Jewish national and 
 theocratic features. The Talmud did service as 
 their civil and religious code. The court of final 
 appeal was a Rabbinical expert, supported by the 
 central synod and the local Kahal, and exercising 
 absolute authority over the moral and material 
 interests of those subordinated to his jurisdiction. 
 The study of the Law was carried to the extreme 
 of devotion. To have an illiterate, an 'Am ha- 
 Arez, a " rustic ", in one's family, was considered 
 a pitiable fate. 
 
 Lithuania, in fine, was the promised land of 
 Rabbinism, in which everything favored the de- 
 velopment of a national Jewish centre. 
 
 94
 
 HUMANISM IN RUSSIA 
 
 The natural poverty of the country, its barren 
 soil, dense forests, and lack of populous centres of 
 civilization, all tended to keep the Polish lords 
 aloof. Poland offered them a more inviting so- 
 journ. There was nothing to hinder the pious 
 scholars who had escaped from religious persecu- 
 tion in the countries of Europe, especially France 
 and Germany, from devoting themselves, with all 
 their heart and energy, to the study of the Talmud 
 and the ceremonials of their religion. No infusion 
 of aliens disturbed them. The inhospitable skies, 
 the absence of diversions, little troubled the refu- 
 gees of the ghettOj-for whom the Book and the 
 dead letter were all-sufficing. They were not 
 affected, their dignity was hardly wounded, by the 
 haughty and arbitrary treatment which the noble- 
 man accorded to the Jewish " factor " and steward, 
 and by the many humiliations which were the price 
 paid in return for the right to live, for without the 
 protection of the lords they would not have been 
 able to hold out against the wretched orthodox 
 peasants. In morality and in race, however, they 
 considered themselves the superior of the "Poriz", 
 the Polish nobleman, with his extravagance and 
 folly. 
 
 In the villages, the Jews had the upper hand, 
 
 95
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 either as the actual owners of the estates, or as the 
 overseers, and in the rude cities with their wooden 
 buildings, they constituted the bulk of the mer- 
 chants, the middlemen, the artisans, even the work- 
 men. They all led a sordid life. Mere existence 
 required a bitter struggle. Destitute of all pleas- 
 ures save the intimate joys of family life, fostering 
 no ambition except such as was connected with the 
 study of the Law, disciplined by religious authority, 
 and chastened by austere and rigid principles of 
 morality, the Jewish masses had a peculiar stamp 
 impressed upon their character by their life of 
 subjection and misery. The mind was constantly 
 kept alert by the dialectics of the Talmud and the 
 ingenious efforts needed to secure one's daily bread. 
 Even the Messianic dreams, inspired by a belief in 
 Divine justice and in the moral and religious superi- 
 ority of Israel, rather than by a mystic conception 
 of life, gave but a faint touch of beauty and 
 glamour to an existence so mournful, so abjectly 
 sad. 
 
 Such was, and such in part is still, the manner 
 in which they live a sober, energetic, melancholy, 
 and subtle people, the mass of the two millions of 
 Jews who reside in Lithuania and White Russia, 
 and send forth, to the great capitals of Europe and 
 
 96
 
 HUMANISM IN RUSSIA 
 
 to the countries beyond seas, a stream of industri- 
 ous immigrants, resourceful intellectually and 
 morally. 
 
 In the second half of the eighteenth century, 
 thanks to the peace with which Lithuania was 
 blessed after its subjection by Russia, Rabbinical 
 studies reached their zenith. The high schools, the 
 Yeshibot, became the centres of attraction for the 
 best of the young men. The number of writers 
 and scholars increased considerably, and the He- 
 brew printing presses were kept in full blast. The 
 ideal of every Lithuanian Jew was, if not to marry 
 his daughter to a scholar, at least to have a Bahur 
 at his table, a student of the Talmud, a prospective 
 Rabbi. "The Torah is the best Sehorah" 
 ("merchandise"), every Lithuanian mother 
 croons at the cradle of her child. 
 
 In those days a Rabbinic authority arose like 
 unto whom none had been known among Jews in 
 the later centuries, and his earnest, independent 
 genius, as well as his moral grandeur, conferred 
 a consecration upon the peculiar spiritual tenden- 
 cies prevailing in Lithuanian Judaism, which 
 he personified at its loftiest. Elijah of Wilna, 
 surnamed " the Gaon ", " his Excellency ", suc- 
 ceeded in resisting the assaults of Hasidism, which 
 
 97
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 threatened to overwhelm, if not the learned among 
 them, certainly the Lithuanian masses. To parry 
 the dangers of mysticism, which exercised so power- 
 ful an attraction that the dry' and subtle casuistry 
 of Rabbinic learning could not damp its ardor, he 
 broke with scholastic methods, and took up a com- 
 paratively rational interpretation of texts and the 
 laws. He went to the extreme of asserting the 
 value of profane and practical knowledge, the pur- 
 suit of which could not but bring advantage to the 
 study of the Law a position unheard of at his 
 day, and excusable only in so popular a man as 
 he was. He himself wrote a treatise on mathe- 
 matics, and philologic research was a favorite 
 occupation with him. His pupils followed his ex- 
 ample; they translated several scientific works into 
 Hebrew, and founded schools and centres of puri- 
 tanism, not only in Lithuania, but also as far away 
 as Palestine. From this time on the Yeshibah 
 of Wolosin became the chief seat of traditional 
 Talmud study and Rabbinic rationalism. 
 
 One of the contemporaries of " the Gaon " was 
 the physician Judah Hurwitz, of Wilna, who op- 
 posed Hasidism in his pamphlet Megillat Sedarim 
 ("A Book of Essays "), and in his ethical work 
 'Ammude Bet-Yehudah ("The Pillars of the 
 
 98
 
 HUMANISM IN RUSSIA 
 
 House of Judah ", Prague, 1793), he pleads the 
 cause of internationalism and the equality of men 
 and races ! 
 
 It would be rash to suppose that an echo of the 
 studies of the Encyclopedists had reached a prov- 
 ince double-barred and double-locked by politics 
 and religion. The European languages were un- 
 known in the Lithuanian Jewries of the Gaon's 
 day, and his pupils sought their mental pabulum 
 in the writings of the Jewish scholars of the Middle 
 Ages, Maimonides, and Albo, and their compeers. 
 The result was an odd, whimsical science. False, 
 antiquated notions and theories were introduced 
 through the medium of the Hebrew, and they 
 attained no slight vogue. At the end of the eight- 
 eenth century, a certain Elias, a Rabbi, also of 
 Wilna, undertook to gather all the facts of science 
 into one collection. He compiled a curious ency- 
 clopedia, the Sefer ha-Berit (" The Book of the 
 Covenant"). By the side of geographic details 
 of the most fantastic sort, he set down chemical 
 discoveries and physical laws in the form of 
 magical formulas. This book, by no means the 
 only one of its kind, was reprinted many a time, 
 and in our own day it still affords delight to 
 orthodox readers. 
 
 99
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 A long time passed before the Russian govern- 
 ment took note of the intellectual condition of its 
 Jewish subjects, who, in turn, asked nothing better 
 than to be left undisturbed. Nevertheless, the 
 treatment accorded them by the government was 
 not calculated to inspire them with great confidence 
 in it. As for a Russification of the Jewish masses, 
 there could be no question of that, at a time when 
 Russian civilization and language were themselves 
 in an embryonic state. 
 
 It was only when the first Alexander came to the 
 throne that the reforms planned by the government 
 began to make an impression upon the distant 
 ghetto. A special commission was instituted for the 
 purpose of studying the conditions under which the 
 Jews were living, and how to ameliorate them ma- 
 terially and intellectually. The first close contact 
 between Jews and Russians took place in the little 
 town of Shklow, inhabited almost entirely by Jews. 
 It was an important station on the route from the 
 capital to Western Europe, and the Jews were 
 afforded an opportunity of entering into relations 
 with men of mark, both Russians and strangers, 
 who passed through on their way to St. Petersburg. 3 
 
 *As early as 1780 a Hebrew ode was published on the occa- 
 sion of Empress Catherine IPs passing through Shklow. A 
 
 100
 
 HUMANISM IN RUSSIA 
 
 A circle of literary men under the influence of the 
 Meassefim was founded there, and a curious lit- 
 erary document issued thence testifies to the 
 hopes aroused by the reform projects planned in 
 the reign of Alexander I for the improvement of 
 the condition of the Jews. It is a pamphlet bear- 
 ing the title Kol Shaw' at Bat-Yehudah, or Sinat 
 ha-Dat (" The Loud Voice of the Daughter of 
 Judah ", or " Religious Hatred "), and published, 
 in Shklow in 1803, in Hebrew and Russian. The 
 author, whose name was Lob Nevakhovich,* pro- 
 tests energetically, in j)ehalf of truth and humanity, 
 against the contemptuous treatment accorded the 
 Jews. 
 
 " Ah, ye Christians, men of the newer faith, who vaunt your 
 mercy and lovingkindness ! Exercise your mercy upon us, turn 
 your loving hearts toward us. Why do you scorn the Jew? If 
 he forsakes his faith, how doth it profit you? Have you not 
 heard the voice of Moses Mendelssohn, the celebrated writer of 
 our people, who asked your co-religionists, ' Of what avail that 
 you should continue to attach men lacking faith and religion to 
 
 printing press was set up there about 1777, and it was at Shklow 
 that a litterateur, N. H. Schulmann, made the first attempt to 
 found a weekly political journal in Hebrew, announcing it in 
 his edition of the Zeker Rab. 
 
 1 Grandfather of the well-known scholar E. Metchnikoff, of the 
 Pasteur Institute. 
 
 101
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 yourselves ' ? Can you not understand that the Jew, too, loves 
 righteousness and justice like unto yourselves? Why do you 
 constantly scrutinize the man to find the Jew in him? Seek but 
 the man in the Jew, and you will surely find him!" 
 
 Like so many that have followed, this first ap- 
 peal awakened no answering echo in Russian 
 hearts. A century has passed since then, and Rus- 
 sia still fails to find the man in the unconverted 
 Jew! 
 
 The hopes aroused in the Jews of Lithuania by 
 the Napoleonic wars were disappointed. An iron 
 hand held them down, and they continued to vege- 
 tate miserably in their gloomy, abandoned corner. 
 
 The story goes that when Napoleon at the head 
 of the grande armee entered Wilna, the exclama- 
 tion was forced from him, " Why, this is the Jeru- 
 salem of Lithuania ! " Whether the story is true 
 or not, it is a fact that no other city was more de- 
 serving of the epithet. The residence of the Gaon 
 was a Jewish metropolis as early as the eighteenth 
 century, and during the whole of the nineteenth 
 century Wilna was the Jewish city par excellence, 
 a distinction to which it was helped by several 
 facts by the systematic and intentional elimina- 
 tion of the Polish element, especially since the in- 
 
 102
 
 HUMANISM IN RUSSIA 
 
 surrection of 1831, by the prohibition of the Pol- 
 ish language, the closing of the university, and the 
 absence of a Lithuanian population. The de- 
 throned capital of a people betrayed by its nobility 
 became, after its abandonment by the native inhab- 
 itants, the centre of a Jewry independent of its sur- 
 roundings and undisturbed in its internal develop- 
 ment. Without in the least deviating from Rab- 
 binic traditions, its constitutional platform, Jewish 
 society in Wilna was gradually penetrated by mod- 
 ern ideas. 
 
 The humanism of tjje German Jews, the Haska- 
 lah, met with no effective resistance in a compara- 
 tively enlightened world, prepared for it by the 
 school of the Gaon. The Rabbinical students 
 themselves were the first representatives of human- 
 ism in Lithuania. They became as ambitious in 
 cultivating the Hebrew language and studying the 
 secular sciences presented in it, as in searching out 
 and examining the Talmud. Sprung form the peo- 
 ple, living its life and sharing in its miseries, sepa- 
 rated from Christian society by a barrier of pre- 
 scriptions that seemed insuperable to them, the 
 earliest of the Lithuanian litterateurs vitalized their 
 young love for science and Hebrew letters with the 
 disinterested devotion that characterizes the ideal- 
 ists of the ghetto in general. 
 
 103
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 A literary circle, known as the " Berliners ", was 
 formed in Wilna, about 1830. It was the pattern 
 after which a large number were modelled a little 
 later, all of them pursuing Hebrew literature with 
 zeal and ardor. 
 
 Two writers of worth, both from Wilna, the 
 one a poet, the other a prose writer, headed the 
 literary procession in Lithuania. 
 
 Abraham Bar Lebensohn (Adam ha-Kohen, 
 1794-1880), surnamed the "father of poetry", 
 was born at Wilna. He spent a sad childhood. 
 Left motherless early, he was deprived of the love 
 and the care that are the only consolations known 
 to a child of the ghetto. At the age of three, he 
 was sent to the Heder, at seven he was a student 
 of the Talmud, then casuistry occupied his mind, 
 and, finally, the Kabbalah. The last had but feeble 
 attractions for the future poet. His mental mould 
 was determined by his thorough study of the Bible 
 and Hebrew grammar, which was good form in 
 Wilna as early as his day, and the works of 
 Wessely, for whom he always professed warm 
 admiration, had a decided influence upon his poetic 
 bias. 
 
 In his first attempts at poetry, Lebensohn did 
 not depart greatly from the achievements of the 
 
 104
 
 HUMANISM IN RUSSIA 
 
 many Rabbinical students whose favorite pastime 
 was to discuss the events of the day in Hebrew 
 verse. An elegy to the memory of a Rabbi, an ode 
 celebrating the equivocal glory of a Polish noble- 
 man, and similar subjects, were the natural choice 
 of the muse of the era, and the early flights of our 
 author were not different. There was nothing in 
 them to betray the future poet of merit. A little 
 later he took up the study of German, but his knowl- 
 edge of the language was never more than super- 
 ficial. Haunted by the fame of Schiller, he de- 
 voted himself to poetry, and imitated the German 
 poets, or tried to imitate them, for he never suc- 
 ceeded in grasping the true meaning of German 
 poetry, nor in understanding erotic literature. To 
 the Rabbinical student, with his puritanic spirit and 
 austere manners, it was a collocation of poetic 
 figures of speech and symbolic expressions. 
 
 His life differed in no wise from that of the 
 poor Jews of the ghetto. Given in marriage early 
 by his father, he suddenly found himself deep in 
 the bitter struggle for existence, before he had 
 known the transport of living, or youth, or the 
 passions, or love, or the inner doubts and beliefs 
 that contend with one another in the heart of man. 
 Feeling for nature, aesthetic delights, were strange 
 
 105
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 provinces to this son of the ghetto. A conception 
 of art that is destitute of a moral aim would have 
 passed his understanding and his puritanic horizon. 
 Too much of a free-thinker to follow the Rab- 
 binical profession, he taught Hebrew to children 
 an unremunerative occupation, and little respected 
 in a society in which the most ignorant are not 
 uninstructed, and in which, the choice of vocations 
 being restricted, the unsuccessful and the unskilled 
 naturally drop into teaching. Ten years of it, 
 daily from eight in the morning until nine at night, 
 undermined his health. He fell sick, and was 
 compelled to give up his hap-hazard calling, to the 
 great gain of Hebrew poetry. He went into the 
 brokerage business, and his small leisure he de- 
 voted to his muse. Harassed by petty, sordid 
 cares, this broker was yet a genuine idealist, though 
 it cannot be maintained that Lebensohn was of the 
 stuff of which dreamers are made and great poets. 
 But in his mind, rationalistic and logical to the 
 point of dryness, there was a secluded recess per- 
 vaded with melancholy and real feeling. The He- 
 brew language he cherished with ardent and ex- 
 alted love. Is it not a beautiful language and 
 admirable? Is it not the last relic saved from the 
 shipwreck in which all the national possessions of 
 
 106
 
 HUMANISM IN RUSSIA 
 
 our people were lost? And is not he, Lebensohn 
 himself, the heir to the prophets, the poet laureate 
 and high priest to the holy language ? With what 
 pride he unveils the state of his soul to us : 
 
 " I am seated at the table of God, and with my hand I guide 
 His pen ; and my hand writes the language holy unto Him, the 
 language of* His Law, the language of His people, Selah ! O 
 God, arouse, awake my spirit, for is it not Thy holy language 
 wherein I sing unto Thee ? " ' 
 
 A creature of his surroundings, and a disciple 
 of the Rabbis, as he was, the dialectics of a logician 
 were in him joined to native simplicity of spirit, yet 
 he never reached the point of understanding the 
 inner world of struggles and passions that agitate 
 the individual lives of men. For a love song or a 
 poem in praise of nature, he thought it necessary 
 only to copy the German authors and link together 
 a series of pointed verses. The poem " David and 
 Bath-sheba " is a failure. His descriptions of na- 
 ture are dry and artificial. He was never able to 
 account for what was happening under his eyes and 
 around him. Events produced an effect upon him 
 out of all proportion to their importance. The 
 military and civic reforms of Nicholas I, he cele- 
 
 4 Shire Sefat Kodesh, II, I. 
 8 107
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 brated in an ode, in which he applied the enthusi- 
 astic praise " Henceforth Israel will see only 
 good ! " to regulations that were wholly prejudicial 
 to Jewish interests. When some Jewish banker or 
 other was appointed consul-general in the Orient, 
 he welcomed the occurrence in dithyrambic verses, 
 dedicated to the poor fellow in the name of the 
 Jews of Lithuania and White Russia. But when- 
 ever the heart of our poet beats in unison with the 
 sentiments of his Jewish brethren, whenever he 
 surrenders himself to the sadness, the peculiar 
 melancholy, that pervades Jewish relations, then 
 he attains to moral heights and lyric vigor unsur- 
 passed. In his three volumes of poetry, by the side 
 of numerous worthless pieces, we meet many gems 
 of style and thought. The distressed cry of hu- 
 manity against the wretchedness under which it 
 staggers, the sorrowful protest man makes against 
 the lack of compassion he encounters in his fellow, 
 his obstinate refusal to understand the implacable 
 cruelty of nature when she snatches his dearest 
 from him, and his impotence in the presence of 
 death these are the subjects that have inspired 
 Lebensohn's best efforts. He insists constantly, Is 
 not pity the daughter of heaven ? Do we not find 
 her among beasts even, and among reptiles ? Man 
 
 108
 
 HUMANISM IN RUSSIA 
 
 alone is a stranger to her, and he makes himself the 
 tyrant of his neighbor. 
 
 But it is not man alone who refuses to know 
 this daughter of heaven, Nature denies pity, too, 
 and shows herself relentless : 
 
 " O world ! House of mourning, valley of weeping ! Thy 
 rivers are tears, and thy soil ashes. Upon thy surface thou bear- 
 est men that mourn, and in thy bowels the corpses of the dead. 
 .... From out of the mountains covered with snow and ice 
 comes forth a chariot with none to guide. Within sits man and 
 the wife of his bosom, beautiful as a flower, and at their knees 
 play sweet children. Alas ! a caravan of the dead simulating 
 life! They journey on, and they go astray, and perish on the 
 icy fields." 
 
 Distress round about, and all hopes collapsed, 
 death hovers apart, yet near, remorseless, threaten- 
 ing, and in the end victorious. 
 
 In another poem, entitled " The Weeping 
 Woman ", his subject is pity again. He cries out: 
 
 " Thy enemy [cruelty] is stronger than thou. If thou art a 
 burning fire, she is a current of icy water ! . . . . Alas for thee, 
 O pity! Where is he that will have pity upon thee?" 
 
 With a few vigorous strokes, the Hebrew poet 
 describes the nothingness of man in the face of the 
 vast world. The lot of the Hamlets and of the 
 Renes is more enviable than that of the "Mourner" 
 
 109
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 of the ghetto. They at least taste of life before 
 becoming a prey to melancholy and delivering 
 themselves up to pessimism. They know the 
 charms of living and its vexations. The disap- 
 pointed son of the ghetto lays no stress on gratifica- 
 tions and pleasures. In the name of the supreme 
 moral law he sets himself up for a pessimistic 
 philosopher. 
 
 " Our life is a breath, light as a floating bark. The grave is 
 at the very threshold of life, it awaits us not far from the womb 
 of our mother 
 
 " Since the beginnings of the earth, we have been here, and 
 she changes us like the grass of her soil. She stands firm, un- 
 shaken. We alone are changeable, and help there is none for us, 
 no refuge, nor may we decline to come hither. Like an angler 
 of fish, the world brings us up on a hook. Before it has finished 
 devouring one generation, the next is ready for its fate. One is 
 swallowed up, the other snatched away. Whence cometh our 
 help?" 
 
 To this general destruction, this wildness of the 
 elements, which the " Mourner " fails to compre- 
 hend, permeated as he is with belief in Divine 
 justice, is superadded the malice of man. 
 
 " And thou also, thou becomest a scourge unto thy brother ! 
 The heavenly host is joined by thy fellow-man. From the wrath 
 of man, O man, thou wilt never escape. His jealousy of thee 
 will last for aye, until thou art no more ! " 
 
 110
 
 HUMANISM IN RUSSIA 
 
 And with all this, does life offer aught substan- 
 tial, aught that is lasting? 
 
 " Where are they, the forgotten generations ? Their very name 
 and memory have disappeared. And in the generation to come, 
 we, too, shall be forgotten. And who escapes his lot? Not a 
 single one of us all. None is secure from death. Wealth, wis- 
 dom, strength, beauty, all are nothing, nothing " 
 
 In a burst of revolt, our poet exclaims: 
 
 " If I knew that my voice with its reverberations sufficed to 
 destroy the earth and the fulness thereof, and all the hosts of 
 heaven, I would cry with a thundering noise : Cease ! Myself 
 I would return to nothing'with the rest of mankind. Know not 
 the living that the grave will swallow them up after a life of 
 sadness and cruel misery? See they not that the whole of human 
 life is like the flash that goes before the fatal thunderbolt?" 
 
 The same train of thought is not met with again 
 until we come down to our own time, and Maupas- 
 sant himself does not present it with greater vigor 
 in Sur I'eau. 
 
 And the end of the matter is that " man has 
 nothing but the consciousness of sorrow; he is 
 naked and starved, feeble and without energy. His 
 soul desires all that he has not, and so he longs and 
 languishes day and night." 
 
 The uncertainty caused by the certainty of death, 
 the terror inspired by the fatal end, the aching 
 
 ill
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 regrets over the parting with dear ones, these feel- 
 ings, which possess even the devoutest Jew, are 
 expressed in one of Lebensohn's most beautiful 
 poems, " The Death Agony ", and in " Knowl- 
 edge and Death " the skepticism of the Maskil 
 prevails over the optimism of the Jew. 
 
 Sometimes he permits himself to sing of the 
 misery of his people as such. In " The Wail of 
 the Daughter of Judah " (Naakat Bat-Yehudah] , 
 it would not be too much to say that there is an 
 echo of the best of the Psalms. The weakest of 
 his verses are, nevertheless, those in which he ex- 
 presses longing for Jerusalem. 
 
 A great misfortune befell Lebensohn. The pre- 
 mature death of his son, the young poet Micah 
 Joseph, the centre of many and legitimate hopes, 
 extorted cries of distress and despair from him. 
 
 " Who, alas ! hath driven my bird from my nest ? Who is it 
 that hath banished my lyre from my abode? Who hath shat- 
 tered my heart, and brought me lamentation? .... Who 
 hath with one blow blasted my hopes ? " 
 
 There is enough in his writings to make the 
 fortune of a great poet, in spite of their ballast of 
 mediocre and tiresome verses, which the reader 
 should disregard as he goes along. Between him 
 
 112
 
 HUMANISM IN RUSSIA 
 
 and his contemporary, the haughty recluse Alfred 
 de Vigny, there is not a little resemblance. Need- 
 less to say that Lebensohn had no acquaintance 
 whatsoever with the works of the French poet. 
 
 Lebensohn's poems, published at Wilna, in 
 1852, under the title " Poems in the Holy Lan- 
 guage " (Shire Sefat Kodesh], were greeted with 
 enthusiasm. The author was hailed as the " father 
 of poetry ". Besides, he published several works 
 treating of grammar and exegesis. 
 
 When the celebrated philanthropist Montefiore 
 went to Russia, in 18^48, to induce the Czar's gov- 
 ernment to ameliorate the civil condition of the 
 Jews and grant reforms in the conduct of the 
 schools, Lebensohn ranged himself publicly on the 
 side of the reformers. According to him, the 
 degradation of the Jews was due to three main 
 causes : 
 
 1. Absence of Haskalah, that is, a rational 
 education, founded upon instruction in the lan- 
 guage of the land, the ordinary branches of knowl- 
 edge, and a handicraft. 
 
 2. The ignorance of the Rabbis and preachers 
 on all subjects outside of religion. 
 
 3. Indulgence in luxuries, especially of the table 
 and of dress. 
 
 113
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 If the first two causes are more or less just, the 
 third displays a ludicrously nai've conception of life. 
 Lebensohn was speaking of a famished people, the 
 majority of whom ate meat only once a week, on 
 the Sabbath, and he reproaches them with gastro- 
 nomic excesses and extravagance in dress. We 
 shall see that his simple outlook was shared by 
 most of the Russian Maskilim. 
 
 In 1867, at the time when the struggle for the 
 emancipation of the Jews and internal reforms in 
 general was at its highest point, Lebensohn pub- 
 lished his drama " Truth and Faith " (Emet we- 
 Emunah, Wilna), which he had written all of 
 twenty years earlier. It is a purely didactic work, 
 blameless of any trace of poetic ardor. It must be 
 conceded that the style is clear and fluent, and the 
 ethical problem is stated with precision. But it 
 lacks every attempt at analysis of character, and 
 is destitute of all psychologic motivation. These 
 being of the very essence of dramatic composition, 
 his drama reduces itself to a moral treatise, weari- 
 some at once and worthless. The plan is simple 
 enough. Sheker (Falsehood) seeks to seduce and 
 win over Hamon (the Crowd). He offers to give 
 him his daughter Emunah (Faith) in marriage, 
 but she is wooed by two lovers, Emet (Truth) and 
 Sekel (Reason). 
 
 114
 
 HUMANISM IN RUSSIA 
 
 The influence of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto is 
 direct and manifest. Like the older author, Leben- 
 sohn, skeptic though he is, does not go to the 
 length of casting doubt upon faith. He rises up 
 against falsehood, hypocrisy, and mock piety, the 
 piety that persecutes others, and steeps its votaries 
 in ignorance. " Pure reason is not opposed to a 
 pure religion ", was the device adopted by the 
 Wilna school. 
 
 Belief in God being set aside as a basic principle, 
 the reason invoked by the dramatist is positive 
 reason, the reason oPscience, of justice, of rational 
 logic. In verbose monologues, he combats the 
 superstitions and fanaticism of the orthodox. The 
 whole force of the Maskil's hatred against obscu- 
 rantism is expressed through the character named 
 Zibeon, Jewish hypocrite and chief adjutant in the 
 camp of Sheker (Falsehood). This Jewish Tar- 
 tufe is very different in his complexity from the 
 character created by Moliere. Zibeon is a wonder- 
 working Rabbi, a subtle sophist, a crafty dialec- 
 tician. The waves of the Talmud, the casuistry of 
 more than a millennium of scholasticism, have left 
 their traces in his mind and personality. In his 
 hatred of the adversaries of the Haskalah, Leben- 
 sohn depicts him, besides, as a hypocrite, a lover 
 
 115
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 of the good things of this world, and given to 
 lewdness, which are not the usual traits of these 
 Rabbis. The alleged Tartufe of the ghetto can- 
 not be called a hypocrite. He is a believer, and 
 hence sincere. What leads him to commit the 
 worst excesses, is his fanaticism, his blind piety. 
 
 On the other hand, the dramatist is full of admi- 
 ration for Sekel (Reason), Hokmah (Knowl- 
 edge), Emet (Truth), and even Emunah (Faith). 
 
 On the background of the prosiness of this work 
 by Lebensohn, there stands out one passage of re- 
 markable beauty, the prayer of Sekel beseeching 
 God to liberate Emet. The triumph of Truth 
 closes the drama. 
 
 One characteristic feature should be pointed out : 
 Neither Regesh (Sentiment), a prominent Jewish 
 quality, nor Taawah (Passion), appears in this 
 gallery of allegorical characters personifying the 
 moral attributes. For Lebensohn, as for the whole 
 school of the humanists of his time, the only thing 
 that mattered was reason, and reason had to be 
 shown all-sufficing to ensure the triumph of truth. 
 
 In its day Lebensohn's drama excited the wrath 
 of the orthodox. A Rabbi with literary preten- 
 sions, Malbim (Mei'r Lob ben Jehiel Michael), 
 considered it his duty to intervene, and to the accu- 
 
 116
 
 HUMANISM IN RUSSIA 
 
 sations launched by Lebensohn he replied in an- 
 other drama, called Mashal u-Melizah ("Allegory 
 and Interpretation"), wherein he undertakes the 
 defense of the orthodox against the charges of ill- 
 disposed Maskilim. 
 
 If Abraham Bar Lebensohn is considered the 
 father of poetry, his no less celebrated contem- 
 porary and compatriot, Mordecai Aaron Ginz- 
 burg, has an equally good claim to be called the 
 foremost master of modern Hebrew prose. Ginz- 
 burg is the creator of a realistic Hebrew prose 
 style, though he was permeated to the end with the 
 style and the spirit of the Bible. Whenever the 
 Biblical style can render modern thoughts only by 
 torturing and twisting it, or by resorting to cumber- 
 some circumlocutions, Ginzburg does not hesitate 
 to levy contributions from Talmudic literature 
 and even the modern languages. These linguistic 
 additions made by him are always excellent, and 
 in no way prejudicial to the elegance of Hebrew 
 style. For it should be reiterated, in season and 
 out of season, that it is a mistake to believe the 
 neo-Hebrew to be essentially different from the lan- 
 guage of the Bible, analogous to the difference 
 between the modern and the classic Greek. The 
 
 117
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 modern Hebrew is nothing more than an adapta- 
 tion of the ancient Hebrew, conformable to the 
 modern spirit and new ideas. The extreme in- 
 novators, who at best are few in number, cannot 
 but confirm this statement of the case. 
 
 Ginzburg was a fertile writer; he has left us 
 fifteen volumes, and more, on various subjects. 
 Endowed with good common sense, and equipped 
 with a more solid modern education than the ma- 
 jority of the writers of the time, he exercised a 
 very great influence upon his readers and upon the 
 development of Hebrew literature. His "Abiezer", 
 a sort of autobiography, very realistic, presents a 
 striking picture of the defective education and 
 backward ways of the ghetto, which the critic de- 
 nounces, with remarkable subtlety, in the name of 
 civilization and progress. Besides, he published 
 two volumes on the Napoleonic wars; one volume, 
 under the title Hamat Damesek (1840), on the 
 ritual murder accusation at Damascus; a history 
 of Russia ; a translation of the Alexandrian Philo's 
 account of his mission to Rome ; and a treatise on 
 style (Debir). He was very successful with his 
 works, and all of them were published during his 
 lifetime, at Wilna, Prague, and Leipsic, and have 
 been republished since. One of his achievements 
 
 118
 
 HUMANISM IN RUSSIA 
 
 is that he helped to create a public of Hebrew 
 readers. It must be admitted that the great mass 
 of the people were at first somewhat repelled by 
 his realism and by his terse and accurate way of 
 writing. Their taste was not sufficiently refined to 
 appreciate these qualities, and their primitive sensi- 
 bilities could not derive pleasure from a description 
 of things as they actually are. This is the difficulty 
 which the second generation of Lithuanian writers 
 took account of, and overcame, when they intro- 
 duced romanticism into Hebrew literature. 
 * 
 
 Though it was the first, Wilna was not the only 
 centre of Hebrew literature in Russia. In the 
 south, and quite independent of the Wilna school, 
 literary circles were formed under the influence of 
 the Galician writers and workers. 
 
 At Odessa, a European window opening on the 
 Empire of the Czar, we see the first enlightened 
 Jewish community come into existence. The edu- 
 cated flocked thither from all parts, especially from 
 Galicia. Simhah Pinsker and B. Stern are the rep- 
 resentatives of the Science of Judaism in Russia, 
 and the contributions of the Karaite Abraham Fir- 
 kovich in the same field were most valuable, while 
 Eichenbaum, Gottlober, and others distinguished 
 themselves as poets and writers. 
 
 119
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 Isaac Eichenbaum (1796-1861) was a graceful 
 poet. Besides his prose writings and his remark- 
 able treatise on the game of chess, we have a col- 
 lection in verse by him, entitled Kol Zimrah ("The 
 Voice of Song", Leipsic, 1836). His sweetness 
 and tenderness, his elegant and clear style, often 
 recall Heine. The following quotation is from his 
 poem " The Four Seasons ". 
 
 " Winter has passed, the cold has fled, the ice melts under the 
 fiery darts of the sun. A stream of melted snow sends its limpid 
 waters flowing down the declivity of the rock. My beloved 
 alone is unmoved, and all the fires of my love cannot melt her 
 icy heart. 
 
 " The hills are clothed with festive mirth, the face of the 
 valleys smiles joyously. The cedar beams, the vine is jubilant, 
 and the pine tree finds a nest in the recesses of the jagged 
 mountain. But in me sighs increase, they bring me low my 
 friend will not yet hearken unto me. 
 
 " All sings that lives in the woodland. The beasts of the 
 earth rejoice, and in the branches of the trees the winged crea- 
 tures warble, each to his mate. My well-beloved alone turns her 
 steps away from me, and under the shadow of my roof I am 
 left in solitude. 
 
 " The plants spring from the soil, the grass glitters in the 
 splendor of the sun, and the earth is covered with verdure. 
 Upon the meadows, the lilies and the roses bloom. Thus my 
 hopes blossom, too, and I am filled with joyous expectation my 
 friend will come back and in her arms enfold me." 
 
 120
 
 HUMANISM IN RUSSIA 
 
 The acknowledged master of the humanists in 
 southern Russia was Isaac Bar Levinsohn, of Kre- 
 menetz, in Wolhynia (1788-1860). His proper 
 place is in a history of the emancipation of the 
 Russian Jews, rather than in a history of literature. 
 Levinsohn was born in the country of Hasidism. 
 A happy chance carried him to Brody when he 
 was very young. He attached himself there to the 
 humanist circle, and made the acquaintance of the 
 Galician masters. On his return to his own coun- 
 try, he was actuated by the desire to work for the 
 emancipation and promote the culture of the Rus- 
 sian Jews. 
 
 Like Wessely, Levinsohn remained on strictly 
 orthodox ground in his writings, and in the name 
 of traditional religion itself he attacks superstition, 
 and urges the obligatory study of the Hebrew lan- 
 guage, the pursuit of the various branches of 
 knowledge, and the learning of trades. His pro- 
 found scholarship, the gentleness and sincerity of 
 his writings, earned for him the respect of even the 
 most orthodox. His Bet-Yehudah (" The House 
 of Judah ") and Teudah be-Yisrael (" Testimony 
 in Israel ") are pleas in favor of modern school- 
 ing. In " Zerubbabel " he treats of questions of 
 Hebrew philology, and with the help of documents 
 
 121
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 he annihilates the legend of the ritual murder in 
 his Efes-Dammim ("No Blood!"). Ahijah ha- 
 Shiloni is a defense of Talmudic Judaism against 
 its Christian detractors. Besides, Levinsohn wrote 
 a number of other things, epigrams, articles, and 
 essays.* 
 
 The contemporaries of Levinsohn exaggerated 
 the importance of the literary part of his work. 
 Not much of it, outside of his philologic studies, 
 deserves to be called literary, and even they often 
 fall below the mark on account of the simplicity of 
 his views, and especially on account of his prolixity 
 and his awkward diction and style. Also the direct 
 influence which he has exerted upon Jews is less 
 considerable than once was thought. Upon Hasid- 
 ism he made no impression whatsoever. In Lithu- 
 ania, to be sure, his works were widely read by the 
 Jews, but in that home of the Hebrew language 
 the subject-matter and arguments of an author play 
 but little part in giving vogue to what is written 
 in the Biblical language. 
 
 By his self-abnegation and his wretched fortunes, 
 his isolated life in a remote town, weak in body yet 
 working for the elevation of his co-religionists, he 
 
 *We owe a new edition of all his works to Nathansohn, War- 
 saw, 1880-1900. 
 
 122
 
 HUMANISM IN RUSSIA 
 
 won the admiration of his contemporaries without 
 exception. 
 
 The fame of the solitary idealist of Kremenetz 
 spread until it reached government circles. Levin- 
 sohn was the first of the Jewish humanists who 
 maintained direct relations with the Russian au- 
 thorities. Czar Nicholas I gave him a personal 
 audience, and several times sought his advice on 
 problems connected with the endeavor to amelio- 
 rate the social condition of the Jews. The found- 
 ing of Jewish elementary schools, the opening of 
 two Rabbinical seminaries, one at Wilna and one at 
 Zhitomir, the establishment of numerous agricul- 
 tural colonies, the improvements effected in the po- 
 litical condition of the Jews and in the censorship 
 of Hebrew books all these progressive measures 
 are in great part, if not entirely, due to the influence 
 of Levinsohn. And the educated men of his time 
 paid the tribute of veneration to a compeer who 
 enjoyed the esteem of the governing classes to so 
 high a degree. 
 
 123
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 
 
 ABRAHAM MAPU 
 
 The political reaction following upon the Polish 
 revolution of 1831 made itself felt in Lithuania 
 particularly. The hand of the government weighed 
 heavy upon the people of this province. The 
 University of Wilna was closed, and all traces of 
 civilization were effaced. 
 
 From the arbitrariness of the Polish nobles, the 
 Jews were rescued only to fall into the tender 
 mercies of unscrupulous officials. As it was, since 
 1823 the most rigorous measures had been devised 
 against them. They were exposed to expulsions 
 from the villages, and their commercial and other 
 privileges had been considerably curtailed. Be- 
 sides, a new scourge was inflicted upon them, com- 
 pulsory service in the army, unknown until then, a 
 frightful service, with an active period of twenty- 
 five years. Children were torn from their families 
 and their faith, and the whole life of a man was 
 
 124
 
 swallowed up. They struggled against this new 
 incubus with all the weapons at the disposal of a 
 feeble population. Bribery, premature marriage, 
 wholesale evasion, voluntary or forced substitu- 
 tion, were the means employed by the well-to-do 
 to save their progeny from military service. 
 
 In order to ensure the regular recruiting of sol- 
 diers among the Jews, Czar Nicholas I, while 
 abolishing the central synod organization, main- 
 tained the local Kahal everywhere, and made it 
 responsible for the military conscription. The 
 wealthy, the learned, the heads of the communities 
 profited greatly by this official recognition of the 
 Kahal. It enabled them to free the members of 
 their families from enrollment in the army. In 
 their hands, it became an instrument for the oppres- 
 sion and exploitation of the poor. " The devil 
 take the hindmost! " expresses the state of mind of 
 the Russian Jews in the middle of the nineteenth 
 century, during the whole of the period called the 
 Behalah ("Terror"). 
 
 The reforms projected by Alexander I for the 
 benefit of the Jews, the hopes cherished by the 
 Lithuanian humanists, proved abortive. Reaction- 
 ary tendencies made themselves felt everywhere 
 cruelly, but chiefly they injured the Jews, forever 
 
 125
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 persecuted, downtrodden, and humiliated. The 
 profound pessimism of Lebensohn's poetry is elo- 
 quent testimony to the feelings of educated Jews. 
 And yet, these votaries of knowledge, of civiliza- 
 tion, the daughter of heaven, clung to their illu- 
 sions. They continued to insist that only thorough- 
 going reforms can solve the Jewish question. The 
 people at large did not side with them, and even 
 among the educated their view of the situation was 
 not shared by the younger men. In this moral dis- 
 order, the masses of the people permitted them- 
 selves to be carried along unresistingly by the cur- 
 rent of Hasidic views, which had long been waiting 
 to capture the last fortress of rational Judaism. 
 The Rabbis stood by alarmed, unable to do any- 
 thing to" arrest the growing encroachments of the 
 mystic movement. Yet there was an adversary 
 ready and equipped. In the young neo-^iebrew 
 literature, mysticism found a foeman far more 
 powerful than ever logic and rationalism had been. 
 The Hebrew language was cultivated with zeal 
 by the educated classes, and even by the young 
 Rabbis. It was the epoch of the Mellzah, and the 
 Melizah was to supplement the jejuneness of Rab- 
 binism and oppose the Hasidim with good results. 
 Hebrew was in the ascendant, not only for poetry, 
 
 126
 
 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 
 
 but for general purposes as well. In the sunshine 
 of the nineteenth century, it became the language 
 of commerce, of jurisprudence, of friendly inter- 
 course. Folklore itself, in the very teeth of the 
 now despised jargon, knew no other tongue. The 
 period produced a large quantity of popular poems, 
 which to this day are sung by the Jews of Lithu- 
 ania. The dominant note is the national plaint of 
 the Jewish people, its dreams, and its Messianic 
 hopes. They are essentially Zionistic. 
 
