The History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century
by Leo Wiener · English · Gutenberg #46729 · 738,270 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century
Author: Leo Wiener
Release date: August 29, 2014 [eBook #46729]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46729
Credits: Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images available at The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY OF YIDDISH LITERATURE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ***
Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images available at The Internet Archive)
THE HISTORY OF YIDDISH LITERATURE
IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
THE HISTORY
OF
YIDDISH LITERATURE
IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
BY
LEO WIENER
INSTRUCTOR IN THE SLAVIC LANGUAGES
AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1899
COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Norwood Press
J. B. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
To My Mother
PREFACE
A suggestion to write the present book reached me in the spring of 1898.
At that time my library contained several hundreds of volumes of the
best Judeo-German (Yiddish) literature, which had been brought together
by dint of continued attention and, frequently, by mere chance, for the
transitoriness of its works, the absence of any and all bibliographies,
the almost absolute absence of a guide into its literature, and the
whimsicalness of its book trade made a systematic selection of such a
library a difficult problem to solve. Not satisfied with the meagre
details which could be gleaned from internal testimonies in the works of
the Judeo-German writers, I resolved to visit the Slavic countries for
the sake of gathering data, both literary and biographical, from which
anything like a trustworthy history of its literature could be
constructed. A recital of my journey will serve as a means of
orientation to the future investigator in this or related fields, and
will at the same time indicate my obligations to the men and the books
that made my sketch possible.
From Liverpool, my place of landing, I proceeded at once to Oxford,
where I familiarized myself with the superb Oppenheim collection of
Judeo-German books of the older period, stored in the Bodleian Library;
it does not contain, however, anything bearing on the nineteenth
century. In London the British Museum furnished me with a few modern
works which are now difficult to procure, especially the periodical
_Kolmewasser_ and _Warschauer Jüdische Zeitung_. Unfortunately my time
was limited, and I was unable to make thorough bibliographical notes
from these rare publications; besides, I then hoped to be able to
discover sets of them in Russia. In this I was disappointed--hence the
meagreness of my references to them. The Rosenthaliana in Amsterdam and
the Imperial Library in Berlin added nothing material to my information.
Warsaw was my first objective point as regards facts and books. The
latter I obtained in large numbers by rummaging the bookstores of
Scheinfinkel and Morgenstern. In a dark and damp cellar, in which
Morgenstern kept part of his store, many rare books were picked up. In
Warsaw I received many valuable data from Perez, Dienesohn, Spektor,
Freid, Levinsohn, both as to the activity which they themselves have
developed and as to what they knew of some of their _confrères_. In
Bialystok I called on the venerable poet, Gottlober; he is very advanced
in years, being above ninety, is blind, and no longer in possession of
his mental faculties, but his daughter gave me some interesting
information about her father. Wilna presented nothing noteworthy, except
that in a store a few early prints were found.
In St. Petersburg I had hoped to spend usefully a week investigating the
rich collections of Judeo-German in the Asiatic Museum and the Imperial
Library. The museum was, however, closed for the summer, and the
restrictions placed on the investigator in the library made it
impossible to inspect even one-tenth of the three or four thousand books
contained there. When about to abandon that part of my work the
assistant librarian, Professor Harkavy, under whose charge the
collection is, most generously presented me with one thousand volumes
out of his own private library. In Kiev I had a long conference with S.
Rabinowitsch and with A. Schulmann; the latter informed me that he is
now at work on a history of Judeo-German literature previous to the
nineteenth century; the specimen of his work which he published a few
years ago in the _Jüdische Volksbibliothēk_ gives hope that it will
entirely supersede the feeble productions of M. Grünbaum. In Odessa I
learned many important facts from conversations with S. J. Abramowitsch,
J. J. Linetzki, J. J. Lerner, P. Samostschin, and depleted the
bookstores, especially that of Rivkin, of their rarer books. Jassy in
Roumania and Lemberg in Galicia offered little of interest, but in
Cracow Faust's bookstore furnished some needed data by its excellent
choice of modern works.
Thus I succeeded in seeing nearly all the living writers of any note,
and in purchasing or inspecting books in all the larger stores and
libraries that contained such material. In spite of all that, the
present work is of necessity fragmentary; it is to be hoped that by
coöperation of several men it will be possible to save whatever matter
there may still be in existence from oblivion ere it be too late. The
greatest difficulty I encountered in the pursuit of my work was the
identification of pseudonyms and the settlement of bibliographical data.
As many of the first as could be ascertained, in one way or other, are
given in an appendix; but the bibliography has remained quite imperfect
in spite of my efforts to get at facts. A complete bibliography can
probably never be written, on account of the peculiar conditions
prevailing in the Imperial Library, from which by theft and otherwise
many books have disappeared; but even under these conditions it would
not be a hard matter to furnish four or five thousand names of works for
this century. This task must be left to some one resident in St.
Petersburg who can get access to the libraries.
This history being intended for the general public, and not for the
linguistic scholar, there was no choice left for the transliteration of
Judeo-German words but to give it in the modified orthography of the
German language; for uniformity's sake such words occurring in the body
of the English text are left in their German form. All Hebrew and Slavic
words are given phonetically as heard in the mouths of Lithuanian Jews;
that dialect was chosen as being least distant from the literary German;
for the same reason the texts in the Chrestomathy are normalized in the
same variety of the vernacular. The consonants are read as in German,
and _ž_ is like French _j_. The vowels are nearly all short, so that
_ü_, _ie_, _i_ are equal to German _i_; similarly _ä_, _ö_, _eh_, _ee_
are like German short _e_. The German long _e_ is represented by _ē_,
_oe_, _ae_, and in Slavic and Hebrew words also by _ee_. _Ei_ and _eu_
are pronounced like German _ei_ in _mein_, while _ēi_ is equal to German
_ee_; _ā_ and _o_ are German short _o_; _au_ sounds more like German
_ou_, and _äu_ and _ō_ resemble German _öi_; _aü_ is equal to German
_ai_.
The collection of data on the writers in America has been even more
difficult than in Russia, and has been crowned with less success. Most
of the periodicals published here have been of an ephemeral nature, and
the newspapers, of which there have been more than forty at one time or
other, can no longer be procured; and yet they have contained the bulk
of the literary productions written in this country. It is to be hoped
that those who have been active in creating a Judeo-German literature
will set about to write down their reminiscences from which at a later
day a just picture may be given of the ferment which preceded the
absorption of the Russian Jews by the American nation.
The purpose of this work will be attained if it throws some light on the
mental attitude of a people whose literature is less known to the world
than that of the Gypsy, the Malay, or the North American Indian.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.,
December, 1898.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE vii
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. THE JUDEO-GERMAN LANGUAGE 12
III. FOLKLORE 25
IV. THE FOLKSONG 53
V. PRINTED POPULAR POETRY 72
VI. OTHER ASPECTS OF POETRY BEFORE THE EIGHTIES 95
VII. POETRY SINCE THE EIGHTIES IN RUSSIA 105
VIII. POETRY SINCE THE EIGHTIES IN AMERICA 118
IX. PROSE WRITERS FROM 1817-1863 131
X. PROSE WRITERS FROM 1863-1881: ABRAMOWITSCH 148
XI. PROSE WRITERS FROM 1863-1881: LINETZKI, DICK 161
XII. PROSE WRITERS SINCE 1881: SPEKTOR 177
XIII. PROSE WRITERS SINCE 1881: RABINOWITSCH, PEREZ 194
XIV. PROSE WRITERS SINCE 1881: IN AMERICA 216
XV. THE JEWISCH THEATRE 231
XVI. OTHER ASPECTS OF LITERATURE 244
CHRESTOMATHY
PAGE
I. SSEEFER KOHELES. ECCLESIASTES. M. M. Lefin 258
II. DIE MALPE. THE MONKEY. S. Ettinger 260
III. DAIGES NĀCH DEM TŌDT. WORRY AFTER DEATH. S. Ettinger 260
IV. DER ELENDER SUCHT DIE RUHE. THE FORLORN
MAN LOOKING FOR REST. B. W. Ehrenkranz-Zbarżer 261
V. DIWREE CHOCHMO. WORDS OF WISDOM. E. Z. Zweifel 264
VI. DIE STIEFMUTTER. THE STEPMOTHER. M. Gordon 264
VII. DIE MUME SOSJE. AUNT SOSIE. A. Goldfaden 268
VIII. SEMER LE-SSIMCHAS TŌRE. SONG OF THE REJOICING
OF THE LAW. J. L. Gordon 272
IX. DIE KLATSCHE. THE DOBBIN. S. J. Abramowitsch 276
X. TUNEJADEWKE. PARASITEVILLE. S. J. Abramowitsch 284
XI. A HARTER BISSEN. A TOUGH MORSEL. D. Frischmann 294
XII. STEMPENJU'S FIEDELE. STEMPENJU'S VIOLIN. S. Rabinowitsch 300
XIII. DER TALMUD. THE TALMUD. S. Frug 306
XIV. DĀS JÜDISCHE KIND. THE JEWISH CHILD. S. Frug 308
XV. DER ADELIGER KĀTER. THE NOBLE TOM-CAT. M. Winchevsky 312
XVI. JONKIPER. THE ATONEMENT DAY. J. Dienesohn 314
XVII. AUF'N BUSEN VUN JAM. ON THE BOSOM OF THE
OCEAN. M. Rosenfeld 324
XVIII. BONZJE SCHWEIG. BONTSIE SILENT. J. L. Perez 332
* * * * *
I. APPENDIX. BIBLIOGRAPHY 355
II. APPENDIX. PSEUDONYMS 383
INDEX 385
THE HISTORY OF YIDDISH LITERATURE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
I. INTRODUCTION
The literatures of the early Middle Ages were bilingual. The Catholic
religion had brought with it the use of the Latin language for religious
and ethical purposes, and in proportion as the influence of the clergy
was exerted on worldly matters, even profane learning found its
expression through the foreign tongue. Only by degrees did the native
dialects manage to establish themselves independently, and it has been
but a few centuries since they succeeded in emancipating themselves
entirely and in ousting the Latin from the domain of secular knowledge.