 In polished and tender Hebrew, with lofty ex- 
 pressions and despairful cries worthy of Byron, a 
 poet of the people mourns the misfortunes of Zion : 
 
 "Zion, Zion, city of our God! How awful is thy breach! 
 Who will heal thee! .... Every nation, every country, sees its 
 splendor grow from day to day. Thou alone and thy people, 
 ye fall from depth to awful depth 
 
 " Holy land, O Zion and Jerusalem ! How dare the stranger 
 trample on thy soil with haughty foot? How, O Heaven, can 
 the son of the stranger stand upon the spot whence Thy command 
 banishes him?" 
 
 But hope is not entirely blasted: 
 
 " In the name of all thy people, in all their dwelling-places, 
 have we sworn unto thee, O Zion, with scorching tears, that 
 thou shalt always rest upon our hearts as a seal. Not by night 
 and not by day shalt thou be forgotten by us." 
 
 127
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 Another popular poem, anonymous like the last, 
 entitled " The Rose ", is still more dolorous and 
 despairful in tone. Stepped upon by every passer- 
 by, the rose supplicates incessantly, " O man, have 
 pity on me, restore me to my home ! " 
 
 Besides these and others with the same under- 
 lying ideas, the lyrics of Lebensohn and " The 
 Mourning Dove " by Letteris constituted the rep- 
 ertory of the people. But soon romanticism on 
 the part of the litterateurs began to respond to the 
 romanticism of the masses, asserting itself as a 
 national Jewish need. 
 
 A translation of Les Mysteres de Parts, pub- 
 lished in Wilna in 1847-8, introduced the romantic 
 movement among the Jews, and at the same time 
 the novel into the Hebrew language. This trans- 
 lation, or, rather, adaptation, of Sue's work, exe- 
 cuted in a stilted Biblical style, won great renown 
 for its young author, Kalman Schulman. of Wilna 
 (1826-1900) 
 
 From the literary point of view, Schulman's 
 achievement is interesting because of the kind of 
 literature it was the first to offer to readers of He- 
 brew pastime literature, fiction in place of the 
 serious writings of the humanists. The enormous 
 success obtained by this first work of the translator, 
 
 128
 
 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 
 
 the repeated editions which it underwent, testify to 
 the existence of a public that craved light literature. 
 Thenceforth, romanticism was to occupy the first 
 place, and the Melizah style was appropriated for 
 the purposes of fiction, to the delight of the friends 
 of the Bible language. 
 
 In spite of his small originality, it happened that 
 Kalman Schulman contributed more than any other 
 writer to the achievement of securing a place for 
 Hebrew in the hearts of the people. For the 
 length of a half-century, he was regarded popularly 
 as the master of Hebcew style. Romantic and con- 
 servative in religion, enthusiastic for whatsoever 
 the Jewish genius produced, na'i've in his conception 
 of life, he let his activity play upon all the fields of 
 literature. He published a History of the World 
 in ten volumes; a geography, likewise in ten vol- 
 umes; four volumes of biographical and literary 
 essays on the Jewish writers of the Middle Ages; 
 a national romance dealing with the time of Bar 
 Kokbah (a composite made up of a number of 
 translations) ; and curious Biblical and Talmudic 
 essays. 1 
 
 His language is the Hebrew of Isaiah. The 
 
 1 These works, first published at Wilna, have been republished 
 again and again. 
 
 129
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 artificialities and the undue emphasis of his style, 
 his childlike views, his romantic sentimentality in 
 all that touches Jews and Judaism, which appealed 
 directly to the hearts of the simple, ignorant 
 readers who constituted his public, explain the suc- 
 cess of this writer, well merited even though he 
 lacked originality. His books were spread broad- 
 cast, by the millions of copies, and they fostered 
 love of Hebrew, of science, and knowledge in gen- 
 eral among the people. By this token, Schulman 
 was a civilizing agent of the first rank. His work 
 is the portal through which the Maskil had to pass, 
 and sometimes passes to this day, on the path of 
 development toward modern civilization. 
 
 Schulman became the head of a school. His 
 poetic and inflated style long imposed itself upon 
 all subjects, and hindered the natural development 
 of Hebrew prose, inaugurated by Mordecai A. 
 Ginzburg. 
 
 More creative writers were not long in making 
 their appearance. Among the poets of the roman- 
 tic school, a prominent place belongs to Micah 
 Joseph Lebensohn, briefly called Mikal (1828- 
 1852), the son of Abraham Bar Lebensohn. 
 
 Gentle and gracious in the same measure in 
 which his father was hard and unyielding, Micah 
 
 130
 
 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 
 
 Joseph Lebensohn was the only writer of the time 
 to enjoy the advantage of a complete modern edu- 
 cation, and the only one of his generation to escape 
 cruel want and the struggle for personal freedom. 
 He knew German literature thoroughly, and he 
 had taken a course in philosophy at Berlin, under 
 Schelling. Along with these attainments, he was 
 master of Hebrew as a living language. It was 
 the vehicle for his most intimate thoughts and the 
 subtlest shades of feeling. 
 
 His rich poetic imagination, his harmonious 
 style, warm figures or speech, consummate lyric 
 quality, unmarred by the blatant, crude exaggera- 
 tions of his predecessors, constitute Mikal the first 
 artist of his day in Hebrew poetry. 
 
 He made his appearance in the world of letters, 
 in 1851, with a translation of Schiller's " Destruc- 
 tion of Troy", finished in style and in poetic polish. 
 He was the first to apply the rules of modern pros- 
 ody strictly to Hebrew poetry. His collection of 
 poems, Shire Bat-Z'iyyon (" The Songs of the 
 Daughter of Zion"),* is a masterpiece. It con- 
 tains six historical poems, admirable in thought, 
 form, and inspiration. In " Solomon and Kohe- 
 
 *Wilna, 1852. German translation by J. Steinberg, Wilna, 
 1859. 
 
 131
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 let ", his most ambitious poem, he brings the youth 
 of King Solomon before our eyes. It was the first 
 time the love of Solomon for the Shulammite was 
 celebrated a sublime, exalted love sung in marvel- 
 lous fashion. The joy of life trembles in all the 
 fibres of the poet's heart .... Then the old age 
 of Ecclesiastes is contrasted strikingly with the 
 youth of Solomon the king disillusioned, skep- 
 tical, convinced of the vanity of love, beauty, and 
 knowledge. All is dross, vanity of vanities ! And 
 the young romantic poet ends his work with the 
 conclusion that wisdom cannot exist without faith 
 that faith alone is capable of giving man su- 
 preme satisfaction. 
 
 " Jael and Sisera ", a noble production, treats of 
 the silent struggle, in the heart of the valiant 
 woman extolled by Deborah, between the duty of 
 hospitality on the one side, and love of country 
 on the other. The latter triumphs in the end: 
 
 " With this people I dwell, and in its land I am sheltered ! 
 Should I not desire its prosperity and its happiness ? " 
 
 " Moses on Mount Abarim " is full of admira- 
 tion for the great legislator. The poet says re- 
 garding his death : 
 
 "The light of the world is obscured and dun, 
 Of what avail the light of the sun? " 
 132
 
 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 
 
 His elegy on Jehudah Halevi is instinct with th 
 pathos of patriotic love for the Holy Land : 
 
 " That land, where every stone is an altar to the living God, 
 and every rock a seat for a prophet of the supreme Lord ". 
 
 Or, as he exclaims in another poem, " Land of 
 the muses, perfection of beauty, wherein every 
 stone is a book, every rock a graven tablet! " 
 
 Another collection of poems by Mikal, Kinnor 
 Bat-Ziyyon (" The Harp of the Daughter of 
 Zion"), published at Wilna, posthumously, con- 
 tains, besides a numbef of pieces translated from 
 the German, also lyric poems, in which the poet 
 breathes forth his soul and his suffering. He loves 
 life passionately, but he divines that he will not be 
 granted the opportunity of enjoying it long, and, 
 in an access of despair, he cries out : " Accursed 
 be death, accursed also life ! " His nature changes, 
 his muse grows sad, and, like his father, he dis- 
 cerns only injustice and misfortune in the world. 
 In a poem addressed to " The Stars ", he fairly 
 storms high heaven to wrest from it the secret of 
 the worlds: 
 
 " Answer me, I pray, answer me, ye who are denizens on high ! 
 O, stop the march of the eternal laws a single instant! Alas, 
 my heart is full of disgust over this earth. Here man is born 
 
 133
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 unto pain and misery 1 .... Here reigns religious Hatred! On 
 her lips she bears the name of the God of mercy, and in her 
 hands the blood-dripping sword. She prays, she throws herself 
 upon her knees, yet without cease, and in the name of God, she 
 slaughters her victims. This world, when the Lord created it 
 in a fit of anger, He cast it far away from Him in wrath. Then 
 Death threw herself upon it, scattering terror everywhere. She 
 holds this world in 'her talons. Misery also precipitates herself 
 upon it, gnashing her teeth in beast-like rage. She clutches man 
 like a beast of prey, she torments him without reprieve . . . ." 
 
 This posthumous collection of poems contains 
 also love poems and Zionist lamentations, all bear- 
 ing the impress of the deep melancholy and the 
 sadness that characterized the last years of the 
 poet's short life. A cruel malady carried him off 
 at the age of twenty-four, and the friends of He- 
 brew poetry were left mourning in despair. 
 
 Romantic fiction in Hebrew, which the strait- 
 laced life and the austerity of the educated had 
 rendered impossible up to this time, now made its 
 first appearance in the form of translations of 
 modern romances. They were received with ac- 
 claim by a well-disposed public greedy for novel- 
 ties. The creators of original romances were not 
 long in coming. The first master in the depart- 
 ment, the father of Hebrew romance, was Abra- 
 ham Mapu (1808-1867). 
 
 134
 
 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 
 
 Mapu was born at Slobodka, a suburb of Kowno, 
 a sad town inhabited almost entirely by Jews. The 
 whole of the population vegetates there amid the 
 most deplorable conditions, economic and sanitary. 
 The father of Mapu was a poor, melancholy 
 Melammed, a teacher of Hebrew and the Talmud, 
 simple in his outlook upon life, yet not without a 
 certain degree of education. He loved and culti- 
 vated knowledge as taught by the Hebrew masters 
 of the Middle Ages. Mapu's mother was gentle 
 and sweet. With resignation and fortitude she 
 endured the physical suffering that hampered her 
 all her life. His brother Mattathias, a Rabbinical 
 student, was a man of parts. 
 
 In brief, it was misery itself, the life he knew, 
 but the misery once surmounted, and vain desires 
 eliminated, it was a life that tended to bind closer 
 the ties of family love. Being a sickly child, Mapu 
 did not begin to study the elementary branches 
 until he was five years old, an advanced age among 
 people whose children were usually sent to the 
 Heder at four, to spend years upon years there that 
 brought no joy to the student as he sat all day 
 long bent over the great folios of the Talmud, 
 except the joy that comes from success in study. 
 Rational instruction in the Bible and in Hebrew 
 
 135
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 grammar, scorned by the Talmudic dialecticians 
 as superficial studies, was banished from the Heder. 
 Happily for the future writer, his father taught 
 him the Bible, and awakened love in his sensitive 
 heart for the Hebrew language and for the glori- 
 ous past of his people. At the same time, his Tal- 
 mudic education went on admirably. At the age 
 of twelve, he had the reputation of being a scholar, 
 at the age of thirteen, an 'Illtti, a " phenomenon ", 
 and from that time on he was at liberty to devote 
 himself to his studies at his own free will, without 
 submitting himself to the discipline of a master. 
 
 Like all young Talmudists, he was soon sought 
 after as a desirable son-in-law, and it was not long 
 before his father affianced him to the daughter of 
 a well-to-do burgher. At the age of seventeen, he 
 was married. Marriage, however, did not change 
 his life. As before, he pursued his studies, while 
 his father-in-law provided for his wants. But soon 
 his studies took a new direction. His pensive 
 mind, stifled by Rabbinic scholasticism, turned to 
 the Kabbalah. Mystical exaltation more and more 
 took possession of him, and the day came when he 
 all but declared himself a follower of Hasidism. 
 It was his mother who saved him. He yielded to 
 her prayers, and was held back from committing 
 a perilous act of heresy. 
 
 136
 
 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 
 
 These internal conflicts between feeling and 
 reason, the perplexities with which his spirit 
 wrestled, did not affect our author to an excessive 
 degree. They produced no radical change in his 
 personality. All his life Mapu remained the hum- 
 ble scholar of the ghetto, a successor of the Ebyo- 
 nim, of the psalmists and the prophets. Timorous, 
 melancholy, lacking all desire for the things con- 
 nected with practical life, often degraded by their 
 own material wretchedness and by the intellectual 
 wretchedness of their surroundings, these dreamers 
 of the ghetto, more numerous than the outsider 
 knows, hide a moral exaltation in the depths of 
 their hearts, a supreme idealism, always ready to 
 do battle, never conquered. In their persons we 
 are offered the only explanation there is for the 
 activity and persistence of the Messianic people. 
 
 Mapu was on the point of succumbing, like so 
 many others, the darkness of mysticism was about 
 to drop like a pall upon his mind, when something 
 happened, insignificant in itself, but important 
 through its consequences, and he was snatched out 
 of danger. A Latin psalter fell into his hands by 
 chance; it gave a fresh turn to his studies, and his 
 mind took its bearings anew. 
 
 Was it curiosity, or was it desire for knowledge, 
 
 137
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 that impelled him to decipher the sacred text in an 
 unknown language at what cost soever? It is cer- 
 tain that no difficulty affrighted him. Word by 
 word he translated the Latin text by dint of com- 
 paring it with the Hebrew original, and he suc- 
 ceeded in acquiring a large number of Latin words. 
 He is not alone in this achievement. Solomon 
 Maimon learned the alphabet of the German, the 
 language in which he later wrote his best philo- 
 sophic essays, from the German names of the 
 treatises of the Talmud prefixed to an edition 
 printed in Berlin. And many other such cases 
 among the educated Jews of Lithuania might be 
 cited. 
 
 These mental gymnastics, the necessity of ren- 
 dering account to himself as to the precise value of 
 each word, helped Mapu to a better understanding 
 of the Bible text and a closer identification with its 
 spirit. 
 
 Good fortune and material well-being are not 
 stable possessions with people like the Russian 
 Jews, obliged to earn their livelihood in the face of 
 rabid competition, and exposed to the caprices of a 
 hostile legislation. One day Mapu's father-in-law 
 found himself ruined. The young man was 
 obliged to interrupt his studies and accept a place 
 
 138
 
 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 
 
 as tutor in the family of a well-situated Jewish 
 farmer. 
 
 His prolonged stay in the country exerted an 
 excellent influence upon the impressionable soul 
 of the young man. His close communion with 
 nature, which quickly captivated his mind, rent 
 asunder forever the mystic veil that had en- 
 shrouded it. Still more important was his asso- 
 ciation with the enlightened Polish curate of the 
 village, who interested himself in the young scholar 
 and devoted much time to his instruction. Mapu 
 threw himself with ardor into the study of the 
 Latin classics. He is the first instance of a Hebrew 
 poet having had the opportunity of forming his 
 mind upon the ample models of classic antiquity. 
 Continuing under the tuition of the curate, he 
 studied French, the language of his preference, 
 then German, and, only in the last instance, Rus- 
 sian. The Russian language was not held in high 
 esteem by the Maskilim of Mapu's day. In 
 Kowno, whither he returned after some time, he 
 was compelled to hide his new acquisitions, for fear 
 of arousing the hatred of the fanatics and suffering 
 injury in his profession as teacher of Hebrew. 
 
 Infatuated with the works of the romanticists, 
 especially the novels of Eugene Sue, his favorite 
 
 10 139
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 author, he began to think out the first part of his 
 historical romance Ahabat Ziyyon (" The Love of 
 Zion") as early as 1830. Twenty-three years 
 were to pass before it saw the light of day. Dur- 
 ing that interval he led a life of never-ceasing pri- 
 vation and toil, laboring by day, dreaming by 
 night. The Haskalah had created humanist cen- 
 tres in the little towns of Lithuania. In some of 
 these, in Zhagor and in Rossieny, " the city of the 
 educated, of the friends of their people and of the 
 sacred tongue ", Mapu finally found the oppor- 
 tunity to display his talents. But his material con- 
 dition, bad enough to begin with, grew worse and 
 worse. After oft-repeated applications, he re- 
 ceived the appointment as teacher at a Jewish gov- 
 ernment school in Kowno, in 1848. This, together 
 with the pecuniary assistance granted him by his 
 more fortunate brother, put an end permanently 
 to his embarrassment. Occupying an independent 
 position, he could devote himself to his romance. 
 Finally, the success obtained by the Hebrew trans- 
 lation of " The Mysteries of Paris " emboldened 
 him to publish his " Love of Zion ", and the timid 
 author was overwhelmed, stupefied almost, when 
 he realized the enthusiasm with which the public 
 had greeted his first literary product. 
 
 140
 
 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 
 
 Into the ascetic and puritanic environment in 
 which the world of sentiment and the life of the 
 spirit were unknown, Mapu's romance descended 
 like a flash of lightning, rending the cloud that 
 enveloped all hearts. A century after Rousseau, 
 there was still a corner in Europe in which pleas- 
 ure, the joy of living, the good things of this life, 
 and nature, were considered futilities, in which 
 love was condemned as a crime, and the passions 
 as the ruin of the soul. Such were the surround- 
 ings amid which " The. Love of Zion ", a Jewish 
 Nouvelle Heloise, appeared as the first plea for 
 nature and love. 
 
 ' The Love of Zion " is an historical romance. 
 It re-tells a chapter in the life of the Jewish people 
 at the time of the prophet Isaiah. The poet could 
 not exercise any choice as to his subject it was 
 forced upon him inevitably. In order to be sure 
 of touching a responsive chord in his people, it was 
 necessary to carry the action twenty-five centuries 
 back. A Jewish novel based on contemporaneous 
 life would have been incongruous both with truth 
 and with the spirit of the ghetto. 
 
 The time of his novel was the golden age of 
 ancient Judea. It was the epoch of a great literary 
 and prophetic outburst. Also it was an agitated 
 
 141
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 time, presenting striking contrasts. At Jerusalem, 
 an enlightened king was making a firm stand 
 against the limitation of his power from within 
 and against an almost invincible enemy from with- 
 out. On the one side, society was decadent, on 
 the other side arose the greatest moralists the 
 world has ever seen, the prophets, the intrepid 
 assailants of corruption. It was, finally, the period 
 in which the noblest dreams of a better, an ideal 
 humanity were dreamed. That is the time in which 
 the author lets his story take place. 
 
 In the reign of King Ahaz, two friends lived at Jerusalem. 
 The one named Joram was an officer in the army and the owner 
 of rich domains ; the other, Jedidiah, belonged to the royal family. 
 Joram had married two wives, Haggith and Naamah. The latter 
 was his favorite, but at the end of many years she had borne 
 him no children. Obliged to go forth to war against the Philis- 
 tines, Joram entrusted his family to the care of his friend 
 Jedidiah. At the moment of his departure, his wife Naamah, 
 and also Tirzah, the wife of Jedidiah, discovered, each, that 
 she was with child. The two friends agreed, that if the one 
 bore a son and the other a daughter, the two children should 
 in time marry each other. 
 
 Things turned out according to the hopes of the fathers. The 
 wife of Jedidiah was the first to be confined, and she gave birth 
 to a daughter, who was named Tamar. 
 
 Joram was taken captive by the enemy, and did not return. 
 At the same time a great misfortune overtook his family. Hi* 
 
 142
 
 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 
 
 steward Achan permitted himself to be tempted to evil by a 
 judge, Matthan by name, a personal enemy of Joram. He set 
 fire to the house of his master, first having despoiled it of all 
 there was in it. His booty he carried to the house of Matthan, 
 and Haggith and her children perished in the flames. Achan 
 laid the blame for the fire upon Naamah, who, he said, desired 
 to avenge herself upon her rival Haggith. He substituted his 
 own son Nabal for Azrikam, the son of Haggith, the only one of 
 Joram's family, he pretended, to escape with his life. Poor 
 Naamah, about to be delivered, was compelled to flee and take 
 refuge with a shepherd in the neighborhood of Bethlehem. 
 There she bore twins, a son named Amnon, and a daughter, 
 
 Peninnah. 
 
 * 
 
 Jedidiah, shocked by the calamity that had overwhelmed the 
 house of his friend, took the supposed Azrikam, the son of 
 Joram, home with him, and raised him with his own children. 
 In order to keep the spirit of his word to his friend, he consid- 
 ered Azrikam the future husband of his daughter, seeing that 
 Naamah had disappeared, and was, besides, under the suspicion 
 of being a murderess. Achan's triumph was complete. His son 
 was to take the place of Azrikam, inherit the house of Joram, 
 and marry the beautiful Tamar. 
 
 In the meanwhile happened the fall of the kingdom of Samaria. 
 The Assyrians carried off the inhabitants captive, among them 
 Hananel, the father-in-law of Jedidiah. One of the captives, 
 the Samaritan priest Zimri, succeeded in making his escape, and 
 he fled to Jerusalem. The name of his fellow-prisoner Hana- 
 nel, which he used as a recommendation, opened the house and 
 the trustful heart of Jedidiah to him. 
 
 Tamar and Azrikam grew up side by side in the house of 
 Jedidiah. They differed from each other radically. Beautiful 
 
 143
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 as Tamar was, and good and generous, so ugly and perverse 
 was Azrikam. The maiden despised him with all her heart. 
 One day Tamar, while walking in the country near Bethlehem, 
 was attacked by a lion. A shepherd hastened to her rescue and 
 saved her life. This shepherd was none but Amnon, the son of 
 the unfortunate Naamah. 
 
 Teman, the brother of Tamar, by chance happened upon 
 Peninnah, the sister of Amnon, who pretended she was an alien, 
 and he was seized with violent love for her. Thus the son 
 and the daughter of Jedidiah were infatuated, the one with the 
 daughter of Naamah, the other with her son, without suspecting 
 who they were. 
 
 Amnon, who had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of 
 Tabernacles, was received with joy, by Jedidiah and his wife, 
 as the savior of their daughter. He was made at home in 
 their house, and won general favor by reason of his excellent 
 character. The young shepherd felt attracted to the study of 
 sacred subjects. He frequented the school of the prophets, and 
 he was particularly entranced with the eloquence of the great 
 Isaiah. 
 
 The pretended Azrikam did not view the friendship established 
 between Tamar and Amnon with a favorable eye. He took the 
 priest Zimri into his confidence, and made him his accomplice 
 and aid in disposing of his rival. Jedidiah, meanwhile, remained 
 faithful to his promise, and persisted in his intention of giving his 
 daughter in marriage to Azrikam, in spite of her own wishes 
 in the matter. When the tender feeling between Tamar and 
 Amnon became evident, Jedidiah dismissed the latter from his 
 house. 
 
 The period treated of is the most turbulent in the history of 
 Judea. The conflict of passions and intrigues is going on that 
 
 144
 
 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 
 
 preceded the downfall of the kingdom of Judah and the great 
 Assyrian invasion. Moral disorder reigns everywhere, iniquity 
 and lies rule in place of justice. The upright tremble and hope, 
 encouraged by the prophets. The wicked are defiant, and give 
 themselves up shamelessly to their debauches. 
 
 " Let us drink, let us sing ! " exclaimed the crowd of the im- 
 pious. " Who knows whether to-morrow finds us alive ! " 
 
 Zimri meditates a master stroke. Every evening Amnon betook 
 himself to a little hut on the outskirts of the town, where his 
 mother and his sister lived. Zimri surprises him. He takes 
 Tamar and Teman there, and they watch Amnon embrace his 
 sister. Now all is over. A dreadful blow is dealt the love of 
 brother and sister, who are ignorant of the bonds of kinship 
 uniting Amnon and Peninrtah. Repulsed by Tamar, for he 
 knows not what reason, Amnon leaves Jerusalem, despair in his 
 heart. 
 
 All is not lost yet. Maltreated by his own son and plagued 
 by remorse, Achan confesses his misdeeds to the alleged Azrikam, 
 and reveals his real origin to him. Furious, Azrikam thinks of 
 nothing but to get rid of his father. He sets his father's house 
 afire, but, before his death, Achan makes a confession to the 
 court. Everything is disclosed, and everything is cleared up. 
 Tamar, now made aware of the error she has committed, is 
 inconsolable at having separated from Amnon. 
 
 Meantime the political events take their course. The brave 
 king Hezekiah carries on the struggle against his minister 
 Shebnah, who desires to surrender the capital to the Assyrians. 
 The miraculous defeat of the enemy at the gates of Jerusalem 
 assures the triumph of Hezekiah. Peace and justice are estab- 
 lished once more. 
 
 During this time, Amnon, taken prisoner in war and sold as 
 145
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 slave to a master living on one of the Ionian isles, has found 
 his father Joram there. Both together succeed in making good 
 their escape, and they return to Jerusalem. 
 
 The joy of the Holy City delivered from the invader coincides 
 with the joy of the two reunited families, whose cherished 
 wishes are realized. The loves of Tamar and Amnon, and 
 Teman and Peninnah, triumph. 
 
 This is the frame of the novel, which recalls the 
 wonder-tales of the eighteenth century. From the 
 point of view of romantic intrigue, study of char- 
 acter, and development of plot, it is a puerile work. 
 The interest does not reside in the romantic story. 
 Borrowed from modern works, the fiction rather 
 injures Mapu's novel, which is primarily a poem 
 and an historical reconstruction. " The Love of 
 Zion " is more than an historical romance, more 
 than a narrative invented by an imaginative ro- 
 mancer it is ancient Judea herself, the Judea of 
 the prophets and the kings, brought to life again 
 in the dreams of the poet. The reconstruction of 
 Jewish society of long ago, the appreciation of the 
 prophetic life, the local color, the majesty of the 
 descriptions of nature, the vivid and striking figures 
 of speech, the elevated and vigorous style, every- 
 thing is so instinct with the spirit of the Bible that, 
 without the romantic story, one would believe him- 
 
 146
 
 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 
 
 self to be perusing a long-lost and now recovered 
 book of poetry of ancient Judea. 
 
 Dreamy, guileless, ignorant of the actual and 
 complicated phenomena of modern life, Mapu was 
 able to identify himself with the times of the 
 prophets so well that he confounded them with 
 modern times. He committed the anachronism of 
 transporting the humanist ideas of the Lithuanian 
 Maskil to the period of Isaiah. But by reason of 
 wishing to show himself modern, he became an- 
 cient. He was not even aware of the fact that he 
 was restoring the past with its peculiar civilization, 
 its manners, and ideas. 
 
 None the less his aim as a reformer was attained. 
 Guided by prophetic intuition, Mapu accomplished 
 a task making for morality and culture. To men 
 given over to a degenerate asceticism, or to a mystic 
 attitude hostile to the present, he revealed a glori- 
 ous past as it really had been, not as their brains, 
 weighed down by misery and befogged by igno- 
 rance, pictured it to have been. He showed them, 
 not the Judea of the Rabbis, of the pious, and the 
 ascetics, but the land blessed by nature, the land 
 where men took joy in living, the land of life, flow- 
 ing with gaiety and love, the land of the Song of 
 Songs and of Ruth. He drew Isaiah for them, 
 
 147
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 not as a saintly Rabbi or a teller of mystical 
 dreams, but a poetic Isaiah, patriot, sublime moral- 
 ist, the prophet of a free Judea, the preacher of 
 earthly prosperity, of goodness, and justice, oppos- 
 ing the narrow doctrines and minute and senseless 
 ceremonialism inculcated by the priests, who were 
 the predecessors of the Rabbis. 
 
 The lesson of the novel is an exhortation to 
 return to a natural life. It presents a world of 
 pleasure, of feeling, of joyous living, justified and 
 idealized in the name of the past. It sets forth 
 the charms of rural life in a succession of poetic 
 pictures. Judea, the pastoral land, passes under 
 the eyes of the reader. The blithe humor of the 
 vine-dressers, the light-heartedness of the shep- 
 herds, the popular festivals with their outbursts of 
 joy and high spirits, are reproduced with masterly 
 skill. The moral grandeur of Judea appears in 
 the magnificent description of a whole people as- 
 sembled to celebrate the Feast in the Holy City, 
 and in the impassioned discourses of the prophets, 
 who openly criticise the great and the priests in the 
 name of justice and truth. But especially it is love 
 that pervades the work, love, chaste and ingenuous, 
 apotheosized in the relation of Amnon and Tamar. 
 
 The impression that was made by the book is 
 
 148
 
 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 
 
 inconceivable. It can be compared with nothing 
 less than the effect produced by the publication of 
 the Nouvelle Helo'ise. 
 
 At last the Hebrew language had found the 
 master who could make the appeal to popular taste, 
 who understood the art of speaking to the multi- 
 tude and touching them deeply. The success of 
 the book was impressive. In spite of the fanatical 
 intriguers, who looked with horror upon this pro- 
 fanation of the holy language, the novel made its 
 way everywhere, into tbe academies for Rabbinical 
 students, into the very synagogues. The young 
 were amazed and entranced by the poetic flights 
 and by the sentimentalism of the book. A whole 
 people seemed to be reborn unto life, to emerge 
 from its millennial lethargy. Upon all minds the 
 comparison between ancient grandeur and actually 
 existing misery obtruded itself. 
 
 The Lithuanian woods witnessed a startling 
 spectacle. Rabbinical students, playing truant, re- 
 sorted thither to read Mapu's novel in secret. 
 Luxuriously they lived the ancient days over again. 
 The elevated love celebrated in the book touched 
 all hearts, and many an artless romance was 
 sketched in outline. 
 
 But the greatest beneficiary of the new move- 
 
 149
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 ment ushered into being by the appearance of "The 
 Love of Zion " was the Hebrew language, revived 
 in all its splendor. 
 
 " I have searched out the ancient Latin in its majestic vigor, 
 the German with its depth of meaning, the French full of charm 
 and ravishing expressions, the Russian in the flower of its youth. 
 Each has qualities of its own, each is crowned with beauty. 
 But in the face of all of them, whose voice appeals unto me? 
 Is it not thy voice, my dove? How pellucid is thy word, though 
 its music issues from the land of destruction! .... The melody 
 of thy words sings in my ear like a heavenly harp." s 
 
 This idealization of a language of the past, and 
 of that past itself, produced an enormous effect 
 upon all minds, and it prepared the soil for an 
 abundant harvest. The success won by ' The 
 Love of Zion " encouraged Mapu to publish his 
 other historical romance, the action of which is 
 placed in the same period as the first work. Ashmat 
 Shomeron ("The Transgression of Samaria"), 
 also published at Wilna, is an epic in the true sense. 
 It reproduces the conflicts set afoot by the rivalry 
 between Jerusalem and Samaria. The underlying 
 idea in this novel is not unlike that of " The Love 
 of Zion ". But the author allows himself to run 
 riot in the use of antitheses and contrasts. He 
 
 8 See Brainin, " Abraham Mapu ", p. 107. 
 150
 
 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 
 
 arraigns the poor inhabitants of Samaria with piti- 
 less severity. Whatever is good, just, beautiful, 
 lofty, and chaste in love, proceeds from Jerusalem ; 
 whatever savors of hypocrisy, crookedness, dog- 
 matism, absurdity, sensuality, proceeds from Sa- 
 maria. The author is particularly implacable to- 
 ward the hypocrites, and toward the blind fanatics 
 with their narrow-mindedness. The personifica- 
 tion of certain types of ghetto fanatics is a trans- 
 parent ruse. The book excited the anger of the 
 obscurantists, and, in their wrath, they persecuted 
 all who read the works of Mapu. 
 
 ' The Transgression of Samaria " shares a 
 number of faults of technique with the first novel, 
 but also it is equally with the other a product of 
 rich imaginativeness and epic vigor. In reprodu- 
 cing local color and the Biblical life, the author's 
 touch is even surer than in " The Love of Zion ". 
 If one were inclined to apply to Mapu's novels 
 the standards of art criticism, a radical fault would 
 reveal itself. Mapu is not a psychologist. He 
 does not know how to create heroes of flesh and 
 blood. His men and women are blurred, artificial. 
 The moral aim dominates. The plot is puerile, 
 and the succession of events tiresome. But these 
 shortcomings were not noticed by his simple, un- 
 
 151
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 cultivated readers, for the reason that they shared 
 the artless naivete of the author. 
 
 Besides these two, we have some poetic frag- 
 ments of a third historical romance by Mapu, 
 which was destroyed by the Russian censor. There 
 is also an excellent manual of the Hebrew language, 
 Amon Padgug ("The Master Pedagogue"), 
 very much valued by teachers of Hebrew, and, fin- 
 ally, a method of the French language in Hebrew. 
 
 We shall revert elsewhere to his last novel, 'Ayit 
 Zabua ("The Hypocrite"), which is very dif- 
 ferent in style and character from his first two 
 romances. 
 
 In his last years he was afflicted with a severe 
 disease. Unable to work, he was supported by his 
 brother, who had settled in Paris, and who invited 
 Mapu to join him there. On the way, death over- 
 took him, and he never saw the capital of the 
 country for which he had expressed the greatest 
 admiration all his life. 
 
 In southern Russia, especially at Odessa, literary 
 activity continued to be carried on with success. 
 Abraham Bar Gottlober (1811-1900), writing 
 under the pseudonym Mahalalel, was the most 
 productive of the poets, if not the best endowed of 
 the whole school. 
 
 152
 
 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 
 
 A disciple of Isaac Bar Levinsohn, and visibly 
 affected by the influence of Wessely and Abraham 
 Bar Lebensohn, he devoted himself to poetry. The 
 first volume of his poems appeared at Wilna in 
 1851. Toward the end of his days, he published 
 his complete works in three volumes, Kol Shire 
 Mahalalel (" Collected Poems ", Warsaw, 1890). 
 His earliest productions go back to the middle of 
 the last century. He is a remarkable stylist, and, 
 in some of his works, his language is both simple 
 and polished. " Cain ", or the Vagabond, is a 
 marvel in style and thought. 
 
 In the poem entitled " The Bird in the Cage ", 
 he writes as a Zionist, and he weeps over the trials 
 of his people in exile. In another poem, Nezah 
 Yisrael (" The Eternity of Israel "), perhaps the 
 best that issued from his pen, he puts forward a 
 dignified claim to his title as Jew, of which he is 
 proud. 
 
 " Judah has neither bow nor warring hosts, nor avenging 
 dart, nor sharpened sword. But he has a suit in the name of 
 justice with the nations that contend with him 
 
 " I take good heed not to recount to you our glory. Why 
 should I extol the eternal people, for you detest its virtues, you 
 desire not to hear of them .... But remember, ye peoples, if 
 I commit a transgression, not in me lies the wrong through your 
 sin I have stumbled .... 
 
 " I ask not for pity, I ask but for justice." 
 153
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 On the whole, Gottlober lacks poetic warmth. In 
 the majority of his poems, his style errs on the side 
 of prolixity and wordiness. He has made a number 
 of translations into Hebrew, and his prose is ex- 
 cellent. His satires frequently display wit. His 
 versified history of Hebrew poetry, contained in 
 the third volume of his works, is inferior to the 
 Melizat Yeshurun by Solomon Levinsohn referred 
 to above. Later he published a monthly review in 
 Hebrew, under the title Ha-Boker Or ("The 
 Clear Morning"). His reminiscences of the 
 Hasidim, 4 whom he opposed all his life, are the 
 best of his prose writings, and put him in a class 
 with the realists. He also wrote a history of the 
 Kabbalah and Hasidism ( Toledot ha-Kabbalah 
 weha-Hasidut) . 
 
 Gottlober was the Mehabber personified, the 
 type of the vagabond author, who is obliged to go 
 about in person and force his works upon patrons 
 in easy circumstances. 
 
 The number of writers belonging to the ro- 
 mantic school, by reason of the form of their 
 works, or by reason of their content, is too large 
 for us to give them all by name. Only a few can 
 be mentioned and characterized briefly. 
 
 4 In the monthly Ha-Boker Or, and Orot me-Offl ("Gleams 
 in the Darkness"), Warsaw, 1881. 
 
 154
 
 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 
 
 Elias Mordecai Werbel (1805-1880) was the 
 official poet of the literary circle at Odessa. A 
 collection of his poems, which appeared at Odessa, 
 is distinguished by its polished execution. Besides 
 odes and occasional poems, they contain several 
 historical pieces, the most remarkable of them 
 " Huldah and Bor ", Wilna, 1848, based on a 
 Tahnudic legend. 1 
 
 He was excelled by Israel Roll (1830-1893), a 
 Galician by birth, but living in Odessa. His Shire 
 Romi (" Roman Poems "), all translated from the 
 works of the great Latin poets, give evidence of 
 considerable poetic endowment. His style is clas- 
 sic, copious, and precise, and his volume of poems 
 will always maintain a place in a library of Hebrew 
 literature by the side of Mikal's version of Ovid 
 and the admirable translation of the Sibylline 
 books made by the eminent philologist Joshua 
 Steinberg. 
 
 In prose, first place belongs to Benjamin Man- 
 delstamm (died 1886). Among his works is a 
 history of Russia, but his most important produc- 
 tion, Hazon la-Mo ed, is a narrative of his travels 
 and the impressions he received in the " Jewish 
 
 1 In Keneset Yurtul, Warsaw, 1888. 
 11 155
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 zone ", chiefly Lithuania. In certain respects, he 
 must be classified with Mordecai A. Ginzburg, 
 with whom he shares clarity of thought and wit. 
 But his sentimentality, and his excessive indulgence 
 in certain affectations of style, range him with the 
 romantic poets. 
 
 The distinguished poet Judah Leon Gordon in 
 his beginnings also belonged to the romantic school. 
 His earliest poems, especially " David and 
 Michal ", treat of Bible times. But Gordon did 
 not remain long in sympathy with the endeavors 
 of the romanticists, and the mature stage of his 
 literary activity belongs to a later epoch. 
 
 The characteristic trait of Hebrew romanticism, 
 which distinguishes it from most analogous move- 
 ments in Europe, is that it remained in the path 
 of orderly progress and emancipation. It showed 
 no sign of turning aside toward reactionary meas- 
 ures in religion or in other concerns. Neither the 
 retrograde policy adopted by the government 
 against the Jews, nor the uncompromising fanati- 
 cism of certain parties among the Jews themselves, 
 could arrest the development of the humanitarian 
 ideas disseminated by the Austrian and the Italian 
 school. 
 
 156
 
 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 
 
 Since the origin of the German Meassefim move- 
 ment, the evolution of Hebrew literature has not 
 been stopped for a single instant in its striving for 
 knowledge and light. The romantic movement is 
 one of its most characteristic stages, and at the 
 same time one most productive of good results. 
 The sombre present held out no promises for the 
 future, and the dark clouds on the political hori- 
 zon eclipsed every hope of better fortunes. At 
 such a time the champions of the Haskalah op- 
 posed ignorance and prejudice in the name of the 
 past, and in the name of morality and idealism 
 they sought to win the hearts of the populace for 
 the " Divine Haskalah ". 
 
 The influence of Hebrew romanticism was 
 many-sided. The blending of the rationalism of 
 the first humanists with the patriotic sentiments of 
 Luzzatto fortified the bonds that united the writers 
 to the mass of the faithful believers. A sentimen- 
 talism that was called forth by a poetic revival of 
 the times of the prophets did more for the diffusion 
 of sane and natural ideas than exhortations and 
 arguments without end, and the declaration, re- 
 peated again and again by the school of Wilna, 
 that science and faith stand in no sort of opposition 
 to each other, was an equally powerful means of 
 
 157
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 bringing together the educated with the moderate 
 among the religious. 
 
 Soon the times were to become more favorable 
 to a renewal of the combat with the obscurants, 
 and then the antagonism between the educated 
 classes and the orthodox would be resumed with 
 fresh vigor. When that time arrived, a whole 
 school of ardent realistic writers set themselves the 
 task of counteracting the misery of Jewish life, and 
 they executed it without sparing the susceptibilities 
 and the self-love of the religious masses. They 
 rose up in judgment against orthodox and tradi- 
 tional Judaism; they chastised it and traduced it. 
 With acerbity they promulgated the gospel of 
 modern humanism and the surrender of outward 
 beliefs. By their side, however, we shall see a more 
 moderate school claim its own, and one not less 
 efficient. It will proclaim words of charity, faith, 
 and hope. To the negations and destructive aphor- 
 isms of the realistic school it will oppose firm con- 
 fidence in the early regeneration of the Jewish 
 people, called to fulfil its destiny upon its national 
 soil. The Zionist appeal will unite the orthodox 
 masses and the emancipated youth in a single trans- 
 port of action and hope. 
 
 158
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 THE EMANCIPATION MOVEMENT 
 
 THE REALISTS 
 
 The accession of Alexander II to the throne 
 marks a decisive moment in the history of the Rus- 
 sian empire. The fresh impetus that proceeded 
 from the generous ancj liberal ideas encouraged by 
 the Czar himself reached the ghetto. Substantial 
 improvements in the political situation of the Jews 
 their enlarged rights of residence in all parts of 
 the empire and the easier access to the liberal pro- 
 fessions granted them, the abolition of the old 
 order of military service and the suppression of 
 the Kahal these, joined to the expectation of an 
 early civil emancipation, stirred the Jewish human- 
 ists profoundly. Startled out of their age-long 
 dreams, the Jews with a modern education found 
 themselves suddenly face to face with reality, and 
 engaged in a struggle with the exigencies of mod- 
 ern life. In justice to them it must be said that they 
 realized at once where their duty lay, and they 
 were not found wanting. 
 
 in
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 They ranged themselves on the side of the re- 
 form government, and with all their strength they 
 tried to neutralize the resistance with which the 
 conservative Jews met the reforms, projected or 
 achieved. They were particularly active in the 
 regions remote from the large cities, which had 
 hardly been touched by the new currents. Early 
 in the struggle, the creation of a Hebrew press 
 placed an effective instrument in the hands of the 
 defenders of the new order. 
 
 The interest aroused among the Jews by the 
 Crimean War suggested the idea of a political and 
 literary journal in Hebrew to Eliezer Lipman 
 Silberman. It was called Ha-Maggid (" The 
 Herald"), and the first issue appeared in 1856, 
 in the little Prussian town of Lyck, situated on the 
 Russo-Polish frontier. It was successful beyond 
 expectation. The enthusiasm of the readers at 
 sight of the periodical published in the holy lan- 
 guage expressed itself in dithyrambic eulogies and 
 a vast number of odes that filled its columns. The 
 influence it exercised was great. It formed a meet- 
 ing-place for the educated Jews of all countries and 
 all shades of opinion. Besides news bearing on 
 politics and literature, and philological essays, and 
 poems more or less bombastic, Ha-Maggid pub- 
 
 160
 
 THE REALISTS 
 
 lished a number of original articles of great value. 
 Its issues formed the link between the old masters, 
 Rapoport and Luzzatto, and young Russian writ- 
 ers like Gordon and Lilienblum. 
 
 The learned French Orientalist Joseph Halevy, 
 later the author of an interesting collection of He- 
 brew poems, used Ha-Maggid for the promulga- 
 tion of his bold ideas on the revival of Hebrew, 
 and its practical adjustment to modern notions and 
 needs by means of the invention of new terms. In 
 part, his propositions have been realized in our 
 own days. To Rabbi Hirsch Kalisher and the 
 editor, David Gordon, as the first promoters of the 
 Zionist idea, Ha-Maggid gave the opportunity, as 
 early as 1860, of urging its practical realization, 
 and due to their propaganda the first society was 
 formed for the colonization of Palestine. 
 
 This pioneer venture in the field of Hebrew 
 journalism stimulated many others. Hebrew news- 
 papers sprang up in all countries, varying in their 
 tendencies according to their surroundings and the 
 opinions of their editors. In Galicia especially, 
 where there was no absurd censorship to manacle 
 thought, Hebrew journals were published in abun- 
 dance. In Palestine, in Austria, at one time in 
 Paris even, periodicals were founded, and they 
 
 161
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 created a public opinion as well as readers. But 
 it was above all in Russia, in the measure in which 
 the censorship was relaxed, that the Hebrew press 
 became eventually a popular tribunal in the true 
 sense of the word, with a steady army of readers 
 at its back. 
 
 Samuel Joseph Finn, an historian and a philol- 
 ogist of merit, published a review at Wilna, called 
 Ha-Karmel (1860-1880), which was devoted to 
 the Science of Judaism in particular. 
 
 Hayyim Selig Slonimski, the renowned mathe- 
 matician, founded his journal Ha-Zefirah (" The 
 Morningstar ") in 1872. It was issued first in 
 Berlin and later in Warsaw. He himself wrote a 
 large number of articles in it, in his chosen field as 
 popularizer of the natural sciences. 
 
 In Galicia, Joseph Kohen-Zedek published Ha- 
 Mebasser ("The Messenger") and Ha-Nesher 
 ("The Eagle"), and Baruch Werber, Ha-'Ibri 
 ("The Hebrew"). 
 
 By far outstripping all these in importance was 
 the first Hebrew journal that appeared in Russia, 
 Ha-Meliz ("The Interpreter"), founded at 
 Odessa in 1860, by Alexander Zederbaum, one of 
 the most faithful champions of humanism. Ha- 
 Meliz became the principal organ of the move- 
 
 162
 
 THE REALISTS 
 
 mcnt for emancipation, and the spokesman of the 
 Jewish reformers. 
 
 The Hebrew press with all its shortcomings, and 
 in spite of its meagre resources, 1 which prevented 
 it from securing regular, paid contributors, and 
 left it at the mercy of an irresponsible set of ama- 
 teurs, yet exercised considerable influence upon the 
 Jews of Russia. Unremittingly it busied itself 
 with the spread of civilization, knowledge, and 
 Hebrew literature. 
 
 In the large centres, especially in the more re- 
 cently established communities in the south of Rus- 
 sia, the intellectual emancipation of the Jews was 
 an accomplished fact at an early day. The young 
 people streamed to the schools, and applied them- 
 selves voluntarily to manual trades. The profes- 
 sional schools and the Rabbinical seminaries es- 
 tablished by the government robbed the Hedarim 
 and the Yeshibot of thousands of students. The 
 Russian language, hitherto neglected, began to dis- 
 pute the first place with the jargon and even the 
 Hebrew. Wherever the breath of economic and 
 political reforms had penetrated, emancipation 
 made its way, and without encountering serious 
 opposition on the part of traditional Judaism. 
 
 1 Sometimes ten readers clubbed together for one subscription. 
 163
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 Wilna, the capital of Lithuania, sorely tried by 
 the Polish insurrection of 1863, and intentionally 
 excluded by the government from the benefits of 
 all administrative and political reforms, did not 
 continue to be the centre of the new life of the Rus- 
 sian Jews, as it had been of their old life. The 
 " Lithuanian Jerusalem " had put aside its sceptre, 
 and it lay down for a long sleep, with dreams of 
 the Haskalah, " twin-sister of faith ". As Wilna 
 has since that time witnessed no excesses of fanat- 
 icism, so also it has not known an intense life, the 
 acrid opposition between Haskalah and religion. 
 It remained the capital of the moderate, traditional 
 attitude and religious opportunism. 
 
 By way of compensation, the small country 
 towns and the Talmudic centres in Lithuania put 
 up a stubborn resistance to the new reforms. The 
 poor literary folk stranded in out-of-the-way cor- 
 ners far removed from civilization were treated 
 as pernicious heretics. Nothing could stop the 
 fanatics in their persecution, and they had recourse 
 to the extremest expedients. Made to believe that 
 the reformers harbored designs against the funda- 
 mental principles of Judaism, the people, deluded 
 and erring, thought the obscurantists right and ap- 
 plauded them, while they rose up against the 
 modernizers as one man. 
 
 164
 
 THE REALISTS 
 
 The opposition between humanism and the re- 
 ligious fanatics degenerated into a remorseless 
 struggle. The early Haskalah, the gentle, celestial 
 daughter of dreamers, was a thing of the past. The 
 educated classes, conscious of the support of the 
 authorities and of the public opinion prevailing in 
 the centres of enlightenment, became aggressive, 
 and made a bold attack upon the course and ways 
 of the traditionalists. They displayed openly, with 
 bluntest realism, all the evils that were corroding 
 the system of their antagonists. They followed 
 the example of the Russian realistic literature of 
 their day, in exposing, branding, scourging, and 
 chastising whatever is old and antiquated, what- 
 ever mutinies against the modern spirit. Such is 
 the character of the realistic literature succeeding 
 the epoch of the romanticists. 
 
 The signal was again given by Abraham Mapu, 
 in his novel descriptive of the manners of the 
 small town, 'Aylt Zabua ("The Hypocrite"), 
 of which the early volumes appeared about the 
 year 1860, at Wilna. In view of the growing in- 
 solence of the fanatics, and the urgency of the re- 
 forms projected by the government, the master of 
 Hebrew romance decided to abandon the poetic 
 heights to which his dreams had been soaring. He 
 
 165
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 threw himself into the scrimmage, adding the 
 weight of his authority to the efforts of those who 
 were carrying on the combat with the obscurantists. 
 Even in his historical romances, especially in the 
 second of them, he had permitted his hatred 
 against the hypocrites of the ghetto, disguised in 
 the skin of the false prophet Zimri and his emula- 
 tors, to make itself plainly visible. Now he un- 
 masked them in full view of all, and without re- 
 gard for the feelings of the other party. 
 
 " The Hypocrite " is an ambitious novel in five 
 parts. All the types of ghetto fanatics are por- 
 trayed with the crudest realism. The most promi- 
 nent figure is Rabbi Zadok, canting, unmannerly, 
 lewd, an unscrupulous criminal, covering his mal- 
 practices with the mantle of piety. He is the pro- 
 totype of all the Tartufes of the ghetto, who play 
 upon the ignorance and credulity of the people. 
 His chief follower, Gadiel, is a blind fanatic, an 
 implacable persecutor of all who do not share his 
 opinions, the enemy of Hebrew literature, embit- 
 tering the life of any who venture to read a modern 
 publication. Devoted adherent of the Haskalah 
 as he was, Mapu was not sparing of paint in black- 
 ening these enemies of culture. 
 
 Around his central figure a large number of 
 
 166
 
 THE REALISTS 
 
 characters are grouped, each personifying a type 
 peculiar to the Lithuanian province. The darkest 
 portrait is that of Gaal, the ignorant upstart who 
 rules the whole community, and makes common 
 cause with Rabbi Zadok and his followers. The 
 venality of the officials gives the heartless parvenu 
 free scope for his arbitrary misdeeds, and without 
 let or hindrance he persecutes all who are suspected 
 of modernizing tendencies. He is enveloped in an 
 atmosphere of crime and terror. Mapu was guilty 
 of overdrawing his characters; he exceeded the 
 limits of truth. On the other hand, he grows more 
 indulgent and more veracious when he describes 
 the life of the humbler denizens of the ghetto. 
 
 Jerahmeel, the Batlan, is a finished product. 
 The Batlan is a species unknown outside of the 
 ghetto. In a sense, he is the bohemian in Jewry. 
 His distinguishing traits are his oddity and farcical 
 ways. Not that he is an ignoramus far from that. 
 In many instances he is an erudite Talmudist, but 
 his simplicity, his absent-mindedness, his lack of all 
 practical sense, incapacitate him from undertaking 
 anything, of whatever nature it may be. He is a 
 parasite, and by reason of mere inertia he becomes 
 attached to the enemies of progress. 
 
 The Shadhan, the influential matrimonial agent 
 167
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 lacking in no Jewish community, is painted true to 
 life. Spiteful, cunning, witty, even learned, he 
 excels in the art of bringing together the eligibles 
 of the two sexes and unravelling intricate situations. 
 
 The most sympathetic figure in the whole novel 
 is the honest burgher. Mapu has given us the 
 idealization of the large class of humble tradesmen 
 who have been well grounded in the Talmud, who 
 are endowed with an open heart for every generous 
 feeling, and whose good common sense and pro- 
 foundly moral character the congested condition 
 of the ghetto has not succeeded in perverting. 
 
 All these figures represent real individuals, liv- 
 ing and acting. Mapu has without a doubt exag- 
 gerated reality, and frequently to the detriment of 
 truth. Nevertheless they remain veracious types. 
 
 On the other hand, he has not succeeded so well 
 in the creation of the Maskilim type. The new 
 generation, the enlightened friends of culture, are 
 puppets without life, without personality, who 
 speak and move only for the purpose of glorifying 
 the " Divine Haskalah ". 
 
 Mapu's conception of Jewish life can be summed 
 up in two phrases: enlightened, hence good, just, 
 generous ; fanatic, hence wicked, hypocritical, lewd, 
 cowardly. 
 
 168
 
 THE REALISTS 
 
 If the novel on account of its treatment of the 
 subject has some claims upon the description real- 
 istic, it has none by reason of its form. " The 
 Hypocrite " suffers from all the defects of Mapu's 
 historical romances, which, in the work under con- 
 sideration, take on a graver aspect. The style of 
 Isaiah and poetic flights do not comport well with 
 a modern subject and a modern environment. 
 Herein, again, Mapu's example became pernicious 
 for his successors. 
 
 When the novel is in full swing, there occurs a 
 series of letters written by one of the heroes from 
 Palestine. The enthusiasm of the author for the 
 Holy Land cannot deny itself, and this unexpected 
 Zionist note, in a purely modern work, reveals his 
 soul as it really is, the soul of a great dreamer. 
 
 It was after the appearance of Mapu's " Hypo- 
 crite ", in the year 1867, that Abraham Bar Le- 
 bensohn published, at Wilna, his drama " Truth 
 and Faith ", written twenty years before, in which, 
 also, the Tartufe of the ghetto plays a great part. 
 
 At about the same time a young writer, Solomon 
 Jacob Abramowitsch, issued his realistic novel Ha- 
 Abot weha-Banim (" Fathers and Sons ", Zhito- 
 mir, 1868). Abramowitsch had already acquired 
 some fame by a natural history ( Toledot ha-Teba) 
 
 169
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 in four volumes, in which he taxed his ingenuity to 
 create a complete nomenclature for zoology in He- 
 brew. His novel is a failure. The subject is the 
 antagonism between religious fathers and emanci- 
 pated sons, and the action takes place in Hasidic 
 surroundings. There is nothing to betray the future 
 master, the delicate satirist, the admirable painter 
 of manners. Abramowitsch then turned away from 
 Hebrew for a while, and made the literary fortune 
 of the Jewish-German jargon by writing his tales of 
 Jewish life in it, but about ten years ago he re- 
 entered the ranks of the writers of Hebrew, and 
 became one of the most original authors handling 
 the sacred language. What distinguishes Abramo- 
 witsch from his contemporaries is his style. He 
 was among the first to introduce the diction of the 
 Talmud and the Midrash into modern Hebrew. 
 The result is a picturesque idiom, to which the 
 Talmudic expressions give its peculiar charm. 
 Though it continues essentially Biblical, the new 
 element in it puts it into perfect accord with the 
 spirit and the environment it is called upon to 
 depict. It lends itself marvellously well to the 
 description of the life and manners of the Jews 
 of Wolhynia, the province which forms the back- 
 ground of his novels. 
 
 170
 
 THE REALISTS 
 
 All these creators of a Hebrew realism were 
 outstripped by the poet Gordon, who expresses the 
 whole of his agitated epoch in his own person alone. 
 
 12 171
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 THE CONFLICT WITH RABBINISM 
 
 JUDAH LEON GORDON 
 
 Judah Leon Gordon (1830-1892) was born at 
 Wilna, of well-to-do parents, who were pious and 
 comparatively enlightened. As was customary in 
 his day, he received a Rabbinical education, but at 
 the same time he was not permitted to neglect the 
 study of the Bible and the classical Hebrew. He 
 was a brilliant student, and all circumstances 
 pointed to his future eminence as a Talmudist. 
 The academic address which he delivered on the 
 occasion of his Bar-Mizwah, on his thirteenth 
 birthday, proclaimed him an 'Him, and he was 
 betrothed to the daughter of a rich burgher. 
 
 His father's financial ruin caused the rupture of 
 his engagement, and, a marriage being out of the 
 question, he was left free to continue his studies as 
 he would. He returned to Wilna, the first centre 
 of the Haskalah in Russia. The secular literature 
 couched in Hebrew had penetrated to the very 
 
 172
 
 JUDAH LEON GORDON 
 
 synagogue, if not openly, at least by the back door. 
 In secret Gordon devoured all the modern writings 
 that fell in his hands. It was the time of the elder 
 Lebensohn, when he stood at the summit of his 
 fame and influence. Very soon Gordon perceived 
 that the study of Hebrew is not sufficient for the 
 equipment of a man of learning and cultivation. 
 Under the guidance of an intelligent kinsman, he 
 studied German, Russian, French, and Latin, one 
 of the first Hebrew writers to become thoroughly 
 acquainted with Russian literature. He devoted 
 much time to the study of Hebrew philology and 
 grammar, and he was justly reputed a distinguished 
 connoisseur of the language. Both his linguistic 
 researches and his new linguistic formations in 
 Hebrew are extremely valuable. 
 
 The muse visited him early, and by his first 
 attempts at poetry he earned the good-will and 
 favor of Lebensohn the father and the friendship 
 of Lebensohn the son. In his youthful fervor, he 
 offers enthusiastic admiration to the older man, and 
 proclaims himself his disciple. But it was the 
 younger poet, Micah Joseph, who exerted the 
 greater influence upon him. A little drama dedi- 
 cated to the memory of the poet snatched away 
 in the prime of his years shows the depth and ten- 
 derness of Gordon's affection for him. 
 
 173
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 All this time Gordon did not cease to be a stu- 
 dent. In 1852 he passed his final examinations, 
 graduating him from the Rabbinical Seminary at 
 Wilna, and he was appointed teacher at a Jewish 
 government school at Poneviej, a small town in the 
 Government of Kowno. Successively he was trans- 
 ferred from town to town in the same district. 
 Twenty years of wrangling with fanatics and 
 teaching of children in the most backward prov- 
 ince of Lithuania did not arrest his literary activity. 
 In 1872 he was called to the post of secretary to 
 the Jewish community of St. Petersburg and sec- 
 retary to the recently formed Society for the Pro- 
 motion of Culture among the Jews of Russia. 
 Thenceforward his material needs were provided 
 for, and he held an assured, independent position. 
 Denounced in 1879 as a political conspirator, he 
 was thrown into prison, with the result that he 
 suffered considerable financial loss and irreparable 
 physical injury. His innocence was established, 
 and, having been set free, he became one of the 
 editors of the journal Ha-Meliz, the Hebrew peri- 
 odical with the largest circulation at the time. But 
 the disease he had contracted ate away his strength, 
 and he died a victim of the Russian espionage 
 system. 
 
 174
 
 JUDAH LEON GORDON 
 
 As was said, the young poet followed in the 
 tracks of the two Lebensohns. In 1857 he pub- 
 lished his first ambitious poem, Ahabat David u- 
 Michal, 1 the product of a nai've dreamer, who 
 swears a solemn oath to " remain the slave of the 
 Hebrew language forever, and consecrate all his 
 life to it ". " David and Michal " rehearses poet- 
 ically the tale of the shepherd's love for the daugh- 
 ter of the king. The poet carries us back to 
 Biblical times. He tells us how the daughter of 
 Saul is enamored of tlie young shepherd summoned 
 to the royal court to dispel the king's melancholy. 
 Jealousy springs up in the heart of Saul, and he 
 takes umbrage at the popularity of David. Before 
 granting him the hand of his daughter, he imposes 
 superhuman tests upon the young suitor, which 
 would seem to doom him to certain death. But 
 David emerges from every trial with glory, and 
 returns triumphant. The king is mastered by con- 
 suming jealousy, and in his anger pursues David 
 relentlessly. David is obliged to flee, and Michal 
 is given to his rival. The friendship of David and 
 Jonathan is depicted in touching words. Finally 
 David prevails, and he is anointed king over 
 
 lr rhe collected poems of Gordon appeared, in four volumes, 
 in 1884, at St. Petersburg, and in six volumes, in 1900, at Wilna. 
 
 175
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 Israel. He takes Michal back unto himself, love 
 being stronger than the sense of injury. The shame 
 of the past is forgotten. But the poor victim is 
 never to know the joy of bearing a child Michal 
 remains barren until the last, and leads a solitary 
 existence. Old and forgotten, she passes out of 
 life on the very day of David's death. 
 
 In this simple, pure drama, the influence of 
 Schiller and of Micah Joseph Lebensohn is clearly 
 seen. But real feeling for nature and real under- 
 standing of the emotion of love are lacking in 
 Gordon. His descriptions of nature are a pale re- 
 tracing of the pictures of the romanticists. Poet 
 of the ghetto as he was, he knew neither nature at 
 first hand, nor love, nor art. 2 His poems of love 
 are destitute of the personal note. On the other 
 hand, in point of classic style and the modern 
 polish of his verses, he outdistances all who pre- 
 ceded him. Lebensohn the younger removed from 
 the arena, Gordon attained the first place among 
 Hebrew poets. 
 
 In " David and Barzillai ", the poet contrasts 
 the tranquillity of the shepherd's life with that of 
 the king. Gordon was happily inspired by the 
 
 "The first collection of his lyrics and his epic poems appeared 
 at Wilna, in 1866, under the title Shire Yehudah. 
 
 176
 
 JUDAH LEON GORDON 
 
 desire for outdoor life that had sprung up in the 
 ghetto since Mapu's warm praise of rural scenes 
 and pleasures, and also under the influence of the 
 Jewish agricultural colonies founded in Russia. He 
 shows us the aged king, crushed under a load of 
 hardships, betrayed by his own son, standing face 
 to face with the old shepherd, who refuses royal 
 gifts. 
 
 " And David reigned as Israel's head, 
 And Barzillai his flocks to pasture led." 
 
 The charm of this Kttle poem lies in the descrip- 
 tion of the land of Gilead. It seems that in re- 
 viving the past, the Hebrew poets were often 
 vouchsafed remarkable insight into nature and 
 local coloring, which ordinarily was not a charac- 
 teristic of theirs. The same warmth and historical 
 verisimilitude is found again in Asenath Bat-Poti- 
 pherah. 
 
 From the same period dates the first volume of 
 fables by Gordon, published at Vienna, in 1860, 
 under the title Mishle Yehudah, forming the 
 second part of his collected poems, and being itself 
 divided into four books. It consists of translations, 
 or, better, imitations of ^?Esop, La Fontaine, and 
 Kryloff, together with fables drawn from the Mid- 
 177
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 rash. The style is concise and telling, and the 
 satire is keen. 
 
 The production of these fables marks a turning- 
 point in the work of Gordon. Snatched out of the 
 indulgent and conciliatory surroundings in which 
 he had developed, he found himself face to face 
 with the sad reality of Jewish life in the provinces. 
 The invincible fanaticism of the Rabbis, the ana- 
 chronistic education given the children, who were 
 kept in a state of ignorance, weighed "heavily upon 
 the heart of the patriot and man of intellect. It 
 was the time in which liberal ideas and European 
 civilization had penetrated into Russia under the 
 protection of Czar Alexander II, and Gordon 
 yearned to see his Russian co-religionists occupy a 
 position similar to that enjoyed by their brethren 
 in the West. 
 
 Those envied Jews of the West had had a 
 proper understanding of the exigencies of their 
 time. They had liberated themselves from the 
 yoke of Rabbinism, and had assimilated with their 
 fellow-citizens of other faiths. The Russian gov- 
 ernment encouraged the spread of education among 
 the Jews, and granted privileges to such as profited 
 by the opportunities offered. The reformers were 
 strengthened also by the support of the newly- 
 
 178
 
 JUDAH LEON GORDON 
 
 founded Hebrew journals. Gordon threw him- 
 self deliberately into the fracas. Poetry and prose, 
 Hebrew and Russian, all served him to champion 
 the cause of the Haskalah. With him the Has- 
 kalah was no longer limited to the cultivation of 
 the Hebrew language and to the writing of philo- 
 sophical treatises. It had become an undisguised 
 conflict with obscurantism, ignorance, a time-worn 
 routine, and all that barred the way to culture. 
 Since the government permitted the Jews to enter 
 the social life of the Country, and seeing that they 
 might in the future aspire to a better lot, the Has- 
 kalah should and would work to prepare them for 
 it and make them worthy of it. 
 
 In 1863, after the liberation of the serfs in Rus- 
 sia, Gordon uttered a thrilling cry, Hakizah 
 
 " Awake, O my people ! How long wilt thou slumber ? Lo, 
 the night has vanished, the sun shines bright. Open thy eyes, 
 look hither and thither. I pray thee, see in what place thou art, 
 in what time thou livest ! . . . . 
 
 " The land wherein we were born, wherein we live, is it not 
 part of Europe, the most civilized of all continents? .... 
 
 " This land, Eden itself, behold, it is open unto thee, its sons 
 welcome thee as brother ..... Thou hast but to apply thy 
 heart to wisdom and knowledge, become a public-spirited people, 
 and speak their tongue ! " 
 
 179
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 In another poem, the writer acclaims the dawn 
 of a new time for the Jews. Their zeal to enter 
 the liberal professions augurs well for a speedy 
 and complete emancipation. 
 
 We have seen how stubborn a resistance was 
 opposed by the orthodox to this new phase of the 
 Haskalah. Terror seized upon them when they 
 saw the young desert the religious schools and give 
 themselves up to profane studies. As for the new 
 Rabbinical seminaries, they regarded them as out- 
 right nurseries of atheism. 
 
 However, the government standing on the side 
 of the reformers, the orthodox could not fight in 
 the open. They entrenched themselves behind a 
 passive resistance. In this struggle, as was observed 
 above, Gordon occupied the foremost place. 
 Thenceforth a single idea animated him, opposi- 
 tion to the enemies of light. His bitter, trenchant 
 sarcasm, his caustic, vengeful pen, were put at the 
 service of this cause. Even his historical poems 
 quiver with his resentment. He loses no opportu- 
 nity to scourge the Rabbis and their conservative 
 adherents. 
 
 Ben Shinne Arayot (" Between the Teeth of the 
 Lions ") is an historical poem on a subject con- 
 nected with the Judeo-Roman wars. The hero, 
 
 180
 
 JUDAH LEON GORDON 
 
 Simon the Zealot, is taken captive by Titus. At 
 the moment of succumbing in the arena, his eyes 
 meet those of his beloved Martha, sold by the 
 enemy as a slave, and the two expire at the same 
 time. 
 
 The poem is a masterpiece by reason of the 
 truly poetic inspiration that informs it, and the 
 deep national feeling expressed in it. But Gordon 
 did not stop at that. He makes use of the oppor- 
 tunity to attack Rabbinism in its vital beginnings, 
 wherein he discerns the, cause of his nation's peril. 
 
 " Woe is thee, O Israel ! Thy teachers have not taught thee 
 how to conduct war with skill and strategem. 
 
 " Rebellion and bravery, of what avail are they without disci- 
 pline and tactics! 
 
 " True, for many long centuries, they led thee, and con- 
 structed houses of learning for thee but what did they teach 
 thee? 
 
 "What accomplished they? They but sowed the wind, and 
 ploughed the rock, drew water in a sieve, and threshed empty 
 straw ! 
 
 " They taught thee to run counter to life, to isolate thyself 
 betwen walls of precepts and prescriptions, to be dead on earth 
 and alive in heaven, to walk about in a dream and speak in thy 
 sleep. 
 
 " Thus thy spirit grew faint, thy strength dried up, and the 
 dust of thy scribes has sepulchred thee, a living mummy 
 
 " Woe is thee, O Jerusalem that art lost ! " 
 181
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 Yet, though he accuses Rabbinism of all possible 
 ills that have befallen the Jewish people, it does 
 not follow that he justifies the Roman invasion. 
 All his wrath is aroused against Rome, the peren- 
 nial enemy of Judaism. In the name of humanity 
 and justice, he pours out his scorn over her. The 
 first he presents is Titus, " the delight of man- 
 kind ", preparing brilliant but sanguinary specta- 
 cles for his people, and revelling in the sight of 
 innocent blood shed in the gladiators' arena. Then 
 he arraigns Rome herself, " the great people who 
 is mistress of three-quarters of the earth, the terror 
 of the world, whose triumph can know no limit 
 now that she has carried off the victory over a 
 people destined to perish, whose territory can be 
 covered in a five hours' march ". And finally his 
 Jewish heart is revolted by " the noble matrons 
 followed by their servants, whose tender soul is 
 about to take delight in the bloody sights of the 
 arena ". 
 
 Bi-Mezulot Yam ("In the Depths of the Sea") 
 revives a terrible episode of the exodus of the Jews 
 from Spain (1492). The refugees embarked on 
 pirate vessels, where they were exploited pitilessly. 
 The cupidity of the corsairs is insatiable. After 
 despoiling the Jews of all they own, they sell them 
 
 182
 
 JUDAH LEON GORDON 
 
 as slaves or cast them into the water. This is the 
 lot that threatens to overtake a group of exiles on 
 a certain ship. But the captain falls in love with 
 the daughter of a Rabbi, a maiden of rare beauty. 
 To rescue her companions, she pretends to yield 
 to the solicitations of the captain, who promises 
 to land the passengers safe and sound on the coast. 
 He keeps his word, but the girl and her mother 
 must stay with him. At a distance from the coast, 
 the two women, with prayers to God upon their 
 lips, throw themselves jnto the sea, to save the girl 
 from having to surrender herself to the desires of 
 the corsair. It is one of the most beautiful of 
 Gordon's poems. Indignation and grief inspire 
 such words as these : 
 
 " The daughter of Jacob is banished from every foot of 
 Spanish soil. Portugal also has thrust her out. Europe turns 
 her back upon the unfortunates. She grants them only the grave, 
 martyrdom, hell. Their bones are strewn upon the rocks of 
 
 Africa. Their blood floods the shores of Asia And the 
 
 Judge of the world appeareth not ! And the tears of the op- 
 pressed are not avenged ! " 
 
 What revolts the poet above all is the thought 
 that the downtrodden victims will never have their 
 revenge all the crimes against them will go un- 
 punished : 
 
 183
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 " Never, O Israel, wilt thou be avenged ! Power is with thy 
 oppressors. What they desire they accomplish, what they do, 
 prospereth Spain did her vessels not set forth and dis- 
 cover the New World, the day thou wast driven out a fugitive 
 and outlaw? And Portugal, did she not find the way to the 
 Indies? And in that far-off country, too, she ruined the land 
 that welcomed thy refugees. Yea, Spain and Portugal stand 
 unassailed ! " 
 
 But if vengeance is withheld from the Jews, im- 
 placable hatred takes possession of all hearts, and 
 never will it be appeased. 
 
 " Enjoin it upon your children until the end of days. Adjure 
 your descendants, the great and the little, never to return to the 
 land of Spain, reddened with your blood, never again to set foot 
 upon the Pyrenean peninsula ! " 
 
 The despair, the grief of the poet are concen- 
 trated in the last stanzas, telling how the maiden 
 and her mother throw themselves into the water: 
 
 " Only the Eye of the World, silently looking through the 
 clouds, the eye that witnesseth the end of all things, views the 
 ruin of these thousands of beings, and it sheds not a single tear." 
 
 His last historical poem, " King Zedekiah in 
 Prison ", dates from the period when the poet's 
 skepticism was a confirmed temper of mind. Ac- 
 cording to Gordon, the ruin of the Jewish State 
 was brought about by the weight given to moral 
 
 184
 
 JUDAH LEON GORDON 
 
 as compared with political considerations. He no 
 longer contents himself with attacking Rabbinism, 
 he goes back to the very principles of the Judaism 
 of the prophets. These are the ideas which he 
 puts into the mouth of the King of Judah, the cap- 
 tive of Nebuchadnezzar. He makes him the advo- 
 cate of the claims of political power as against the 
 moralist pretensions of the prophets. 
 
 The king passes all his misfortunes in review, 
 and he asks himself to what cause they are attrib- 
 utable. 
 
 " Because I did not submit to the will of Jeremiah ? But what 
 was it that the priest of Anathoth required of me to do? " 
 
 No, the king cannot concede that " the City 
 would still be standing if her inhabitants had not 
 borne burdens on the Sabbath day ". 
 
 The prophet proclaims the rule of the letter and 
 of the Law, supreme over work and war, but can 
 a people of dreamers and visionaries exist a single 
 day? 
 
 The king does not stop at such rebellious 
 thoughts. He remembers all too well the story of 
 Saul and Samuel how the king was castigated for 
 having resisted the whims of the prophets. 
 
 1 Thus the seers and prophets have always 
 sought to crush the kings in Israel ", he maintains. 
 
 185
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 " Alas ! I see that the words of the son of Hilkiah will be ful- 
 filled -^yithout fail. The Law will stand, the kingdom will be 
 ruinedj The book, the word they will succeed to the royal 
 sceptra I foresee a whole people of scholars and teachers, de- 
 generlte folk and feeble." 
 
 Hhis amazing view, so disconcerting to the 
 pr/phet-people, Gordon held to the very end. And 
 feing that the Law had killed the nation, and a 
 fruel fatality dogged the footsteps of the people 
 the Book, would it not be best to free the indi- 
 viduals from the chains of the faith and liberate 
 the masses from the minute religious ceremonial 
 that has obstructed their path to life? This was 
 the task Gordon set himself for the rest of his days. 
 In a poem inscribed to Smolenskin, the editor of 
 Ha-Shahar (" Daybreak "), on the occasion of the 
 periodical's resuming publication after an interval, 
 the poet poured forth his afflicted soul, and pointed 
 out the aim he had decided to pursue : 
 
 " Once upon a time I sang of love, too, and pleasure, and 
 friendship; I announced the advent of days of joy, liberty, and 
 hope. The strings of my lyre thrilled with emotion 
 
 " But yonder comes Ha-Shahar again, and I shall attune my 
 harp to hail the break of day. 
 
 " Alas, I am no more the same, I know not how to sing, I 
 waken naught but grief. Disquieting dreams trouble my nights. 
 
 They show me my people face to face They show me my 
 
 186
 
 JUDAH LEON GORDON 
 
 people in all its abasement, with all its unprobed wounds. They 
 reveal to me the iniquity that is the source of all its ills. 
 
 " I see its leaders go astray, and its teachers deceiving it. 
 My heart bleeds with grief. The strings of my lyre groan, my 
 song is a lament. 
 
 "Since that day I sing no more of joy and solace; I hope no 
 more for the light, I wait no more for liberty. I sing only of 
 bitter days, I foretell everlasting slavery, degradation, and no 
 end. And from the strings of my lyre tears gush forth for the 
 ruin of my people. 
 
 " Since that day my muse is black as a raven, her mouth is 
 filled with abuse, from her tongue drops complaint. She groans 
 like the Bat-Kol upon Mojjnt Horeb's ruins. She cries out 
 against the wicked shepherds, against the sottish people. 
 
 " She recounts unto God, unto all the human kind, the degrad- 
 ing miseries of a hand-to-mouth existence, of the soul that 
 pierces to the depths of evil." 
 
 But the patriotism of the poet carries the day 
 over his discouragement: 
 
 " From pity for my people, from compassion, I will tell unto 
 its shepherds their crimes, unto its teachers the error of their 
 ways." 
 
 Will he succeed in his purpose ? Is not all hope 
 lost? No matter, he at least will do his duty until 
 the end : 
 
 " From every part of the Law, from every retreat of the people, 
 I shall gather together all vain teachings, all the poisonous 
 13 187
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 vipers, wherever they may be, and in the sight of all suspend 
 them like a banner. Let the wounded look upon them, perhaps 
 they will be cured perhaps there is still healing for their ills, 
 perhaps there is still life in them ! " 
 
 The poet kept his word. In a series of satires, 
 fables, and epistles, he reveals the moral plagues 
 that eat into the fabric of Jewish society in the Slav 
 countries. He gives a realistic description, at once 
 accurate and subjective, of an extraordinary milieu, 
 lacking plausibility though it existed and defied all 
 opposition. Gordon descended to the innermost 
 depths of the people's soul, he knew its profoundest 
 secrets. He caught the spirit of the peculiar man- 
 ners of the ghetto and reproduced them with un- 
 failing fidelity. Also he knew all the dishonor of 
 some of the persons who ruled its society, and he 
 sounded their mean, crafty brains. His heart was 
 filled with indignation at the painful spectacle he 
 himself bodied forth, and he suffered the misfor- 
 tunes of his people. 
 
 His poetic manner changed with the new direc- 
 tion taken by his mind. He was no more an artist 
 for art's sake. Classical purity ceased to interest 
 him. What he pursued above all things was an 
 object which can be reached only by struggle and 
 propaganda. His style became more realistic. He 
 
 188
 
 JUDAH LEON GORDON 
 
 saturated it with Talmudic terms and phrases, 
 thus adapting it more closely to the spirit of the 
 scenes and things and acts he was occupied with, 
 and making it the proper medium for the descrip- 
 tion of a world that was Rabbinical in all essential 
 points. But Gordon never went to excess in the 
 use of Talmudisms; he always maintained a just 
 sense of proportion. It requires discriminating 
 taste to appreciate his style, now delicate and now 
 sarcastic, by turns appealing and vehement. Here 
 Gordon displayed the whole range of his talent, 
 all his creative powers. The language he uses is 
 the genuine modern Hebrew, a polished and ex- 
 pressive medium, yielding in naught to the clas- 
 sical Hebrew. 
 
 The social condition of the Jewish woman, the 
 saddest conceivable in the ghetto, inspired the first 
 of Gordon's satires. The poem is entitled " The 
 Dot on the I ", or, more literally, " The Hanger 
 of the Yod " (#020 shel Yod). 
 
 " O thou, Jewish Woman, who knows thy life ! Unnoticed 
 thou enterest the world, unnoticed thou departest from it. 
 
 " Thy heart-aches and thy joys, thy sorrows and thy desires 
 spring up within thee and die within thee. 
 
 " All the good things of this life, its pleasures, its enjoyments, 
 they were created for the daughters of the other nations. The 
 
 189
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 Jewish woman's life is naught but servitude, toil without end. 
 Thou conceivest, thou bearest, thou givest suck, thou weanest 
 thy babes, thou bakest, thou cookest, and thou witherest before 
 thy time. 
 
 " Vain for thee to be dowered with an impressionable heart, 
 to be beautiful, gentle, intelligent ! 
 
 " The Law in thy mouth is turned to foolishness, beauty in 
 
 thee is a taint, every gift a fault, all knowledge a defect 
 
 Thou art but a hen good to raise a brood of chicks ! " 
 
 It is vain for a Jewish woman to cherish aspira- 
 tions after life, after knowledge nothing of all 
 this is accessible to her. 
 
 " The planting of the Lord wastes away in a desert land with- 
 out having seen the light of the sun 
 
 " Before thou becomest conscious of thy soul, before thou 
 knowest aught, thou art given in marriage, thou art a mother. 
 
 " Before thou hast learnt to be a daughter to thy parents, thou 
 art a wife, and mother to children of thine own. 
 
 " Thou art betrothed knowest thou him for whom thou art 
 destined? Dost thou love him? Yea, hast thou seen him? 
 Love ! Thou unhappy being ! Knowest thou not that to the 
 heart of a Jewish woman love is prohibited? 
 
 " Forty days before thy birth, thy mate and life companion 
 was assigned to thee. 8 
 
 " Cover thy head, cut off thy braids of hair. Of what avail 
 to look at him who stands beside thee? Is he hunchbacked or 
 
 3 According to popular belief, it is decided forty days before 
 its birth to whom a child will be married. 
 
 190
 
 JUDAH LEON GORDON 
 
 one-eyed? Is he young or old? What matters it? Not thou 
 hast chosen, but thy parents, they rule over thee, like merchan- 
 dise thou passest from hand to hand." 
 
 Slave to her parents, slave to her husband, she 
 is not permitted to taste even the joys of mother- 
 hood in peace. Unforeseen misfortunes assail her 
 and lay her low. Her husband, without an educa- 
 tion, without a profession, often without a heart, 
 finds himself suddenly at odds with life, after hav- 
 ing eaten at the table and lodged in the house of 
 his wife's parents for a^number of years following 
 his marriage, as is customary among the Jews of 
 the Slavic countries. If no chance of success pre- 
 sents itself soon, he grows weary, abandons his 
 wife and children, and goes off no one knows 
 whither, without a sign of his whereabouts, and she 
 remains behind, an 'Agunah, a forsaken wife, 
 widowed without being a widow, most unfortunate 
 of unfortunate creatures. 
 
 " This is the history of all Jewish women, and it is the history 
 of Bath-shua the beautiful." 
 
 Bath-shua is a noble creature, endowed by nature 
 with all fine qualities she is beautiful, intelligent, 
 pure, good, attractive, and an excellent house- 
 keeper. She is admired by everybody. Even the 
 
 191
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 miserable Parush, the recluse student, conceals him- 
 self behind the railing that divides the women's 
 gallery from the rest of the synagogue, to steal a 
 look at her. Alas, this flower of womankind is 
 betrothed by her father to a certain Hillel, a sour 
 specimen, ugly, stupid, repulsive. But he knows 
 the Talmud by heart, folio by folio, and to say 
 that is to say everything. The marriage comes off 
 in due time, the young couple eat at the table of 
 Bath-shua's parents for three years, and two chil- 
 dren spring from the union. 
 
 The wife's father loses his fortune, and Hillel 
 must earn his own livelihood. Incapable as he is, 
 he finds nothing to do, and he goes to foreign parts 
 to seek his fortunes. Never is he heard of again. 
 Bath-shua remains behind alone with her two chil- 
 dren. By painful toil, she earns her bread with un- 
 failing courage. All the love of her rich nature 
 she pours out upon her children, whom by a 
 supreme effort she dresses and adorns like the chil- 
 dren of the wealthy. 
 