As long as the Jews have not been arrested in their natural development
by external pressure, they have fallen into line with the conditions
prevalent in their permanent homes and have added their mite towards the
evolution of the vernaculars of their respective countries. It would be
idle to adduce here proofs of this; suffice it only to mention Spain,
whose literature would be incomplete without including in the list of
its early writers the names of some illustrious Jews active there before
the expulsion of the Jews in the fifteenth century. But the matter
everywhere stood quite differently in regard to the Latin language. That
being the language of the Catholic clergy, it could not be cultivated by
the Jews without compromising their own faith; the example of the
bilingualism was, however, too strong not to affect them, and hence they
had recourse to the tongue of their own sacred scriptures for purposes
corresponding to those of the Catholic Church. The stronger the
influence of the latter was in the country, the more did the Jews cling
to the Hebrew and the Jargon of the Talmud for literary purposes. It
need not, then, surprise us to find the Jewish literature of the
centuries preceding the invention of printing almost exclusively in the
ancient tongue.
As long as the German Jews were living in Germany, and the Sephardic
Jews in Spain, there was no urgent necessity to create a special
vernacular literature for them: they spoke the language of their
Christian fellow-citizens, shared with them the same conception of life,
the same popular customs, except such as touched upon their religious
convictions, and the works current among their Gentile neighbors were
quite intelligible, and fully acceptable to them. The extent of common
intellectual pleasures was much greater than one would be inclined to
admit without examination. In Germany we have the testimony of the first
Judeo-German or Yiddish works printed in the sixteenth century that even
at that late time the Jews were deriving pleasure from the stories
belonging to the cycle of King Arthur and similar romances. In 1602 a
pious Jew, in order to offset these older stories, as he himself
mentions in his introduction,[1] issued the 'Maasebuch,' which is a
collection of Jewish folklore. It is equally impossible, however, to
discover from early German songs preserved by the Jews that they in any
way differed from those recited and sung by the Gentiles, and they have
to be classed among the relics of German literature, which has actually
been done by a scholar who subjected them to a close scrutiny.[2] On the
other hand, the Jews who were active in German literature, like
Süsskind, only accidentally betray their Jewish origin. Had they not
chosen to make special mention of the fact in their own works, it would
not be possible by any criterion to separate them from the host of
authors of their own time.
Had there been no disturbing element introduced in the national life of
the German Jews, there would not have developed with them a specifically
Judeo-German literature, even though they may have used the Hebrew
characters in the transliteration of German books. Unfortunately, in the
beginning of the sixteenth century, a large number of Jews, mainly from
the region of the Middle Rhine, had become permanently settled in
Bohemia, Poland, and Russia. Here they formed compact colonies in towns
and cities, having been admitted to these countries primarily to create
the nucleus of a town population, as the agricultural Slavs had been
averse to town life. They had brought with them their patrimony of the
German language, their German intellectual atmosphere and mode of life;
and their very compactness precluded their amalgamation with their
Slavic neighbors. Their numerical strength and spiritual superiority
obliterated even the last trace of those Jews who had been resident in
those regions before them and had spoken the Slavic dialects as their
mother-tongues. Separated from their mother-country, they craved the
intellectual food to which they had been accustomed there; but their
relations with it were entirely broken, and they no longer took part in
the mental life of their German contemporaries. The Reformation with its
literary awakening could not exert any influence on them; they only
turned back for reminiscences of ages gone by, and hungered after
stories with which their ancestors had whiled away their hours of
leisure in the cities along the Rhine. And so it happened that when the
legendary lore of the Nibelungen, of Siegfried, of Dietrich of Bern, of
Wigalois, of King Arthur, had begun to fade away even from the folk
books of Germany, it lived on in the Slavic countries and continued to
evoke pleasure and admiration.
These chapbooks, embodying the folklore of past generations, were almost
the first printed Judeo-German books, as they certainly were the most
popular. That the early Judeo-German literature was intended mainly for
readers in the east of Europe is amply evidenced by specific mention in
the works themselves, as for example in the 'Maasebuch,' where the
compiler, or author, urges the German women to buy quickly his book,
lest it be all too fast sold in Bohemia, Poland, and Russia.[3] In fact,
the patron of the 'Maasebuch,' or the author of the same, for it is not
quite clear whether they are not one and the same person, was himself a
native of Meseritz in Lithuania. Only after these story books had
created a taste for reading, and in order to counteract the effects of
the non-Jewish lore, the Rabbis began to substitute the more Jewish
legends of the 'Maasebuch' and the 'Zeena Ureena,' and the ethical
treatises which were intended to instruct the people in the tenets of
their fathers. In this manner the Judeo-German literature was made
possible. Its preservation for four centuries was mainly due to the
isolation of the German Jews in Russia and Poland, where the German
medievalism became ossified and was preserved intact to within half a
century ago, when under favorable conditions the Russianization of the
Jews began. Had these conditions prevailed but a short time longer,
Judeo-German literature would have been a thing of the past and of
interest only to the linguist and the historian. But very soon various
causes combined to resuscitate the dialect literature. In the short time
that the Jews had enjoyed the privileges of a Russian culture, then
German medievalism was completely dispelled, and the modern period
which, in its incipient stage, reaches back into the first quarter of
this century, presents a distinct phase which in no way resembles the
literature of the three hundred years that preceded it. It is not a
continuation of its older form, but has developed on an entirely new
basis.
The medieval period of Judeo-German literature was by no means confined
to the Slavic countries. It reacted on the Jews who had remained in
Germany, who, in their narrow Ghetto life, were excluded from an active
participation in the German literature of their country. This reaction
was not due alone to the fact that the specifically Jewish literature
appealed in an equal degree to those who had been left behind in their
old homes, but in a larger measure to the superior intellectual activity
of the emigrants and their descendants who kept alive the spark of
Jewish learning when it had become weakened at home and found no food
for its replenishment within its own communities. They had to turn to
the Slavic lands for their teachers and Rabbis, who brought with them
not only their Hebrew learning, but also their Judeo-German language and
literature. Up to the middle of the eighteenth century there was no
division of the Jews of the west and the east of Europe; they took equal
part in the common Judeo-German literature, however scanty its scope.
What was produced in Russia was read with the same pleasure in Germany,
and _vice versa_, even though the spoken form of the vernacular in
Slavic countries was more and more departing from that of Germany.
Even Mendelssohn's teacher was a Galician Jew. But with Mendelssohn a
new era had dawned in the history of the German Jews. By his example the
dialect was at once abandoned for the literary language, and the Jews
were once more brought back into the fold of the German nation. The
separation of the two branches of the German Jews was complete, and the
inhabitants of the Slavic countries were left to shift for themselves.
For nearly one hundred years they had to miss the beneficent effects of
an intellectual intercourse with the West, and in the beginning of our
century the contrast between the two could not have been greater: the
German Jews were rapidly becoming identified with the spiritual pursuits
of their Gentile fellow-citizens, the Slavic Jews persevered in the
medievalism into which they had been thrown centuries before. Only by
slow degrees did the Mendelssohnian Reform find its way into Poland and
Russia; and even when its influence was at its highest, it was not
possible for it to affect those lands in the same way that it affected
the districts that were more or less under German influence. The German
language could not become the medium of instruction for the masses,
whose homely dialects had so far departed from their mother-tongue as to
make the latter unintelligible to them. In Russia it was a long time
before the native literature could make itself felt, or before Russian
education came to take the place of the German culture; so in the
meanwhile the Judeo-German language was left to its own evolution, and a
new literature had its rise.
In arriving at its present stage, Judeo-German literature of the
nineteenth century has passed through several phases. At first, up to
the sixties, it was used as a weapon by the few enlightened men who were
anxious to extend the benefits of the Mendelssohnian Reform to the
masses at large. It is an outgrowth of the Hebrew literature of the same
period, which had its rise from the same causes, but which could appeal
only to a small number of men who were well versed in Hebrew lore. Since
these apostles of the new learning had themselves received their impetus
through the Hebrew, it was natural for them to be active both in the
Hebrew and the Judeo-German field. We consequently find here the names
of Gottlober and J. L. Gordon, who belong equally to both literatures.