 Meantime a young man by the name of Fabi 
 makes his appearance in the little town. He is the 
 type of the modern Jew, educated and intelligent, 
 and he is handsome and generous besides. He 
 begins by taking an interest in the young woman, 
 
 192
 
 JUDAH LEON GORDON 
 
 and ends by falling in love with her. Bath-shua 
 does not dare believe in her happiness. But an 
 insurmountable obstacle lies in the path of their 
 union. Bath-shua is not divorced from her hus- 
 band, and none can tell whether he is dead or alive. 
 Energetically Fabi undertakes to find the hiding- 
 place of the faithless man. He traces him, and 
 bribes him to give his wife a divorce. The official 
 document, properly drawn up and attested by a 
 Rabbinical authority, is sent to her. Hillel em- 
 barks for America, andjiis vessel suffers shipwreck. 
 
 Finally, it would seem, Bath-shua will enjoy the 
 happiness she has amply merited. Alas, no! In 
 the person of Rabbi Wofsi, fortune plays her an- 
 other trick. This Rabbi is a rigid legalist, the 
 slightest of slips suffices to render the divorce in- 
 valid. According to certain commentators the 
 name Hillel is spelled incorrectly in the document. 
 After the He a Yod is missing ! Thus is the hap- 
 piness glimpsed by Bath-shua shattered forever! 
 
 Her fate is not unique the Bath-shuas are 
 counted by the legion in the ghetto. And there 
 are other fates no less poignant caused by reasons 
 no less futile. 
 
 In another poem, Ashakka de-Rispak ("The 
 Shaft of the Wagon ", meaning " For a Trifle "), 
 
 193
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 the poet tells how the peace of a household was 
 undermined on account of a barley grain discovered 
 by accident in the soup at the Passover meal, which 
 must be free from every trace of fermented food. 
 Brooding over the incident and filled with remorse 
 for having served the doubtful soup to her family, 
 the poor woman runs to the Rabbi, who decides 
 that she has, indeed, caused her family to eat pro- 
 hibited food, and the dishes in which it was pre- 
 pared and served must be broken, they cannot be 
 used, they may not even be sold. But the husband, 
 a simple carter, does not accept the decision tran- 
 quilly. He vents his anger upon the woman. The 
 peace of the house is troubled, and finally the man 
 repudiates his wife. 
 
 The poet fulminates against the Rabbis and 
 their narrow, senseless interpretations of texts. 
 
 " Slaves we were in the land of Egypt .... And what are 
 we now? Do we not sink lower from year to year? Are we 
 not bound with ropes of absurdities, with cords of quibbles, with 
 all sorts of prejudices? .... The stranger no longer oppresses 
 us, our despots are the progeny of our own bodies. Our hands 
 are no longer manacled, but our soul is in chains." 
 
 In the last of his great satires, ' ' The Two 
 Joseph-ben-Simons ", Gordon gives a sombre and 
 at the same time lofty picture of the manners of 
 
 194
 
 JUDAH LEON GORDON 
 
 the ghetto, an exact description of the wicked, arbi- 
 trary domination exercised by the Kahal, and an 
 idealization of the Maskil, powerless to prevail 
 single-handed in the combat with combined reac- 
 tionary forces. A young Talmudist, devotee of 
 the sciences and of modern literature, is persecuted 
 by the fanatics. Unable to resist the seductions of 
 his alien studies, he is forced to expatriate himself. 
 He goes to Italy, to the University of Padua, 
 whither the renown of Samuel David Luzzatto 
 has attracted many a young Russian Jew eager for 
 knowledge. There he pursues both Rabbinical and 
 medical courses. 
 
 His efforts are crowned with success, and he 
 dreams of returning to his country and consecrat- 
 ing his powers to the amelioration of the material 
 and moral condition of his brethren. In his mind's 
 eye he sees himself at the head of his community, 
 healing souls and bodies, redressing wrongs, intro- 
 ducing reforms, breathing a new spirit into the dry 
 bones and limbs of Judaism. Hardly has he set 
 foot upon the soil of his native town when he is 
 arrested and thrown into prison. The Kahal had 
 made out a passport in his name for the cobbler's 
 son, a degraded character, a highway robber and 
 sneak thief, and charged with murder. Now the 
 
 195
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 true Joseph ben Simon is to expiate the crime of 
 the other. It is vain for him to protest his inno- 
 cence. The president of the Kahal, before whom 
 he is arraigned, declares there is no other Joseph 
 ben Simon, and he is the guilty one. 
 
 The little town is described minutely. We are 
 on the public square, the market place, the dump- 
 ing ground of all the offal and dirt, whence an 
 offensive odor rises in the nostrils of the passer-by. 
 Facing this square is the synagogue, a mean, dilapi- 
 dated building. " Mud and filth detract from 
 holiness ", but the Lord takes no offense, " He 
 thrones too high to be incommoded by it ". The 
 greatest impurity, however, a moral infection, oozes 
 from the little chamber adjoining the synagogue 
 the meeting-room of the Kahal. That is the breed- 
 ing place of crime and injustice. Oppression and 
 venality assert themselves there with barefaced im- 
 pudence. The Kahal keeps the lists relating to 
 military service; it makes out the passports, and 
 the whole town is at its mercy. It offers the hypo- 
 crite of the ghetto the opportunity of exercising his 
 fatal power. There the widow is despoiled, and 
 the orphans are abused. Together with the un- 
 fortunates who have dared aspire to the light, the 
 fatherless are delivered to the recruiting agent as 
 
 196
 
 JUDAH LEON GORDON 
 
 substitutes for the sons of the wealthy. It is 
 the domain over which reigns the venerated Rabbi, 
 powerful and fear-inspiring, Shamgar ben Anath, a 
 stupid and uncouth upstart. 
 
 The life of sacrifices and privations led by the 
 Jewish students who go abroad in search of an 
 education, inspires Gordon with one of the most 
 beautiful passages in his poem. In the true sense 
 of the word, these young men are loyal to Jewish 
 traditions. They are the genuine successors of 
 those who formerly braved hunger and cold upon 
 the benches of the Yeshibot. 
 
 " How strong it is, the desire for knowledge in the hearts of 
 the youth of Israel, the crushed people ! It is like the fire, never 
 extinguished, burning upon the altar ! . . . . 
 
 " Stop upon the highways leading to Mir, Eisheshok, and Wolo- 
 sin. 4 See yon haggard youths walking on foot ! Whither lead 
 their steps? What do they seek? Naked they will sleep upon 
 the floor, and lead a life of privation. 
 
 " It is said : ' The Torah is given to him alone who dies for 
 her ! ' " 
 
 And here is the modern counterpart: 
 
 "Go to no matter what university in \Europe: the lot of the 
 young Jewish strangers is no better The Russians are 
 
 4 Lithuanian towns well-known for their Talmudic academies. 
 197
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 proud of the fame of a Lomonossoff, the son of a poor moujik who 
 became a luminary in the wqrld of science. How numerous are 
 the Lomonossoffs of the Jew alley ! . . . . " 
 
 And then the poet, in an access of patriotism, 
 cries out : 
 
 i " And what, in fine, art thou, O Israel, but a poor Bahur 
 among the peoples, eating one day with one of them, another day 
 with the other! .... 
 
 " Thou hast kindled a perpetual lamp for the whole world. 
 Around thee alone the world is dark, O People, slave of slaves, 
 desperate and despised ! " 
 
 With this poem we bring to a close the analysis 
 of Gordon's satires. It shows at their best the 
 dreams, the aspirations, the struggles of the Mas- 
 kilim, in their opposition to the aims of the reac- 
 tionaries and the moral and material confusion in 
 which Slavic Judaism wallowed. 
 
 The same order of ideas is presented in the 
 greater part of the original pieces in his " Little 
 Fables for Big Children ". They are written in 
 a vivid, pithy style. The delicate, bantering criti- 
 cism and the deep philosophy with which they are 
 impregnated put these fables among the finest pro- 
 ductions of Hebrew literature. 
 
 To the same period as the fables belong the 
 several volumes of tales published by Gordon, 
 
 198
 
 JUDAH LEON GORDON 
 
 Shene Yomim ive-Latlah Ehad (" Two Days and 
 One Night"), 'Olam ke-Minhago (" The World 
 as It is "), and later the first part of Kol Kitbe 
 Yehudah ("Collected Writings of Gordon"). 
 They also relate to the life and manners of the 
 Jews of Lithuania, and the struggle of the modern 
 element with the old. Gordon as story teller is 
 inferior to Gordon as poet. Nevertheless his prose 
 displays all the delicacy of his mind and the pre- 
 cision of his observations. At all events, these 
 tales of his are not a negligible quantity in Hebrew 
 literature. 
 
 The reaction which set in about 1870, after a 
 period of social reforms and unrealized hopes, 
 affected the poet deeply. The government put 
 obstacles in the forward march of the Jews, the 
 masses remained steeped in fanaticism, and the men 
 of light and leading themselves fell short of doing 
 their whole duty. Disillusioned, he cherished no 
 hope of anything. He could not share the optim- 
 ism of Smolenskin and his school. For an instant 
 he stops to look back over the road travelled. He 
 sees nothing, and in anguish he asks himself: 
 
 "For whom have I toiled all the years of my prime? 
 " My parents, they cling to the faith and to their people, they 
 think of nothing but business and religious observances all 
 
 199
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 day long; they despise knowledge, and are hostile to good 
 sense 
 
 " Our intellectuals scorn the national language, and all their 
 love is lavished upon the language of the land. 
 
 " Our daughters, charming as they are, are kept in absolute 
 ignorance of Hebrew 
 
 " And the young generation go on and on, God knows how 
 far and whither .... perhaps to the point whence they will 
 never return." 
 
 He therefore addresses himself to a handful of 
 the elect, amateurs, the only ones who do not des- 
 pise the Hebrew poet, but understand him and 
 approve his ways : 
 
 " To you I bring my genius as a sacrifice, before you I shed 
 my tears as a libation .... Who knows but I am the last to 
 sing of Zion, and you the last to read the Zion songs ? " 
 
 This pessimistic strain recurs in all the later 
 writings of Gordon. Even after the events of 
 1882, when revived hatred and persecution had 
 thrown the camp of the emancipators into disorder, 
 and the most ardent of the anti-Rabbinic cham- 
 pions, like Lilienblum and Braudes, had been 
 driven to the point of raising the flag of Zionism, 
 Gordon alone of all was not carried along with the 
 current. His skepticism kept him from embracing 
 the illusions of his friends converted to Zionism. 
 
 200
 
 JUDAH LEON GORDON 
 
 All his contempt for the tyrants, and his com- 
 passion for his people unjustly oppressed, he puts 
 into his poem Ahoti Ruhamah, which is inscribed 
 " to the Honor of the Daughter of Jacob violated 
 by the Son of Hamor." 
 
 " Why weepest thou, my afflicted sister ? 
 
 "Wherefore this desolation of spirit, this anguish of heart? 
 
 " If thieves surprised thee and ravished thy honor, if the hand 
 of the malefactor has prevailed against thee, is it thy fault, my 
 afflicted sister ? 
 
 "Whither shall I bear my shame? 
 
 " Where is thy shame, seeing thy heart is pure and chaste ? 
 Arise, display thy wound, that all the world may see the blood 
 of Abel upon the forehead of Cain. Let the world know, my 
 afflicted sister, how thou art tortured ! 
 
 " Not upon thee falls the shame, but upon thy oppressors. 
 
 " Thy purity has not been sullied by their polluting touch .... 
 Thou art white as snow, my afflicted sister." 
 
 Almost the poet seems to regret his efforts of 
 other days to bring the Jews close to the Christians. 
 
 " What of humiliation hath befallen thee is a solace unto me. 
 Long I bore distress and injustice, violence and spoliation; yet 
 I remained loyal to my country; for better days I hoped, and 
 submitted to all. But to bear thy shame, my afflicted sister, I 
 have no spirit more." 
 
 But what was to become of it all? Whither 
 were the Jews to turn ? The Palestine of the Turk 
 
 201
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 has not too many attractions for the poet. He 
 still believes in the existence of a country some- 
 where " in which the light shines for all human 
 beings alike, in which man is not humiliated on 
 account of his race or his faith." Thither he 
 invites his brethren to go and seek an asylum, 
 " until what day our Father in heaven will take 
 pity on us and return us to our ancient mother." 
 It was the agitated time in which Pinsker sent 
 forth his manifesto, " Auto-Emancipation ", and 
 Gordon dedicated his poem, " The Flock of the 
 Lord ", to him. 
 
 " What are we, you ask, and what our life ? Are we a people 
 like those around us, or only members of a religious community? 
 I will tell you: We are neither a people, nor a brotherhood, we 
 are but a flock the holy flock of the Lord God, and the whole 
 earth is an altar for us. Thereon we are laid either as burnt 
 offerings sacrificed by the other peoples, or as victims bound by 
 the precepts of our own Rabbis. A flock wandering in the waste 
 
 desert, sheep set upon on all sides by the wolves We cry 
 
 out in vain ! We utter laments none hears ! The desert shuts us 
 in on all sides. The earth is of copper, the heavens are of brass. 
 
 " Not an ordinary flock are we, but a flock of iron. We 
 survive the slaughter. But will our strength endure forever? 
 
 " A flock dispersed, undisciplined, without a bond we are the 
 flock of the Lord God ! " 
 
 Not that the idea of a national rebirth displeased 
 
 202
 
 JUDAH LEON GORDON 
 
 the poet. Far from it. Zionism cannot but exer- 
 cise a charm upon the Jewish heart. But he be- 
 lieved the time had not yet arrived for a national 
 regeneration. According to his opinion, there was 
 a work of religious liberation to be accomplished 
 before the reconstruction of the Jewish State could 
 be thought of. He defended this idea in a series 
 of articles published in Ha-Meliz, of which he was 
 the editor at that time. 
 
 The last years of his life were tragic, pathetic. 
 With a torn heart he sat by and looked upon the 
 desperate situation into which the government had 
 put millions of his brethren. To this he alludes 
 in his fable " Adoni-bezek ", which we reproduce 
 in its entirety, to give a notion of Gordon as a 
 fabulist: 
 
 " In a sumptuous palace, in the middle of a vast hall, per- 
 fumed, and draped with Egyptian fabrics, stands a table, and 
 upon it are the most delicious viands. Adoni-bezek is dining. 
 His attendants are standing each in his place his cupbearer, 
 the master baker, and the chief cook. The eunuchs, his slaves, 
 come and go, bringing every variety of dainty dishes, and the 
 flesh of all sorts of beasts and birds, roasted and stewed. 
 
 " On the floor, insolent dogs lie sprawling, their jaws agape, 
 panting to snap up the bones and scraps their master throws 
 to them. 
 
 " Prostrate under the table are seventy captive kings, with 
 14 203
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 their thumbs and big toes cut off. To appease their appetite 
 they must scramble for the scraps that drop under the table of 
 their sovereign lord. 
 
 " Adoni-bezek has finished his repast, and he amuses himself 
 with throwing bones to the creatures under the table. Suddenly 
 there is a hubbub, the dogs bark, and yap at their human neigh- 
 bors, who have appropriated morsels meant for them. 
 
 "The wounded kings complain to the master: O king, see 
 our suffering and deliver us from thy dogs. And Adoni-bezek's 
 answer is: But it is you who are to be blamed, and they are 
 in the right. Why do you do them wrong? 
 
 "With bitterness the kings make reply: 
 
 " O king, is it our fault if we have been brought so low that 
 we must vie with your dogs and pick up the crumbs that drop 
 from your table? Thou didst come up against us and crush us 
 with thy powerful hand, thou didst mutilate us and chain us in 
 these cages. No longer are we able to work or seek our suste- 
 nance. Why should these dogs have the right to bite and bark ? 
 O that the just if still there are such men in our time might 
 rise up ! O that one whose heart has been touched by God might 
 judge between ourselves and those who bite us, which of us is the 
 hangman and which the victim?" 
 
 Toward the end of his days the poet was per- 
 mitted to enjoy a great gratification. The Jewish 
 notabilities of the capital arranged a celebration of 
 the twenty-fifth anniversary of his activity as a 
 writer. At the reunion of Gordon's friends on 
 this occasion it was decided to publish an edition 
 de luxe of his poetical works. A final optimistic 
 
 20<i
 
 JUDAH LEON GORDON 
 
 note was forced from his heart, deeply moved by 
 this unexpected tribute. He recalled the vow once 
 made by him, always to remain loyal to Hebrew, 
 and he recounted the vexations and disappoint- 
 ments to which the poet is exposed who chooses to 
 write in a dead language doomed to oblivion. 
 Then he addressed a salutation to the young " of 
 whom we had despaired, and who are coming back, 
 and to the dawn of the rebirth of the Hebrew lan- 
 guage and the Jewish people." 
 
 However, Gordon never entered into the na- 
 tional revival with full faith in its promises. Until 
 the end he remained the poet of misery and des- 
 pair. 
 
 The death of Smolenskin elicited a last disconso- 
 late word from him. It may be considered the 
 ghetto poet's testament. He compared the great 
 writer to the Jewish people, and asked himself: 
 
 "What is our people, and what its literature? 
 " A giant felled to the ground unable to rise. 
 " The whole earth is its sepulchre. 
 
 " And its books ? the epitaph engraved upon its tomb- 
 stone. . . " 
 
 205
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 REFORMERS AND CONSERVATIVES 
 
 THE Two EXTREMES 
 
 Though Gordon was the most distinguished, he 
 was not the only representative of the anti-Rabbinic 
 school in the neo-Hebrew literature. The decline 
 of liberalism in official state circles, and the frus- 
 tration of every hope of equality, had their effect 
 in reshaping the policy pursued by educated Jews. 
 Up to this time they had cherished no desire except 
 for external emancipation and to assimilate with 
 their neighbors of other faiths. Liberty and jus- 
 tice suddenly removed from their horizon, they 
 could not but transfer their ambition and their 
 activity to the inner chambers of Judaism. Other 
 circumstances contributed to the result. The eco- 
 nomic changes affecting the bourgeoisie and the 
 influence exercised by the realism and the utili- 
 tarian tendencies of the Russian literature of the 
 time had not a little to do with the modified aims 
 cherished in the camp of the Maskilim. Jews of 
 
 206
 
 THE TWO EXTREMES 
 
 education living in Galicia or in the small towns of 
 Russia, who had the best opportunity of penetrat- 
 ing to the intimate life of the people and knowing 
 its day by day misery, could and did make clear, 
 how helpless the masses of the Jews were in the 
 face of the moral and economic ruin that menaced 
 them, and how serious an obstacle religious restric- 
 tions and ignorance placed in the way of any change 
 in their condition. And therefore they made it 
 their object to extol practical, thoroughgoing 
 reforms. ^ 
 
 In religion, they demanded, with Gordon, the 
 abolition of all restrictions weighing upon the peo- 
 ple, and a radical reform of Jewish education. 
 
 In practical life, they were desirous of turning 
 the attention of their brethren to the manual trades, 
 to the technical professions, and to agriculture. 
 Besides, it was their purpose to extend modern 
 primary instruction and bring it within the reach 
 of considerably larger circles. 
 
 The government viewed these efforts with a 
 favorable eye, and under its protection the Society 
 for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews in 
 Russia was formed, with headquarters at St. 
 Petersburg. Thus supported, the educated could 
 carry on their propaganda in the open, and throw 
 
 207
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 light into the remotest corners of the country. The 
 Hebrew press, though still in its infancy, co-ope- 
 rated with them zealously in furthering their benef- 
 icent purposes. 
 
 The most determined group of the anti-reli- 
 gious propagandists was at Brody in Galicia. 
 Thence emanated the influences that operated in 
 Russia, and thence He-Haluz ("The Pioneer"), 
 founded by Erter and Schorr in 1853, and pub- 
 lished at Lemberg, carried on a brilliant campaign 
 against religious superstitions, shrinking not even 
 from attacks upon the Biblical tradition itself. The 
 boldest of the contributors to He-Haluz, not count- 
 ing its valiant editor, was Abraham Krochmal, the 
 son of the philosopher. A scholar and subtle 
 thinker, he introduced Biblical criticism into He- 
 brew literature. In his books * as well as in his 
 articles in He-Haluz and in Ha-Kol, the latter 
 edited by Rodkinson, he goes so far as to dispute 
 the Divine character of the Bible, and he demands 
 radical reforms in Judaism. His writings gave 
 the signal for a considerable stir and expression 
 of opinion. Even the most moderate among the 
 
 1 Ha-Ketdb vaeha-Miktab ("Writing and the Scriptures"), 
 Lemberg, 1875; 'lyyun Tefillah ("Reflections on Prayer"), Lem- 
 berg, 1885, etc. 
 
 208
 
 THE TWO EXTREMES 
 
 orthodox could not remain tranquil in the presence 
 of such blasphemous views. They put Krochmal 
 outside of the pale of Judaism, together with all 
 scholars occupied with Bible criticism, among them 
 Geiger, who had exerted great influence upon the 
 school of reformers writing in Hebrew. 
 
 In Lithuania things did not go so far. The hard 
 conditions of existence there were not propitious 
 to the rise of a purely scholarly school or to theo- 
 retic discussion. Scientific centres were entirely 
 wanting, and the censor permitted no trifling with 
 the subject of religion. A new movement, realistic 
 and utilitarian in the main, began to take shape, 
 first in the form of a protest against the unsubstan- 
 tial ideals of the Hebrew press and Hebrew 
 literature. In 1867, Abraham Kowner, an ardent 
 controversialist, published his Heker Dabar ("A 
 Word of Criticism ") , and his Zeror Perahim ("A 
 Bouquet of Flowers ") , in which he takes the press 
 and the writers severely to task for indulging in 
 rhetoric and futile scintillations, instead of occupy- 
 ing themselves with the real exigencies of life. In 
 the same year, Abraham Jacob Paperna published 
 his essay in literary criticism, and the young Smo- 
 lenskin, in an article appearing at Odessa, attacked 
 Letteris for his artificial, insincere translation of 
 
 209
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 Goethe's Faust into Hebrew. On all sides there 
 blew a fresh breath of realism, and the critical 
 spirit was abroad. 
 
 The most characteristic exponent of this reform- 
 ing movement was Moses Lob Lilienblum, a native 
 of the Government of Kowno. Endowed with a 
 temperate, logical mind, untroubled by an excess 
 of sentimentality, Lilienblum, one of those deliber- 
 ate, puritanic scholars that constitute the glory of 
 Lithuanian Talmudism, was at once hero and actor 
 in the intense drama performed in the Russian 
 ghetto, which he himself described as the " Jewish 
 tragi-comedy ". 
 
 He began his literary career with an article en- 
 titled Orhot ha-Talmud ("The Paths of the 
 Talmud"), and published in Ha-Meliz in 1868. 
 Here, as well as in the articles following it, he does 
 not depart from established tradition. In the very 
 name of the spirit of the Talmud, he demands 
 religious reforms and the abolition of the restric- 
 tions that make daily life burdensome. These ex- 
 cessive requirements, he urges, were heaped up by 
 the Rabbis subsequent to the full development of 
 the Law, and in opposition to its spirit. The young 
 scholar showed himself to be a zealous admirer of 
 the Talmud, and with clinching logic he proves 
 
 210
 
 THE TWO EXTREMES 
 
 that the Rabbis of later times, in asserting its im- 
 mutability, had distinctly deviated from the princi- 
 ples of the Law, the fundamental idea of which 
 was the harmonizing of " Law and Life ". The 
 wrath aroused by such articles can easily be imagin- 
 ed. Lilienblum was an Apikoros, the " heretic " 
 par excellence of the Lithuanian ghetto. The young 
 writer had to undergo a series of outrageous per- 
 secutions and acts of vengeance inflicted by the 
 fanatics, especially the Hasidim, of his town. He 
 tells the story in detail in his autobiography, Hat- 
 tot Ne'urim ("The Sins of Youth"), published 
 at Vienna, in 1876, one of the most noteworthy 
 productions of modern Hebrew literature. With 
 the logical directness of a Mitnagged* and the 
 cruel, sarcastic candor of a wasted existence, Lilien- 
 blum probes and exposes the depths of his tortured 
 conscience, at the same time following up inexor- 
 ably the steps which remove the free-thinker from 
 the faithful believer, without, however, reaching 
 a real or positive result in the spirit at once of 
 Rousseau and Voltaire. As he himself says: 
 
 " It is a drama essentially Jewish, because it is a life without 
 
 ' Literally, " one who is opposed " [to the mystical system of 
 Hasidism] ; a protestant, a Puritan. 
 
 211
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 dramatic effect, without extraordinary adventure. It is made 
 up of torment and suffering, all the more grievous as they are 
 kept hidden in the recesses of one's heart " 
 
 Better than any one else he knows the cause of 
 these ills. Like Gordon, he holds that the Book 
 has killed the Man, the dead letter has been sub- 
 stituted for feeling. 
 
 " You ask me, O reader ", he says with bitterness, " who I 
 am, and what my name is? Well, then, I am a living being, 
 not a Job who has never existed. Nor am I one of the dead 
 in the valley of bones brought back to life by the prophet 
 Ezekiel, which is only a tale that is told. But I am one of the 
 living dead of the Babylonian Talmud, revived by the new 
 Hebrew literature, itself a dead literature, powerless to bring 
 the dead to life with its dew, scarcely able to transport us into 
 a state between life and death. I am a Talmudist, a believer 
 aforetimes, now become an unbeliever, no longer clinging to the 
 dreams and the hopes which my ancestors bequeathed to me. I 
 am a wreck, a miserable wretch, hopeless unto despair " 
 
 And he narrates the incidents of his childhood, 
 the period of the Tohu, of chaos and confusion, 
 the days of study, misery, superstition. He recalls 
 the years of adolescence, his premature marriage, 
 his struggle for a bare existence, his wretched life 
 as a teacher of the Talmud, panting under the 
 double yoke of a mother-in-law and a rigid cere- 
 monial. Then comes his introduction to Hebrew 
 
 212
 
 THE TWO EXTREMES 
 
 literature. His conscience long refuses assent, but 
 stern logic triumphs, and the result is that all the 
 ideas that have been his guiding principles crumble 
 into dust one by one. Negation replaces faith. 
 The terrible conflict begins with a whole town of 
 formalists, who declare him outside of the com- 
 munity of Israel, a pitiless conflict, in which he 
 is supported half-heartedly by two or three of the 
 strong-minded. The publication of his first article, 
 on the necessity of reforms in religion, increases the 
 fury of the people against him, and his ruin is 
 determined. Had there not been intervention 
 from the outside, he would have been delivered to 
 the authorities to serve in the army, or denounced 
 as a dangerous heretic. Arid yet the so-called 
 heretic cursed by every mouth had proceeded so 
 short a distance on the path of heterodoxy that he 
 still entertained scruples about carrying a book 
 from one house to another on the Sabbath ! 
 
 This nai've soul, in which all sorts of feelings 
 had long before begun to stir obscurely, was 
 aroused to full consciousness by the reading of 
 Mapu's works. Casual acquaintance with an intel- 
 ligent woman made his heart vibrate with notes 
 unknown until then. Life in his native town be- 
 came intolerable, and he left it for Odessa, the 
 
 213
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 El Dorado of all ghetto dreamers. Again disil- 
 lusionment was his lot. He who was ready to 
 undergo martyrdom for his ideas, this champion 
 of the Haskalah, his heart famishing for knowl- 
 edge and justice, was not long in discerning, with 
 his penetrating, perspicacious mind, that he had 
 not yet reached the best of modern worlds. With 
 bitterness he notes that the Jews of the south of 
 Russia, " where the Talmud is cut out of practical 
 life, if they are more liberal than the others, are 
 yet not exempt from stupid superstitions." He 
 notes that the Hebrew literature so dear to his 
 heart is excluded from the circles of the intellectual. 
 He sees that egotistic materialism has superseded 
 the ideal aspirations of the ghetto. He discovers 
 that feeling has no place in modern life, and toler- 
 ance, the loudly vaunted, is but a sound. When 
 he ventures to put his complaints into words, he 
 is treated as a " religious fanatic " by people who 
 have no interest beyond their own selfish pleasures 
 and the satisfaction of their material cravings. He 
 is deeply affected by what he observes and notes. 
 In the presence of the egotistic indifference of the 
 emancipated Jews, he is shaken in his firmest con- 
 victions, and he admits with anguish that the ideal 
 for which he has fought and sacrificed his life is 
 
 214
 
 THE TWO EXTREMES 
 
 but a phantom. Under the stress of such disap- 
 pointment he writes these lines : 
 
 " In very truth, I tell you, never will the Jewish religion be 
 in accord with life. It will sink, or, at best, it will remain the 
 cherished possession of the limited few, as it is now in the 
 Western countries of Europe Practical reality is in oppo- 
 sition to religion. Now I know that we have no public on our 
 side; and actual life with its great movements produces its 
 results without the aid of literature, which even in our people 
 is an effective influence only with the simple spirits of the country 
 districts. The desire for life and liberty, the prevalence of 
 charlatanism on the one side, and on the other the abandoning 
 of religious studies in favor of secular studies, will have baleful 
 consequences for the Jewish youth, even in Lithuania." 
 
 This whole period of our author's life is charac- 
 terized by similar regrets he mourns over days 
 spent in barren struggles and over the follies of 
 youth. 
 
 " To-day I finished writing my autobiography, which I call 
 ' The Sins of Youth '. I have drawn up the balance-sheet of 
 my life of thirty years and one month, and I am deeply grieved 
 to see that the sum total is a cipher. How heavily the hand of 
 fortune has lain upon me! The education I received was the 
 reverse of everything I had need of later. I was raised with 
 the idea of becoming a distinguished Rabbinical authority, and 
 here I am a business man ; I was raised in an imaginary world, 
 to be a faithful observer of the Law, shrinking back from what- 
 ever has the odor of sin, and the very things I was taught crush 
 
 215
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 me to earth now that the imaginary man has disappeared in 
 me; I was raised to live in the atmosphere of the dead, and 
 here I am cast among people who lead a real life, in which I 
 am unable to take my part; I was raised in a world'of dreams 
 and pure theory, and I find myself now in the midst of the chaos 
 of practical life, to which I am driven by my need^s to apply 
 myself, though my brain refuses to leave the old ruts and sub- 
 stitute practice for speculation. I am not even equipped to carry 
 on a discussion with business men discussing nothing but busi- 
 ness. I was raised to be the father of a family, in the sphere 
 chosen for me by my father in his wisdom How far re- 
 moved my heart is from all such things . . . . ! 
 
 " I weep over my shattered little world which I cannot restore!" 
 
 The regrets of Lilienblum over the useless work 
 attempted by Hebrew literature betray themselves 
 also in his pamphlet in verse, Kehal Re f aim ("The 
 Assembly of the Dead"). The dead are imper- 
 sonated by the Hebrew periodicals and reviews. 
 
 Later, a novelist of talent, Reuben Asher Brau- 
 des, resumed the attempt to harmonize theory and 
 practice, in his great novel, " Religion and Life ". 
 The hero, the young Rabbi Samuel, is the picture 
 of Lilienblum. From the point of view of art, it 
 is one of the best novels in Hebrew literature. 
 Life in the rural districts, the austere idealism of 
 the enlightened, the superstitions of the crowd, are 
 
 216
 
 THE TWO EXTREMES 
 
 depicted with extraordinary clearness of outline. 3 
 The novel ran in Ha-Boker Or (1877-1880), and 
 was never completed a counterpart of its hero. 
 Had not Lilienblum, too, stopped in the middle of 
 the road? 
 
 The crisis that occurred in the life of Lilienblum, 
 torn from his ideal speculations in a provincial 
 town, and forced into contact with an actuality that 
 was as far as possible away from solving the prob- 
 lem of harmonizing religion and life, was the typ- 
 ical fate of all the educated Jews of the period. 
 Lilienblum and his followers gave themselves up 
 to regrets over the futile work of three generations 
 of humanists, who, instead of restoring the ghetto 
 to health, had but hastened its utter ruin. The 
 ideal aspirations of the Maskilim had been suc- 
 ceeded by a gross utilitarianism without an ideal. 
 What disquieted the soul of the Maskil in the 
 decade from 1870 to 1880 is expressed in the con- 
 cluding words of " The Sins of Youth " : 
 
 " The young people are to work at nothing and think of 
 nothing but how to prepare for their own life. All is forbidden, 
 
 * Ha-Dat iveha-Hayyim, Lemberg, 1880. Another long novel 
 by Braudes is called Shete ha-Kezawot ("The Two Extremes"), 
 published in 1886, wherein he extols the national revival and 
 religious romanticism. 
 
 217
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 wherefrom they cannot derive direct profit they are permitted 
 only the study of sciences and languages, or apprenticeship to a 
 trade. 
 
 " The youth who break away from the laborious study of the 
 Talmud, throw themselves with avidity into the study of modern 
 literature. This headlong course has been in vogue with us 
 about a century. One generation disappears, to make place for 
 the next, and each generation is pushed forward by a blind 
 force, no one knows whither . . . . ! 
 
 " It is high time for us to throw a glance backward to stop a 
 moment and ask ourselves: Whither are we hastening, and why 
 do we hasten ?".... 
 
 However, the gods did not forsake the ghetto. 
 If Gordon and, with more emphasis, Lilienblum 
 predicted the ruin of all the dreams of the ghetto, 
 it was because, having been wrenched from the life 
 of the masses and out of traditional surroundings, 
 they judged things from a distance, and permitted 
 themselves to be influenced by appearances. 
 Blinded by their bias, they saw only two well-de- 
 fined camps in Judaism the moderns, indifferent 
 to all that constitutes Judaism, and the bigots, op- 
 posed to what savors of knowledge, free-thinking, 
 and worldly pleasure. They made their reckoning 
 without the Jewish people. The humanist propa- 
 ganda was not so empty and vain as its later pro- 
 moters were pleased to consider it. The conserva- 
 
 218
 
 THE TWO EXTREMES 
 
 tive romanticism of a Samuel David Luzzatto 
 and the Zionist sentiments of a Mapu had planted 
 a germinating seed in the heart of traditional Juda- 
 ism itself. It is conceded that we cannot resort for 
 evidence to such old romanticists as Schulman, who 
 in the serenity of their souls gave little heed to the 
 campaign of the reformers, though it is neverthe- 
 less a fact that they contributed to the diffusion of 
 humanism and of Hebrew literature by their 
 works, which were well received in orthodox cir- 
 cles. Our contention 'fs better proved by Rabbis 
 reputed orthodox, who devoted themselves with 
 enthusiasm to the cultivation of Hebrew literature. 
 Without renouncing religion, they found a way of 
 effecting the harmonization of religion and life. 
 In point of fact, humanism of a conservative 
 stripe reached its zenith at the precise moment 
 when the realists, deceived by superficial appear- 
 ances, were predicting the complete breaking up of 
 traditional Judaism. 
 
 The chief representatives of the reform press 
 were He-Haluz, Ha-Meliz, and later on Ha-Kol 
 ("The Voice"), and by their side the views of 
 the conservatives were defended in Ha-Maggid, 
 Ha-Habazzelet (" The Lily "), published at Jeru- 
 salem, and especially Ha-Lebanon, appearing first 
 
 15 219
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 at Paris and then at Mayence. In Ha-Maggid, 
 beginning with the year 1871, the editor, David 
 Gordon, supported by the assenting opinion of his 
 readers, carried on an ardent campaign for the 
 colonization of Palestine as the necessary fore- 
 runner of the political revival of Israel. 
 
 A Galician thinker, Fabius Mises, published, in 
 1869, an article in Ha-Meliz, entitled Milhemet 
 ha-Dat ("The Wars of the Faith"), in which 
 he wards off the attacks upon the Jewish religion 
 by the anti-Rabbinical school. He proves it to be 
 a reasonable religion, and a national religion par 
 excellence. In his poems, Mises assails Geiger for 
 the religious reforms urged by him, and he op- 
 poses also the school of He-Haluz in the name of 
 the national tradition. Later on Mises published 
 an important history of modern philosophy in 
 Hebrew. 
 
 Michael Pines, a writer in Ha-Lebanon, and the 
 opponent of Lilienblum, was the protagonist of the 
 conservative party in Lithuania. His chief work, 
 Yalde Ruhl ("The Children of My Spirit"), 
 appeared in 1872 at Mayence. It may be con- 
 sidered the literary masterpiece on the conserva- 
 tive side, the counterstroke to Lilienblum's " Sins 
 of Youth ". It is a defense of traditional Judaism, 
 
 220
 
 THE TWO EXTREMES 
 
 and is instinct with an intuitive philosophy and with 
 deep faith. Pines makes a closely reasoned claim 
 for the right of the Jewish religion to exist in its 
 integrity. Without being a fanatic, he believes, 
 with Samuel David Luzzatto, that the religion of 
 the Jew on its poetic side is the peculiar product 
 of the Jewish national genius that the religion, 
 and not the artificial legal system engrafted upon 
 it, is the essential part of Judaism. The cere- 
 monies and the religious practices are necessary for 
 the purpose of maintaining the harmony of the 
 faith, " as the wick is necessary for the lamp ". 
 This harmony, reacting at once upon feeling and 
 morality, cannot be undone by the results of sci- 
 ence, and therefore the Jewish religion is eternal 
 in its essence. The religious reforms introduced 
 by the German Rabbis have but had the effect of 
 drying up the springs of poetry in the religion, and 
 as for the compromise between faith and life, 
 extolled and urged by Lilienblum, it is only a 
 futile phrase. Of what use is it, seeing that the 
 religious feel no need of it, but on the contrary 
 take delight in the religion as it stands, which fills 
 the void in their soul? 
 
 Pines did not share the pessimistic fears of the 
 realists of his time. A true conservative, he be- 
 
 221
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 lieved in the national rebirth of the people of 
 Israel, and, a romantic Jew, he dreamed of the 
 realization of the humanitarian predictions of the 
 prophets. Judaism to him is the pure idea of jus- 
 tice, " and every just idea ends by conquering the 
 whole of humanity ". 
 
 Extremes meet. There is one point in common 
 between Lilienblum, the last of the humanists, the 
 disillusioned skeptic, and Pines, the optimist of the 
 ghetto. Both maintained that the action of the 
 humanists was inefficacious, and the compromise 
 between religion and life a vain expedient. Never- 
 theless, there was no possibility of bringing the 
 two to stand upon the same platform. While the 
 humanists, in abandoning the perennial dreams of 
 the people, had separated themselves from its 
 moral and religious life, and thus cut away the 
 ground from under their own feet, the romantic 
 conservatives paid no attention to the demands of 
 modern life, the currents of which had loosed the 
 foundations of the old world, and were threaten- 
 ing to carry away the last national breastwork. 
 
 A synthesis was needed to merge the two cur- 
 rents, the humanist and the romantic, and lead the 
 languishing Haskalah back to the living sources 
 
 222
 
 THE TWO EXTREMES 
 
 of national Judaism. This was the task accom- 
 plished by Perez Smolenskin, the leader of the na- 
 tional progressive movement. 
 
 223
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE NATIONAL PROGRESSIVE 
 MOVEMENT 
 
 PEREZ SMOLENSKIN 
 
 Perez Smolenskin was born, in 1842, at Monas- 
 tryshchina, a little market town near Mohilew. 
 His father, a poor and an unfortunate man, who 
 was not able to support his wife and six chil- 
 dren successfully, was forced to leave his family 
 on account of a slanderous accusation brought 
 against him by a Polish priest. The mother, a 
 plucky woman of the people, supported herself by 
 hard work, in spite of which it was her ambition 
 to make Rabbis of her boys. At length the father 
 joined his family again, and a period of compara- 
 tive prosperity set in. 
 
 The first care of the returned father was to 
 look to the education of his two sons, Leon and 
 Perez. The latter showed unusual ability. At 
 the age of four he began the study of the Penta- 
 teuch, at five he had been introduced to the Tal- 
 
 224
 
 THE NATIONAL PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT 
 
 mud. These studies absorbed him until his elev- 
 enth year. Then, like all the sons of the ghetto 
 desirous of an education, he left his father and 
 mother, and betook himself to the Yeshibah at 
 Shklow. The journey was made on foot, and his 
 only escort was the blessing of his mother. The 
 lad's youth proved no obstacle to his entering the 
 Talmud academy, nor to his acquiring celebrity for 
 industry and attainments. His brother Leon, who 
 had preceded him to Shklow, initiated him in the 
 Russian language, and ^supplied him with modern 
 Hebrew writings. Openhearted and lively, he set 
 prejudice at defiance, and maintained friendly re- 
 lations with a certain intellectual who was reputed 
 a heretic, an acquaintanceship that contributed 
 greatly to the mental development of young Perez. 
 The dignified burghers who were taking turns in 
 supplying him with his meals, alarmed at his aber- 
 ration from the straight path, one after another 
 withdrew their protection from him. Black misery 
 clutched him. He was but fourteen years old, and 
 already he had entered upon a life of disquiet and 
 adventure. His story is the Odyssey of an erring 
 son of the ghetto. Repulsed by the Mitnaggedim, 
 he sought help with the Hasidim. He was equally 
 ill-fitted for their life. Their uncouth mystical 
 
 225
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 exaltation, the absurdity of their superstitions, and 
 their hypocrisy drove him to exasperation. He 
 cast himself into the whirl of life, became assistant 
 to a cantor at a synagogue, and then teacher of 
 Hebrew and Talmud. The whole gamut of pre- 
 carious employments open to a scholar of the 
 ghetto he ran up and down again. His restless 
 spirit and the desire to complete his education car- 
 ried him to Odessa. There he established himself, 
 and there years of work and endeavor were passed. 
 He acquired the modern languages, his mind grew 
 broader, and he gave up religious practices once 
 for all, always remaining attached to Judaism, 
 however. 
 
 In 1867 appeared his first literary production, 
 the article against Letteris, who at that time occu- 
 pied the position of an incontestable authority, in 
 which Smolenskin permits himself to pass severe 
 and independent criticism upon his Hebrew adap- 
 tation of Goethe's Faust. In the Odessa period 
 falls also the writing of the first few chapters of his 
 great novel, Ha-Toeh be-Darke ha-Hayyim ("A 
 Wanderer Astray on the Path of Life ").* But his 
 
 1 A complete edition of the novels and articles by Smolenskin 
 appeared recently at St. Petersburg and Wilna, published by 
 Katzenelenbogen. 
 
 226
 
 THE NATIONAL PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT 
 
 free spirit could not adapt itself to the narrowness 
 and meanness of the literary folk and the editors of 
 periodicals. He determined to leave Russia for 
 the civilized Occident, the promised land in the 
 dreams of the Russian Maskilim, beautified by the 
 presence of Rapoport and Luzzatto. His first des- 
 tination was Prague, the residence of Rapoport, 
 then Vienna, and later he pushed his way to Paris 
 and London. Everywhere he studied and made 
 notes. A sharp-eyed observer, he sought to probe 
 European affairs as well as Occidental Judaism to 
 their depths. He established relations with Rab- 
 bis, scholars, and Jewish notables, and finally he 
 was in a position to appraise at close range the 
 liberty he had heard vaunted so loudly, and the 
 religious reforms wished for so eagerly by the in- 
 telligent of his own country. He soon had oc- 
 casion to see the reverse of the medal, and his 
 disenchantment was complete. Regretfully he 
 came to the conclusion that the modern emancipa- 
 tion movement had brought the Jewish spirit in 
 the Occident to the point at which the Western Jew 
 was turned away from the essence of Judaism. 
 Form had taken the place of substance, ceremonial 
 the place of religious and national sentiment. 
 Heartsick over such disregard of the past, indig- 
 
 227
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 nant at the indifference displayed by modern Jews 
 toward all he held dear, young Smolenskin re- 
 solved to break the silence that was observed in the 
 great capitals of Europe respecting all things Jew- 
 ish and carry the gospel of the ghetto to the " neo- 
 Gentiles ". 
 
 The first shaft was delivered in Vienna, where 
 he began the publication of his review Ha-Shahar 
 ("Daybreak"). Almost without means, but 
 fired by the wish to work for the national and 
 moral elevation of his people, the young writer 
 laid down the articles of his faith : 
 
 " The purpose of Ha-Shahar is to shed the light of knowledge 
 upon the paths of the sons of Jacob, to open the eyes of those 
 who either have not beheld knowledge, or, beholding, have not 
 understood its value, to regenerate the beauty of the Hebrew 
 language, and increase the number of its devotees. 
 
 " .... But when the eyes of the blind begin to open slowly, 
 and they shake off the sluggish slumber in which they have been 
 sunk since many years, then there is still another class to be 
 dealt with those who, having tasted of the fruit of the tree of 
 knowledge, intentionally close their eyes to our language, 
 the only possession left to us that can bring together the hearts 
 
 of Israel and make one nation of it all over the earth Let 
 
 them take warning! If my hand is against the bigots and the 
 hypocrites who hide themselves under the mantle of the truth, 
 .... it will be equally unsparing of the enlightened hypocrites 
 who seek with honeyed words to alienate the sons of Israel from 
 
 their ancestral heritage " 
 
 228
 
 THE NATIONAL PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT 
 
 War to mediaeval obscurantism, war to modern 
 indifference, was the plan of his campaign. Ha- 
 Shahar soon became the organ of all in the ghetto 
 who thought, felt, and fought, the spokesman of 
 the nationalist Maskilim, setting forth their de- 
 mands as culture bearers and patriots. 
 
 At a time when Hebrew literature consisted 
 mainly of translations or works of minor signifi- 
 cance, Smolenskin had the boldness to announce 
 that the columns of his periodical would be open 
 to writers of original articles only. The era of the 
 translator and the vapid imitator had come to a 
 close. A new school of original writers stepped 
 upon the boards, and little by little the reading 
 public accustomed itself to give preference to them. 
 
 And at a time when disparagement of the na- 
 tional element in Judaism had been carried to the 
 furthest excess, Smolenskin asserted Judaism's 
 right to exist, in such words as these : 
 
 [The wilfully blind] " bid us to be like all the other nations, 
 and I repeat after them: Let us be like all the other nations, 
 pursuing and attaining knowledge, leaving off from wickedness 
 and folly, and dwelling as loyal citizens in the lands whither 
 we have been scattered. Yes, let us be like all the other nations, 
 unashamed of the rock whence we have been hewn, like the rest 
 in holding dear our language and the glory of our people. It 
 is not a disgrace for us to believe that our exile will once come 
 
 229
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 to an end, .... and we need not blush for clinging to the 
 ancient language with which we wandered from people to people, 
 in which our poets sang and our seers prophesied when we lived 
 at ease in our own land, and in which our fathers poured out 
 their hearts when their blood flowed like water in the sight of 
 all .... They who thrust us away from the Hebrew language 
 meditate evil against our people and against its glory ! " 
 
 The reputation of Ha-Shahar was firmly estab- 
 lished by the publication of Smolenskin's great 
 novel Ha-To'eh be-Darke ha-Hayyim in its col- 
 umns. In this as in the rest of his works, he is the 
 prophet denouncing the crimes and the depravity 
 of the ghetto, and proclaiming the revival of na- 
 tional dignity. 
 
 Smolenskin permitted himself to be thwarted 
 by nothing in the execution of his bold designs, 
 neither by the meagreness of his material resources 
 nor by the animosities which his fearless course did 
 not fail to arouse among literary men. 
 
 In 1872, Smolenskin published, at Vienna, his 
 masterpiece 'Am 'Olam ("The Eternal People"), 
 which became the platform of the movement for 
 national emancipation. Noteworthy from every 
 point of view, this work shows him to have been 
 an original thinker and an inspired poet, a hu- 
 manist and at the same time a patriot. He is full 
 of love for his people, and his faith in its future 
 
 230
 
 THE NATIONAL PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT 
 
 knows no limits. He demonstrates convincingly 
 that true nationalism is not incompatible with the 
 final realization of the ideal of the universal broth- 
 erhood of men. National devotion is but a higher 
 aspect of devotion to family. In nature we see 
 that, in the measure in which the individuality of 
 a being is distinct, its superiority and its independ- 
 ence are increased. Differentiation is the law of 
 progress. Why not apply the law to human groups, 
 or nations? 
 
 The sum total of the qualities peculiar to the 
 various nations, and the various ways in w r hich they 
 respond to concepts presented to them from with- 
 out, these constitute the life and the culture of 
 mankind as a whole. While admitting that the 
 historical past of a people is an essential part of 
 its existence, he believes it to be a still more urgent 
 necessity for every people to possess a present ideal, 
 and entertain national hopes for a better future. 
 Judaism cherishes the Messianic ideal, which at 
 bottom is nothing but the hope of its national re- 
 birth. Unfortunately, the modern, unreligious 
 Jew denies the ideal, and the orthodox Jew en- 
 velops it in the obscurity of mysticism. 
 
 The last chapter of " The Eternal People ", 
 called " The Hope of Israel ", is pervaded by mag- 
 
 231
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 nificent enthusiasm. For the first time in Hebrew, 
 Messianism is detached from its religious element. 
 For the first time, a Hebrew writer asserts that 
 Messianism is the political and moral resurrection 
 of Israel, the return to the prophetic tradition. 
 
 Why should the Greeks, the Roumanians, desire 
 a national emancipation, and Israel, the people of 
 the Bible, not? .... The only obstacle is the 
 fact that the Jews have lost the notion of their 
 national unity and the feeling of their solidarity. 
 
 This conviction as to the existence of a Jewish 
 nationality, the national emancipation dreamed by 
 Salvador, Hess, and Luzzatto, considered a heresy 
 by the orthodox and a dangerous theory by the 
 liberals, had at last found its prophet. In Smo- 
 lenskin's enthusiastic formulation of it, the ideal 
 was carried to the masses in Russia and Galicia, 
 superseding the mystical Messianism they had 
 cherished before. 
 
 Smolenskin's combative spirit did not allow him 
 to rest at that. The idea of national regeneration 
 was in collision with the theory, raised to a com- 
 manding position by Mendelssohn and his school, 
 that Judaism constitutes a religious confession. In 
 a series of articles ("A Time to Plant, and a 
 
 232
 
 THE NATIONAL PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT 
 
 Time to Pluck up that which is Planted"), 1 he 
 deals with the Mendelssohnian theory. 
 
 Proceeding from history and his knowledge of 
 Judaism, he proves that the Jewish religion is not a 
 rigid block of unalterable notions, but rather a body 
 of ethical and philosophical teachings constantly 
 undergoing a process of evolution, and changing 
 its aspect according to the times and the environ- 
 ment. If this doctrine is the quintessence of the 
 national genius of the Jew, it is nevertheless acces- 
 sible, in theory and in^practice, to whosoever de- 
 sires access. It is not the dogmatic and exclusive 
 privilege of a sacerdotal caste. 
 
 This is the rationale of Smolenskin's opposition 
 to the religious dogmatism of Mendelssohn, who 
 had wished to confine Judaism inside of the circle 
 of Rabbinic law without recognizing its essentially 
 evolutionary character. Maimonides himself is 
 not spared by Smolenskin, for it was Maimonides 
 who had set the seal of consecration upon logical 
 dogmatism. The less does he spare the modern 
 school of reformers. Religious reforms, he freely 
 admits, are necessary, but they ought to be sponta- 
 neous developments, emanations from the heart of 
 
 -Ha-Shahar, 1875-6. 
 
 233
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 the believers themselves, in response to changes in 
 the times and social relations. They ought not to 
 be the artificial product of a few intellectuals who 
 have long broken away from the masses of the 
 people, sharing neither their suffering nor their 
 hopes. If Luther succeeded, it was because he had 
 faith himself. But the modern Jewish reformers 
 are not believers, therefore their work does not 
 abide. It is only the study of the Hebrew lan- 
 guage, of the religion of the Jew, his culture, and 
 his spirit that is capable of replacing the dead 
 letter and soulless regulations by a keen national 
 and religious sentiment in harmony with the exi- 
 gencies of life. The next century, he predicted, 
 would see a renewed, unified Judaism. 
 
 This is a summing up of the ideas which brought 
 him approval and endorsement from all sides, but 
 also, and to a greater degree, opposition and ani- 
 mosity, the latter from the old followers of the 
 German humanist movement. One of them, the 
 poet Gottlober, founded, in 1876, a rival review, 
 Ha-Boker Or, in which he pleaded the cause of the 
 school of Mendelssohn. But the new periodical, 
 which continued to appear until 1881, could neither 
 supplant Ha-Shahar, nor diminish Smolenskin's 
 ardor. Other obstacles of all sorts, and the diffi- 
 
 234
 
 THE NATIONAL PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT 
 
 culties raised by the Russian censor, were equally 
 ineffectual in halting the efforts of the valiant apos- 
 tle of Jewish nationalism. He was assured the co- 
 operation of all independent literary men, for Smo- 
 lenskin had never posed as a believer in dogmatic 
 religion or as its defender. On the contrary, he 
 waged constant war with Rabbinism. He was 
 persuaded that an untrammelled propaganda, bold 
 speech issuing from a knowledge of the heart of 
 the masses and their urgent needs, would bring 
 about a natural and peaceable revolution, restoring 
 to the Jewish people its free spirit, its creative 
 genius, and its lofty morality. It mattered little 
 to him that the young had ceased to be orthodox: 
 in case of need, national feeling would suffice to 
 maintain Israel. At this point, it appears, Smo- 
 lenskin excelled Samuel David Luzzatto and his 
 school as a free-thinker. The Jewish people is to 
 him the eternal people personifying the prophetic 
 idea, realizable in the Jewish land and not in exile. 
 The liberalism displayed by Europe toward the 
 Jews during a part of the nineteenth century is in 
 his opinion but a transient phenomenon, and as 
 early as 1872 he foresaw the recrudescence of 
 anti-Semitism. 
 
 This conception of Jewish life was welcomed 
 
 16 235
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 by the educated as a revelation. The distinction 
 of the editor of Ha-Shahar is that he knew how 
 to develop the ideas enunciated by the masters pre- 
 ceding him, how to carry them to completion, and 
 render them accessible to the people at large. He 
 revealed a new formula to them, thanks to which 
 their claims as Jews were no longer in contradiction 
 with the demands of modern times. It was the 
 revenge taken by the people speaking through the 
 mouth of the writer. It was the echo of the cry 
 of the throbbing soul of the ghetto. 
 
 236
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE CONTRIBUTORS TO 
 HA-SHAHAR 
 
 Ha-Shahar soon became the centre of a hot 
 crusade against obscurantism. The propaganda 
 it carried on was all the more effectual as it op- 
 posed an out-of-date -'Judaism in the name of a 
 national regeneration, the deathless ideal of the 
 Jewish people. While admitting the principle 
 that reforms are necessary, provided they are rea- 
 sonable and slowly advanced, in agreement with 
 the natural evolution of Judaism and not in oppo- 
 sition to its spirit, Smolenskin's review at the same 
 time constituted itself the focus of a bold campaign 
 against the kind of religious reform introduced by 
 the moderns. 
 
 Whoever thought, felt, suffered, and was alive 
 to the new ideas, hastened to range himself under 
 the banner of the Hebrew review during its eigh- 
 teen years of a more or less regular existence, 
 the occasional interruptions being due to lack 
 
 237
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 of funds. Its history forms an important chap- 
 ter in that of Hebrew literature. Smolenskin 
 possessed the art of stimulating well-tried powers, 
 and discovering new talent and bringing it forward. 
 The school of Ha-Shahar may almost be looked 
 upon as the creation of his strong hand. Gordon, 
 it is true, published the best of his satires in Ha- 
 Shahar, and Lilienblum pursued his reform pur- 
 poses in its columns, 'Olam ha-Tohu ("The World 
 of Chaos "), his ringing criticism of " The Hypo- 
 crite ", being among the articles written by him for 
 it, in which he casts upon Mapu's work the light 
 of the utilitarian realism borrowed from the Rus- 
 sian writers of his time, and exposes it as a nai've, 
 unreal conception of Jewish life. Though these 
 two veterans gave him their support, the larger 
 number of the collaborators of Smolenskin made 
 their first appearance in the world of letters under 
 his auspices, and it was due to his influence that 
 German and Austrian scholars returned to the use 
 of Hebrew. On the other hand, the co-operation 
 of eminent professors, such as Heller, David Mul- 
 ler, and others, contributed not a little to the suc- 
 cess of Ha-Shahar. 
 
 The Galician novelist Mordecai D. Brandstat- 
 ter is properly reckoned among the best of the con- 
 
 238
 
 THE CONTRIBUTORS TO HA-SHAHAR 
 
 tributors to the review. His novels, a collected 
 edition of which appeared in 1891, are of distin- 
 guished literary interest. Brandstatter is the 
 painter of the customs and manners of the Galician 
 Hasidim, whom he rallies with kindliness that yet 
 has a keen edge, and with perfect artistic taste. 
 Almost he is the only humorist of the time. His 
 style is classic without going to extremes. He 
 often makes use of the Talmudic jargon peculiar 
 to Rabbinical scholars, whom he has the skill to 
 transfer to his canvas down to their slightest ges- 
 tures and mannerisms. But he does not restrain 
 his wit in showing up the ridiculous side of the 
 moderns as well. His best-known novels, which 
 have been translated into Russian and into Ger- 
 man, are " Doctor Alfasi ", " Mordecai Kiso- 
 witz ", " The Beginning and the End of a Quar- 
 rel ", etc. Brandstatter also wrote satires in 
 verse. He has not a few points of resemblance to 
 the painter of Galician Jewish manners in German, 
 Karl Emil Franzos. 
 
 Solomon Mandelkern, the erudite author of a 
 new Biblical Concordance, hailing from Dubno 
 (1846-1902), was an inspired poet. His histori- 
 cal pieces, his satires, and his epigrams, published 
 for the most part in Ha-Shahar, have finish and 
 
 239
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 grace. In his Zionist poems, he gives evidence of 
 an enlightened patriotism. His popularity he 
 gained by a detailed history of Russia (Dibre 
 Yeme Russia) in three volumes, published at 
 Wilna, in 1876, and a number of other works, all 
 written in a pure, Biblical style at once beautiful 
 and lively. 
 
 Jehudah Lob Levin (born in 1845), surnamed 
 Yehallel, another poet who was an habitual con- 
 tributor to Ha-Shahar, owes his fame to the fer- 
 vent realism of his poems, which, however, suffer 
 from pompousness and prolixity. His first ap- 
 pearance in the review was with a collection of 
 poems, Sifte Renanot (" The Lips of Song"), in 
 1867. A long, realistic poem of his, Kishron ha- 
 Maaseh (" The Value of Work "), in which he 
 extols the unrivalled place of work in the universe, 
 also was published in Ha-Shahar. In this poem, 
 as well as in his prose articles, he ranged himself 
 with Lilienblum in demanding a reshaping of Jew- 
 ish life on an utilitarian, practical basis. 
 
 The criticism of Jewish customs and manners 
 was brilliantly done by M. Cahen and Ben-Zebi, 
 to mention only two among the many journalists 
 of talent. The " Letters from Mohilew " by the 
 former testify to the impartiality and independ- 
 
 240
 
 THE CONTRIBUTORS TO HA-SHAHAR 
 
 ence, not only of the author, but also of the editor 
 who accepted them for his periodical. Ben-Zebi 
 wrote " Letters from Palestine ", in which he de- 
 picts the ways of the rapacious notables of the 
 old school in his country. 
 
 Science, historical and philosophical, found a 
 sure welcome in Ha-Shahar. Smolenskin knew 
 how to arouse the interest of the educated in these 
 branches, which had been neglected by writers of 
 Hebrew in Russia. Besides such well-known names 
 as Chwolson, the eminent professor, Harkavy, the 
 indefatigable explores of Jewish history in the 
 Slav countries, and Gurland, the learned chronicler 
 of the persecutions of the Jews in Poland, it is 
 proper to make mention of David Kahana, one of 
 the most eminent of the scientific contributors to 
 Ha-Shahar, a scholar of distinction, who has suc- 
 ceeded in throwing light upon the obscure epoch of 
 the false Messiahs and on the origin of Hasidism. 
 
 Dr. Solomon Rubin's ingenious philosophical 
 studies on the origin of religions and the history 
 of ancient peoples were also for the most part pub- 
 lished in Ha-Shahar. Lazarus Schulman, the au- 
 thor of humorous tales, wrote a painstaking analy- 
 sis of Heine for Smolenskin's periodical. Other 
 contributors to the scientific department were 
 
 241
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 Joshua Lewinsohn, Schorr, Jehiel Bernstein, 
 Moses Ornstein, Dr. Kantor, and Dr. A. Poriess, 
 the last of whom was the author of an excellent 
 treatise on physiology in Hebrew. The produc- 
 tions of these writers did more for the spread of 
 enlightenment than all the exhortations of the 
 reformers. 
 
 Of litterateurs, the novelist Braudes, and the 
 poets Menahem M. Dolitzki and Zebi Schere- 
 schewsky, etc., made their first appearance in the 
 columns of Ha-Shahar. 
 
 The impetus issuing from Ha-Shahar was visible 
 on all fields of Judaism. The number of Hebrew 
 readers increased considerably, and the interest in 
 Hebrew literature grew. The eminent scholar I. 
 H.Weiss published his five-volume History of Tra- 
 dition (Dor Dor we-Doreshaw} in Hebrew 
 (Vienna, 1883-1890). Though it was a purely 
 scientific work, laying bare the successive steps in 
 the natural development of Rabbinic law, it pro- 
 duced a veritable revolution in the attitude of the 
 orthodox of the backward countries. 
 
 As was mentioned above, Gottlober founded his 
 review, Ha-Boker Or, in 1876, to ensure the con- 
 tinuity of the humanist tradition and defend the 
 theories of the school of Mendelssohn. The last 
 
 242
 
 THE CONTRIBUTORS TO HA-SHAHAR 
 
 of the followers of German humanism rallied 
 about it, Braudes published his principal novel 
 " Religion and Life " in it, and it also attracted 
 the last representatives of the Melizah, like Wechs- 
 ler (Ish Naomi], who wrote Biblical criticism in 
 an artificial, pompous style. 
 
 This artificiality, fostered in an earlier period 
 by the Melizim, had by no means disappeared from 
 Hebrew literature. Its most popular devotees in 
 the later day of which we are speaking were, be- 
 sides Kalman Schulman, A. Friedberg, who wrote 
 a Hebrew adaptation of Grace Aguilar's tale, 
 "The Vale of Cedars", published in 1876, and 
 Ramesh, the translator of " Robinson Crusoe." 
 
 Translations continued to enjoy great vogue, and 
 it was vain for Smolenskin, in the introduction to 
 his novel Ha-To'eh be-Darke ha-Hayyim, to warn 
 the public against the abuses of which translators 
 were guilty. The readers of Hebrew sought, be- 
 sides novels, chiefly works on the natural sciences 
 and on mathematics, especially astronomy. Among 
 the authors of original scientific books, Hirsch 
 Rabinowitz should be given the first place, as the 
 writer of a series of treatises on physics, chemistry, 
 etc., which appeared at Wilna, between the years 
 1866 and 1880. After him come Lerner, Mises, 
 Reifmann, and a number of others. 
 
 243
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 The period was also prolific in periodicals rep- 
 resenting various tendencies. At Jerusalem ap- 
 peared Ha-Habazzelet, Shaare Ziyyon ("The 
 Gates of Zion"), and others. On the American 
 side of the Atlantic, the review Ha-Zofeh be-Erez 
 Nod (" The Watchman in the Land of the Wan- 
 derer") reflected the fortunes and views of the 
 educated among the immigrants in the New 
 World. Even the orthodox had recourse to this 
 modern expedient of periodicals in their endeavor 
 to put up a defense of Rabbinism. The journal 
 Ha-Yareah ("The Moon"), and particularly 
 Mahazike ha-Dat (" The Pillars of the Faith "), 
 both issued in Galicia, were the organs of the faith- 
 ful in their opposition to humanism and progress. 
 Ha-Kol, the journal founded by Rodkinson ( 1876- 
 1880), with reform purposes, played a role of 
 considerable importance in the conflict between the 
 two parties. 
 
 Already tendencies were beginning to crop up 
 radically different from any Judaism had betrayed 
 previously. In 1877, when Smolenskin was pub- 
 lishing his weekly paper Ha-Mabbit ("The Ob- 
 server"), Freiman founded the first Socialistic 
 journal in Hebrew, Ha-Emet ("The Truth"). 
 It also appeared in Vienna. And, again, S. A. 
 
 244
 
 THE CONTRIBUTORS TO HA-SHAHAR 
 
 Salkindson, a convert from Judaism, the author of 
 admirable translations of " Othello " (1874) and 
 "Romeo and Juliet" (1878), both published 
 through the endeavors of Smolenskin, brought out 
 the Hebrew translation of an epic wholly Christian 
 in character, Milton's " Paradise Lost ". It was 
 a sign of the times that this work of art was en- 
 joyed and appreciated by the educated Hebrew 
 public in due accordance with its literary merits. 
 
 The clash of opinions and tendencies encouraged 
 by the authority and the tolerance of Smolenskin 
 was fruitful of result^. Ha-Shahar had made it- 
 self the centre of a synthetic movement, progres- 
 sive and national, which was gradually revealing 
 the outline of its plan and aims. The reaction 
 caused by the unexpected revival of anti-Semitism 
 in Germany, Austria, Roumania, and Russia, had 
 levelled the last ruins of German humanism in the 
 West, and had put disillusionment in the place of 
 dreams of equality in the East. Whoever re- 
 mained faithful to the Hebrew language and to 
 the ideal of the regeneration of the Jewish people, 
 turned his eyes toward the stout-hearted writer 
 who ten years earlier had predicted the overthrow 
 of all humanitarian hopes, and had been the first 
 to propose the practical solution of the Jewish 
 problem by means of national reconstruction. 
 
 245
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 Smolenskin's fame had by this time transcended 
 the circle of his readers and those interested in 
 Hebrew literature. The Alliance Israelite Univer- 
 selle entrusted to him the mission of investigating 
 the conditions of the life of the Roumanian Jews. 
 During his stay in Paris, Adolphe Cremieux, the 
 tireless defender of the oppressed of his race, 
 agreed, in conversation with him, that only those 
 who know the Hebrew language, hold the key to 
 the heart of the Jewish masses, and, Cremieux con- 
 tinued, he would give ten years of his life to have 
 known Hebrew. 1 
 
 The war of 1877 between Russia and Turkey, 
 and the nationalistic sentiments it engendered 
 everywhere in Eastern Europe, awakened a patri- 
 otic movement among the Jewish youth who had 
 until then resisted the idea of national emancipa- 
 tion. A young student in Paris, a native of Lithu- 
 ania, Eliezer Ben-Jehudah, published two articles 
 in Ha-Shahar, in 1878, in which, setting aside all 
 religious notions, he urged the regeneration of the 
 Jewish people on its ancient soil, and the cultiva- 
 tion of the Biblical language. 
 
 In 1880, Smolenskin, who had undertaken a new 
 
 'Brainin, in his admirable "Life of Smolenskin", Warsaw, 
 1897, p. 58; Ha-Shahar, X, 522. 
 
 246
 
 THE CONTRIBUTORS TO HA-SHAHAR 
 
 and complete edition of his works in twenty-four 
 volumes, at Vienna, went on a tour through Rus- 
 sia. Great was his joy when he noted the results 
 produced by his own activity, and saw that he had 
 gained the affection and approval of all enlightened 
 classes of Jews. Under the influence of Ha-Sha- 
 har, a new generation had grown up, free and 
 nevertheless loyal to its nativity and to the ideal 
 of Judaism. Smolenskin's journey resembled a 
 triumphal procession. The university students at 
 St. Petersburg and Moscow arranged meetings in 
 honor of the Hebrew writer, at which he was 
 acclaimed the master of the national tongue, the 
 prophet of the rejuvenation of his people. In the 
 provincial districts, similar scenes were enacted, 
 and Smolenskin saw himself the object of honors 
 never before accorded a Hebrew author. He re- 
 turned to Vienna, encouraged to pursue the task 
 he had assumed, and full of hope for the future. 
 It was the eve of the cataclysm foretold by the 
 editor of Ha-Shahar. 
 
 247
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 THE NOVELS OF SMOLENSKIN 
 
 Smolenskin owed his vast popularity and his in- 
 fluence on his contemporaries only in part to his 
 work as a journalist. What brought him close to 
 the people were his realistic novels, which occupy 
 the highest place in modern Hebrew literature. 
 
 Smolenskin's first piece of fiction, Ha-Gemitl 
 (" The Recompense "), was published at Odessa, 
 in 1868, on a subject connected with the Polish 
 insurrection. Save its realistic style, there was 
 nothing about it to betray the future novel writer 
 of eminence. 
 
 It was said above, that Smolenskin wrote the 
 early chapters of his Ha-Toeh while at Odessa, 
 and, also, he planned another novel there, " The 
 Joy of the Hypocrite ". When he proposed 
 working out the latter for publication in Ha-Meliz, 
 the editor rejected the idea disdainfully, saying 
 that he preferred translations to original stories, 
 so little likely did it seem that realistic writing 
 could be done in Hebrew. Once he had his own 
 
 248
 
 THE NOVELS OF SMOLENSKIN 
 
 organ, Ha-Shahar, Smolenskin wrote and pub- 
 lished novel after novel in it, beginning with his 
 Ha-To'eh be-Darke ha-Hayyim. In Ha-Shahar 
 it appeared in three parts. Later it came out in 
 book form, in four volumes. It is the first work 
 of the Hebrew realistic school worthy of being 
 classed as such. 
 
 As Cervantes makes his hero Don Quixote pass 
 through all the social strata of his time, so the 
 Hebrew novelist conducts his wanderer, Joseph the 
 orphan, through the nooks and corners of the 
 ghetto. He introduces him to all the scenes of 
 Jewish life, he displays before his eyes all its cus- 
 toms and manners, he makes him a witness to all its 
 superstitions, fanaticism, and sordidness of every 
 kind, a physical and social abasement that has no 
 parallel. A faithful observer, an impressionist, an 
 unemphatic realist, he discloses on every page mis- 
 understood lives, extravagant beliefs, movements, 
 evils, greatnesses, and miseries, of which the civil- 
 ized world had not the slightest suspicion. It is 
 the Odyssey of the ghetto adventurer, the life and 
 journeyings of the author himself, magnified, and 
 enveloped in the fictitious circumstances in which 
 the hero is placed, a human document of the great- 
 est significance. 
 
 249
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 Joseph, the orphan, whose father, persecuted by 
 the Hasidim, disappeared, and whose mother died 
 in abject misery, is received into the house of his 
 uncle, the same brother of his father who had 
 caused the father's ruin. Abused by a wicked aunt 
 and driven by an irresistible hankering after a 
 vagabond life, he runs away from his foster home. 
 First he is picked up by a band of rascally mendi- 
 cants, then he becomes an inmate in the house of a 
 Baal-Shem, a charlatan wonder-worker, and thus 
 a changeful existence leads him to traverse the 
 greater part of Jewish Russia. In a series of pho- 
 tographic pictures, Smolenskin reproduces in detail 
 the ways and exploits of all the bohemians of the 
 ghetto, from the beggars up to the peripatetic can- 
 tors", their moral shortcomings, their spitefulness, 
 and their insolence. Impelled by the wish to ac- 
 quire an education, and perhaps also put a roof 
 over his head, Joseph finally enters a celebrated 
 Yeshibah. It is the salvation of the young tramp. 
 He is given food, he sleeps on the school benches, 
 and he is rescued from military service. But soon, 
 having incurred disfavor by his frankness, and 
 especially because he is discovered reading secular 
 books, in which he is initiated by one of his fellow- 
 students, he is obliged to leave the Yeshibah. By 
 
 250
 
 THE NOVELS OF SMOLENSKIN 
 
 the skin of his teeth he escapes being packed off 
 to the army as a soldier. He takes refuge with 
 the Hasidim, and has the good fortune to find 
 favor in the eyes of the Zaddik ("Saint") himself. 
 
 But very soon he revolts against the equivocal 
 transports of the saintly sect. In his wanderings, 
 Joseph doubtless meets with good people, disinter- 
 ested idealists, simple men and women of the rank 
 and file, Rabbis worthy of the highest praise, en- 
 thusiastic intellectuals, but the ordinary life of the 
 ghetto, abnormal and narrow, disgusts him com- 
 pletely. He departs to seek a freer life in the 
 West. Passing through Germany without stop- 
 ping, he goes on to London. Everywhere he 
 makes Jewish society the object of study, and 
 everywhere he suffers disillusionment. Ha-To eh 
 is a veritable encyclopedia of Jewish life at the 
 beginning of the second half of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 As a work of fiction, the novel cannot bear in- 
 spection. It is a succession of fantastic, sometimes 
 incoherent events, an artificial complex of person- 
 ages appearing on the scene at the will of the 
 author, and acting like puppets on wires. The mi- 
 raculous abounds, and the characters are in part 
 exaggerated, in part blurred. 
 
 17 251
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 On the other hand, it is an incomparable work 
 taken as a panorama of realistic scenes, not always 
 consecutive scenes, but always absolutely true to 
 life a gallery of pictures of the ghetto. 
 
 Joseph is a painter, a realist first and last, and 
 an impressionist besides. Looking at the lights 
 and shadows of his picture, we feel that what we 
 see is not all pure, spontaneous art. Like Auerbach 
 and like Dickens, he is a thinker, a teacher. A 
 true son of the ghetto, he preaches and moralizes. 
 Sometimes he goes too far in his desire to impress 
 a lesson. The reader perceives too clearly that the 
 author has not remained an indifferent outsider 
 while writing his novel. It is evident that his heart 
 is torn by contradictory emotions pity, compas- 
 sion, scorn, anger, and love, all at once. 
 
 In point of style also the novel is a realistic 
 piece of work. Smolenskin does not resort to Tal- 
 mudisms, like Gordon and Abramowitsch, but, also, 
 he takes care not to indulge in too many Biblical 
 metaphors. This sometimes necessitates circumlo- 
 cutions, and on the whole his oratorical manner 
 leads to prolixity, but his prose always remains 
 pure, flowing, and precise in the highest degree. 
 
 To illustrate Smolenskin's way of writing, and 
 all the peculiarity of the social life he depicts, we 
 
 252
 
 THE NOVELS OF SMOLENSKIN 
 
 cannot do better than translate a few passages 
 from his novel dealing with characteristic phases 
 of ghetto life. 
 
 Joseph is narrating his adventures and the im- 
 pressions of his daily routine. The following is 
 his striking description of the Heder, the well- 
 known primary school of the ghetto, when his 
 uncle first enters him there as a pupil : 
 
 " When I say house, let not the reader imagine a stone struc- 
 ture. What he would see is a small, low building, somewhat 
 like a dog's kennel, built of thin boards, rotten at that. The 
 thatch that covers it by way of roof hangs down to the ground, 
 and yet it cannot keep off the rain, for the goats browsing in the 
 neighborhood have munched off half of it to satisfy their appetite. 
 Within there is a single room covered with black soot, the four 
 walls garnished with spider-webs, and the floor paved with 
 mortar. On the eastern wall hangs a large sheet of paper with 
 the inscription, ' Hence blows the breath of life ', which not 
 many visitors will believe, because, instead of a quickening 
 breath, pestilential odors enter by the window and offend the 
 nostrils of those whose olfactory nerve has not lost all sensitive- 
 ness On the opposite wall, to the west, appear the words, 
 
 ' A memorial unto the destruction of the Temple '. To this day 
 I do not know what there was to commemorate the fall of the 
 Holy Place. The rickety rafters? Or were the little creatures 
 swarming all over the walls to remind one of ' the foxes that 
 walk upon the mountain of Zion'? 
 
 " A huge stove occupies one-fourth of the room-space. Between 
 the stove and the wall, to the right, is a bed made up ready for 
 
 253
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 use, and on the other side a smaller one full of straw and hay, 
 and without bed-covers. Opposite to it stands a large deal 
 table tattoed with marks that are the handiwork of the Melam- 
 med. With his little penknife, which was never out of his hands, 
 he would cut them into the wood all the time he was teaching 
 us figures of beasts and fowl, and queer words 
 
 " Around this table about ten boys were sitting, some conning 
 the Talmud and others the Bible. One of the latter, seated at 
 the right of the teacher, was reading aloud, in a sing-song voice, 
 the section of the Pentateuch assigned for the following Sabbath 
 in the synagogue, and his cantillation blended with the crooning 
 of the teacher's wife as she sat by her baby's bed, .... but 
 every now and then the master's voice rose and drowned the 
 sounds of both, as the growl of the thunder stifles the roar of the 
 waves. 
 
 " . . . . The teacher was hideous to behold. He was short 
 of stature and thin, his cheeks were withered looking, his nose 
 long and aquiline. His two Peot 1 were raven black and hung 
 down like ropes by the side of his face. Old as he was, his 
 cheeks showed only tufts of beard here and there, on account of 
 his habit of plucking the hairs out one by one when he was 
 absorbed in thought, not to mention those plucked out by his 
 wife without the excuse of thinking. His black cap shone like 
 a buttered roll, his linen shirt was neither an Egyptian nor a 
 Swiss fabric, and his chest, overgrown with long black hair, 
 always showed bare through the slit of his unbuttoned shirt. 
 His linen trousers had been white once upon a time, but now 
 they were picturesquely variegated from the dust and soot cling- 
 ing to them, and by the stains added by his young hopeful, 
 
 * See Lev. XIX, 27. 
 
 254
 
 THE NOVELS OF SMOLENSKIN 
 
 when he sat and played on his knees, by way of contributing 
 his share to the glory in which his father was resplendently 
 
 arrayed His Zizzit hung down to his bare feet. When 
 
 my uncle entered the house, the teacher jumped up and ran 
 hither and thither, seeking his shoes, but he could not find them. 
 My uncle relieved him from his embarrassment by presenting me, 
 with the words, ' Here is a new pupil for you ! ' Calming down, 
 the teacher resumed his seat, and when we approached him, 
 he tapped me on my cheek, saying, ' What hast thou learnt, my 
 son ? ' All the pupils opened their mouth and eyes in amazement, 
 and looked at me with envy. These many days, since they them- 
 selves were entered as new pupils in the school, they had 
 not heard such gentle words issue from the mouth of the 
 teacher " ^ 
 
 This odd school prepared the child of the ghetto 
 in very deed for the life and the struggle for ex- 
 istence awaiting him. In the next higher school, 
 the Yeshibah, the alma mater of the Rabbinical stu- 
 dent, the happenings were no less curious. 
 
 The young people in those strange colleges, for 
 the most part precocious urchins, fall into classes, 
 which, however, are not sharply divided off from 
 one another. Day and night they sit bent over 
 the huge folios of the Rabbis, occupied constantly 
 with the study of the Law. Their meals are fur- 
 nished them by the humble people of the town, 
 often under deplorable conditions, and, on the 
 whole, the life they lead is misery not untinged 
 
 255
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 with humiliation. Such are the student years of 
 the future Rabbis. And yet this bohemian exist- 
 ence is not destitute of picturesque elements and 
 attractive features. Frequently it is at the Yeshi- 
 bah that the young man for the first time finds 
 sincere friends for whom he forms a lasting at- 
 tachment, and they become his trusted advisers. It 
 is a mob of young people, enthusiastic and impetu- 
 ous, yet among them is found the aristocracy of the 
 ghetto, those endowed with extraordinary intel- 
 lectual gifts, and the devotion displayed by some 
 of them to Talmudic knowledge is absolutely sub- 
 lime. 
 
 Smolenskin paints a characteristic Yeshibah 
 scene enacted by these embryonic Talmudists: 
 
 " It is a strange spectacle that meets the eye of the observer on 
 his first visit to the women's gallery in the Yeshibah [at night- 
 fall]. He finds it suddenly transformed into a gathering-place 
 for merchants. The boys who have bread or money, try their 
 hands at trafficking, and those who have neither bread nor 
 money, try theirs at theft, and a large group of those who loathe 
 the one pursuit as well as the other, sit apart and entertain 
 each other with the wonderful exploits of brigands, and giants, 
 and witches, and devils, and evil spirits, who are abroad at 
 night to affright human beings, and the dead who leave their 
 graves to terrify the wicked or cure the sick with grass of the 
 field, and many more such tales that delight the heart and soul 
 of the listeners. Such things have I myself seen even while the 
 
 256
 
 THE NOVELS OF SMOLENSKIN 
 
 afternoon and the evening prayers were going on below. I 
 heard confused sounds. One would cry out, ' Who wants bread ?' 
 And another would sing out in reply, ' Who has bread to sell ? 
 Who has bread to sell ?' ' Here is bread !' ' Will you take a 
 penny for it?' 'Two pennies, and no less!' 'Some one has 
 stolen my bread ! V/ho stole my bread ? ' ' My bread is first- 
 class ! Come and buy ! ' ' But I haven't a red copper ! ' ' All 
 right, give me a pledge !' ' You may have my troubles as a 
 pledge, you old curmudgeon ! ' ' Here are two pennies, give me 
 the bread ! ' ' Get out, I was ahead of you ! ' ' I insist upon my 
 rights, I was the first.' ' Why, I handed my money over long 
 ago, it is my bread.' ' You stole my bread.' ' You lie, it's my 
 bread !' ' You're a liar, a thief, a robber !' ' The devil take you, 
 you hound !' ' Wait a moment, and I'll show you my teeth, if 
 I'm a hound !' 
 
 " And so the words fly from mouth to mouth in the women's 
 gallery, and cuffs and blows are not rare things, either, and not 
 one of the boys remembers that the congregation below is at 
 prayers. They go on trafficking and telling tales undisturbed, 
 until the end of the service, and then they return to their seats, 
 every boy to his own at the long tables, which are lighted each 
 of them by a single candle for its whole length. A dispute 
 breaks out as to where the candle is to stand. First one draws 
 it up to himself, and then another wrests it from his hand and 
 sets it next to his own book, and finally all decide to measure 
 the table. One of the boys takes off his belt, and ascertains the 
 breadth of the table and its length, and the candle is put in the 
 exact centre. The quarrel is settled, and the students begin to 
 drawl the text before them, and what they did the whole live- 
 long day, they continue to do at night. 
 