Those who devoted themselves exclusively to creating a Judeo-German
literature, like the other Mendelssohnian disciples, took the German
literature as the guide for their efforts, and even dreamed of
approaching the literary language of Germany in the final amalgamation
with the Mendelssohnian Reform. In the meanwhile, in the sixties and
still more in the seventies, the Jews were becoming Russianized in the
schools which had been thrown open to their youths. In the sixties, the
Judeo-German literature, having received its impetus in the preceding
generation, reached its highest development as a literature of Reform,
but it appealed only to those who had not had the benefits of the
Russian schools. In the seventies it became reminiscent, and was in
danger of rapid extinction. In the eighties, the persecutions and riots
against the Jews led many of those who had availed themselves of the
Russian culture to devote themselves to the service of their less
fortunate brethren; and many new forces, that otherwise would have found
their way into Russian letters, were exerted entirely in the evolution
of Judeo-German. In this new stage, the Mendelssohnian Reform, with its
concomitant German language, was lost sight of. The element of
instruction was still an important one in this late period, but this
instruction was along universal lines, and no longer purely Jewish;
above all else, this literature became an art.
Poetry was the first to be developed, as it lent itself more readily to
didactic purposes; it has also, until lately, remained in closer contact
with the popular poetry, which, in its turn, is an evolution of the
poetry of the preceding centuries. The theatre was the latest to detach
itself from prose, to which it is organically related. These facts have
influenced the separate treatment of the three divisions of literature
in the present work. It was deemed indispensable to add to these a
chapter on the Judeo-German folklore, as the reading of Judeo-German
works would frequently be unintelligible without some knowledge of the
creations of the popular mind. Here the relation to medievalism is even
more apparent than in the popular poetry; in fact, the greater part of
the printed books of that class owe their origin to past ages; they are
frequently nothing more than modernizations of old books, as is, for
example, the case with 'Bevys of Hamptoun,' which, but for the
language, is identical with its prototype in the beginning of the
sixteenth century.
In its popular form, Judeo-German is certainly not inferior to many of
the literary languages which have been fortunate enough to attract the
attention of the linguist and student of comparative literature. In its
_belleslettres_ it compares favorably with those of countries like
Bulgaria, which had their regeneration at about the same time; nay, it
may appear to the unbiassed observer that it even surpasses them in that
respect. And yet, in spite of it all, Judeo-German has remained
practically a sealed book to the world. The few who have given reports
of it display an astounding amount of ignorance on the subject. Karpeles
devotes, in his history of Jewish literature, almost thirty pages to the
medieval form of it, but to the rich modern development of it only _two
lines_![4] Steinschneider knows by hearsay only Dick, and denies the
practical value of modern Judeo-German.[5] But the acme of complacent
ignorance, not to use a stronger word, is reached by Grünbaum,[6] who
dishes up, as specimens of literature, newspaper advertisements and
extracts of Schaikewitsch, not mentioning even by name a single one of
the first-class writers. It is painful to look into the pages of his
work, which, apart from endless linguistic blunders of a most senseless
character, has probably done more than anything else to divert
attention from this interesting literature.
Much more sympathetic are the few pages which Berenson devotes to it in
an article in the _Andover Review_;[7] though abounding in errors, it is
fair and unbiassed, and at least displays a familiarity with the
originals. Still better are the remarks of the Polish author Klemens
Junosza in the introductions to his translations of the works of
Abramowitsch into Polish; the translations themselves are masterpieces,
considering the extreme quaintness of Abramowitsch's style. There are,
indeed, a few sketches on the Judeo-German literature written in the
dialect itself,[8] but none of them attest a philosophical grasp of the
subject, or even betray a thorough familiarity with the literature. A
number of good reviews on various productions have appeared in the
Russian periodical _Voschod_, from the pen of one signing himself
"Criticus."[9] To one of these reviews he has attached a discussion of
the literature in general; this, however short, is the best that has yet
been written on the subject.
It is hard to foretell the future of Judeo-German. In America it is
certainly doomed to extinction.[10] Its lease of life is commensurate
with the last large immigration to the new world. In the countries of
Europe it will last as long as there are any disabilities for the Jews,
as long as they are secluded in Ghettos and driven into Pales.[11] It
would be idle to speculate when these persecutions will cease.
II. THE JUDEO-GERMAN LANGUAGE
There is probably no other language in existence on which so much
opprobrium has been heaped as on the Judeo-German.[12] Philologists have
neglected its study, Germanic scholars have until lately been loath to
admit it as a branch of the German language, and even now it has to beg
for recognition. German writers look upon it with contempt and as
something to be shunned; and for over half a century the Russian and
Polish Jews, whose mother-tongue it is, have been replete with apologies
whenever they have had recourse to it for literary purposes.[13] Such a
bias can be explained only as a manifestation of a general prejudice
against everything Jewish, for passions have been at play to such an
extent as to blind the scientific vision to the most obvious and common
linguistic phenomena. Unfortunately, this interesting evolution of a
German dialect has found its most violent opponents in the German Jews,
who, since the day of Mendelssohn, have come to look upon it as an
arbitrary and vicious corruption of the language of their country.[14]
This attack upon it, while justifiable in so far as it affects its
survival in Germany, loses all reasonableness when transferred to the
Jews of Russia, former Poland and Roumania, where it forms a
comparatively uniform medium of intercourse of between five and six
millions of people, of whom the majority know no other language. It
cannot be maintained that it is desirable to preserve the Judeo-German,
and to give it a place of honor among the sisterhood of languages; but
that has nothing to do with the historic fact of its existence. The many
millions of people who use it from the day of their birth cannot be held
responsible for any intentional neglect of grammatical rules, and its
widespread dissemination is sufficient reason for subjecting it to a
thorough investigation. A few timid attempts have been made in that
direction, but they are far from being exhaustive, and touch but a small
part of the very rich material at hand. Nor is this the place in which a
complete discussion of the matter is to be looked for. This chapter
presents only such of the data as must be well understood for a correct
appreciation of the dialectic varieties current in the extensive
Judeo-German literature of the last fifty years.
All languages are subject to a continuous change, not only from within,
through natural growth and decay, but also from without, through the
influence of foreign languages as carriers of new ideas. The languages
of Europe, one and all, owe their Latin elements to the universality of
the Roman dominion, and, later, of the Catholic Church. With the
Renaissance, and lately through the sciences, much Greek has been added
to their vocabularies. When two nations have come into a close
intellectual contact, the result has always been a mixture of languages.
In the case of English, the original Germanic tongue has become almost
unrecognizable under the heavy burden of foreign words. But more
interesting than these cases, and more resembling the formation of the
Judeo-German, are those non-Semitic languages that have come under the
sway of Mohammedanism. Their religious literature being always written
in the Arabic of the Koran, they were continually, for a long period of
centuries, brought under the same influences, and these have caused them
to borrow, not only many words, but even whole turns and sentences, from
their religious lore. The Arabic has frequently become completely
transformed under the pronunciation and grammatical treatment of the
borrowing language, but nevertheless a thorough knowledge of such
tongues as Turkish and Persian is not possible without a fair
understanding of Arabic. The case is still more interesting with
Hindustani, spoken by more than one hundred millions of people, where
more than five-eighths of the language is not of Indian origin, but
Persian and Arabic. With these preliminary facts it will not be
difficult to see what has taken place in Judeo-German.
Previous to the sixteenth century the Jews in Germany spoke the dialects
of their immediate surroundings; there is no evidence to prove any
introduction of Hebrew words at that early period, although it must be
supposed that words relating purely to the Mosaic ritual may have found
their way into the spoken language even then. The sixteenth century
finds a large number of German Jews resident in Bohemia, Poland, and
Lithuania. As is frequently the case with immigrants, the Jews in those
distant countries developed a greater intellectual activity than their
brethren at home, and this is indicated by the prominence of the
printing offices at Prague and Cracow, and the large number of natives
of those countries who figure as authors of Judeo-German works up to the
nineteenth century. But torn away from a vivifying intercourse with
their mother-country, their vocabulary could not be increased from the
living source of the language alone, for their interests began to
diverge. Religious instruction being given entirely in Hebrew, it was
natural for them to make use of all such Hebrew words as they thus
became familiar with. Their close study of the Talmud furnished them
from that source with a large number of words of argumentation, while
the native Slavic languages naturally added their mite toward making the
Judeo-German more and more unlike the mother-tongue. Since books printed
in Bohemia were equally current in Poland, and _vice versa_, and Jews
perused a great number of books, there was always a lively interchange
of thoughts going on in these countries, causing some Bohemian words to
migrate to Poland, and Polish words back to Bohemia. These books printed
in Slavic countries were received with open hands also in Germany, and
their preponderance over similar books at home was so great that the
foreign corruption affected the spoken language of the German Jews, and
they accepted also a number of Slavic words together with the Semitic
infection. This was still further aided by the many Polish teachers who,
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were almost the only
instructors of Hebrew in Germany.[15]
We have, then, here an analogous case to the formation of Osmanli out of
the Turkish, and Modern Persian out of the Old by means of the Arabic,
and if the word Jargon is used to describe the condition of Judeo-German
in the past three centuries, then Gibberish would be the only word that
would fit as a designation of the corresponding compounds of the
beautiful languages of Turkey, Persia, and India. A Jargon is the
chaotic state of a speech-mixture at the moment when the foreign
elements first enter into it. That mixture can never be entirely
arbitrary, for it is subject to the spirit of one fundamental language
which does not lose its identity. All the Romance elements in English
have not stifled its Germanic basis, and Hindustani is neither Persian
nor Arabic, in spite of the overwhelming foreign element in it, but an
Indian language. Similarly Judeo-German has remained essentially a
German dialect group.