 " Then one of them says, ' I sold my bread for two pennies '. 
 257
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 ' And I bought an apple for one penny and a cake for half a 
 penny ', returns another. ' Darkness swallow up the monitor I 
 He doesn't give us enough candles to light up the dark ! ' ' The 
 devil take him !' ' A plague on him !' ' I am going on a visit 
 home at Passover.' 'Sarah the widow lent me three pennies.' 
 " While the boys talk thus over their open books, their bodies 
 are swaying to and fro like reeds in a pond, and their voices 
 rise and fall in the same sing-song in which they con their 
 texts, all to deceive the monitor, who, hearing the usual drawl 
 and seeing the rocking bodies, believes the students to be busy 
 at their tasks. But little by little, they forget and drop out of 
 their recitative into the ordinary conversational tone. ' Tell me, 
 Zabualean [the pupils are called by their native town in the 
 Yeshibah], don't you think it's about time for the angel of death 
 to come and carry off our monitor? Or is he going to live 
 forever?' 'I pray to God to afflict his body with such ills that 
 he cannot come to the Yeshibah. Then we should have rest. I 
 take good care not to ask for his death. Another would take 
 his place, and there's no telling whether he would not be worse. 
 If pain keeps him abed, we shall have a respite.' ' But aren't 
 you committing a sin, cursing a deaf man?' interposes one of the 
 boys, indignantly. ' Look at that Azubian ! A saint, isn't he ? 
 Proof enough that he has seven sins hidden in his heart !' 
 retorts the Zabualean. ' No need of any such proof ! Why, this 
 very Azubian could not resist the tempter, and is hard at work 
 studying Russian. That's as bad as bad can be, you don't have 
 to search out hidden sins.' ' I at least am not perverting the 
 right,' the Azubian flings out, ' because the Talmud itself says 
 that the law of the land is law, but you are committing an actual 
 sin against the Torah in cursing . . . . ' The sentence was 
 never finished, for the monitor had been standing behind the 
 
 258
 
 THE NOVELS OF SMOLENSKIN 
 
 table observing the boys for some time, and when he saw the 
 excitement of the Azubian, being deaf, he could not hear what 
 he said, he threw himself upon him, and, seizing him by the 
 ear, shook him as violently as his strength permitted, crying, 
 ' You wretches, you rebels, there, that's for you !' and he beat 
 another boy with his fists, and struck a third upon his cheeks. 
 ' The monitor has rained profuse kisses upon the Azubian for 
 defending him!' one of the boys paraphrased Proverbs, 2 
 drawling in the approved sing-song, and keeping his eyes fixed 
 upon his book. The others burst into loud laughter at the sally. 
 Even those who were still smarting from the monitor's blows 
 could not restrain themselves and joined in. ' Are you making 
 fun of me? You're not afraid?' thundered the monitor, in 
 towering rage, turning this* way and that, uncertain whom to 
 select as the first victim of his heavy hand. Before he could 
 collect his wits, one of the boys yelled, ' Rabbi Isaac, Rabbi 
 Isaac, the candles!' It worked like a conjurer's charm upon a 
 serpent. In an instant the monitor turned and ran to his room 
 and searched it. Seeing no one there, he sank into his chair, and 
 groaned : ' Wicked, depraved children ! Those gallows-birds, 
 I'll mangle their flesh, and flay the skin from their bones !' and 
 he kept on mumbling to himself in this strain, until sleep fell 
 upon his eyelids shaded by long eyebrows white as snow, and 
 his head dropped into his hands resting upon the table. 
 
 " As soon as he slept, the boys resumed their talk, and my 
 friend continued to tell me about life in the Yeshibah" .... 
 ' Do 3'ou think that the Yeshibah students are guileless youths 
 who have never dropped their mother's apron strings? If you 
 do, you are vastly mistaken. They are up to all the tricks, and 
 
 1 XXVII, 6. 
 
 259
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 the dullest among them can show a thing or two to the best of 
 the rich boys. You will do well to observe their ways and learn 
 from them.' ' I shall try to walk in their footsteps.' .... 
 
 " Then I went out to get my supper. On returning I found 
 the greater part of the boys had gone to sleep, and almost all the 
 candles were out. Only a few of the students were sitting to- 
 gether and talking. I sought out my friend, and discovered him 
 lying upon one of the tables in the women's gallery, but he was 
 still awake. ' Why don't you look for a place to lie down in ?' he 
 asked me. ' I shall lie here next to you,' I replied. ' No, you 
 can't do that. Here each boy has a place in which he always 
 sleeps; he never changes about. Go down to the men's hall and 
 look for an unoccupied spot. If you find a table, so much the 
 better. If not, you must be satisfied with a bench.' I did as he 
 advised. I found a long table in the men's hall, but hardly was 
 I stretched out upon it when a boy took me by the scruff of my 
 neck and shook me, saying : ' Get out, this is my place ! And 
 all the tables here are taken by boys who came to the Yeshibah 
 long ahead of you. You must look for another place.' 
 
 " Not very much pleased, I slipped down from the table, and 
 lay on the bench. But I could not go to sleep. I was not ac- 
 customed to the narrow board, nor to sleep without a bed-cover, 
 and the little and big insects that swarmed in the cracks of the 
 wood came forth from their nests and tickled me all over my 
 body. But there was nothing to do, and I lay there in discom- 
 fort until all the lights were extinguished. Only one light of all 
 burnt the whole night, the Ner tamid, and under it sat two 
 students, the 'watchers' [whose duty it was to continue at their 
 task until morning, so that the study of the Law might not be 
 interrupted day or night]." 
 
 260
 
 THE NOVELS OF SMOLENSKIN 
 
 A life full of excitement, of which the above is 
 a specimen, was not likely to displease so adven- 
 turous a spirit as Joseph's. When all is said, the 
 Yeshibah provided a living for the young people, 
 not overabundant, it is true, but at least they were 
 'relieved of material cares. The pious middle class 
 Jews, and even the poor, considered it their duty 
 to supply the needs of the young Talmudists, and 
 the ambition of the latter was satisfied by the gen- 
 eral good feeling that prevailed in their favor. 
 For the aristocracy among the Jews, whose minds 
 had not yet been stimulated by the new ideas, the 
 Yeshibah was the home of all the virtues, the 
 school in which the ideal was pursued, and lofty 
 dreams were dreamed. 
 
 In another novel, " The Joy of the Hypocrite," 
 which appeared in Vienna, in 1872, Smolenskin 
 extols the idealism of his hero Simon, a product of 
 the Yeshibah : 
 
 " Who had implanted in the mind of Simon the ideal of justice 
 and the sublime word ? Who had kindled in his soul the sacred 
 flame, love of truth and research? Verily, he had found all 
 these in the Yeshibah. Glory and increase be to you, ye holy 
 places, last refuges of Israel's real heritage! From your portals 
 came forth the elect destined from birth to be the light of their 
 people and breathe new life into the dry bones." 
 
 261
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 Even during the period of the Behalah (" Ter- 
 ror") the Yeshibah remained unscathed, beyond 
 the reach of misery and baseness. The venal job- 
 bers, who, with the assistance of the Kahal, de- 
 livered the sons of the poor to the army in order to 
 shield the rich, did not dare invade the Rabbinical 
 schools. Like the Temple in ancient times, the 
 Yeshibot offered a sure refuge. Whenever these 
 sanctuaries were imperilled, national sentiment was 
 aroused, and the threatened encroachments upon 
 the last national treasure were resisted with bitter 
 determination, for the idealism of the people of 
 the ghetto, their hope and their faith, were en- 
 shrined there. 
 
 Joseph forfeited the privilege of sanctuary re- 
 siding in the Yeshibah on the day he was taken red- 
 handed, in the act of reading a profane book. Re- 
 ligious fanaticism had never proceeded with so 
 much rigor as during the reign of terror following 
 upon the disorganization of the social life of the 
 Jews by the authorities, and the triumphant asser- 
 tion of arbitrary power. Nevertheless, even at 
 this disheartening juncture, the Rabbinical schools 
 were the asylum of whatever of ideal or sublime 
 there remained in Israel. 
 
 They furnished all the champions of humanism 
 
 262
 
 THE NOVELS OF SMOLENSKIN 
 
 and the preachers and disseminators of civiliza- 
 tion. In them Joseph met the generous comrades 
 who introduced him to the Haskalah, and awak- 
 ened love for the noble and the good in him, and 
 boundless devotion to his people. 
 
 Hard as flint toward the inefficient leaders, with- 
 out pity for the hypocrites and the fanatics, the 
 heart of Joseph yet pulsated with love for the Jew- 
 ish masses. Their unsympathetic surroundings 
 and the persecutions to which they were exposed 
 but increased his compassion for the straying flock 
 of his people. In the general degradation, he suc- 
 ceeded in rising to moral heights, and so could set 
 himself up for an impartial judge. He did not 
 permit himself to be carried away by the sadness 
 of the moment, though he did not remain indif- 
 ferent to it, and his heart bled at the thought of 
 his people's sufferings. In the human desert, in 
 which he delighted to disport himself, he discov- 
 ered noble characters, lofty sentiments, generous 
 friendships, and, above all, lives devoted entirely 
 to the pursuit of the ideal undeterred by any 
 obstacle. 
 
 One after the other he presents the idealists of 
 the ghetto to the reader. There is, first of all, 
 Jedidiah, the common type of the Maskil, work- 
 
 263
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 ing zealously for culture, spreading truth and light 
 in all the circles he can reach, dreaming of a Juda- 
 ism, just, enlightened, exalted. Then there are the 
 ardent young apostles, like that noble friend of 
 Joseph, Gideon, most enlightened and most toler- 
 ant of Maskilim. In the measure in which Gideon 
 detests fanaticism, he loves the people. He loves 
 the masses with the heart of a patriot and the soul 
 of a prophet. He loves them exactly as they are, 
 with their beliefs, their simple faith, their poor, 
 submissive lives, their ambitions as the chosen peo- 
 ple, and their Messianic hope, to which he himself 
 clings, though in a way less mystical than theirs. 
 Thrilling, patriotic exaltation pervades the chap- 
 ter on " The Day of Atonement." There Smo- 
 lenskin appears as a genuine romanticist. 
 
 Such in outline are the features of this chaotic, 
 superb novel, which, in spite of its faults of tech- 
 nique, remains to this day the truest and the most 
 beautiful product of neo-Hebrew literature. 
 
 Ten years after finishing it, the author added a 
 fourth part, which, on the whole, is nothing but 
 an artificial collection of letters relating only in- 
 directly to the main story. Joseph takes us with 
 him through the Western lands, and then to Rus- 
 
 264
 
 THE NOVELS OF SMOLENSKIN 
 
 sia, whither he returns. In France and in England, 
 he deplores the degeneracy of Judaism, attributing 
 it to the ascendency of the Mendelssohnian school, 
 and he foresees the approach of anti-Semitism. In 
 Russia, he notes the prevalence of economic misery 
 in frightful proportions, especially in the small 
 rural towns, while in the large centres he regrets 
 to see that the communities use every effort to 
 imitate Occidental Judaism with all its faults. The 
 overhasty culture of the Russian Jews, weakly cor- 
 related with the economic and political conditions 
 under which they lived, was bound to bring on the 
 breaking up of the passive idealism which consti- 
 tuted their chief strength. 
 
 The novel Keburat Hamor (" The Burial of 
 the Ass ") is the most elaborate and the most fin- 
 ished of Smolenskin's works. It describes the time 
 of the " Terror " and the domination of the Kahal. 
 The hero, Hayyim Jacob, is a wag, but pleasant- 
 ries are not always understood in the ghetto, and 
 he is made to pay for them. His practical jokes 
 and his small respect for the notables of the com- 
 munity, whom he dares to defy and poke fun at, 
 are his ruin. 
 
 He was scarcely more than a child when he was 
 guilty of unprecedented conduct. Wrapped in blue 
 
 265
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 drapery, like a corpse risen from the grave, and 
 spreading terror wherever he appeared, he made 
 his way one evening into the room in which cakes 
 were stored for the next day's annual banquet of 
 the Hebrah Kadisha (" Holy Brotherhood "), the 
 all-powerful society, organized primarily to per- 
 form the last rites and ceremonies for the dead, 
 to which the best Jews of a town belong. He got 
 possession of all the dainty morsels, and made 
 away with them. It was an unpardonable crime, 
 high treason against saintliness. An inquiry was 
 ordered, but the culprit was not discovered. 
 
 In revenge, the Brotherhood ordained the 
 " burial of an ass " for the nameless criminal, and 
 the verdict was recorded in the minutes of the 
 society. 
 
 The incorrigible Hayyim Jacob continues to per- 
 petrate jokes, and the Kahal decides to surrender 
 him to the army recruiting officer. Warned be- 
 times, he is able to make good his escape. He re- 
 turns to his native town later on under an assumed 
 name, imposes upon everybody by his scholarship, 
 and marries the daughter of the head of the com- 
 munity. But his natural inclinations get the upper 
 hand again. Meantime, he has confided the tale 
 of his youthful tricks to his wife. She is disturbed 
 
 266
 
 THE NOVELS OF SMOLENSKIN 
 
 by what she knows, she cannot endure the idea of 
 the unparalleled punishment that awaits her hus- 
 band should he be identified, for to undergo the 
 " burial of an ass " is the supremest indignity that 
 can be offered to a Jew. The body of the offender 
 is dragged along the ground to the cemetery, and 
 there it is thrown into a ditch made for the purpose 
 behind the wall enclosing the grounds. But was 
 not her father the head of the community? Could 
 he not annul the verdict? She discloses the secret 
 to him, and the effect-is to fill him with instanta- 
 neous rage: What! to that wicked fellow he has 
 given his daughter, to that heretic! He wants to 
 force him to give up his wife, but no more than the 
 husband will the woman listen to any such proposal. 
 Hayyim Jacob succeeds in ingratiating himself 
 with his father-in-law, though by fraud and only 
 for a short time. After that, one persecution after 
 another is inflicted upon him, and he succumbs. 
 So much for the background upon which the 1 
 novelist has painted his scenes, authentic reproduc- 
 tions from the life of the Jews in Russia. The 
 character of Hayyim Jacob stands out clear and 
 forceful. His wife Esther is the typical Jewish 
 woman, loyal and devoted unto death, of irre- 
 proachable conduct under reverses of fortune, and 
 
 18 267
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 braving a world for love of her husband. The 
 prominent characters of the ghetto are drawn with 
 fidelity, though the colors are sometimes laid on 
 too thick. The author has been particularly happy 
 in re-creating the atmosphere of the ghetto, with 
 its contradictions and its passions, the specialized 
 intellectuality which long seclusion has forged for 
 it, and its odd, original conception of life. 
 
 Smolenskin goes to the Yeshibah for the subject 
 of one of his novels, Gemul Yesharim ("The 
 Recompense of the Righteous "). The author de- 
 scribes the part played by the Jewish youth in the 
 Polish insurrection. The ingratitude of the Poles 
 proves that the Jews have nothing to expect from 
 others, and they should count only upon their own 
 resources. 
 
 Gaon we-Sheber (" Greatness and Ruin ") is a 
 collection of scattered novelettes, some of which 
 are veritable works of art. 
 
 Ha-Yerushah ("The Inheritance") is the last 
 of Smolenskin's great novels. It was first published 
 in Ha-Shah&r, in 1 880-81. Its three volumes are 
 full of incoherencies and long drawn out argu- 
 ments. The life of the Jews of Odessa, however, 
 and of Roumania, is well depicted, and also the 
 psychologic stages through which the older human- 
 
 268
 
 THE NOVELS OF SMOLENSKIN 
 
 ists pass, deceived in their hopes, and groping for 
 a return to national Judaism. 
 
 Smolenskin's last novel, Nekam Berit (" Holy 
 Vengeance", Ha-Shahar, 1884), is wholly Zion- 
 istic. It was the author's swan song. Not long 
 after its completion, an illness carried him off. 
 
 The novels of Smolenskin are a series of social 
 documents and propagandist writings rather than 
 works of pure art. Their chief defects are the 
 incoherence of the action, the artificiality of the 
 denouement, their simplicity in all that concerns 
 modern life, as well as their excessive didactic ten- 
 dencies and the long-winded style of the author. 
 Most of these defects he shares with such writers 
 as Auerbach, Jokai, and Thackeray, with whom 
 he may be placed in the same class. In passing 
 judgment, it must be borne in mind that the He- 
 brew writer's life was one prolonged and bitter 
 struggle for bare existence, his own and Ha-Sha- 
 har's, for the periodical never yielded him any 
 income. Only his idealism and the consciousness 
 of the useful purpose he was serving sustained him 
 in critical moments. These circumstances explain 
 why his works bear the marks of hasty production. 
 However that may be, since he gave them to the 
 
 269
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 Jewish world, his novels have, even more than his 
 articles, exercised unparalleled influence upon his 
 readers. 
 
 In a word, the life of the Russian ghetto, its 
 misery and its passions, the positive and the nega- 
 tive types of that vanishing world, have been set 
 down in the writings of Smolenskin with such 
 power of realism and such profound knowledge 
 of conditions that it is impossible to form a just 
 idea of Russo-Polish Judaism without having read 
 what he has written. 
 
 270
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 CONTEMPORANEOUS LITERATURE 
 
 The years 1881-1882 mark off a distinct era in 
 the history of the Jewish people. The revival of 
 anti-Semitism in Germany, the unexpected renewal 
 of persecutions and massacres in Russia and 
 Roumania, the outlawing of millions of human be- 
 ings, whose situation grew less tenable from day 
 to day in those two countries such were the oc- 
 currences that disconcerted the most optimistic. 
 
 In the face of the precipitate exodus of crazed 
 masses of the people and the urgency of decisive 
 action, the old disputes between humanists and 
 nationalists were laid aside. There could be but 
 one choice between impossible assimilation with the 
 Slav people on the one hand, and the idea, on the 
 other hand, of a national emancipation divested of 
 its mystical envelope and supplied with a territory 
 as a practicable basis. All the Hebrew-writing 
 authors were agreed that the time had passed for 
 wrangling over a divergence of opinions. It was 
 imperative that all forces should range themselves 
 
 271
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 on the side of action. Even a skeptic like Gordon 
 issued at that time, among many things like it, his 
 thrilling poem : " We were a people, and we will 
 a people be with our young and with our old will 
 we gol " 
 
 But whither? Some decided for America with 
 the Western philanthropists, others, with Smo- 
 lenskin, declared absolutely in favor of Palestine, 
 the country of the Jew's perennial dreams. 
 
 Academic discussions of such questions are futile. 
 It may safely be left to time and experience to 
 decide between the two currents of opinion. As 
 early as 1880, the young dreamer Ben-Jehudah, 
 inspired with the idea of reviving the Hebrew as 
 a national language, left Paris and established him- 
 self at Jerusalem. And from Lithuania came the 
 romantic conservative Pines, forsaking the dis- 
 tinguished position he occupied there, in order to 
 give his aid in the elevation of the Jews of Pales- 
 tine. The tracks made by these two pioneers issu- 
 ing from opposite camps were soon trodden by the 
 followers of important movements. 
 
 A select circle of four hundred university stu- 
 dents, indignant at the humiliating position into 
 which they had been forced, thundered forth an 
 appeal that resounded throughout the length and 
 
 272
 
 CONTEMPORANEOUS LITERATURE 
 
 breadth of Jewish Russia : Bet Ya'akob, leku we- 
 nelekah (" O House of Jacob, come ye and let us 
 walk"). The practical result was the organiza- 
 tion of the group BILU, 1 the first to leave for 
 Palestine and establish a colony there. This nu- 
 cleus was enlarged by the accession of hundreds 
 of middle class burghers and of the educated, and 
 thus Jewish colonization was a permanently as- 
 sured fact in the Holy Land. 
 
 The surprising return of the younger genera- 
 tion, who had wholly broken with Judaism, this 
 first step toward the actual realization of the Zion- 
 ist dream, has had most important consequences 
 for the renascence of Hebrew literature. As for 
 the educated element that had never, at least in 
 spirit, left the ghetto, men like Lilienblum, Braudes, 
 and others, whose later activity, a propaganda 
 for economic reforms and instruction in manual 
 trades, had almost ceased to have a reason for 
 continuing, as for them, their adhesion to Zion- 
 ism could not be long delayed. And even outside 
 of the ghetto a voice was heard, the authoritative 
 voice of Dr. Leon Pinsker, announcing his support 
 of the philo-Palestinian movement, as it was then 
 
 1 Is. II, 5. BILU are the initials of the four words of the 
 Hebrew sentence quoted above. 
 
 273
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 called. In his brochure " Auto-Emancipation ", 
 the learned physician of Odessa, one of the old 
 guard of staunch humanists, declares that the dis- 
 ease of anti-Semitism is a chronic affection, incur- 
 able as long as the Jews are in exile. There is but 
 one solution for the Jewish question, the national 
 regeneration of the Jews upon their ancient soil. 
 
 A new dawn began to break upon the horizon 
 of the Jewish people. Hebrew literature was 
 stimulated as never before, and the enthusiasm of 
 the writers incorporated itself in the spirited pro- 
 posals of Moses Eismann, Professor Schapira, 
 and a number of others. In this sudden blossom- 
 ing of patriotic ideas, excesses were inevitable. A 
 chauvinistic reaction was not long in setting in. 
 The religious reformers were attacked, they were 
 accused of hindering a fusion of diverse parties in 
 Judaism whose cordial agreement was indispen- 
 sable to the success of the new movement. 
 
 Smolenskin alone was irreproachable. He who 
 had never acknowledged the benefits of assimila- 
 tion, had no need now to go to extremes. He re- 
 mained faithful to his patriotic ideal, without re- 
 nouncing any of his humanitarian and cultural 
 aspirations. The activity he displayed was fever- 
 ish. Now that he no longer stood alone in the de- 
 
 274
 
 CONTEMPORANEOUS LITERATURE 
 
 fense of his ideas, he redoubled his efforts with 
 admirable energy encouraging here, exhorting 
 there. But he was coming to the end of his 
 strength, exhausted by a life of struggle and 
 wretchedness, by long overtaxing of his physical 
 and mental powers. He died in 1885, in the vigor 
 of his years, cut off by disease. The whole of 
 Jewry mourned at his grave. And Ha-Shahar 
 soon ceased to exist. 
 
 With the extinction of Ha-Shahar we arrive at 
 the end of the task we have set ourselves, of fol- 
 lowing up a phase of literary evolution. Modern 
 Hebrew literature, for a century the handmaiden 
 of one preponderating idea, the humanist idea in 
 all its various applications, henceforth enters upon 
 a new phase of its development. Led back by 
 Smolenskin to its national source, stripped of 
 every religious element, and imposed by the force 
 of circumstances upon the masses and the educated 
 alike, as the link uniting them thenceforth for the 
 furtherance of the same patriotic end, it has again 
 taken its place as the language of the Jewish peo- 
 ple. It has ceased to serve as the mere mediator 
 between Rabbinism and modern life. It is become 
 an end in itself, an important factor in the life of 
 
 275
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 the Jews. It is no longer a parasite flourishing at 
 the expense of orthodoxy, from which it has for a 
 century been luring away successive generations 
 of the best of the young men, who, however, once 
 emancipated, hastened to abandon that to which 
 they owed their enlightenment. It has become the 
 receptacle of the national literature of the Jewish 
 people. 
 
 In 1885, when the distinguished editor of 
 Ha-Zefirah, Nahum Sokolow, undertook the 
 publication of the great literary annual, He- 
 Asif ("The Collector"), the success he achieved 
 went beyond the wildest expectations. The edition 
 ran up to seven thousand copies. It was followed 
 by other enterprises of a similar character, notably 
 Keneset Yisrael ("The Assembly of Israel"), 
 published by Saul Phinehas Rabbinowitz, the 
 learned historian. 
 
 In 1886, the journalist, Jehudah Lob Kantor, 
 encouraged by the vogue acquired by the Hebrew 
 language, founded the first daily paper in it, Ha- 
 Yom (" The Day "), at St. Petersburg. The suc- 
 cess of this organ induced Ha-Meliz and Ha-Zefi- 
 rah to change into dailies. A Hebrew political 
 press thus came into being, and it has contributed 
 tremendously to the spread of Zionism and culture. 
 
 276
 
 CONTEMPORANEOUS LITERATURE 
 
 Even the Hasidim, who had until then remained 
 contumacious toward modern ideas, were reached 
 by its influence. It was, however, the Hebrew lan- 
 guage that profited most by the development of 
 journalism in it. The demands of daily life en- 
 riched its vocabulary and its resources, completing 
 the work of modernization. 
 
 In Palestine, the need felt for an academic lan- 
 guage common to the children of immigrants from 
 all countries was a great factor in the practical re- 
 habilitation of Hebrew as the vernacular. Ben- 
 Jehudah was the first to use it in his home, in 
 intercourse with the members of his family and his 
 household, and a number of educated Jews fol- 
 lowed his example, not permitting any other to be 
 spoken within their four walls. In the schools at 
 Jerusalem and in the newly-established colonies, it 
 has become the official language. A recoil from 
 the Palestinian movement was felt in Europe and 
 in America, and a limited number of circles were 
 formed everywhere in which only Hebrew was 
 spoken. The journal Ha-Zebi ("The Deer"), 
 published by Ben-Jehudah, became the organ of 
 Hebrew as a spoken language, which differs from 
 the literary language only in the greater freedom 
 granted it of borrowing modern words and expres- 
 
 277
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 sions from the Arabic and even from the European 
 languages, and by its tendency to create new words 
 from old Hebrew roots, in compliance with forms 
 occurring in the Bible and the Mishnah. Here are 
 a couple of examples of this tendency: The He- 
 brew word Sha'ah means " time ", " hour ". To 
 this word the modern Hebrew adds the termina- 
 tion on, making it Shaon, with the meaning 
 " watch ", or " clock ". The verb darak, in Bib- 
 lical Hebrew " to walk ", gives rise in the modern 
 language to Mtdrakah, " pavement." 
 
 The spread of the language and the increase in 
 the number of readers together produced a change 
 in the material condition of the writers. Their 
 compensation became ampler in proportion, the 
 consequence of which was that they could devote 
 themselves to work requiring more sustained effort, 
 and what they produced was more finished in detail. 
 With the founding of the publishing society 
 Ahiasaf, and more particularly the one called 
 Tushiyah, due to the energy of Abraham L. Ben- 
 Avigdor, a sympathetic writer, Hebrew was af- 
 forded the possibility of developing naturally, in 
 the manner of a modern language. 
 
 There was a short interval of non-production, 
 
 278
 
 CONTEMPORANEOUS LITERATURE 
 
 caused by the brutality and sadness of unexpected 
 events, but literary creativeness recovered quickly, 
 and manifested itself, with growing force, in varied 
 and widespread activity worthy of a literature that 
 had grown out of the needs of a national group. 
 On the field of poetry, there is, first of all, Con- 
 stantin Shapiro, the virile lyricist, who knew how 
 to put into fitting words the indignation and revolt 
 of the people against the injustice levelled against 
 them. His " Poems of Jeshurun " published in 
 He-Asif for 1888, alive with emotion and patriotic 
 ardor, as well as his Haggadic legends, must be 
 put in the first rank. After him comes Menahem 
 M. Dolitzki, the elegiac poet of Zionism, the 
 singer of sweet " Zionides." Then a young 
 writer, snatched away all too early, Mordecai Zebi 
 Manne, who was distinguished for his tender lyrics 
 and deep feeling for nature and art. 3 And, finally, 
 there is Naphtali Herz Imber, the song-writer of 
 the Palestinian colonies, the poet of the reborn 
 Holy Land and the Zionist hope. 4 
 
 Among the latest to claim the attention of the 
 
 3 Poems published in New York, in 1896. 
 
 3 His works appeared in Warsaw in 1897. 
 
 4 Poems published at Jerusalem in 1886. 
 
 279
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 public, the name of Hayyim N. Bialik 5 ought to 
 be mentioned, a vigorous lyricist and an incom- 
 parable stylist, and of S. Tchernichovski," an erotic 
 poet, the singer of love and beauty, a Hebrew with 
 an Hellenic soul. These two, both of them at the 
 beginning of their career, are the most brilliant in 
 a group of poets more or less well known. 
 
 Again, there are two story-writers that are par- 
 ticularly prominent, Abramowitsch, the old favor- 
 ite, who, having abandoned Hebrew for a brief 
 period in favor of jargon, returned to enrich He- 
 brew literature with a series of tales, poetic and 
 humorous, of incomparable originality and in a 
 style all his own. 7 The second one is Isaac Lob 
 Perez, the symbolist painter of love and misery, 
 a charming teller of tales and a distinguished 
 artist. 8 
 
 Of novelists and romancers, in prose and in 
 verse, Samuely may be mentioned, and Goldin, 
 Berschadsky, Feierberg, J. Kahn, Berditchevsky, 
 S. L. Gordon, N. Pines, Rabinovitz, Steinberg, 
 and Loubochitzky, to name only a few among 
 
 * Poems published at Warsaw in 1902. 
 6 Poems published at Warsaw in 1900-3. 
 T Collected Tales and Novels, Odessa, 1900. 
 8 Works, in ten volumes, Hebrew Library of Tushiyah, 1899- 
 1901. 
 
 280
 
 CONTEMPORANEOUS LITERATURE 
 
 many. Ben-Avigdor is the creator of the young 
 realist movement, through his psychologic tales of 
 ghetto life, particularly his Menahem ha-Sofer 
 (" Menahem the Scribe"), wherein he opposes 
 the new chauvinism. 
 
 Among the masters of the feuilleton are the 
 subtle critic David Frischmann, translator of 
 numerous scientific books; the writer of charming 
 causeries, A. L. Levinski, author of a Zionist uto- 
 pia, "Journey to Palestine in the Year 5800", 
 published in Ha-Pardes ("Paradise "), in Odessa; 
 and J. H. Taviow, the witty writer. 
 
 On the field of thought and criticism, the most 
 prominent place belongs to Ahad ha-' Am,' the first 
 editor of the review Ha-Shlloah, a critic who often 
 drops into paradoxes, but is always original and 
 bold. He is the promoter of " spiritual Zionism ", 
 the counterstroke dealt to the practical, political 
 movement by Messianic mysticism clothed in a 
 somewhat more rational garb than its traditional 
 form. He has a fine critical mind and is an acute 
 observer, as well as a remarkable stylist. 
 
 To Ahad ha-' Am we may oppose Wolf Jawitz, 
 the philosopher of religious romanticism, the de- 
 
 9 Collected Essays, published at Odessa in 1885, and at Warsaw 
 in 1901. 
 
 281
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 fender of tradition, and one of the regenerators 
 of Hebrew style. 10 Between these two extremes, 
 there is a moderate party, the foremost represen- 
 tative of which is Nahum Sokolow, the popular 
 and prolific editor of Ha-Zefirah, prominent at 
 once as a writer and a man of action. Dr. S. Bern- 
 feld also deserves mention, as the admirable 
 popularizer of the Science of Judaism, and an ex- 
 cellent historian, the author of a history of Jewish 
 theology recently published at Warsaw. 
 
 Among the latest claimants of public attention is 
 M. J. Berditchevsky, author of numerous tales 
 bordering upon the decadent, but not wholly bare 
 of the spirit of poetry. David Neumark takes 
 rank as a thinker. Philology is worthily repre- 
 sented by Joshua Steinberg, author of a scientific 
 grammar on original lines, 11 not yet known to the 
 scholars of Europe, and translator of the Sibylline 
 books. Fabius Mises has published a history of 
 modern philosophy in Europe, and J. L. Katzen- 
 elenson is the author of a treatise on anatomy and 
 of a number of literary works acceptable to the 
 
 10 Ha-Arez, published at Jerusalem in 1893-96; "History of 
 the Jews", published at Wilna, 1898-1902, etc. 
 
 "Ma'arke Leshon Eber ("The Principles of the Hebrew Lan- 
 guage"), Wilna, 1884, etc. 
 
 282
 
 CONTEMPORANEOUS LITERATURE 
 
 public. Then there are Leon Rabinovich, editor 
 of Ha-Meliz, David Yellin, Lerner, A. Kahana, 
 and others. 
 
 The history of modern literature has found a 
 worthy representative in the person of Reuben 
 Brainin, a master of style, himself the author of 
 popular tales. His remarkable studies of Mapu, 
 Smolenskin, and other writers, are conceived and 
 executed according to the approved methods of 
 modern critics. They have done good work in 
 refining the taste and aesthetic feeling of the He- 
 brew-reading public. 
 
 All these, and a number of others, have given 
 the Hebrew language an assured place. To their 
 original works must be added numberless trans- 
 lations, text books, and editions of all sorts, and 
 then we can form a fair idea of the actual signifi- 
 cance of Hebrew in its modern development. In the 
 number of publications, it ranks as the third litera- 
 ture in Russia, the Russian and the Polish being the 
 only ones ahead of it, and no estimate of the in- 
 fluence it wields can afford to leave out of account 
 its vogue in Palestine, Austria, and America. 
 
 19 283
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 A glance at modern Hebrew literature as a 
 whole reveals a striking tendency in its develop- 
 ment, at once unexpected and inevitable. The 
 humanist ideal, which stood sponsor at its rebirth, 
 bore within itself a germ of dissolution. For na- 
 tional and religious aims it desired to substitute 
 the idea of liberty and equality. Sooner or later 
 it would have had to end in assimilation. During 
 the course of a whole century, from the appearance 
 of the first issue of Ha-Meassef, in 1784-5, until 
 the cessation of Ha-Shahar, in 1885, Hebrew lit- 
 erature offers the spectacle of a constant conflict be- 
 tween the humanist ideals and Judaism. In spite of 
 obstacles of every kind, and in spite of the danger- 
 ous rivalry of the European languages, the rivalry 
 of the Jewish-German itself, the Hebrew language 
 has given proof of persistent vitality, and displayed 
 surprising power of adaptation to all sorts of cir- 
 cumstances and all departments of literature, and 
 widely separated countries have been the scene of its 
 development. So far as the earliest humanists had 
 
 284
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 planned, the Hebrew language was to serve only 
 as an instrument of propaganda and emancipation. 
 Thanks to the efforts of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, 
 Mendes, and Wessely, it rose for a brief moment 
 to the rank of a truly literary medium, very soon, 
 however, to make way for the languages of the 
 various countries, while it receded to the narrow 
 confines provided by the Maskilim. Its final des- 
 tiny was to be decided in Slav lands. In Galicia, 
 it gave birth, in the domain of philosophy, to the 
 ideal of the " mission of the Jewish people ", and 
 to the " science of Judaism." But for the great 
 mass of the Jews remaining faithful to the Mes- 
 sianic ideal, what was of greatest significance was 
 the national and religious romanticism expounded 
 by Samuel David Luzzatto. 
 
 Lithuania, with its inexhaustible resources, 
 moral and intellectual, became the stronghold of 
 Hebrew. In its double aspect as a humanistic and 
 a romantic force, Hebrew literature bounded for- 
 ward on new paths with the lustiness of youth. 
 Before long, under the impetus of social and eco- 
 nomic reforms, the Hebrew writers declared war 
 upon a Rabbinical authority that rejected every in- 
 novation, and was opposed to all progress. To 
 meet the issue, the realistic literature came forward, 
 
 285
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 polemic and destructive in character. A pitiless 
 combat ensued between the humanists and Rabbin- 
 ism, and the consequences were fateful for the one 
 party as well as the other. Rabbinism felt that 
 its very essence had been shaken, and that it was 
 destined to disappear, at least in its traditional 
 form. Humanism, on the other side, startled out 
 of its dreams of justice and equality, lost ground, 
 inch by inch, by reason of having broken with the 
 national hope of the people. The attempt made 
 by some writers to bring about the harmonization 
 of religion and life turned out a lamentable mis- 
 carriage. The antagonism between the literary 
 folk and the mass of believers ended in the break- 
 ing up of the whole literature created by the hu- 
 manists. At that moment the progressive national 
 movement made its appearance with Smolenskin, 
 and supplied Hebrew literature with a purpose and 
 its civilizing mission. 
 
 The predominant note of contemporary He- 
 brew literature is the Zionist ideal stripped of its 
 mystical envelopes. It may be asserted that the 
 Messianic hope in this new form is in the act of 
 producing a transformation in Polish Hasidic sur- 
 roundings, identical with that achieved by human- 
 ism in Lithuania. The rabid opposition offered 
 
 286
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 to Hebrew literature by the Hasidim suffices to con- 
 firm this prognostication of a dreaded result. 
 
 Also beyond the boundaries of the Slav coun- 
 tries, in the distant Orient, the Hebrew lion is 
 gaining territory, from Palestine to Morocco, and 
 wherever his foot treads, culture springs up and 
 national regeneration. 
 
 Deep down in the sorely tried soul of the Jewish 
 masses, there reposes a fund of idealism, and 
 ardent faith in a better future unshaken by time or 
 disappointments. Defraud them of the millennial 
 ideal which sustains their courage, which is the 
 very cornerstone of their existence, and you sur- 
 render them into the power of a dangerous despair, 
 you push them into the arms of the demoralization 
 that lies in wait everywhere, and in some coun- 
 tries has already come out in the open. 
 
 Hebrew literature, faithful to its Biblical mis- 
 sion, has within it the power of replenishing the 
 moral resources of the masses and making their 
 hearts thrill with enthusiasm for justice and the 
 ideal. It is the focus of the rays vivifying all that 
 breathes, that struggles, that creates, that hopes 
 within the Jewish soul. 
 
 To misunderstand this moral bearing of the 
 
 287
 
 THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE 
 
 renascence of the Hebrew language is to fail to 
 know the very life of the better part of Judaism 
 and the Jew. 
 
 Literary creation is now at its full blossom, and 
 the ferment of ideas instilled from all sides is so 
 powerful that an abundant harvest may be ex- 
 pected. 
 
 And that Bible language which has given hu- 
 manity so many glorious pages, which has but now, 
 thanks to the humanists, added a new page, is it 
 destined in very truth to be born anew, and become 
 once more the language of the national culture of 
 the whole of the Jewish people ? It would be rash 
 to reply with a categorical affirmative. 
 
 What has been proved in the foregoing pages is, 
 we believe, that it exists, and is developing both 
 as a literary and a spoken language; that it has 
 shown itself to be the equal of the modern lan- 
 guages ; that it is capable of giving expression to all 
 thoughts and all forms of human activity; and, 
 finally, that it is accomplishing a work of culture 
 and emancipation. The expansion of the language 
 of the prophets taking place under our eyes is a 
 fact that cannot but fascinate every mind interested 
 in the mysterious evolution of the destinies of man- 
 kind in the direction of the ideal. 
 
 288
 
 INDEX 
 
 Abarbanel, biography of, in Ha- 
 Meassef, 33. 
 
 " Abiezer," autobiography by 
 Ginzburg, 118. 
 
 Abramowitsch, Solomon Jacob, 
 novel by, 169, 170; natural 
 history by, 169-70; style of, 
 170; alluded to, 252; story- 
 writer, 280. 
 
 Achan, personage in Ahabat 
 Ziyyon, 143. 
 
 " Adoni-bezek," fable by Gordon, 
 203-4. 
 
 ^sop, translated by Gordon. -177. 
 
 Agricultural colonies, and Levin- 
 sohn, 123. 
 
 Agriculture, urged for Jews, 207. 
 
 Aguilar, Grace, Hebrew transla- 
 tion of tale by, 243. 
 
 'Agunah, forsaken wife, 191. 
 
 Ahabat David u-Michal. See 
 " David and Michal." 
 
 Ahabat Ziyyon, romance by 
 Mapu, 140; success of, 140; 
 effect of, 141; contents of, 
 141-6; characteristics of, 146; 
 lesson of, 147-8; impression 
 made by, 148-9; effect of, on 
 Hebrew, 149-50. 
 
 Ahad ha-'Am, essayist, influenced 
 by Krochmal, 68; character- 
 ized, 281. 
 
 Ahaz, King, personage in Ahabat 
 Ziyyon 14.2. 
 
 Aher, the Jewish Faust, 72. 
 
 Ahiasaf , publishing society, 278. 
 
 Ahijah ha-Shiloni, work by Levin- 
 sohn, 122. 
 
 Ahoti Ruhamah, poem by Gordon, 
 201. 
 
 Albo, studied by the Lithuanian 
 Jews, 99. 
 
 Alexander I, of Russia, and the 
 Jews, 100, 101; reforms of, 
 abortive, 125. 
 
 Alexander II, of Russia, liberality 
 
 of, 159; reforms of, 178. 
 Alim le-Terufah, a part of the 
 
 Biur, 30 (n.). 
 
 Alliance Israelite Universette, the, 
 employs Smolenskin, 246. 
 
 Almanzi, Joseph, poet, 82. 
 
 Alsace, refugees from, 33; Hebrew 
 literature in, 48. 
 