Had the Judeo-German had for its basis some dialect which widely differs
from the literary norm, such as Low German or Swiss, it would have long
ago been claimed as a precious survival by German philologists. But it
happens to follow so closely the structure of High German that its
deviations have struck the superficial observer as a kind of careless
corruption of the German. A closer scrutiny, however, convinces one that
in its many dialectic variations it closely follows the High German
dialects of the Middle Rhine with Frankfurt for its centre. There is not
a peculiarity in its grammatical forms, in the changes of its vocalism,
for which exact parallels are not found within a small radius of the old
imperial city, the great centre of Jewish learning and life in the
Middle Ages. No doubt, the emigration into Russia came mainly from the
region of the Rhine. At any rate those who arrived from there brought
with them traditions which were laid as the foundation of their written
literature, whose influence has been very great on the Jews of the later
Middle Ages. While men received their religious literature directly
through the Hebrew, women could get their ethical instruction only by
means of Judeo-German books. No house was without them, and through them
a certain contact was kept up with the literary German towards which the
authors have never ceased to lean. In the meanwhile the language could
not remain uniform over the wide extent of the Slavic countries, and
many distinct groups have developed there. The various subdialects of
Poland differ considerably from the group which includes the northwest
of Russia, while they resemble somewhat more closely the southern
variety. But nothing of that appears in the printed literature previous
to the beginning of this century. There a great uniformity prevails, and
by giving the Hebrew vowels, or the consonants that are used as such,
the values that they have in the mouths of German Jews, we obtain, in
fact, what appears to be an apocopated, corrupted form of literary
German. The spelling has remained more or less traditional, and though
it becomes finally phonetic, it seems to ascribe to the vowels the
values nearest to those of the mother-language and current in certain
varieties of the Lithuanian group. From this it may be assumed that the
Polish and southern Russian varieties have developed from the
Lithuanian, which probably bears some relation to the historical
migrations into those parts of the quondam Polish kingdom, and this is
made the more plausible from the fact that the vowel changes are
frequently in exact correspondence with the changes in the White
Russian, Polish, and Little Russian. Such a phenomenon of parallelism is
found also in other languages, and in our case may be explained by the
unconscious changes of the Germanic vowels simultaneously with those in
the Slavic words which, having been naturalized in Judeo-German, were
heard and used differently in the new surroundings.
However it may be, the language of the Judeo-German books in the
sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries is subject to but
slight variations. It is true, the Blitz Bible printed in Amsterdam in
1676 seems to deviate greatly from other similar works, and the uncouth
compound which is found there does, indeed, have all appearances of a
Jargon. It owes its origin to the Polish Jews who but a few years before
had been exiled from more than two hundred and fifty towns[16] and who,
having settled in Holland, began to modify their Judeo-German by
introducing Dutch into it. Although the Bible was intended for Polish
Jews, as is evident by the letters-patent granted by John the Third of
Poland, yet it has never exerted any influence on the dialects in Russia
and Poland, for not one word of Dutch origin can be found in them. This
older stage of the language is even now familiar to the Russian Jewish
women through the 'Zeena Ureena,' the prayer book, and the special
prayers which they recite in Judeo-German, and Jewish writers have
recourse to it whenever they wish to express a prayer, as, for example,
in Abramowitsch's 'Hymns' and 'Saturday Prayers.' This older stage is
known under the name of _Iwre-teutsch_, _Korben-ssider-teutsch_,
_Tchines-teutsch_, thus indicating its proper sphere in lithurgical
works. This form of the language is comparatively free from Hebrew
words.[17] On the other hand, Cabbalistic works become almost unreadable
on account of the prevalence of Semitic over German words.[18]
In the beginning of the nineteenth century a Galician, Minchas Mendel
Lefin, laid the foundation for the use of the vernacular for literary
purposes.[19] This example was soon followed by the writers in Russia
who became acquainted with German culture through the followers of the
Mendelssohnian School at Lemberg, who comprise nearly all the authors
from Ettinger to Abramowitsch, most of whom wrote in some southern
dialect. The language of these abounds in a large number of idiomatic
expressions for which one would in vain look in the older writings;
words of Slavic origin that were familiar in everyday life were freely
introduced, and an entirely new diction superseded that of the past
century. At first their spelling was quite phonetic. But soon their
leaning towards German literature led them into the unfortunate mistake
of introducing German orthography for their dialect, so that it now is
frequently impossible to tell from the form of a word how it may have
been pronounced. Add to this the historical spelling of the Hebrew and
the phonetic of the Slavic words, and one can easily imagine the chaos
that prevails in the written language. And yet it must not be supposed
that Judeo-German stands alone in this. The same difficulty and
confusion arises in all those tongues in which the historical continuity
has been broken. Thus Modern Greek is spelled as though it were Ancient
Greek, with which it has hardly any resemblance in sound, while
Bulgarian is still wavering between a phonetic, a Russian, and an Old
Slavic orthography. Similar causes have produced similar results in
Judeo-German.
There is no linguistic norm in the language as now used for literary
purposes. The greater number of the best authors write in slightly
varying dialects of Volhynia; but the Lithuanian variety is also well
represented, and of late Perez has begun to write in his Polish
vernacular.[20] German influence began to show itself early, and it
affected not only the spelling, but also the vocabulary of the early
writers in Lithuania. Dick looked upon Judeo-German only as a means to
lead his people to German culture, and his stories are written in a
curious mixture in which German at times predominates. This evil
practice, which in Dick may be excused on the ground that it served him
only as a means to an end, has come to be a mannerism in writers of the
lower kind, such as Schaikewitsch, Seiffert, and their like. The
scribblers of that class have not only corrupted the literature but also
the language of the Jews.
Various means have been suggested by the writers for the enrichment of
the Judeo-German vocabulary. Some lovers of Hebrew have had the bad
taste to propose the formation of all new words on a Semitic basis, and
have actually brought forth literary productions in that hybrid
language. Others again have advised the introduction of all foreign
words commonly in use among other nations. But the classical writers,
among whom Abramowitsch is foremost, have not stopped to consider what
would be the best expedient, but have coined words in conformity with
the spirit of their dialect, steering a middle course between the
extremes suggested by others. In America, where the majority of the
writers knew more of German than their native vernacular, the literary
dialect has come to resemble the literary German, and the English
environment has caused the infusion of a number of English terms for
familiar objects. But on the whole the language of the better writers
differs in America but little from that of their former home. There is,
naturally, a large divergence to be found in the language, which ranges
from the almost pure German of the prayers and, in modern times, of the
poems of Winchevsky, to the language abounding in Russicisms of
Dlugatsch, and in Hebraisms of Linetzki, from the pure dialects of the
best writers to the corrupt forms of Dick and Meisach, and the even
worse Jargon of Seiffert, but in all these there is no greater variety
than is to be found in all newly formed languages.[21] The most recent
example of such variety is furnished by the Bulgarian, where the writers
of the last fifty years have wavered between the native dialects with
their large elements of Turkish and Greek origin, a purified form of the
same, from which the foreign infection has been eliminated, approaches
to the Old Slavic of a thousand years ago, and, within the last few
years, a curious mixture with the literary Russian. Judeo-German not
only does not suffer by such a comparison, but really gains by it, for
all the best writers have uniformly based their diction on their native
dialects.
In former days Judeo-German was known only by the name of
_Iwre-teutsch_, or _Jüdisch-teutsch_. Frequently such words were used as
_Mame-loschen_ (Mother-tongue), or _Prost-jüdisch_ (Simple Yiddish), but
through the efforts of the disciples of the Haskala (Reform), the
designation of _Jargon_ has been forced upon it; and that appellation
has been adopted by later writers in Russia, so that now one generally
finds only this latter form as the name of the language used by the
writers in Russia. The people, however, speak of their vernacular as
_Jüdisch_, and this has given rise in England and America to the word
_Yiddish_ for both the spoken and written form. It is interesting to
note that originally the name had been merely _Teutsch_ for the language
of the Jews, for they were conscious of their participation with the
Germans in a common inheritance. Reminiscences of that old designation
are left in such words as _verteutschen_, 'to translate,' _i.e._ to do
into German, and _steutsch_, 'how do you mean it?' contracted from _is
teutsch?_ 'how is that in German?'
The main differences between Judeo-German[22] and the mother-tongue are
these: its vocalism has undergone considerable change, varying from
locality to locality; the German unaccented final _e_ has, as in other
dialects of German, disappeared; in declensional forms, the genitive has
almost entirely disappeared, while in the Lithuanian group the dative
has also coincided with the accusative; in the verb, Judeo-German has
lost almost entirely the imperfect tense; the order of words is more
like the English than the German. These are all developments for which
parallels can be adduced from the region of Frankfurt. Judeo-German is,
consequently, not an anomaly, but a natural development.
III. FOLKLORE
There can be no doubt that the Jews were the most potent factors in the
dissemination of folk-literature in the Middle Ages.[23] Various causes
united to make them the natural carriers of folklore from the East to
the West, and from the West back again to the East. They never became so
completely localized as to break away from the community of their
brethren in distant lands, and to develop distinct national
characteristics. The Jews of Spain stood in direct relations with the
Khazars of Russia, and it was a Jew whom Charlemagne sent as ambassador
to Bagdad. The Jewish merchant did not limit his sphere of action by
geographical lines of demarkation, and the Jewish scholar was as much at
home in Italy and Germany as he was in Russia or Egypt. Again and again,
in reading the biographies of Jewish worthies, we are confronted with
men who have had their temporary homes in three continents. In fact, the
stay-at-homes were the exception rather than the rule in the Middle
Ages. In this manner not only a lively intercourse was kept up among the
Jews of the diaspora, but they unwittingly became also the mediators of
the intellectual life of the most remote lands: they not only enriched
the literatures of the various nations by new kinds of compositions, but
also brought with them the substratum of that intellectual life which
finds its expression in the creations of the popular literature.
The Jews have always possessed an innate love for story telling which
was only sharpened by their travels. The religious and semi-religious
stories were far from sufficient to satisfy their curiosity, and in
spite of the discussions by the Rabbis of the permissibility of reading
foreign books of adventure, they proceeded to create and multiply an
apocryphal and profane folk-literature which baffles the investigator
with its variety. Most addicted to these stories were the women, who
received but little learning in the language of their religious lore,
and who knew just enough of their Hebrew characters to read in the
vernacular books specially prepared for them. Times changed, and the
education of the men varied with the progress of the Hebrew and the
native literatures; but the times hardly made an impression on the
female sex. The same minimum of ethical instruction was given them in
the eighteenth century that they had received in the fourteenth, and
they were left to shift for themselves in the selection of their profane
reading matter. The men who condescended to write stories for them had
no special interest to direct the taste of their public, and preferred
to supply the demand rather than create it; nor did the publishers have
any more urgent reason why they should trouble themselves about the
production of new works as long as the old ones satisfied the women.
Consequently, although now and then a 'new' story book saw daylight, the
old ones were just as eagerly received by the feminine readers. And thus
it happens that what was read with pleasure at its first appearance is
accepted as eagerly to-day, and the books that were issued from the
printing presses of the sixteenth century may be found in almost
unchanged hundredth editions, except as to the language, printed in 1898
in Wilna or Warsaw.
Time and space are entirely annihilated in the folklore of the Russian
Jews. Here one finds side by side the quaint stories of the Talmud of
Babylonian, Persian, Egyptian origin, with the Polyphemus myth of the
Greeks, the English 'Bevys of Hamptoun,' the Arabic 'Thousand and One
Nights.' Stories in which half a dozen motives from various separate
tales have been moulded into one harmonious whole jostle with those that
show unmistakable signs of venerable antiquity. Nowhere else can such a
variety of tales be found as in Judeo-German; nor is there any need, as
in other literatures, to have recourse to collections of the diligent
searcher; one will find hundreds of them, nay thousands, told without
any conscious purpose in the chapbooks that are annually issued at
Wilna, Lemberg, Lublin, and other places. Add to these the many
unwritten tales that involve the superstitions and beliefs of a more
local character, in which the Slavic element has been superadded to the
Germanic base, and the wealth of this long-neglected literature will at
once become apparent to the most superficial observer.[24]
These stories have dominated and still dominate the minds of the women
and children among the Russian, Roumanian, and Galician Jews. For them
there exists a whole fantastic world, with its objects of fear and
admiration. There is not an act they perform that is not followed by
endless superstitious rites, in which the beliefs of Chaldea are
inextricably mixed with French, Germanic, or Slavic ceremonies. To
pierce the dense cloud of superstition that has involved the Mosaic Law,
to disentangle the ancient religion from the rank growth of the ages, to
open the eyes of the Jews to the realities of this world, and to break
down the timeless and spaceless sphere of their imaginings--that has
been the task of the followers of the Mendelssohnian Reform for the last
one hundred years. In the pages of the Judeo-German works that they have
produced to take the place of the story books of long ago, one meets
continually with lists of superstitions that they are laboring to
combat, with the names of books that they would fain put in an index
expurgatorius.
It is not difficult to discern a number of distinct strata in the many
folk-tales that are current now, even though the motives from various
periods may be found hopelessly intertwined in one and the same story.
The oldest of these may be conveniently called the Talmudical
substratum, as in those older writings the prototypes of them can be
found. Of course, these in their turn are of a composite nature
themselves, but that need not disconcert us in our present investigation
as long as the resemblance is greater to the stories in the Talmud than
to the originals from which that collection has itself drawn its
information. There is a large variety of subjects that must be
classified in that category. Here belong a number of animal fables, of
stories of strange beasts, much imaginary geography, but especially a
vast number of apocryphal Bible stories.[25] One of the most
interesting series of that class is the one that comprises tales of the
river Sambation.[26] This river has rarely been discovered by poor
mortals, although it has been the object of their lifelong quest. During
the week it throws large rocks heavenwards, and the noise of the roaring
waters is deafening. On the Sabbath the river rests from its turmoil, to
resume again its activity at its expiration. Behind the Sambation lives
the tribe of the Red Jews.
The best story of that cycle is told by Meisach. An inquisitive tailor
sets out in search of the Sambation River. Of all the Jews that he meets
he inquires the direction that he is to take thitherward; and he makes
public announcements of his urgent business at all the synagogues that
he visits. But all in vain. Three times he has already traversed the
length and the breadth of this earth, but never did he get nearer his
destination. Undaunted, he starts out once more to reach the tribe of
the Red Jews. Suddenly he arrives near that awful river. Overwhelmed by
its din, terrified at its eruptions, he falls down on the ground and
prays to the all-merciful God. It happened to be a few minutes before
the time that the river was to go to rest. The clock strikes, and, as if
by magic, the scene is changed. The tailor finds a ford, passes on the
other side, and, exhausted from his wandering, he lies down to sleep in
the grass. The tribe of men that live there are a race of giants. One of
them, noticing the intruder, takes him to be a new species of a
grasshopper, picks him up, and slips him in his spacious coat pocket. He
proceeds to the bathhouse to take his ablution, and thence to the
synagogue, leaving the tailor all the while in his pocket. The giants
begin to pray. At the end, while a pause ensues, the pious tailor
unconsciously exclaims 'Amen!' Astonished to hear that mysterious voice,
the giant brings the tailor to light and showers many signs of respect
upon him, for even the giants know how to honor a pious man. The tailor
liked it there so much that he never returned to his native home.
Abramowitsch has made a fine use of this story in his Jewish 'Don
Quixote.' The hero of that novel has so long pondered about the
Sambation River and the mysterious race of men that live beyond it, that
he loses his reason, and starts out to find them. But he does not get
beyond Berdichev. Another very fruitful class of stories belonging to
that category is the one in which the prophet Elijah plays an important
part.[27] According to the popular belief, Elijah did not die; he even
now frequently comes to visit men, to help them in some dire necessity.
His presence is surmised only when he has disappeared, generally leaving
behind him a vapory cloud. So rooted is this belief in the visitation of
Elijah, that during the ceremony of the circumcision a chair is left
unoccupied for the good prophet. Elijah is not the only one that may be
seen nowadays. Moses and David occasionally leave their heavenly abodes
to aid their devotees or to exhort those that are about to depart from
the road of righteousness. King David presides over the repast at the
conclusion of the Sabbath, for it is then that a song in which his name
is mentioned is recited. There are some who regard it as a devout act to
celebrate that occasion with unswerving accuracy. To those who have made
the vow of 'Mlawe-Malke,' as the repast is called, King David is wont to
appear when they are particularly unfortunate. Unlike Elijah, he makes
his presence known by his company of courtiers and musicians, and he
himself holds a harp in his hands; and unlike him, he resorts to
supernatural means to aid his _protégés_.
Most of the medieval legends cluster around the Rabbis of Central
Europe, who have in one way or another become famous. The cities of
Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Worms, Prague, Cracow, have all their special
circle of wonderful tales about the supernatural powers of the worthies
of long ago. But the king of that cycle of miracle workers is Rambam, as
Maimonides is called.[28] His profound learning and great piety, his
renowned art of medicine, his extensive travels, have naturally lent
themselves to imaginative transformations. He has undergone the same
transmogrification that befell Vergil. Like the latter, he is no longer
the great scholar and physician, but a wizard who knows the hidden
properties of plants and stones, who by will power can transfer himself
in space, and who can read dreams and reveal their future significance.
His whole life was semi-miraculous. When he had arrived at the proper
age to enter an academy of medicine, he applied to a school where only
deaf-mutes were accepted as disciples of Æsculapius. This precaution was
necessary, lest the secrets of the art be disseminated, to the
disadvantage of the craft. Rambam pretended to have neither hearing nor
speech. His progress was remarkable, and in a short time he surpassed
his teachers in the delicate art of surgery. Once there came to the
school a man who asked to be cured of a worm that was gnawing at his
brain. The learned doctors held a consultation, and resolved to trepan
the skull and extract the worm. This was at once executed, and Rambam
was given permission to be present at the operation. With trembling and
fear he perceived the mistake of his teachers and colleagues, for he
knew full well that the man would have to die as soon as the seventh
membrane under the _dura mater_ was cut away. With bated breath, he
stood the pang of anxiety until the sixth covering had been removed.