 "Amal and Tirzah," drama by 
 Shalom Hacohen, 40. 
 
 America, emigration to, 272; He- 
 brew in, 277. 
 
 'Am ha-Ares, scorn for the, 94. 
 
 'Ammude Bet-Yehudah, by Hur- 
 witz, 98. 
 
 Amnon, personage in Ahabat 
 Ziyyon, 144. 
 
 'Am 'Olam, by Smolenskin, 230-4. 
 
 Amon Padgug, manual by Mapu, 
 152. 
 
 Amsterdam, M. H. Luzzatto in, 
 27; Hebrew literature in, 76. 
 
 Anti-Semitism, predicted by Smo- 
 lenskin, 265. 
 
 Apikoros, applied to Lilienblum, 
 211. 
 
 Arabic prosody, and Hebrew, 20. 
 
 Arba' Kosot, elegy by Pappen- 
 heim, 39. 
 
 Aristotle, alluded to, 89. 
 
 Asaph, Psalmist, alluded to, 43. 
 
 Asenatli Bat-Poti-pherah, poem by 
 Gordon, 177. 
 
 Ashakk<j de-Rispak, satire by Gor- 
 don, 193-4. 
 
 Ashmat Shomeron, novel by Ma- 
 pu, 150-1; technical faults of, 
 151; character in, 166. 
 
 " Assembly of Israel, The," an- 
 nual, 276. 
 
 " Assembly of the Dead, The," by 
 Lilienblum, 216. 
 
 " Athaliah's Recompense," drama 
 by Mendes, 38. 
 
 Auerbach, Smolenskin compared 
 with, 252, 269. 
 
 Austria, modern Hebrew litera- 
 ture in, 16; Hebrew journals 
 in, 161. 
 
 " Auto-Emancipation," by Pins- 
 ker, 202, 274. 
 
 289
 
 INDEX 
 
 " Avenging Sword of the Cove- 
 nant, The," pamphlet by 
 Bresselau, 78. 
 
 'Ayit Zabua', novel by Mapu, 152, 
 165-9; criticised by Lilien- 
 blum, 238. 
 
 Azariah dei Rossi, Italian Hebrew 
 author, 19. 
 
 Azrikam, personage in Ahabat 
 Ziyyon, 143. 
 
 Baal-Shem, character in a novel 
 
 by- Smolenskin, 250. 
 Bacher, Simon, poet, 79 (n.). 
 Bacher, Wilhelm, alluded to, 79 
 
 (n.). 
 Bar Kokbah, romance on, by K. 
 
 Schulman, 129. 
 
 Basle, in a poem by Wessely, 33- 
 Bath-shua, personage in one of 
 
 Gordon's poems, 191. 
 Batlan, the, in 'Ayit Zabua*, 167. 
 " Beginning and the End of a 
 
 Quarrel, The," novel by 
 
 Brandstatter, 239. 
 Behalah : the, 125; the Yeshibah 
 
 during, 262; described by 
 
 Smolenskin, 265-8. 
 Ben-Avigdor, Abraham L., writer, 
 
 278, 281. 
 Bene ha-Ne'urim, by Jeiteles, 78 
 
 (n.). 
 Ben-Jehudah, Eliezer, articles by, 
 
 246; establishes himself in 
 
 Palestine, 272; share of, in 
 
 the rehabilitation of Hebrew, 
 
 277; editor of Ha-Zebi, 277. 
 Ben Shinne Arayot, historical 
 
 poem by Gordon, 180-2. 
 Ben Sira, Hebrew version of, by 
 
 Ben-Zeeb, 43. 
 Ben-Zebi, contributor to Ha- 
 
 Shahar, 240, 241. 
 Ben-Zeeb, Judah, grammarian, 
 
 42-3; ode by, 49-50 (n.). 
 Berditchevsky, M. J., story writer, 
 
 280, 282. 
 Berlin, associations of Maskilitn 
 
 in, 29. 
 " Berliners," the, a literary circle 
 
 in Wilna, 104. 
 Bernfeld, S., on S. D. Luzzatto, 
 
 86; popular writer, 282. 
 Bernstein, Jehiel, contributor to 
 
 Ha-Shahar, 242. 
 Berschadsky, writer, 280. 
 " Beruriah," by Mulder, 77. 
 Bet ha-Osar, work by S. D. Luz- 
 zatto, 91. 
 
 " Between the Teeth of the Lions," 
 historical poem by Gordon, 
 180-2. 
 
 Bet-Yehudah, work by Levinsohn, 
 121. 
 
 Bialik, Hayyim N., poet, 280. 
 
 Bible, the, translated into Ger- 
 man, 31. 
 
 Bible criticism in Hebrew, 208. 
 
 Biblical Concordance, by Mandel- 
 kern, 239. 
 
 Bick, Jacob Samuel, a Hasid, 81 
 (n.). 
 
 Bikkure ha-'Ittim, Hebrew pe- 
 riodical, 40, 56; Rapoport con- 
 tributor to, 58, 59, 61. 
 
 Bikkure ha-Shanah, Hebrew pe- 
 riodical, 56. 
 
 Bikkure To'elet, Hebrew periodi- 
 cal, 42, 77. 
 
 BILU, a group of Palestinian im- 
 migrants, 273. 
 
 Bi-Mesulot Yam, historical poem 
 by Gordon, 182-4. 
 
 Biographies, in Ha-Meassef, 33, 
 39- 
 
 Biur, the, commentary on the 
 Bible, 30 (and n.), 31, 41. 
 
 Biurists, the, a school of Jewish 
 " intellectuals," 30, 31, 42. 
 
 Bloch, Samson, Galician writer, 
 
 Blumenfeld, editor of Osar Neh- 
 mad, 56. 
 
 Boccaccio, alluded to, 18. 
 
 Bodek, publisher, 76. 
 
 " Book of Essays, A," by Judah 
 Hurwitz, 98. 
 
 "Book of the Covenant. The," 
 encyclopedia, by Elias of 
 Wilna, 99. 
 
 Borne, Erter compared with, 70-1. 
 
 Bossuet, alluded to, 88. 
 
 " Bouquet of Flowers, A," by 
 Kowner, 209. 
 
 Brainin, Reuben, references to, 
 150 (n.), 246 (n.), writer, 
 283. 
 
 Brandstatter, Mordecai D., novel- 
 ist, 238-9. 
 
 Braudes, Reuben Asher, a Zionist, 
 200, 273; novels by, 216-17 
 (and n.) ; contributor to Ha- 
 Shahar, 242. 
 
 Bresjau, associations of Maskilim 
 in, 30. 
 
 Bresselau, Melr Israel, pamphlet 
 by, 77-8. 
 
 290
 
 INDEX 
 
 Brest, headquarters of " The Syn- 
 od of the Four Countries," 
 93- 
 
 Brody, Erter in, 70; a literary 
 centre, 78 (n.); Levinsohn in, 
 121 ; the seat of the anti- 
 religious propaganda, 208. 
 
 Buckle, alluded to, 61. 
 
 Buda-Pesth, Erter in, 70. 
 
 Burgher, the, in 'Ayit Zabua', 168. 
 
 " Burial of the Ass, The," novel 
 by Smolenskin, 265-8. 
 
 Cahen, M., contributor to Ha- 
 Shahar, 240-1. 
 
 " Cain," poem by Gottlober, 153. 
 
 Castigliom, Vittorio, editor of 
 Rachel Morpurgo's poems, 83; 
 disciple of S. D. Luzzatto, 91. 
 
 Catherine II, of Russia, at 
 Shklow, 100 (n.). 
 
 Censorship of Hebrew books, and 
 Levinsohn, 123. 
 
 Cervantes, alluded to, 72, 249.-' 
 
 " Characterization of the Rabbis," 
 work by Mises, 75. 
 
 Chateaubriand, alluded to, 86. 
 
 Children, levied for the army in 
 Russia, 124. 
 
 " Children of My Spirit, The," by 
 Pines, 220-1. 
 
 Chwolson, contributor to Ha- 
 Shahar, 241. 
 
 " Clear Morning, The." See Ha- 
 Boker Or. 
 
 " Collected Writings of Gordon," 
 199. 
 
 " Collector, The," annual, 276. 
 
 " Collector, The." See Ha-Meas- 
 sef. _ 
 
 Conscription, military, and the 
 
 Kahal, 125. 
 See also Military service. 
 
 Conservatism, defended, 219-23. 
 See also Rabbinism; Orthodox, 
 the. 
 
 Cossack invasion of Lithuania, 94. 
 
 Cossacks, the, insurrection of, 53. 
 
 Cremieux, Adolphe, and Smolen- 
 skin, 246. 
 
 Crimean War, the, the Jews in- 
 terested in, 1 60. 
 
 Culture, Society for the Promo- 
 tion of, Gordon secretary of, 
 174; purpose of, 207. 
 
 " Curtains of Solomon, The," 
 work by Pappenheim, 40. 
 
 Daily Hebrew press, 276-7. 
 
 Damascus, Ginzburg on ritual 
 
 murder accusation at, 118. 
 Dante, alluded to, 18. 
 " Dark Valley, The," poem by 
 
 Rachel Morpurgo, 84. 
 " David and Barzillai," poem by 
 
 Gordon, 176-7. 
 " David and Bath-sheba," poem by 
 
 Lebensohn, 107. 
 " David and Michal," poem by 
 
 Gordon, 156, 175-6. 
 Davidson, Dr. Israel, on parodies, 
 
 56 (n.). 
 
 " Day, The." See Ha-Yom. 
 " Day of Atonement, The," chap- 
 ter in a novel by Smolenskin, 
 
 264. 
 
 : ' Daybreak." See Ha-Shahar. 
 " Death Agony, The," poem by 
 
 Lebensohn, 112. 
 Debir, by Ginzburg, 118. 
 " Deer, The." See Ha-Zebi. 
 " Delicious Vineyard, The." See 
 
 Keretn Hemed. 
 " Delightful Treasure, The." See 
 
 Osar Nehmad. 
 Delmedigo. See Joseph Del- 
 
 medigo. 
 Derenburg, Hartwig, author, 40 
 
 (n.). 
 " Destruction of Troy, The," by 
 
 Schiller, in Hebrew, 131. 
 Dibre Shalom via-Emet, work by 
 
 Wessely, 37. 
 Dibre Yeme Russia, by Mandel- 
 
 kern, 240} 
 Dickens, Smolenskin compared 
 
 with, 252. 
 Dictionary, Hebrew-German, by 
 
 Ben-Zeeb, 43. 
 Dimyon, personage in Luzzatto's 
 
 drama, 24. 
 " Doctor Alfasi," novel by Brand- 
 
 statter, 239. 
 
 Dolitzki, Menahem M., contribu- 
 tor to Ha-Shahar, 242; elegiac 
 
 poet, 279. 
 Dor Dor we-Doreshaw, by Weiss, 
 
 242. 
 " Dot on the I, The," poem by 
 
 Gordon. 189-93. 
 " Drops ot Poetry," work by 
 
 Samoscz, 55. 
 Dubno, Solomon, Biurist, works 
 
 by, 42. 
 
 " Eagle, The." See Ha-Nesher. 
 Education, Jewish, reforms urged 
 in, 207. 
 
 291
 
 INDEX 
 
 Efes-Dammim, work by Levinsohn, 
 
 122. 
 
 Efrati, Joseph, dramatist, 75. 
 Eichenbaum, Isaac, poet, 119, 120. 
 Eismann, Moses, 274. 
 Elementary schools, Jewish, and 
 
 Levinsohn, 123. 
 " Elements of the Sciences, The," 
 
 treatise by Baruch Lindau, 41. 
 Elias, of Wilna, encyclopedia by, 
 
 99- 
 
 Elijah Levita, Italian Hebrew au- 
 thor, 19. 
 Elijah of Wilna, greatness of, 97, 
 
 102; opposes Hasidism, 97-8; 
 
 attitude of, 98; works by, 98; 
 
 and the Haskalah, 103. 
 Elisha ben Abuyah, the Jewish 
 
 Faust, 72. 
 El Ro'e Yisrael, pamphlet by Herz 
 
 Homberg, 41. 
 Emancipation, the, of the Jews, 
 
 served by Hebrew, 16-17; in 
 
 Germany, 29-31; intellectual, 
 
 in Russia, 163. 
 'Entek 'Akor, poem by Rachel 
 
 Morpurgo, 84. 
 Emet, personage in Lebensohn's 
 
 drama, 114, 116. 
 Emet we-Emunah, drama by Le- 
 
 bensohn, 1 14. 
 Emunah, personage in Lebensohn's 
 
 drama, 114, 116. 
 Ensheim, Hebrew poet, 48. 
 Epigrams, 78. 
 
 'Erek Millin, Talmudic encyclo- 
 pedia by Rapoport, 62. 
 Erter, Isaac, editor of He-Halus, 
 
 56, 208; youth and education 
 
 of, 69; friends of, 69-70; 
 
 works of, 70; style of, 70-1; 
 
 as satirist, 71-2; alluded to, 
 
 80. 
 " Esther," by Racine, translated 
 
 by Rapoport, 58, 60. 
 Esther, character in a novel by 
 
 Smolenskin, 267. 
 " Eternal People, The," by 
 
 Smolenskin, 230-4. 
 " Eternity of Israel, The," poem 
 
 by Gottlober, 153. 
 Euchel, Isaac, chief editor of Ha- 
 
 Meassef, 41. 
 Exodus, the, poem by Wessely, 35. 
 
 Fabi, personage in a poem by Gor- 
 don, 192. 
 Fables, by Gordon, 177-8. 
 
 " Face of the World, The," by 
 
 Moses Mendelsohn, 78. 
 " Fathers and Sons," novel by 
 
 S. J. Abramowitsch, 169, 170. 
 Faust, translated by Letteris, 72; 
 
 Letteris's Hebrew version of, 
 
 criticised, 210, 226. 
 Feder, Tobias, Galician writer, 55. 
 Feierberg, writer, 280. 
 Fiction in Hebrew, translations, 
 
 134- 
 Finn, Samuel Joseph, editor of 
 
 Hq-Karmel, 162. 
 
 Firkovich, Abraham, writer, 119. 
 " First Fruits of the Times, The." 
 
 See Bikkure ha-'Ittim. 
 " First Fruits of the Year, The." 
 
 See Bikkure ha-Shanah. 
 Fischmann, publisher, 76. 
 " Flock of the Lord, The," poem 
 
 by Gordon, 202. 
 Folklore, in Hebrew, 127. 
 " For a Trifle," satire by Gordon, 
 
 193-4- 
 " Four Cups, The," elegy by 
 
 Pappenheim, 39. 
 " Four Seasons, The," poem by 
 
 Eichenbaum, 120. 
 France, Hebrew literature in, 48. 
 Frances brothers, the, Italian He- 
 brew authors, 19. 
 Frankel, works of, translated into 
 
 Hebrew, 76; on the necessity 
 
 of Hebrew, 77. 
 Franzos, Karl Emil, Brandstatter 
 
 compared with, 239. 
 French Revolution, the, alluded 
 
 to, 10; and Ha-Meassef, 34; 
 
 and the Jews, 48-50. 
 Friedberg, A., a devotee of the 
 
 Melizah, 243. 
 Friedlander, David, follower of 
 
 Mendelssohn, 41. 
 Frischmann, David, critic, 281. 
 
 Gaal, personage in 'Ayit Zabua", 
 167. 
 
 Gadiel, personage in 'Ayit Zabua', 
 1 66. 
 
 Galicia, the Haskalah in, 55; the 
 work of the Maskilim in, 
 80- 1 ; litterateurs from, in 
 Russia, 119; Hebrew journals 
 in, 161; Hebrew in, 285. 
 
 Galician writers influence Levin- 
 sohn, 121. 
 
 Can Na'ul. work by Wessely, 36. 
 
 " Gaon, The." See Elijah of 
 Wilna. 
 
 292
 
 INDEX 
 
 Goon we-Sheber, by Sraolenskin, 
 268. 
 
 " Gates of Zion, The." See 
 Sha'are Ziyyon. 
 
 Geiger, Abraham, works of, trans- 
 lated into Hebrew, 76; on the 
 necessity for Hebrew, 77; 
 Bible critic, 209; assailed by 
 Fabius Mises, 220. 
 
 Gemul Athaliah, drama by Men- 
 des, 38. 
 
 Gemul Yesharim, novel by Smolen- 
 skin, 268. 
 
 German, Jewish translation of the 
 Bible into, 31. 
 
 Germany, modern Hebrew litera- 
 ture in, 1 6, 76, 77; M. H. 
 Luzzatto in, 27; Jewish eman- 
 cipation in, 29-31; Jews from, 
 emigrate to Poland, 52. 
 
 Geschichte der jiidisclien Literatur, 
 by Karpeles, referred to, 19 
 (n.). 
 
 Gideon, character in a noveV by 
 Smolenskin, 264. 
 
 Ginzburg, Mordecai Aaron, writer, 
 style of, 117, 130; place of, 
 in Hebrew literature, 118; 
 works by, 118; creates a He- 
 brew-reading public, 118; and 
 Mandejstamm, 156. 
 
 " Gleams in the Darkness," by 
 Gottlober, 154. 
 
 " Glory to the Righteous," drama, 
 by Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, 
 16 (n.), 23-6. 
 See also La-Yesharim Tehillah. 
 
 Goethe, Faust by, translated by 
 
 Letteris, 72. 
 See also Faust. 
 
 Goldenberg, editor of Kerem 
 Honed, 56. 
 
 Goldin, writer, 280. 
 
 Gordon, David, editor of Ha-Mag- 
 gid, 161; Zionist, 220. 
 
 Gordon, Judah Leon, on S. D. 
 Luzzatto, 92 ; as a romantic 
 poet, 156; contributor to Ha- 
 Maggid. 161; a realist poet, 
 171; education of, 172-3; lin- 
 guistic attainments of, 173; 
 and the two Lebensohns, 173; 
 as teacher, 174; as communal 
 secretary, 174; as editor, 174; 
 poems by, 175-?; fables by, 
 177-8, 198, 203-4; as reformer, 
 178-80; historical poems by, 
 1 80-6; attacks Rabbinism, 181, 
 206, 207; on the trials of the 
 
 Jews, 182-4; on the ruin of 
 the Jewish State, 184-6; poem 
 by, to Smolenskin, 186-8; as 
 a moralist, 188; realistic style 
 of, 188-9; satires by, 189-98; 
 on the Jewish woman, 189-91; 
 on the Kahal, 195-7; on the 
 Jewish student, 197-8; tales 
 by, 198-9; effect of the re- 
 action on, 199-204; poem by, 
 to Pinsker, 202; articles by, 
 203; twenty-fifth anniversary 
 of, 204-5; on the death of 
 Smolenskin, 205; contributor 
 to Ha-Shahar, 238; alluded to, 
 212, 252; bias of, 218; a Zion- 
 istic poem by, 272. 
 
 Gordon, S. L., writer, 280. 
 
 Gottlober, Abraham Bar, poet, 
 119, 152-4; influences acting 
 on, 153; poems by, 153-4; 
 periodical by, 154; a Mehab- 
 ber, 154; editor of Ha-Boker 
 Or, 242. 
 
 Graber, editor of S. D. Luzzatto's 
 Letters, 91. 
 
 " Greatness and Ruin," by Smolen- 
 skin, 268. 
 
 " Guide of the Perplexed of Mod- 
 ern Times, The," by Kroch- 
 mal, 63-8. 
 
 Gurland, contributor to Ha-Shahar, 
 241. 
 
 Ha-Abot weka-Banim, novel by 
 S. J. Abramowitsch, 169, 170. 
 
 Ha-Arez, by Jawitz, 282 (n.)- 
 
 Ha-Boker Or, monthly review, 
 154; Braudes contributor to, 
 217; rival to Ha-Shahar, 234; 
 stronghold of humanism, 24.2. 
 
 Hacohen, Shalom, editor of Ha- 
 Meassef, 34 (n.), 40; works 
 by, 40; editor of Bikkure ha- 
 'Ittim, 56. 
 
 Ha-Dat weha-Hayyim, novel by 
 Braudes, 217 (n.). 
 
 Ha-Emet, Hebrew periodical, 244. 
 
 Ha-Gemul, first novel by Smolen- 
 skin, 248. 
 
 Haggith, personage in Ahabat 
 Ziyyon, 142. 
 
 Ha-Habaszelet, Hebrew periodical, 
 defender of conservatism, 219, 
 244. 
 
 Ha-Higgayon, work by M. H. 
 Luzzatto, 26. 
 
 Ha-'Ibri, Hebrew periodical, 162. 
 
 293
 
 INDEX 
 
 Ha-Karmel, Hebrew periodical, 
 162. 
 
 Ha-Ketab weha-Miktab, work by 
 Abraham Krochmal, 208 (n.). 
 
 Hakizah 'Ammi, poem by Gordon, 
 179. 
 
 Ha-Kol, Hebrew periodical, 208; 
 defender of reform, 219, 244. 
 
 Hakundus, parody, 57 (n.).. 
 
 Ha-Lebanon, Hebrew periodical, 
 defender of conservatism, 
 219; Pines contributor to, 
 220. 
 
 Halevy, Elie Halfan, poet, 48-9. 
 
 Halevy, Joseph, contributor to Ha- 
 Maggid, tot. 
 
 Halevy, Ludovic, grandfather of, 
 48. 
 
 Ha-Mabbit, weekly edited by 
 Smolenskin, 244. 
 
 Ha-Maggid, Hebrew political jour- 
 nal, 160-1; contributors to, 
 161; defender of conservatism, 
 219, 220. 
 
 Hamat Damesek, by Ginzburg, 
 118. 
 
 Hamburg, associations of Maski- 
 lim in, 29-30. 
 
 Ha-Meassef, Hebrew periodical, 
 30; aims of, 31-2; literary 
 value of, 32-4; fortunes of, 
 34 (and n.) ; contributors to, 
 38, 39, 40-1, 42; chief editor 
 of, 41; compared with other 
 Hebrew periodicals, 57. 
 See also Meassefim, the. 
 
 Ha-Mebasser, Hebrew periodical, 
 162. 
 
 Ha-Melis, Hebrew periodical, 162; 
 J. L. Gordon editor of, 174; 
 articles by Gordon in, 203; 
 Lilienblum contributor to, 
 aip; defender of reform, 219; 
 Mises contributor to, 220; 
 rejects a novel of Smolen- 
 skin, 248; changed into a 
 daily, 276; Rabinovich editor 
 of, 283. 
 
 Hamon, personage in Lebensohn's 
 drama, 114. 
 
 Hamon, personage in Luzzatto's 
 drama, 24. 
 
 Hananel, Rabbenu, biography of, 
 by Rapoport, 61. 
 
 Hananel, personage in Ahabat 
 Ziyyon, 143. 
 
 Ha-Nesher, Hebrew periodical, 
 162. 
 
 " Hanger of the Yod, The," poem 
 by Gordon, 189-93. 
 
 Ha-Pardes, 281. 
 
 Harizi, alluded to, 78. 
 
 Harkavy, contributor to Ha-Sha- 
 har, 241. 
 
 Ha-Roeh u-Mebakker, critical 
 work, 75-6. 
 
 " Harp of Rachel, The," poems 
 by Rachel Morpurgo, 83. 
 
 " Harp of the Daughter of Zion, 
 The," poems by M. J. Leben- 
 sohn, 133. 
 
 Ha-Shahar, Hebrew periodical, 
 1 86; published by Smolen- 
 skin, 228; spokesman of the 
 Maskilim, 229; publishes 
 Smolenskin's great novel, 
 230; rival to, 234; combats 
 obscurantism, 237-8; contribu- 
 tors to, 238-42, 246; influence 
 of, 242, 247; centre of a syn- 
 thetic movement, 245; Smo- 
 lenskin's novels published in, 
 249, 268; end of, 275. 
 
 Ha-Shiloah, Hebrew review, 281. 
 
 Hasidim, the, characterized, 54 
 (and n.); causes for the 
 rapid increase of, 54; strength 
 of, 80; pamphlet against, by 
 Rapoport, 59, 69; reminis- 
 cences of, by Gottlober, 154; 
 persecute Lilienblum, 211; 
 depicted by Brandstatter, 239; 
 influenced by the daily He- 
 brew press, 277; and Zionism, 
 286-7. 
 See also Hasidism. 
 
 Hasidism, pamphlet against, by 
 Tobias Feder, 55; parody on, 
 56 (n.); satire against, by 
 Erter, 70, 71; progress of, 76; 
 opposed by Jeiteles, 78; Elijah 
 of Wilna opposes, 97-8; op- 
 posed by Judah Hurwitz, 9_8; 
 Mapu saved from, 136; his- 
 tory of, by Gottlober, 154; 
 depicted by S. J. Abramo- 
 witsch, 170; Kahana on, 241. 
 See' also Hasidim, the. 
 
 Haskalah, defined, 32 (n.) ; and 
 the evolution of Judaism, 46; 
 in Poland, 55; Rapoport pro- 
 moter of, 60; Erter devotee 
 of, 69; in Lithuania, 103, 
 140, 164; absence of, a degra- 
 dation, 113; earlier and later 
 character of, 165; and Gor- 
 
 294
 
 INDEX 
 
 don, 179; opposed by the 
 orthodox, 180. 
 
 See also Humanism; Maskilim, 
 the. 
 
 Ha-To'eh be-Darke ha-Hayyim, 
 novel by Smolenskin, begun, 
 226, 248; published in Ha- 
 Shahar, 230, 249: introduction 
 to, on translations, 243; ana- 
 lyzed, 249-64; faults of, 25:; 
 style of, 252; addition to, 
 264-5. 
 
 Hattot Ne'urim, autobiography of 
 Lilienblum, 211-16; extracts 
 from, 211-12, 215-16, 217-18. 
 
 Ha-Yweah, Hebrew periodical, 
 244. 
 
 Ha-Yerushah, novel by Smolen- 
 skin, 268-9. 
 
 Ha-Yom, daily Hebrew paper, 276. 
 
 Hayyim Jacob, personage in a 
 novel by Smolenskin, 265. 
 
 Ha-Zebi, Hebrew periodical, 2^7. 
 
 Ha-Zefirah, Hebrew periodical, 
 56. 
 
 Ha-Zefirah, Hebrew periodical, 
 162; edited by Sokolow, 276, 
 282; changed into a daily, 
 276. 
 
 Ha-Zofeh be-Eres Nod, Hebrew 
 periodical, 244. 
 
 Ha-Zofeh le-Bet Yisrael, essays by 
 Erter, 70. 
 
 Hazon la-Mo'ed, book of travels 
 by Mandelstamm, 155. 
 
 He-Asif, annual, 276. 
 
 Hebrah Kadisha, 266. 
 
 Hebrew, considered a dead lan- 
 guage, 9-10; character of 
 modern literature in, 10, n- 
 12; instrument of propaganda, 
 ii ; national return to, 12, 16; 
 extolled by Mendes, 38; in- 
 fluence of the Meassefim on, 
 47; spread of, in Slavic coun- 
 tries, 5 1 ; used for pleas for 
 the abolition of Hebrew, 77; 
 Lebensohn on, 106-7; addi- 
 tions to, 117-18; public for, 
 created by Ginzburg, 119; 
 cultivated by the Lithuanian 
 Jews, 126-7; cause of, ad- 
 vanced by Kalman Schulman, 
 129, 130; advanced by Aha- 
 bat Ziyyon, 149-50; modern- 
 ization of, according to Ha- 
 levy, 161; modernized by 
 S. J. Abraraowitsch, 170; 
 
 used for Bible criticism, 208; 
 rehabilitated as the vernacular 
 of Palestine, 277-8; new for- 
 mations in, 278; vitality of, 
 284-5. 
 
 " Hebrew, The." See Ha-'Ibri. 
 
 Hebrew-German dictionary, by 
 Ben-Zeeb, 42. 
 
 Hebrew literature, modern, char- 
 acter of, 10, 11-12, 275-6; 
 illustrative of a social psy- 
 chology, 13-14; pessimism and 
 optimism of, 13; defective in 
 form, 14; monographs on, 15 
 (n.); stages of, 16; place of 
 M. H. Luzzatto in, 28; orderly 
 development of, 157; stimulat- 
 ed, 274; rank of, in Russia, 
 283; opposes Rabbinism, 285- 
 6; Zionism predominant in, 
 286: task and possibilities of, 
 287-8. 
 
 Hebrew periodicals, 161-3; in- 
 fluence of, 163; promote re- 
 forms, 208; characterized by 
 Lilienblum, 216. 
 
 Hedarim, the, neglected, 163. 
 
 Heder, the, described by Smolen- 
 skin, 253-5. 
 
 Hegel, influences Krochmal, 64, 
 65, 66, 67. 
 
 He-Halus, Hebrew periodical, 56, 
 6p; organ of the anti-Rab- 
 binic propaganda, 208. 219; 
 the school of, opposed by 
 Fabius Mises, 220. 
 
 Heine, Erter compared with, 70-1; 
 alluded to, 88, 120; analyzed 
 by Lazarus Schulman, 241. 
 
 Heker Dabar, by Kowner, 209. 
 
 Heller, contributor to Ha-Shaliar, 
 238. 
 
 " Herald, The." See Ha-Maggid. 
 
 Hereb Nokemet Nekam Berit, 
 pamphlet by Bresselau, 77-8. 
 
 Hess, alluded to, 232. 
 
 Hezekiah, King, personage in 
 Ahabat Ziyyon, 145. 
 
 Higgayon be-Kinnor, poems by 
 Almanzi, 82. 
 
 Hillel, personage in a poem by 
 Gordon, 192. 
 
 History, Jewish, a philosophy of, 
 by Krochmal, 65-8. 
 
 " History of the Jews," by Jawitz, 
 282 (n.). 
 
 Hokmah, personage in Leben- 
 sohn's drama, 116. 
 
 Holland, Hebrew literature in, 76. 
 
 295
 
 INDEX 
 
 Holy Land, the, the Jews love for, 
 
 explained by Rapoport, 61-2. 
 See also Palestine. 
 
 " Holy Vengeance," last novel by 
 Smolenskin, 269. 
 
 Homberg, Herz, follower of Men- 
 delssohn, 41. 
 
 " Hope of Israel, The," chapter 
 in a work by Smolenskin, 
 231-2. 
 
 " House of Judah, The," work by 
 Levinsohn, 121. 
 
 " Huldah and Bor," poem by 
 Werbel, 155. 
 
 Humanism, a harmonization, 219; 
 inefficacious, 222-3; defended 
 in Ha-Boker Or, 242; char- 
 acterized, 275, 284-5; an d 
 Rabbinism, 286. 
 
 See also Haskalah, the; Maski- 
 lim : the; Meassefim, the. 
 
 Humanist centres in Lithuania, 
 140. 
 
 Humanists, literary, among the 
 Jews, 1 1 ; the, stirred by Alex- 
 ander II's concessions, 159-60. 
 See also Haskalah, the; Maski- 
 lim, the; Meassefim, the. 
 
 Hungary, Hebrew literature in, 
 78-9. 
 
 Hurwitz, Judah, works by, 98-9. 
 
 " Hymn to Hypocrisy," satire by 
 Dubno, 42. 
 
 " Hymn to Peace," by Elie Hal fan 
 Haleyy, 48-9. 
 
 " Hypocrite, The." See 'Ayit 
 Zabua'. 
 
 'Illui, applied to Mapu, 136; to 
 
 J. L. Gordon, 172. 
 Imber, Naphtali Herz, poet, 279. 
 " In the Depths of the Sea," his- 
 torical poem by Gordon, 
 
 182-4. 
 " Inhabitants of the World, The," 
 
 drama by Derenburg, 40 (n.). 
 " Inheritance, The," novel by 
 
 Smolenskin, 268-9. 
 " Intellectuals," the. See Maski- 
 
 lim, the. 
 " Interpreter, The." See Ha- 
 
 Meliz. 
 " Investigations of the Land," 
 
 geography by Levinsohn, 79. 
 Isaiah, as drawn by Mapu, 147-8. 
 Ish-Naomi, pseudonym. See 
 
 Wechsler. 
 Italy, modern Hebrew literature 
 
 in, 1 6, 19-20, 47-8, 76, 82. 
 
 'lyyun Tefillah, work by Abraham 
 Krochmal, 208 (n.). 
 
 Jacob Meir, poet, 49 (n.). 
 
 " Jael and Sisera," poem by M. 
 
 J. Lebensohn, 132. 
 Jawitz, Wolf, writer, 281-2. 
 Jedidiah, character in a novel by 
 
 Smolenskin, 263. 
 Jedidiah, personage in Ahabat 
 
 Ziyyon, 142. 
 Jehudah Halevi, alluded to, 63; 
 
 S. D. Luzzatto editor of 
 
 poems of, 85-6; S. D. Luz- 
 zatto compared with, 90; 
 
 elegy on, by M. J. Lebensohn, 
 
 133- 
 
 Jeiteles, Judah, epigrammatist, 78. 
 Jellinek, works of, translated into 
 
 Hebrew, 76. 
 Terahmeel, personage in 'Ayit 
 
 Zabua', 167. 
 Jerusalem, Hebrew in the schools 
 
 of, 277. 
 " Jerusalem," Hebrew periodical, 
 
 56. 
 
 " Jerusalem," work by Mendels- 
 sohn, 41. 
 Jewish-German, the, objected to by 
 
 Mendelssohn, 31; used by 
 
 S. J. Abramowitsch, 170; a 
 
 rival of Hebrew, 284. 
 Jokai, Smolenskin compared with, 
 
 269. 
 
 Joram, personage in Ahabat Ziy- 
 yon, 142. 
 Joseph, personage in a novel by 
 
 Smolenskin, 249. 
 Joseph II, emperor, edict by, 37; 
 
 the reforms of, deprecated, 
 
 54- 
 Joseph ben Simon, personage in a 
 
 poem by Gordon, 196. 
 Joseph Delmedigo, Italian Hebrew 
 
 author, 19; biography of, in 
 
 Ha-Meassef, 33. 
 Jost, stimulated by Rapoport, 59; 
 
 criticised, 76, 89; reference 
 
 to, 87 (n.). 
 " Journey through Lithuania," 
 
 work by Slouschz, 93 (n.). 
 " Journey to Arabia," by Roma- 
 
 nelli, 48. 
 
 " Journey to Palestine," 281. 
 "Joy of the Hypocrite, The," 
 
 novel by Smolenskin, 248, 261. 
 Judaism, prophetical, attacked by 
 
 Gordon, 185; analyzed by 
 
 Smolenskin, 233. 
 
 296
 
 INDEX 
 
 Judeo-Roman wars, the, poem on, 
 
 by Gordon, 180. 
 " Judith," drama by Mendes, 39. 
 
 Kabbalah, the, studied by M. H. 
 Luzzatto, 21, 26; studied by 
 Lebensohn, 104; studied by 
 Mapu, 136; history of, by 
 Gottlober, 154. 
 
 Kahal, the, in Poland, 52; in Lith- 
 uania, 94; and military con- 
 scription, 125; suppressed, 
 159; Gordon on, 195-7; de- 
 scribed by Smolenskin, 265-8. 
 
 Kahana, A., writer, 283. 
 
 Kahana, David, contributor to Ha- 
 Shahar, 241. 
 
 Kahn, J., writer, 280. 
 
 Kahn, Zadoc, alluded to, 49 (n,). 
 
 Kalisher, Hirsch, contributor to 
 Ha-Macgid, 161. 
 
 Kant, alluded to, 42. 
 
 Kantor, Jehudah Lob, contributor 
 to Ha-Shahar, 242; editor of a 
 daily Hebrew paper, 276. 
 
 Karpeles, Gustav, referred to, 19 
 (n.). 
 
 Katzenelenson, J. L., writer, 282-3. 
 
 Keburat Hamor, novel by Smolen- 
 skin, 265-8. 
 
 Kehal Refaim, by Lilienblum, 216. 
 
 Keneset Yisrael, reference to, 155 
 (n.) ; annual, 276. 
 
 Kerem Hemed, Hebrew periodical, 
 56; Rapoport contributor to, 
 59- 
 
 Kinat ha-Emet, work by Judah 
 Mises, 75. 
 
 " King _ Zedekiah in Prison," his- 
 torical poem by Gordon, 184-6. 
 
 Kinnor Bat-Ziyyon, poems by M. 
 J. Lebensohn, 133. 
 
 Kinnor Na'im, poems by S. D. 
 Luzzatto, 86 (n.); Zionistic, 
 91. 
 
 Kishron ha-Ma'aseh^ poem by Je- 
 hudah Lob Levin, 240. 
 
 Klopstock, influences Wessely, 35. 
 
 " Knowledge and Death," poem by 
 Lebensohn, 112. 
 
 Kohen-Zedek, Joseph, editor of 
 Ha-Mebasser, 162. 
 
 Kokebe Yiskak, a periodical, 56. 
 
 Kol Kitbe Yehudah, by Gordon, 
 199. 
 
 Kol Shaw'at Bat-Yehudah, pam- 
 phlet by Nevakhovich, 101. 
 
 Kol Shire Mahalalel, poems by 
 Gottlober, 153. 
 
 Kol 'Ugab, Hebrew anthology, 82 
 (n.). 
 
 Kol Zimrah, poems by Eichen- 
 baum, 120. 
 
 Kowner, Abraham, controversial- 
 ist, 209. 
 
 Kowno, Mapu teacher at, 140. 
 
 Kozo shel Yod, satire by Gordon, 
 189-93. 
 
 Kremenetz, birthplace of Levin- 
 sohn, 121, 123. 
 
 Krochmal, Abraham, contributor 
 to He-Halus, 208; Bible 
 critic, 208-9. 
 
 Krochmal, Nahman, promoter of 
 the idea of the mission of the 
 Jewish people, 57, 63; in- 
 fluences Rapoport, 58; chief 
 work of, 63-8; life of, 63-4; 
 reason in the system of, 64-5; 
 on the Jewish people, 65-7; 
 influences writers, 68-9; en- 
 courages Erter, 69; alluded to, 
 80; compared with S. D. Luz- 
 zatto, 88. 
 
 Kryloff, translated by Gordon, 177. 
 
 La Fontaine, translated by Gor- 
 don, 177. 
 
 " Language of Learners, The," 
 work by M. H. Luzzatto, 21. 
 
 Latin, studied by Mapu, 137-8. 
 
 Law, the, study of, in Poland, 
 52-3; study of, in Lithuania, 
 94, 96, 97; causes ruin of the 
 nation, 186; fundamental idea 
 of, 211. 
 
 " Law and Philosophy, The," work 
 by Reggio, 82. 
 
 La-Yesharim Tehillah, drama by 
 M. H. Luzzatto, 23-6; imita- 
 tions of, 33 (n.). 
 See also " Glory to the Right- 
 eous." 
 
 Lebanon, by Wessely, 36. 
 
 Lebensohn, Abraham Bar, poet, 
 education of, 104; early poetry 
 of, characterized, 104-5; I' 16 
 and opinions of, 105-6; loves 
 the Hebrew language, 106-7; 
 influenced by German authors, 
 107; poems by, analyzed, 107- 
 13; collected poems by, 113; 
 on the degradation of the 
 Jews, 113-14; drama by, 114- 
 17, 169; Pessimism of, 126; 
 popularity of, 128; son of, 
 130; and Gordon, 173. 
 
 297
 
 INDEX 
 
 Lebensohn, Micah Joseph, poet, his 
 father on the death of, 112; 
 character and education of, 
 130-1 ; qualities of, as a writer, 
 131; works by, 131-4; death of, 
 134; Hebrew version of Ovid 
 by, 155; and Gordon, 173, 176. 
 
 Lemberg, birthplace of Rapoport, 
 58. 
 
 Leon. See Messer Leon. 
 
 Leon of Modena, Italian Hebrew 
 author, 19. 
 
 Lerner, scientific writer, 243, 281. 
 
 Les Mysteres de Paris, by Sue, in 
 Hebrew, 128, 140. 
 
 Leshon Lintmudim, work by M. H. 
 Luzzatto, 21. 
 
 Letteris, Meir Halevi, editor of 
 Migdal 'Os, 22 (n.); editor of 
 Erter's work, 70; lyric poet, 
 72; Hebrew version of Faust 
 oy> 7 2 "3i prose of, 73; poetic 
 style of, 73-5; alluded to, 80; 
 criticised by Smolenskin, 209- 
 10, 226. 
 
 " Letters from MohSlew," by M. 
 Cahen, 240-1. 
 
 " Letters from Palestine," by Ben- 
 Zebi, 241. 
 
 Levin, Jehudah Lob, poet, con- 
 tributor to Ha-Shahar, 240. 
 
 Levinski, A. L., writer, 281. 
 
 Levinsohn, Isaac Bar, writer and 
 emancipator, 121-3; works by, 
 121-2; as a litterateur, 122; as 
 a humanist, 123; disciple of, 
 .153- 
 
 Levinsohn, Solomon, poet, 79, 154. 
 
 Levisohn, Mordecai Gumpel, one 
 of the Meassefim, 41-2. 
 