Already the doctors were applying the lancet to the seventh, when his
patience and caution gave way, and he exclaimed, 'Stop; you are killing
him!' His surprised colleagues promised to forgive his deceit if he
would extract the worm without injury to the membrane. This Rambam
carried out in a very simple manner. He placed a cabbage leaf on the
small opening in the seventh covering, and the worm, attracted by the
odor of the leaf, came out to taste of the fresh food, whereupon it was
ousted.[29]
Of such a character are nearly all of his cures. The supernatural
element of the later period, where everything is fantastic, is still
absent from the Rabbi legends. There is always an attempt made to
combine the wonderful with the real, or rather to transfer the real into
the realm of the miraculous. The later stories of miracle-working pursue
the opposite course: they engraft the most extraordinary impossibilities
on the experiences of everyday life. Rambam's travels have also given
rise to a large number of semi-mythical journeys. One of the legends
tells of his sojourn in Algiers, where he incurred the hatred of the
Mussulmans for having decided that an oil-vat had become impure because
a Mohammedan had touched it, whereas another vat into which a weed had
fallen was pronounced by him to be ritually pure. Knowing that his life
was in danger, he escaped to Egypt, making the voyage in less than half
an hour by means of a miraculous document that he took with him and that
had the power of destroying space. In Cairo he became the chief adviser
of the king, and he later managed to save the country from the
visitation of the Algerian minister, who had come there ostensibly to
pursue the fugitive Rambam, but in reality to lay Egypt waste by his
magical arts.
The most interesting stories that still belong to that cycle are those
that have developed in Slavic countries. Out of the large material that
was furnished them by the German cities, in conjunction with the new
matter with which they became familiar in their new homes, they have
moulded many new stories in endless variety. The number of local legends
is unlimited. There is hardly an inn on the highways and byways of
Western Russia and Galicia that has not its own circle of wonderful
tales. Every town possesses its remarkable Rabbi whose memory lives in
the deeds that he is supposed to have performed. But none, except the
town of Mesiboz, the birthplace of Bal-schem-tow, the founder of the
sect of the Khassidim, can boast of such a complete set of legendary
tales as the cities of Wilna and Cracow. In Wilna they will still tell
the curious stranger many reminiscences of those glorious days when
their Rabbis could arrest the workings of natural laws, and when their
sentence was binding on ghosts as well as men. They will take him to the
synagogue and show him a large dark spot in the cupola, and they will
tell him that during an insurrection a cannon-ball struck the building,
and that it would have proceeded on its murderous journey but for the
command of the Rabbi to be lodged in the wall. They will take him to a
street where the spooks used to contend with humankind for the
possession of the houses in which they lived:--the contention was
finally referred to the Gaon of Wilna. After careful inquiry into the
justice of the contending parties he gave his decision, which is worthy
of the wisdom of Solomon: he adjudicated the upper parts of the houses,
as much of them as there was above ground, to the mortals, while the
cellars and other underground structures were left in perpetuity to the
shadowy inhabitants of the lower regions.[30] One of the Gaons at Wilna
was possessed of the miraculous power to create a Golem, a homunculus.
It was a vivified clay man who had to do the bidding of him who had
given him temporary life. Whenever his mission was fulfilled he was
turned back into an unrecognizable mass of clay.[31]
A special class of legends that have been evolved in Slavic countries
are those that tell of the Lamed-wow-niks. According to an old belief
the world is supported by the piety of thirty-six saints (Lamed-wow is
the numerical representation of that number). If it were not for them,
the sins of men would have long ago worked the destruction of the
universe. Out of this basal belief have sprung up the stories that
relate the deeds of the 'hidden' saints. They are called 'hidden'
because it is the very essence of those worthies not to carry their
sanctity for show: they are humble artisans, generally tailors or
shoemakers, who ply their humble vocations unostentatiously, and to all
intents and purposes are common people, poor and rather mentally
undeveloped. No one even dreams of their hidden powers, and no one ever
sees them studying the Law. When by some accident their identity is made
apparent, they vigorously deny that they belong to the chosen
Thirty-six, and only admit the fact when the evidence is overwhelmingly
against them. Then they are ready to perform some act by which a
calamity can be averted from the Jews collectively, and after their
successful undertaking they return to their humble work in some other
town where there is no chance of their being recognized and importuned.
One of the most perfect stories of that kind is told of a hidden saint
who lived in Cracow in the days of Rabbenu Moses Isserls. The Polish
king had listened to the representations of his minister that as
descendant of the Persian king he was entitled to the sum of money which
Haman had promised to him but which he evidently had not paid, having
been robbed of it by the Jews. He ordered the Jews of Cracow to pay
forthwith the enormous sum upon pain of being subjected to a cruel
persecution. After long fasting Rabbenu Isserls told his congregation to
go to Chaim the tailor who was living in the outskirts of the town and
to ask him to use his supernatural powers in averting the impending
calamity. After the customary denials, Chaim promised to be the
spokesman of the Jews before the king. On the next morning he went to
the palace. He passed unnoticed by the guards into the cabinet of his
majesty and asked him to sign a document revoking his order. In anger,
the king went to the door to chide the guards for having admitted a
ragged Jew to his presence. As he opened it, he stepped into space, and
found himself in a desert. He wandered about for a whole day and only in
the evening he met a poor man who offered him a piece of dry bread and
showed him a place of shelter in a cave. The poor man advised him not to
tell of his being a king to any one that he might meet, lest he be
robbed or killed. He gave him a beggar's garments, and supplied him with
a meal of dry bread every day. At the expiration of a year, the poor man
offered him work as a woodcutter with an improvement in his fare if he
would first sign a document. The king was only too happy to change his
monotonous condition, and without looking at it signed the paper
presented to him. His trials lasted two years more, after which he
became a sailor, was shipwrecked and carried back to Cracow. Just then
he awoke to discover that his three years' experience had only lasted
fifteen minutes by the clock. He abided by his agreement in the document
which he had signed in his dream, and thus the great misfortune was once
more warded off by the piety of a Lamed-wow-nik. The minister, the story
continues, escaped to Italy and hence to Amsterdam, where he became a
convert to Judaism. In his old age he returned to Cracow to make
pilgrimages to the graves of Rabbenu Isserls and Chaim, the saint.
All the previous stories and legends pale into insignificance by the
side of the endless miracles spun out by the Khassidim and ascribed to
the founder of the sect and his disciples.[32] Nothing is too absurd for
them. There seems to be a conscious desire in these stories to outdo all
previous records, in order to throw the largest halo on their
Bal-schem-tow, or Bescht, as he is called by his initials.
Bal-schem-tow was neither the miracle-worker that his adherents would
have him, nor the impostor that his opponents imagine him to have been.
He was a truly pious man who sought a refuge in mysticism against the
verbalism of the Jews of his days, in the middle of the eighteenth
century. His followers, unfortunately mistaking the accidental in his
teachings for the essentials of the new doctrine, have raised the
Cabbalistic lucubrations of his disciples to the dignity of religious
books, and have opened wide the doors for superstitions of all kinds.
The realities of this world hardly exist for them, or are at best the
temporal reflexes of that mystic sphere in which all their thoughts
soar. Their rabbis are all workers of miracles, and Bescht is adored by
them more than Moses and the Biblical saints. His life and acts have
been so surrounded by a legendary atmosphere that it is now, only one
hundred and fifty years after his life, not possible to disentangle
truth from fiction and to reconstruct the real man. A large number of
books relate the various miraculous incidents in his life, but the one
entitled 'Khal Chsidim' surpasses them all in variety, and attempts to
give as it were a chronological sequence of his acts.
In that book his grandfather and father are represented as foreshadowing
the greatness of their descendant. His grandfather is a minister to a
king, and Elijah announces to him that at the age of one hundred years
his wife will bear him a son who will be a shining light. His father is
a wizard and a scholar, and enjoins his son before his death to study
with a hidden saint in the town of Ukop. After his studies were
completed he became a teacher in Brody, and a judge. He marries the
sister of Rabbi Gerschon, who takes him for a simpleton, and in vain
tries to instruct him. No one knows of the sanctity of Bescht. He goes
into the mountains accompanied by his wife, and there meditates a long
while. At one time he was about to step from a mountain into empty
space, when the neighboring mountain inclined its summit and received
the erring foot of Bescht. After seven years of solitary life he returns
to Brody to become a servant in Gerschon's household. Later his career
of miracle-working begins: he heals the sick, exorcises evil spirits,
brings down rain by prayers, breaks spells, conquers wizards, predicts
the future, punishes the unbelievers, rewards the faithful by endowing
them with various powers, and does sundry other not less wonderful
things. When he prays, the earth trembles, and no one can hear his voice
for loudness. He sleeps but two hours at night and prays the rest of the
time, while a nimbus of fire surrounds him.