 Levita. See Elijah Levita. 
 
 Lewinsohn, Joshua, contributor to 
 Ha-Shahar, 242. 
 
 " Life of Smolenskin," by Brainin, 
 referred to, 246 (n.). 
 
 Lilienblura, Moses Lob, contribu- 
 tor to Ha-Maggid l 161; a Zion- 
 ist, 200, 273; typical Lithuan- 
 ian scholar, 210; first work by, 
 210-11; autobiography of, 211- 
 16; influenced by Mapu, 213; 
 pamphlet by, 216; depicted in 
 a novel by Braudes, 216-17; 
 a type, 217; bias of, 218; and 
 Pines, 220-1; contributor to 
 Ha-Shahar, 238; alluded to, 
 240. 
 
 " Lily, The." See Ha-Habasselet. 
 
 Lindau, Baruch, one of the 
 ^ Meassefim, 41. 
 
 " Lips of Song, The," poems by 
 Jehudah Lob Levin, 240. 
 
 Lithuania, modern Hebrew litera- 
 ture in, 16; in "The Synod of 
 the Four Countries," 52 ; effect 
 of political reaction in, 124; 
 humanist centres in, 140; 
 small towns of, opposed to re- 
 forms, 164; the reform move- 
 ment in, 209-10; typical 
 scholar of, 210; Hebrew in, 
 285. 
 
 Lithuania, the Jews of, Talmudists, 
 93; organization of, 93-4; pov- 
 erty of, 95; occupations and 
 life of, 96, 99; and the Na- 
 poleonic wars, 102; and the 
 Haskalah, 103; rigorous meas- 
 ures against, 124-5; effect of 
 reaction on, 125-6. 
 
 " Little Fables for Big Children," 
 by Gordon, 198. 
 
 Little Poland, in " The Synod of 
 the Four Countries," 52. 
 
 Little Russia, in " The Synod of 
 the Four Countries," 52. 
 
 " Locked Garden, The," work by 
 Wessely, 36. 
 
 Lolli, Eude, disciple of S. D. Luz- 
 zatto, 91. 
 
 London, Smolenskin in, 227. 
 
 Loubochitzky, writer, 280. 
 
 " Loud Voice of the Daughter of 
 Judah, The," pamphlet by 
 Nevakhovich, 101. 
 
 " Love of Zion, The." See Ahabat 
 Ziyyon. 
 
 Lowe, editor of Ha-Meassef, 34 
 (n.). 
 
 Luther, alluded to, 234. 
 
 Luxuries, effect of, 113. 
 
 Luzzatto, Ephraim, poet^ 47-8. 
 
 Luzzatto, Moses Hayyim, poet, 
 Italian humanist, 16 (n.) ; 
 family of, 20; education of, 
 20-1 ; works of, 2i-6; end 
 of, 27; place of, in Hebrew 
 literature, 28; the Meassefim 
 disciples of, 33, 35, 38; in- 
 fluence of, on Lebensohn, 115; 
 as a Hebraist, 285. 
 
 Luzzatto, Samuel David, stimu- 
 lated by Rapoport, 59; criti- 
 cised, 76; the modern culture 
 of, 81-2; birth and education 
 of, 84-5; learning of, 85; as 
 editor, 85-6; as writer, 86; 
 
 298
 
 INDEX 
 
 romanticism of, 86, 157, 219, 
 285; on Jewish nationality, 86- 
 7; on the Science of Judaism, 
 87-8; on the Jewish religion, 
 88-9; on Jewish rationalism, 
 89-90; patriotism of, 90-1; dis- 
 ciples of, 91; works by, 91; in- 
 fluence of, on his contempo- 
 raries, 91-2; J. L. Gordon on, 
 92; contributor to Ha-Maggid. 
 161; alluded to, 195, 227, 232; 
 and Pines, 221; Smolenskin 
 compared with, 235. 
 
 Luzzatto family, the, Rachel Mor- 
 purgo of, 83. 
 
 Lyck, home of Ha-Maggid, 160. 
 
 " Lync Harp, The," by Almanzi, 
 '82. 
 
 Ma'arke Leshon Eber, by Joshua 
 Steinberg, 282 (n.). 
 
 Maggidim, the, preachers, 53. 
 
 Mahalalel, pseudonym. See Gott- 
 lober, Abraham Bar. 
 
 Mahasike ha-Dat, Hebrew periodi- 
 cal, 244. 
 
 Maitnon, Solomon, as a Hebrew 
 writer, 42; as a student of 
 German, 138. 
 
 Maimonides, alluded to, 41, 63; 
 criticised by S. D. Luzzatto, 
 89; studied by the Lithuanian 
 Jews, 99; criticised by Smolen- 
 skin, 233. 
 
 Malbim, defends the orthodox, 
 116-17. 
 
 Malherbe, alluded to, 36. 
 
 Mandelkern, Solomon, poet, con- 
 tributor to Ha-Shahar, 239-40. 
 
 Mandelstamm, Benjamin, writer, 
 155-6. 
 
 Manne, Mordecai Zebi, poet, 279. 
 
 Manual trades, cultivated by the 
 Jews, 163; urged for Jews, 
 207. 
 
 Mapu, Abraham, influenced by 
 Krochmal, 68; novelist, 134; 
 family of, 135, 140; youth and 
 education of, 135-6; marriage 
 of, 136; student of the Kabba- 
 lah, 136-7; studies the Bible 
 in Latin, 137-8; as tutor, 138- 
 9; modern languages studied 
 by, 139; influenced by Sue, 
 139; material suffering of, 
 140; first romance by, 140-50; 
 naivete of, 147; task accom- 
 plished by, 147-8; on the He- 
 brew language, 150; second 
 20 
 
 romance by, 150-1; technical 
 faults of, 151-2, 169; other 
 works by, 152; as emancipator, 
 165-9; overdraws his char- 
 acters, 167; idealizes the 
 burgher, 168; contrasts paint- 
 ed by, 168; as a Zionist, 169, 
 219; alluded to, 177; influ- 
 ences Lilienblum, 213; criti- 
 cised in Ha-Shahar, 238; 
 Brainin on, 28?. 
 
 Mapu, Mattathias, brother of the 
 novelist, 135, 140. 
 
 Martha, personage in a poem by 
 Gordon, 18 1. 
 
 Maskilim, the, humanists and in- 
 tellectuals, 12; associations of, 
 29-30; the master of, 37; ori- 
 gin of, 46; society of, in Am- 
 sterdam, 77; in Galicia, 80- 1; 
 attacked by Malbim, 117; as 
 depicted by Mapu, 168; typi- 
 fied in Lilienblum, 217-18; de- 
 scribed by Smolenskin, 263-4. 
 See also Haskalah; Humanism. 
 
 Massa' be-Lita, work by Slouschz, 
 93 (n.). 
 
 " Master of the Lyre and the 
 Cithern," poems by Letteris, 
 72 (n.). 
 
 " Master Pedagogue, The," manual 
 by Mapu, 152. 
 
 Matthan, personage in Ahabat Ziy- 
 yon, 143. 
 
 Maupassant, alluded to, in. 
 
 Meassefijn, the, a school of Jewish 
 " intellectuals," 30; origin of, 
 31; the most prominent of, 
 37; scientific writers among, 
 41-2; Polish authors among, 
 42; characterized, 44-6; in- 
 fluence of, on Hebrew, 47; in 
 France, 48-50; influence the 
 Polish Jewish scholars, 51, 55; 
 contrasted with the Hasidim, 
 54; Rapoport disciple of, 59- 
 60; in Hamburg, 78; influence 
 of, felt in Shklow, 101. 
 See also Ha-Meassef. 
 
 Megalle Temirin, parody by Perl, 
 56 (n.). 
 
 Megillat Sedarim, pamphlet by 
 Judah Hurwitz, 98. 
 
 Mehabber, the, vagabond author, 
 12, 81. 
 
 Mehkere Eres, geography by Levin- 
 sohn, 79. 
 
 Meir Lob ben Jehiel Michael. See 
 Malbim. 
 
 299
 
 INDEX 
 
 Melisah, the, stilted Hebrew _ style, 
 47; the epoch of, 126; in fic- 
 tion, 129; devotees of, 243. 
 
 Melisat Yeslrurun, a rhetoric by 
 Levinsohn, 79, 154. 
 
 Meluhat Shaiil, drama by Efrati, 
 
 Menahem ha-Sofer, novel by Ben- 
 Avigdor, 281. 
 
 Mendelsohn, Moses, of Hamburg, 
 one of the Meassefim, 78. 
 
 Mendelssohn, Moses, head of the 
 Biurists, 30; translates the 
 Bible into German, 31; inter- 
 ested in Ha-Meassef, 31; ar- 
 ticles of, in Ha-Meassef, 33-4, 
 40-1; works by, 41; biographi- 
 cal sketch of, 41; and dog- 
 matic principles, 46; Smolen- 
 skin opposes Jewish concepts 
 of, 232-3; defended by Gott- 
 lober, 234, 242; influence of, 
 deprecated by Smolenskin, 
 265. 
 
 Mendes, David Franco, poet, imi- 
 tator of M. H. Luzzatto, 28, 
 38; contributor to Ha-Meassef, 
 38; devotee of Hebrew litera- 
 ture, 38, 47; style of, 38-9; 
 imitated by Rapoport, 58; as a 
 Hebraist, 285. 
 
 Mesilat Yesharim, work by M. H. 
 Luzzatto, 26. 
 
 " Messenger, The." See Ha- 
 Mebasser. 
 
 Messer Leon, Italian Hebrew au- 
 thor, 19. 
 
 Messiah, the, M. H. Luzzatto in 
 the role of, 27. 
 
 Messiahs, the false, Kahana on, 
 241. 
 
 Messianic hope, the, among the 
 Jews of Poland, 57; disregard- 
 ed by the Maskilim, 80; de- 
 fined by Smolenskin, 232. 
 
 Messias, by Klopstock, influences 
 Wessely, 35. 
 
 Metchnikoff, E., alluded to, 101 
 (n.). 
 
 Midrash, the, drawn upon for mod- 
 ern Hebrew, 170; fables from, 
 used by Gordon, 177-8. 
 
 Migdal 'Oz, drama by M. H. Luz- 
 zatto, 21-3. 
 
 Mikal. See Lebensohn, Micah 
 Joseph. 
 
 Milhemet ha-Dat, by Fabius Mises, 
 
 220. 
 
 Military service, under Alexander 
 
 II, 159. 
 See also Conscription. 
 
 Mises, Fabius, defender of con- 
 servatism, 220; scientific 
 writer, 243 ; historian of phi- 
 losophy, 282. 
 
 Mises, Judah, writer, opposed by 
 Rapoport, 60; controversialist, 
 75-6- 
 
 Mishle Asaph, by Satanow, quoted, 
 43-4- 
 
 Mishle Yehudah, fables by Gor- 
 don, 177-8. 
 
 Mishnah, the, the language of, in 
 the modern Hebrew, 44. 
 
 Mishpat, personage in Luzzatto's 
 drama, 24. 
 
 Mission of the Jews, the, and his- 
 torical Judaism, 46; and 
 Krochmal, 58. 
 
 Mitnagged, defined, 211 (n.). 
 
 Moliere, alluded to, 115. 
 
 Monastryshchina, birthplace of 
 Smolenskin, 224. 
 
 Montefiore, alluded to, 113. 
 
 " Moon, The." See Ha-Yareah. 
 
 " Mordecai Kisowitz," novel by 
 Brandstatter, 239. 
 
 Moreh Nebuke ha-Zeman, by 
 Krochmal, 63-8. 
 
 " Morningstar, The." See Ha- 
 Zefirah. 
 
 Morpurgo, Rachel, poetess, 82, 
 83-4. 
 
 Moscow, Smolenskin in, 247. 
 
 Moses, alluded to, 89. 
 
 Moses, the Epic of, by Wessely, 
 35-6. 
 
 " Moses on Mount Abarim," poem 
 by M. J. Lebensohn, 132. 
 
 " Mourner," poem by Lebensohn, 
 109-10. 
 
 " Mourning Dove, The," by Let- 
 teris, popular, 128. 
 
 Mulder, Samuel, poet and scholar, 
 76-7. 
 
 Muller, David, contributor to Ha- 
 Shahar, 238. 
 
 " Mysteries of Paris, The." See 
 Les Mysteres de Paris. 
 
 Naakat Bat-Yehudah, poem by 
 
 Lebensohn, 112. 
 Naamah, personage in Ahabat Ziy- 
 
 yon, 142. 
 Nabal, personage in Ahabat Ziy- 
 
 yon, 143. 
 
 300
 
 INDEX 
 
 Napoleon, celebrated by Elie Hal- 
 fan Halevy, 48; on Wilna, 
 1 02. 
 
 Napoleonic conquests, the, and the 
 Jews, 48-50. 
 
 National Judaism, championed by 
 Smolenskin, 229-30, 230-4. 
 
 National regeneration, discussed in 
 Ha-Shahar, 246. 
 
 Nationalism, and modern Hebrew 
 literature, 12, 16-17. 
 
 Nekam Bent, last novel by Smolen- 
 skin, 269. 
 
 Netherlands, The, Hebrew litera- 
 ture in, 19. 
 
 Xeumark, David, writer on phi- 
 losophy, 282. 
 
 Xevakhovich, Lob, on the con- 
 tempt for Jews, 101-2. 
 
 Nczah Yisrael, poem by Gottlober, 
 i S3- 
 
 Nezem Zahab, poems by Almanzi, 
 82. * 
 
 Nicholas I, of Russia, od6 on, 
 107-8; and Levinsohn, 123; 
 and military conscription, 125. 
 
 " Night Thoughts," by Young, 
 imitated by Pappenheim, 39. 
 
 " No Blood! ", work by Levinsohn, 
 122. 
 
 Nourelle Hcloise, the Jewish, 14:, 
 149. 
 
 Nordau, Max, alluded to, 78 (n.). 
 
 Obscurantism, combated by Ha- 
 Shahar, 237-8. 
 
 " Observer, The." See Ha-Mabbit. 
 
 Odessa, a literary centre, 119; lit- 
 erary activity in, 152; life of 
 the Jews of, described by 
 Smolenskin, 268. 
 
 'Olam ha-Tohu, by Lilienblum, 
 238. 
 
 'Olam ke-Minhago, tale by Gordon, 
 199. 
 
 Orhot ha-Talmud, by Lilienblum, 
 210. 
 
 " Ornament of Gold," poems by 
 Almanzi, 82. 
 
 Or Nogah, satire by Lieberman, 77. 
 
 Ornstein, Moses, contributor to 
 Ha-Shahar, 242. 
 
 Orot me-Ofel, by Gottlober, 154 
 (n.). 
 
 Orthodox, the, defended, 116-17; 
 
 oppose the Haskalah, 180. 
 See also Conservatism; Rabbin- 
 ism; Talmudic Judaism. 
 
 " Othello," translated into He- 
 brew, 245. 
 
 Outdoor life, in Gordon's poems, 
 i"7- 
 
 Ovid, Hebrew version of, 155. 
 
 Ozar Nehmad, a periodical, 56- 
 
 Padua, birthplace of M. H. Luz- 
 zatto, 20. 
 
 Palestine, Hebrew literature in, 
 19; description of, by Bloch, 
 75', geography of, by Levin- 
 sohn, 79; Hebrew journals in, 
 161; emigration to, 272-3. 
 See also Holy Land, the. 
 
 Paperna, Abraham Jacob, critic, 
 209. 
 
 Pappenheim, Solomon, one of the 
 Meassefim, works by, 39-40. 
 
 ' Paradise," 281. 
 
 " Paradise Lost," translated into 
 Hebrew, 245. 
 
 Paris, Hebrew journals in, 161. 
 
 Parodies, in Hebrew literature, 
 56-7 (n.). 
 
 " Parody in Jewish Literature," 
 by Dr. Israel Davidson, 56 
 (n.). 
 
 Parusli, recluse, 192. 
 
 " Path of the Righteous, The," 
 work by M. H. Luzzatto, 26. 
 
 " Paths of the Talmud, The," by 
 Lilienblum, 210. 
 
 Pene Tebel, by Moses Mendelsohn, 
 78. 
 
 Peninnah, personage in Ahabat 
 Ziyyon, 144. 
 
 Perez, Isaac Lob, story writer, 
 280. 
 
 Periodicals. See Hebrew periodi- 
 cals. 
 
 Peri To'elet, Hebrew periodical, 
 S6. 
 
 Perl, Joseph, patron of Hebrew 
 letters, 55-6; on Hasidism, 56 
 (n.); patron of Rapoport, 59. 
 
 " Phaedon," work by Mendelssohn, 
 41- 
 
 Philosophy of Jewish History, a, 
 by Krochmal, 65-8. 
 
 " Pillars of the Faith, The." See 
 Mahasike ha-Dat. 
 
 " Pillars of the House of Judah, 
 The," by Hurwitz, 98-9. 
 
 Pines, Michael, conservative cham- 
 pion, 220-2; establishes him- 
 self in Palestine, 272. 
 
 Pines, N., writer, 280. 
 
 301
 
 INDEX 
 
 Pinsker, Leon, Gordon and, 202; 
 
 supports Palestinian emigra- 
 tion, 273-4. 
 
 Pinsker, Simhah, writer, 119. 
 " Pioneer, The." See He-Halus. 
 Piperno, Abraham Baruch, editor 
 
 of Italian Hebrew poetry, 82 
 
 (n.). 
 " Plaintive Dove, The," by Let- 
 
 teris, 74-5. 
 " Poems in the Holy Language," 
 
 by Lebensohn, 113. 
 " Poems of Jeshurun," by Shapiro, 
 
 279. 
 Poland, modern Hebrew literature 
 
 in, 16; in " The Synod of the 
 
 Four Countries," 52; the Has- 
 
 kalah in, 55. 
 Poland, the Jews of, organization 
 
 and traits of, 51-3; and Has- 
 
 kalah, 55; and the Science of 
 
 Judaism, 62-3; influenced by 
 
 Krochmal, 68. 
 Polish Rabbis, held in esteem, 20-1, 
 
 53- 
 Polish scholars, the, influenced by 
 
 the Meassefim, 51. 
 Poneviej, Gordon teacher at, 174. 
 Poriess, A., contributor to Ha- 
 
 Shahar, 242. 
 Prague, Rapoport Rabbi at, 59; a 
 
 literary centre, 78 (n.) ; 
 
 Smolenskin in, 227. 
 Primary instruction for Jews, 207. 
 " Principles of the Hebrew Lan- 
 
 uage, The," by Joshua Stein- 
 erg, 282 (n.). 
 
 Provence, the, Hebrew literature 
 in, 1 8. 
 
 Psalms, the, imitated by M. H. 
 Luzzatto, 26. 
 
 " Public Reproach," pamphlet by 
 Rapoport, 60. 
 
 Rabbinical seminaries established, 
 123; patronized, 163; nurseries 
 of atheism, 180. 
 
 Rabbinowitz, Saul Phinehas, editor 
 a_nd historian, 276. 
 
 Rabbinism, assailed by Judah 
 Mises, 75; attacked by Gor- 
 don, 181, 194; opponents of, 
 in neo-Hebrew literature, 
 206-7, 208; opposed by Smo- 
 lenskin, 235; defended in pe- 
 riodicals, 244; opposed in He- 
 brew literature, 285-6. 
 Sec also Conservatism; Ortho- 
 dox, the; Talmudic Judaism. 
 
 Rabbis, the, ignorance of, 113. 
 
 Rabinovich, Leon, editor of Ha- 
 Melts, 283. 
 
 Rabinovitz, Shalom, writer, 280. 
 
 Rabinowitz, Hirsch, scientist, 243. 
 
 Racine, imitated by Mendes, 38; 
 a favorite with the Meassefim, 
 45 ; work by, translated by 
 Rapoport, 58; dramas of, 
 translated by Letteris, 72. 
 
 Ratnesh, devotee of the Melisah, 
 
 243- 
 
 Rapoport, Solomon Jehudah, foun- 
 der of the Science of Judaism, 
 57-8; education and youth of, 
 58; works by, 58-9, 61, 62; 
 Jewish attitude of, 59-62; in- 
 fluences a school of writers, 
 68-9; opposes Hasidism, 69; 
 encourages Erter, 69; assails 
 Judah Mises, 75; alluded to, 
 80, 86, 227; a friend of, 81 
 (n.); contributor to Ha-Mag- 
 gid, i 6 i. 
 
 Rationalistic character of modern 
 Hebrew literature, 10. 
 
 Reaction, the, in Lithuania, 124, 
 125-6; and Gordon, 199-204. 
 
 Reason, in Krochmal's system, 
 64-5. 
 
 " Recompense, The," first novel by 
 Smolenskin, 248. 
 
 " Recompense of the Righteous, 
 The," novel by Smolenskin, 
 268. 
 
 " Reflections on Prayer," work by 
 Abraham Krochmal, 208 (n.). 
 
 Reform, religious, and Hebrew lit- 
 erature, 77; urged by the op- 
 ponents of Rabbinism, 207; de- 
 manded by Lilienblum, 210; 
 Pines on, 221; Smolenskin on, 
 2 33 - 4! defended in Ha-Kol 
 244; attacked, 274. 
 
 Reforms, how received in Lith- 
 uania, 164. 
 
 Reggio, Isaac Samuel, author, 82. 
 
 Reifmann, scientific writer, 243. 
 
 " Religion and Life," novel by 
 Braudes, 216, 243. 
 
 " Religious Hatred," pamphlet by 
 Nevakhovich, 101. 
 
 Reshit Limmudim, treatise by 
 Baruch Lindau, 41. 
 
 Resise ha-Melisah, work by 
 Samoscz, 55. 
 
 " Revealer of Mysteries, The," 
 parody by Perl, 56 (n.). 
 
 Revolutionary Code, the, in He- 
 brew, 50 (n.). 
 
 302
 
 INDEX 
 
 Ritual murder, works on, 118, 122. 
 
 " Robinson Crusoe," translated 
 into Hebrew, 243. 
 
 Rodkinson, Michael, editor of Ha- 
 Kol, 208, 244. 
 
 Roll, Israel, poet, 155. 
 
 " Roman Poems," by Roll, 155. 
 
 Romanelli, Samuel, Italian author, 
 48. 
 
 Romanticism, Hebrew, character- 
 istic trait of, 156-7; influence 
 of, 157- 
 
 Rome, scored by Gordon, 182. 
 
 " Romeo and Juliet," translated 
 into Hebrew, 245. 
 
 " Rose, The," a popular poem, 128. 
 
 Rossi. See Azariah dei Rossi. 
 
 Rossieny, humanist centre, 140. 
 
 Roumanian Jews, Smolenskin in- 
 vestigates the life of, 246, 268. 
 
 Rousseau, alluded to, 141, 211. 
 
 " Royalty of Saul, The," drama by 
 fcfrati, 75. 
 
 Rubin, Solomon, contributor to 
 Ha-Shahar, 241. 
 
 Russia, Hebrew journals in, 162; 
 visit of Smolenskin to, 247. 
 
 Russia and Turkey, war of, and 
 Jewish nationalism, 246. 
 
 Russian language, the, used by 
 the Jews, 163. 
 
 Russification of the Jews, 100. 
 
 Safed, M. H. Luzzatto in, 27. 
 St. Petersburg, J. L. Gordon at, 
 
 174; Smolenskin in, 247. 
 Salkindson, S. A., translator, 245. 
 Salvador, alluded to, 232. 
 Samoscz, David, Galician writer, 
 
 " Sampson and Delilah," work by 
 
 M. H. Luzzatto, 21. 
 Samuel, personage in a novel by 
 
 Braudes, 216. 
 Samuely, writer, 280. 
 Satanow, Isaac, one of the Measse- 
 
 fim, works and style of, 43-4. 
 Schapira, 274. 
 Schelling, alluded to, 131. 
 Schereschewsky, Zebi, contributor 
 
 to Ha-Shahar, 242. 
 Schiller, a favorite with the Meas- 
 
 sefim, 45; alluded to, 105; 
 
 translated into Hebrew, 131; 
 
 J. L. Gordon influenced by, 
 
 176. 
 Schorr, editor of He-Haluz, 56, 60, 
 
 208; Rapoport assails, 60; 
 
 contributor to Ha-Shahar, 242. 
 
 Schulman, Kalman, author, trans- 
 lates Les Mysteres de Paris, 
 128-9; style of, 129, 130; 
 works by, 129; romanticist, 
 219; a devotee of the Melizah, 
 243- 
 
 Schulman, Lazarus, contributor to 
 Ha-Shahar, 241. 
 
 Schulmann, N. H., editor of a He- 
 brew weekly, 101 (n.). 
 
 Science of Judaism, the, and his- 
 torical Judaism, 45; founder 
 of, 58, 59; inadequacy of, 
 62-3; and S. D. Luzzatto, 85, 
 87-8; a journal for, 162; 
 popularized by Bernfeld, 282. 
 
 " Seekers of the Good and the 
 Noble, The," a Maskiiim asso- 
 ciation, 30. 
 
 " Seer and the Searcher, The," 
 critical work, 75-6. 
 
 Sefer ha-Berit, encyclopedia, by 
 Elias of Wilna, 99. 
 
 Sekel, personage in Lebensohn's 
 drama, 114, 116. 
 
 Sekel, personage in Luzzatto's 
 drama, 24. 
 
 Serfs, liberation of the, Gordon on, 
 179. 
 
 Sha'are Ziyyon, Hebrew periodical, 
 244. 
 
 Shadhan, the, in 'Ayit Zabua', 
 167-8. 
 
 " Shaft of the Wagon, The," satire 
 by Gordon, 193-4. 
 
 Shamgar ben Anath, personage in 
 a poem by Gordon, 197. 
 
 Shapiro, Constantin, lyric poet, 
 279. 
 
 Shebnah, personage in Ahabat Ziy- 
 yon, 145. 
 
 Sheker, personage in Lebensohn's 
 drama, 114, 115. 
 
 Sheker, personage in Luzzatto's 
 drama, 24. 
 
 Shene Yomim we-Lailah Ehad, tale 
 by Gordon, 199. 
 
 Shete ha-Kezawot, novel by Brau- 
 des, 217 (n.). 
 
 Shire Bat-Ziyyon, poems by M. J. 
 Lebensohn. 131. 
 
 Shire Romi, poems by Roll, 155. 
 
 Shire Sefat Kodesh, poems by 
 Lebensohn, 113. 
 
 Shire Tiferet, epic by Wessely, 
 35-6. 
 
 Shir ha-Shalom, by Elie Halfan 
 Halevy, 48-9. 
 
 303
 
 INDEX 
 
 Shklow, contact between Jews and 
 Russians at, 100 (and n.); 
 litterateurs at, 101. 
 
 Shohare ha-Tob weha-Tushiyah, a 
 Maskilint association, 30. 
 
 Sibylline books, the, translated 
 into Hebrew, 155, 282. 
 
 Sifte Renanot, poems by Jehudah 
 Lob Levin, 240. 
 
 Silberman, Eliezer Lipman, editor 
 of Ha-Maggid, 160. 
 
 Simon, personage in a novel by 
 Smolenskin, 261. 
 
 Simon the Zealot, personage in a 
 poem by Gordon, 181. 
 
 Sinat ha-Dat, pamphlet by Neva- 
 khovich, 101. 
 
 " Sins of Youth, The." See Hat- 
 tot Ne'uritn. 
 
 Slavic countries, the, spread of 
 Hebrew in, 51; Hebrew litera- 
 ture in, 76. 
 
 Slobodka, birthplace of Mapu, 135. 
 
 Slonimski, Hayyim Selig, editor of 
 Ha-Zefirah, 162. 
 
 Slouschz, N., work by, 93 (n.). 
 
 Smolenskin, Leon, brother of the 
 great writer, 224, 225. 
 
 Smolenskin, Perez, novelist, poem 
 by Gordon to, 186-8; optimism 
 of, 199; Gordon on the death 
 of, 205; article by, on Letteris, 
 209-10; leader of the national 
 progressive movement, 22-?; 
 parents of, 224; education of, 
 224-5; privations suffered by, 
 225-6; early writings by, 226; 
 travels of, 227-8; publishes Ha- 
 Shahar, 228-9; as nationalist 
 Jew, 229-30, 230-4; opposes 
 Mendelssohn's conception of 
 
 Judaism, 232-3; analyzes the 
 ewish religion, 233-4; intre- 
 pidity of, 234-5; as a free- 
 thinker, 235; distinction of, 
 236; arouses interest in 
 science, 241 ; deprecates trans- 
 lations, 243; edits a weekly, 
 244; encourages translations 
 of classics, 245; investigates 
 the life of the Roumanian 
 Jews, 246; reception of, in 
 Russia, 247; first novel by, 
 248; greatest novel by, 248-65; 
 subjectivity of, 252; later nov- 
 els by, 265-9; novels by, ap- 
 preciated, 269-70; in favor of 
 emigration to Palestine, 272; 
 end of, 274.5; nationalizes He- 
 
 brew literature, 275; Brainin 
 
 on, 283; alluded to, 286. 
 See also Ha-To'eh be-Darke ha- 
 
 Hayyim. 
 
 Socialist journal in Hebrew, 244. 
 Sokolow, Nahum, editor, 276; 
 
 writer, 282. 
 " Solomon and Koheleth," poem by 
 
 M. J. Lebensohn, 131-2. 
 " Songs of Glory," epic by Wes- 
 
 sely, 35-6. 
 " Songs of the Daughter of Zion, 
 
 The," poems by M. J. Leben- 
 sohn, 131. 
 Spain, Hebrew literature in, 18; 
 
 exodus from, subject of a 
 
 poem by Gordon, 182. 
 " Stars, The," poem by M. J. 
 
 Lebensohn, 133-4. 
 " Stars of Isaac, The." See Ko- 
 
 kebe Yishak. 
 
 Steinberg, Jehudah, writer, 280. 
 Steinberg, Joshua, translator of 
 
 M. J. Lebensohn, 131 (n.); 
 
 translator of the Sibylline 
 
 books, 155, 282; philologist, 
 
 282. 
 
 Stern, B., writer, 119. 
 Stern, I., editor of Kokebe Yishak, 
 
 56. 
 Student, the Jewish, Gordon on, 
 
 197-8. 
 " Successful Labor." See Peri 
 
 To'elet. 
 
 Sudfeld, Gabriel, writer, 78 (n.). 
 Sue, Eugene, novel of, translated, 
 
 128; and Mapu, 139-40. 
 Sur I'eau, by Maupassant, alluded 
 
 to, in. 
 " Sweet Lyre, The," poems by 
 
 S. D. Luzzatto, 86 (n.). 
 " Synod of the Four Countries, 
 The," 52, 93- 
 
 Taawah, personage in Luzzatto's 
 drama, 24. 
 
 Talmud, the, the code of the Lith- 
 uanian Jews, 94; study of, in 
 Lithuania, 97; drawn upon for 
 modern Hebrew, 170, 189. 
 
 Talmud Leshon 'Ibri, grammar by 
 Ben-Zeeb, 42. 
 
 Talmud schools, the, of Poland, 
 famous, 52-3- 
 
 Talmudic Judaism, defended by 
 
 Levinsohn, 122. 
 
 See also Conservatism; Ortho- 
 dox, the; Rabbinism. 
 
 304
 
 INDEX 
 
 Talmudic language, the, in paro- 
 dies, 56 (n.). 
 
 Tamar, personage in Ahabat Ziy- 
 yon, 142. 
 
 Tarmit, personage in Luzzatto's 
 drama, 24. 
 
 Tarnopol, Rapoport Rabbi at, 59. 
 
 Tartufe, a Jewish, 115-16, 166, 
 169. 
 
 Taviow, J. H., writer, 281. 
 
 Tchernichovski, S., poet, 280. 
 
 Technical professions urged for 
 Jews, 207. 
 
 Tehillah, personage in Luzzatto's 
 drama, 24. 
 
 Tekunat ha-Rabbani;n, work by 
 
 Mises, 75. 
 ' Terror," the. See Behalah. the. 
 
 " Testimony in Israel," work by 
 Levinsohn, 121. 
 
 Te'udah be-Yisrael, work by Levin- 
 sohn, 121. 
 
 Thackeray, Smolenskin compared 
 with, 269. 
 
 Thirty Years' War, The, effect of, 
 on the Jews, 52. 
 
 " Time to Plant, A, and a Time to 
 Pluck up that which is Plant- 
 ed," by Smolenskin, 232-3. 
 
 Tirzah, personage in Ahabat Ziy- 
 yon, 142. 
 
 Titus, personage in a poem by Gor- 
 don, 181, 182. 
 
 " To the Shepherds of Israel," 
 pamphlet by Herz Homberg, 
 41. 
 
 To'elet, Maskilim society in Am- 
 sterdam, 77. 
 
 Tofes Kinnor we-'Ugab, poems by 
 Letteris, 72 (n.). 
 
 Tokahat Megullah, pamphlet by 
 Rapoport, 60. 
 
 Toledot ha-Kabbalah weha-Hasidut, 
 work by Gottlober, 154. 
 
 Toledot ha-Teba', by S. J. Abramo- 
 witsch, 169. 
 
 Torat ha-Adam, 37. 
 
 " Tower of Victory, The," drama 
 by_ M. H. Luzzatto, 22-3. 
 
 Tradition, History of, by Weiss, 
 242. 
 
 " Transgression of Samaria, The." 
 See Ashmat Shomerott. 
 
 Translations, not accepted by Ha- 
 Shahar, 229. 
 
 Translations, Hebrew, deprecated 
 by Smolenskin, 243. 
 
 " Treatise America," parody, 57 
 (n.). 
 
 " Treatise of Commercial Men," 
 
 parody, 57 (n.). 
 
 Treatise Purim," parody, 57 (n.). 
 ' Truth, The." See Ha-Emet. 
 " Truth and Faith," drama by 
 
 Lebensohn, 114-17, 169. 
 Turkey, Hebrew literature in, 19. 
 Turkey and Russia, war of, and 
 
 Jewish nationalism, 246. 
 Tushiyah, publishing society, 278. 
 " Two Days and One Night," tale 
 
 by Gordon, 199. 
 " Two Extremes, The," novel by 
 
 Braudes, 217 (n.). 
 "Two _ Joseph-ben-Simons, The," 
 
 satire by Gordon, 194-8. 
 
 'Ugab Rahel, poems by Rachel 
 
 Morpurgo, 83. 
 Ukraine, the, devastated by the 
 
 Cossacks, 53. 
 Upsala, alluded to, 41. 
 " Useful First Fruits." See Bik- 
 
 kitre To'elet. 
 
 " Vale of Cedars, The," translated 
 into Hebrew, 243. 
 
 " Value of Work, The," poem by 
 Jehudah Lob Levin, 240. 
 
 Vienna, a literary centre, 78 (n.) ; 
 Smolenskin in, 227. 
 
 Vigny, Alfred de, alluded to, 113. 
 
 " Voice, The." See Ha-Kol. 
 
 " Voice of Song, The," poems by 
 Eichenbaum, 120. 
 
 "Voice of the Harp, The," He- 
 brew anthology, 82 (n.). 
 
 Voltaire, alluded to, 211. 
 
 " Wail of the Daughter of Judah, 
 The," poem by Lebensohn, 
 
 112. 
 
 " Wanderer Astray on the Path of 
 Life, A." See Ha-To'eh be- 
 Darke ha-Hayyint. 
 
 " Wars of the Faith, The," by 
 Fabius Mises, 220. 
 
 " Watchman for the House of Is- 
 rael, The," essays by Erter, 
 70. 
 
 " Watchman in the Land of the 
 
 Wanderer, The." 
 See Ha-Zofeh be-Erez Nod. 
 
 Wechsler, contributor to Ha-Boker 
 Or, 243. 
 
 " Weeping Woman, The," poem by 
 Lebensohn, 109. 
 
 Weiss, I. H., scholar, 343. 
 
 305
 
 INDEX 
 
 Werbel, Elias Mordecai, poet, 155. 
 
 Werber, Baruch, editor of Ha- 
 'Ibri, 162. 
 
 Wessely, Naphtali Hartwig, poet, 
 imitator of M. H. Luzzatto, 
 28; head of the Meassefim, 30, 
 47; interested in Ha-Meassef, 
 31; poem by, in Ha-Meassef, 
 33; opposes excessive criticism, 
 33; education of, 35; works of, 
 35-6, 37; character of, 37; on 
 the education of the Jews, 37; 
 a disciple of, 78; and Leben- 
 sohn, 104; alluded to, 121; 
 as a Hebraist, 285. 
 
 Western Jew, the, characterized by 
 Smolenskin, 227. 
 
 Wilna, headquarters of " The Syn- 
 od of the Four Countries," 
 93; invaded by Cossacks, 94; 
 characterization of, by Na- 
 poleon, 102; spirit prevailing 
 in, 102-3; literary circle in, 
 104; Rabbinical seminary at, 
 123; University of, closed, 
 124; the school of, conserva- 
 tive, 157; decline of, 164; 
 birthplace of J. L. Gordon, 
 172. 
 
 Wofsi, personage in a poem by 
 Gordon, 193. 
 
 Wolfsohn, editor of Ha-Meassef, 
 34 (n.). 
 
 Wolliynia, home of the Hasidim, 
 54 (n.); the Jews of, depicted 
 by S. J. Abramowitsch, 170. 
 
 Wolosin, the Yeshibah at, famous, 
 98. 
 
 Woman, the Jewish, described by 
 Gordon, 189-91. 
 
 " Word of Criticism, A," by Kow- 
 ner, 209. 
 
 " Words of Peace and Truth," by 
 Wessely, 37. 
 
 "World as It is, The," tale by 
 Gordon, 199. 
 
 " World of Chaos, The," by Lilien- 
 blum, 238. 
 
 " Writing and the Scriptures," 
 work by Abraham Krochmal, 
 208 (n.). 
 
 Yalde Ruhi, by Pines, 220-1. 
 Yehallel, pseudonym. See Levin, 
 
 Jehudah Lob. 
 
 Yellin, David, writer. 283. 
 Yerfot Shelomoh, work by Pap- 
 
 penheim, 40. 
 
 Yeshibah, the, described by Smolen- 
 skin, 255-61 ; during the Beha- 
 lah, 262; the, novel on, by 
 Smolenskin, 268. 
 
 Yeshibot, the, in Lithuania, 97, 
 98; neglected, 163. 
 
 Yeshumn, Hebrew periodical, 56. 
 
 Yonah Homiah, poem by Letteris, 
 74-5- 
 
 Yoshebe Tebcl, drama by Deren- 
 burg, 40 (n.). 
 
 Yosher, personage in Luzzatto's 
 drama, 24. 
 
 Young, English poet, imitated by 
 Pappenheim, 39. 
 
 " Youth," by Jeiteles, 78 (n.). 
 
 Zaddik, a, character in a novel by 
 Smolenskin, 251. 
 
 Zaddik, the, Hasidic wonder-work- 
 er, 54. 
 
 Zadok, personage in 'Ayit Zabua', 
 166, 167. 
 
 " Zeal for Truth, The," work by 
 Judah Mises, 75. 
 
 Zederbaum, Alexander, editor of 
 Ha-Melis, 162-3. 
 
 Zeker Rab, alluded to, 101 (n.). 
 
 Zeror Pcrahim, by Kowner, 209. 
 
 " Zerubbabel," work by Levinsohn, 
 121. 
 
 Zhagor, humanist centre, 140. 
 
 Zhitomir, Rabbinical seminary at, 
 123. 
 
 Zibeon, personage in Lebensohn's 
 drama, 115. 
 
 Zimri, personage in Ahabat Ziy- 
 yon, 143. 
 
 Zimri, personage in Ashmat Sho- 
 ineron, 166. 
 
 " Zion," Hebrew periodical, 56. 
 
 " Zionides," by Dolitzki, 279. 
 
 Zionism, Gordon not converted to, 
 199, 201-2, 203; the develop- 
 ment of, stimulated, 273; 
 spread by the daily Hebrew 
 press, 276; the poet of, 279; 
 spiritual, the promoter of, 
 281 ; the predominant note in 
 modern Hebrew literature, 
 286. 
 
 Zionist poems, by Letteris, 73; 
 character of popular poetry, 
 127; strain, in M. J. Leben- 
 sohn's poetry, 134; idea, pro- 
 moted in Ha-Maggid, 161, 
 220; strain, in Mapu, 169; 
 poems, by Mandelkern, 240; 
 novel, by Smolenskin, 269. 
 
 306
 
 INDEX 
 
 Zionists, Braudes, 200, 273; D. 
 
 Gordon, 220; Lilienblum, 200, 
 
 273; Mapu, 169, 219; Pines, 
 
 222. 
 Zohar, the, imitated by M. H. 
 
 Luzzatto, 27. 
 
 Zunz, stimulated by Rapoport, 59; 
 assists Krochmal, 63; criti- 
 cised, 76; works of, translated 
 into Hebrew, 76; on the neces- 
 sity of Hebrew, 77. 
 
 307
 
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