Not less marvellous are the deeds of his disciples as related in the
'Sseefer Maisse Zadikim' and other similar productions that are issued
in penny sheets in Lemberg to impress the believers with the greatness
of their faith. Many of these have sprung up from the desire to instill
the necessity of observing certain religious rites, and this the authors
think they can accomplish best by connecting a moral with some
miraculous tale. For every imaginable vow there is a special story
telling of the blissfulness that the devotee has reached or the misery
that the lax follower of Khassidism has had occasion to rue. Every good
deed according to them creates its own protecting spirits, while every
crime produces a corresponding monstrous beast that pursues the sinner
and leads him to destruction. Interesting also are those cases when a
man has been as prone to sin as he has been to perform virtuous acts,
for then the struggle between the beings of his creation leads to
amusing results in which all depends on the preponderance of one kind of
deeds over the other. The worst of men is not excluded from the benefits
of mercy if he makes amends for his crimes by an earnest repentance
which is followed by a long penance.
Of the latter class, the following is a typical story. Chaim has brought
many misfortunes to Jewish families by denouncing and blackmailing them
to the Polish magnate, the chief authority of the district. Once while
on his way to the magnate he sees a half-starved beggar in the road, and
he divides with him his bread and carries him to his house and takes
care of him until he is well enough to proceed on his journey. Chaim has
occasion after several years to denounce some one to the magnate. He
goes to the cupboard to fill his wallet for the journey, when he sees a
dead person in it. After he has collected himself from his fright, he
steps up once more to the cupboard. The dead person tells him that he is
the beggar that he saved from starvation some time ago, that he had
heard in heaven that Chaim was to be given his last chance in life, and
that he had come to warn him to repent his misdeeds. Chaim takes his
advice to heart, and for seven years stays uninterruptedly in the
synagogue, perfecting himself in his knowledge of the religious lore. On
the eve of the Passover he allows himself to be tempted by Satan in the
shape of a scholar, to eat leavened bread at a time when the Law
prohibits it. As he steps out to the brook to wash his hands before
tasting of the bread, the dead person once more appears to him and tells
him that Satan has been sent to him to tempt him, because it was
thought that his seven years' penance alone was not sufficient to atone
for his many evil deeds; that all his labors have been in vain, and that
he will have to do penance another seven years. This Chaim is only too
ready to undergo, and he applies himself with even more ardor than
before to get a remission of his sins. At the expiration of the allotted
time Chaim dies and is at once taken to heaven.
The legends and folk-tales so far considered are of a strictly Jewish
character, whatever their origin. They are in one way or another
connected with the inner life of the Jewish community. They deal with
the acts of their worthies and inculcate religious truths. But these are
far from forming the bulk of all the stories that are current to-day
among the German Jews in Slavic countries. Among the printed books of a
popular character there are many that not only are of Gentile origin,
but that have not been transformed in the light of the Mosaic faith;
they have been reprinted without change of contents for the last four
centuries, furnishing an example of long survival unequalled probably in
any other literature.[33] Many of the stories that had been current in
Germany long before the time of printing were among the first to be
issued from Jewish printing presses. Stories of the court of King Arthur
in verse, of Dietrich of Bern, of the 'Constant Love of Floris and
Blanchefleur,' of 'Thousand and One Nights,' had been common in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and many of them may be found in
editions of this century; but none of them has been so popular as the
'Bovo-maisse,' the latest edition of which is known to me from the year
1895. It is identical with the English 'Bevys of Hamptoun' and was done
into Judeo-German by Elia Levita in Venice in the year 1501. It is, no
doubt, related to some one of the many Italian versions in which Bevys
is turned into Bovo. The popularity of this book has been second only to
the 'Zeena-Ureena' which contains a very large number of folk-tales
interwoven in a popular exposition of the Bible. There are also books
that contain stories of 'Sinbad the Sailor,' or what seem to be versions
of Sir John Maundeville's 'Travels,' and other similar fantastic tales.
These stories, having once been committed to writing and printing, have
remained intact up to our times, except that they have undergone
linguistic modernizations. But there is also an unlimited number of
fairy tales and fables in circulation which have never been written
down, which have therefore been more or less subjected to local
influences; in these Hebrew, German, and Slavic elements meet most
freely, causing the stories to be moulded in new forms.[34] It may be
asserted without fear of contradiction that among the Russian Jews the
investigator will find the best, most complete versions of most, if not
all, the stories contained in Grimm's or Andersen's collections. The
reason for it is to be sought in the inordinate love of story-telling
that the Jews possess. They are fond of staying up late in the night,
particularly in the winter, and whiling away the time with an endless
series of stories. The stranger who is a good raconteur is sure of a
kind reception wherever he may chance to stay; but his nights will be
curtailed by the extent of his fund of stories, for his audience will
not budge as long as they suspect that the stranger has not spent all
the arrows from his quiver. The wandering beggar-students and tailors
have the reputation for story-telling; it was by one of the latter that
a large number of fairy tales were related to me. I choose for
illustration one that is known in a great variety of versions.
THE FOOL IS WISER THAN THE WISE
"Once upon a time there lived a rich man who had three sons: two of them
were wise, while one was a fool. After his death the brothers proceeded
to divide the property, which consisted mainly of cattle. The two wise
brothers suggested that the herd be divided into three equal parts, and
that lots be cast for each; but the fool insisted that corrals be built
near the house of each and that each be allowed to keep the cattle that
would stray into his corral. The wise brothers agreed to this, and to
entice the oxen and cows they placed fresh hay in their enclosures; but
the fool did not take measures to gain possession of cattle by unfair
means. The animals were attracted by the odor of the new-mown hay, and
only one calf strolled into the fool's enclosure. The fool kept his calf
for eight days, and forgot to give it fodder during that time; so it
died. He took off its hide, and placed it in the sun to get dry. There
it lay until it shrivelled up. Then he took the hide to Warsaw to sell
it, but no one wanted to buy it, for it was all dried up.
"He started for home and came to an inn where he wanted to stay over
night. He found there twelve men eating, and drinking good wine. He
asked the landlady whether he could stay there over night. She told him
she would not keep him in the house for all the money in the world, and
she asked him to leave the house at once. He did not like her hasty
manner, and he hid himself behind the door where no one could see him.
There he overheard the landlady saying to the men: 'Before my husband
gets home you must go down in the cellar and hide behind the wine-casks.
In the night, when he will be asleep, you must come up and kill him.
Then I shall be satisfied with you!' After a short while her husband
returned from the distillery with some brandy, and the men hurried down
into the cellar. He unloaded the brandy-casks, and went into the house.
He asked his wife for something to eat; but she said there was nothing
in the house. Just then the fool stepped in and asked the innkeeper
whether he could not stay there over night. The landlady got angry at
him and said: 'I told you before that there was no bed here for you!'
But the innkeeper said: 'He will stay here over night!' and the
innkeeper's word was law. He told the fool to sit down at the table with
him, and they started a conversation. The fool accidentally placed his
hand on the hide, which being dry began to crackle. The innkeeper asked
him: 'What makes the hide crackle that way?' and the fool answered: 'It
is talking to me!' 'What does it say?' 'It says that you are hungry, and
that your wife says that there is nothing in the house, but that if you
will look into the oven you will find some dishes.' He went up to the
oven and found there enough for himself and the fool to eat. Then the
hide crackled again, and the innkeeper asked again: 'What does it say?'
'It says that you should start a big fire in the oven!' 'What is the
fire for?' 'I do not know, but you must obey the hide.' So he went and
made a big fire in the oven. Then the hide crackled again. Says he:
'What does the hide say now?' 'It tells to heat kettles of water.' When
the water got hot, the hide crackled again. Then he asked: 'What does
the hide say now?' 'It says that you should take some strong men with
you to the cellar and pour the water behind the wine-casks.' And so he
did. The robbers were all scalded, and they ran away. Then he came
upstairs, and the hide crackled again. Said he: 'Why does it crackle
now?' 'The twelve robbers wanted to kill you at night, because your wife
ordered them to do so.' When the wife heard that, she also ran away.
Then the innkeeper said: 'Sell me your hide!' The fool answered: 'It
costs much money.' 'No matter how much it costs, I shall pay for it, for
it has saved my life.' 'It costs one thousand roubles.' So he gave him
one thousand roubles. The fool went home, and when the brothers heard
that he had sold his hide for one thousand roubles, they killed all
their cattle, and took their hides to Warsaw to sell. They figured that
if their brother's calf brought one thousand roubles, the hides of their
oxen ought to fetch them at least two thousand roubles apiece. When they
asked two thousand roubles apiece, people laughed and offered them a
rouble for each. When they heard that, they went home and upbraided
their brother for having cheated them. But he insisted that he had
received one thousand roubles for his hide, and the brothers left him
alone.
"After a while the fool's wife died. The undertakers wanted one thousand
roubles for her interment. But the fool would not pay that sum. He
placed his wife in a wagon and took her to Warsaw. There he filled the
wagon with fine apples and put the dead body at the head of the wagon
all dressed up. He himself stood at some distance and watched what would
happen. There rode by a Polish count, and as he noticed the fine apples,
he sent his servant to buy some. The servant asked the woman several
times at what price she sold the apples; but as she did not answer him,
he hit her in the face. Then the fool ran up and cried, saying that they
had killed his wife. The count descended from his carriage, and when he
had convinced himself that the woman was really dead, he asked the fool
what he could do to satisfy him. The fool asked five thousand roubles,
and the count paid him. The fool paid the undertaker in Warsaw a few
roubles, and he buried his wife. He returned home and told his brothers
of his having received five thousand roubles for his dead wife. Upon
hearing that, they killed their wives and children and took the dead
bodies to Warsaw to sell. When they arrived in Warsaw, they were asked
what they had in their wagons. They said: 'Dead bodies for sale.' The
people began to laugh, and said that dead bodies had to be taken to the
cemetery. There was nothing left for the brothers to do but to take them
to the cemetery and have them buried.
"They wept bitterly, and swore that they would take revenge on their
brother. And so they did. When they arrived home, they told him that
they wished to make him a prince. They enticed him for that purpose into
a bag, and wanted to throw him into the water. They went away to find a
place where they could throw him in without being noticed. In the
meanwhile the fool kept on crying in the bag that he did not care to be
a prince, that he wished to get out of the bag. Just then a rich Polish
merchant drove by. When he heard the cries in the bag, he stepped down
from his carriage and asked the fool why he was crying so. He said: 'I
do not want to be a prince!' So he untied him and said: 'Let me get into
the bag and be made a prince! I shall make you a present of my horses
and my carriage, if you will let me be a prince.' The rich man crept
into the bag, and the fool tied it fast. He went into the carriage and
drove away. The brothers came, picked up the bag, and threw it into the
water. The fool watched their doings from a distance. The brothers were
sure they had drowned the fool and returned home. The next morning they
were astonished to see their brother driving around town in a fine
carriage. They asked him: 'Where did you get that?' He answered: 'In the
water.' 'Are there more of them left?' 'There are finer ones down
there.' So they went down to the water's edge, and they agreed that one
of them should leap in and see if there were any carriages left there,
and if he should find any, he was to make a noise in the water, when the
other one would follow him. One of them leaped in, and beginning to
drown, began to splash the water. The other, thinking his brother was
calling him, also jumped in, and they were both drowned. The fool became
the sole heir of all their property; he married again, and is now living
quite happily."
* * * * *
Corresponding to the diffusion of folklore among the Jews, their store
of popular beliefs, superstitions, and medicine is unlimited. Their
mysterious world is peopled with the imaginary beings of the Talmud, the
creatures of German mythology, and the creations of the Slavic popular
mind. These exist for them, however, not as separate entities, but as
transfused into an organic whole in which the belief of Babylonia and
Assyria has much of the outward form of the superstition of Russia, just
as the spirits of Poland and Germany are made to be brothers to those of
Chaldea and Egypt. To their minds the transmigrated souls of the
_Gilgulim_, the scoffing _Leezim_, the living dead bodies of the
_Meessim_, the possessing _Dibukim_, the grewsome _Scheedim_, are as
real as the _Riesen_ and _Schraetele_ of Germany and the _Nischtgute_
(niedobry), _Wukodlaki_ (werewolf), _Zlidne_, _Upior_ (vampyre), and
_Domowoj_ of Russia. The beast _Reem_ of the Talmud, the _Pipernātter_
(Lindwurm) of Germany are not less known to them than the fabled animals
of Russian fairy tales. In case of sickness they consult with equal
success the miracle-working Rabbi with his lore derived from Talmud and
Cabbala, as the Tartar medicine man (znachar), or get some old woman to
recite the ancient German formula for warding off the evil eye. There is
not an incident in their lives, from their births unto their deaths,
that is not accompanied by its own circle of superstitious rites and
practices.[35]
Their literature, both oral and printed, is also full of evidences of
that popular creative spirit which finds its expression in the form of
maxims and proverbs. One can hardly turn the pages of a novel or comedy
without finding some interesting specimens of this class. But little has
been done to classify them, or even to collect them. The printed
collections of Tendlau and Bernstein contain less than three thousand
proverbs, while the seven thousand saws on which Schwarzfeld bases his
generalizations in a Roumanian periodical (_Anuarul pentru Israeliţi_)
have not yet been published by him.[36]
Equally rich would prove the harvest of popular anecdotes, either as
told of separate individuals, as Herschele Ostropoler, Motke Chabad,
Jōssef Loksch, the wise man of Chelm, and the like, or as applied to the
inhabitants of certain Abderitic towns.[37] Many such collections are
mentioned in the appendix, but they do not by any means exhaust the
stories that are current among the people. Though they generally are of
the same character as those told of Schildburg and Till Eulenspiegel,
and are even borrowings from those German stories, yet they contain so
much original matter, and have been welded into such new forms, that
they deserve the attention of the student of folklore. They also bear
excellent witness to that pungent wit for which the Jews are so justly
famous.
IV. THE FOLKSONG
The Jews have been preëminently inhabitants of towns; their very
admission into Poland was based on the supposition that they would be
instrumental in creating towns and cities, from which the agricultural
Slavs kept aloof. Centuries of city life have incapacitated them for any
other occupation than commerce and artisanship, and have entirely
estranged them from nature. On the other hand, their civil disabilities
and oppression have led them to cling more closely to the Bible and
their religious lore than was customary among their coreligionists in
other lands. It was in these Slavic countries that the Talmud was
rediscovered and that it was introduced to the rest of Judaism. All
these circumstances developed in them a strong retrospective spirit, so
that in the centre of their intellectual horizon stands man in all his
varying moods and vicissitudes of fortune. Consequently all their
folksongs[38] have more or less of a lyrical tinge, and the
consideration of nature is almost entirely absent from them;
occasionally a flower, a natural phenomenon, finds a passing mention in
them, but these are never used for their own intrinsic interest. Outside
of himself, the Jew knows only his duties to God and his duties to man,
as flowing from his duties to God. Not feeling himself as a constituent
part of a nation, having no other union with his fellow-men except that
of religion, he could never rise to the appreciation and formation of an
epic poem, although the material for such a one was present in the very
popular legend of the one-day king, Saul Wahl.[39]
The cradle songs reflect this spirit.[40] While babies of Gentiles hear
meaningless nursery rhymes or comical ditties, Jewish infants are early
made acquainted with the serious aspects of life. They are told of the
ideal of their future occupation, which is commerce, they are spurred on
to 'Tōre,' which is learning, mainly religious, and they are reminded
that they must remain an 'ehrlicher,' _i.e._ an orthodox, Jew. The
following poem is, probably, the most popular song in Judeo-German, as
it is sung from Galicia to Siberia, and from the Baltic provinces to
Roumania:
Hinter Jankeles Wiegele
Stēht a klār-weiss Ziegele:
Ziegele is' gefāhren handlen
Rožinkelach mit Mandlen.
Rožinkelach mit Mandlen
Sanen die beste S-chōre,--
Jankele wet lernen Tōre,
Tōre wet er lernen,
Briewelach wet er schreiben,
Un' an ehrlicher Jüd'
Wet er af tomid verbleiben.
Behind Jacob's cradle there stands a clear white goat: the goat has
gone a-bartering raisins and almonds. Raisins and almonds are the
best wares,--Jacob will study the Law, the Law he will study,
letters he will write, and an honest Jew he will forever remain.
But commerce and learning are not for girls. They are generally
incapacitated for the first by their onerous duties of home; and
learning, at least a knowledge of the Sacred language and its lore, has
never been regarded as a requisite of woman. She received her religious
instruction and ethical training by means of Judeo-German books which
owe their very origin to the necessity of educating her. The name of the
script in which all these books of the past three centuries are printed
is _Weiberdeutsch_, indicating at once the use to which it was put. The
title-pages of the works generally tell that they are 'gar hübsch
bescheidlich far frumme Weiber un' Maidlich,' or that 'die Weiber un'
Meidlich di Weil damit vertreiben die heiligen Täg.' The Biblical
injunction 'fructify and multiply yourself' invests family life with a
special sacredness, throws a gloom over the childless home, and leads
this people to regard motherhood as the ideal state of the Jewish woman.
All these sentiments find frequent expressions in their songs, and while
the infant boy is lulled to sleep with a recitation of his future manly
virtues, the baby girl hears in her cradle, 'In the month of Tamuz, my
little lady, you will become a mother!'
Childhood alone claims exemption from oppressing thoughts and gloom:
childhood must have its merriments, its pranks, its wantonness, no
matter how serious life is to become later, or how soon it is to be
ended. With the Jew youth, indeed, lasts but 'an hour,' and in
after-life he has many an occasion to regret its short duration:
Jāhren klēine, Jāhren schoene,
Wās sent ihr asō wēnig dā?
Ihr sent nor gekummen,
Me hāt euch schoen aufgenummen,
Un' sent nor gewe'n bei uns ēin Scho?
Jāhren junge, Jāhren g'ringe,
Wās sent ihr asō gich aweg?
Es seht euch nit kēin Äugel,
Es derjāgen euch nit die Voegel,
Ihr sent aweg gār ohn' ein Eck'!
Little years, beautiful years, why are there so few of you? You had
scarcely come, you were well received, and you stayed but an hour
with us!--Young years, light years, why have you passed so quickly?
Not an eye can see you, not a bird can fly as swiftly, you have
passed without return!
The number of ditties sung by children is very great. They do not in
general differ from similar popular productions of other nations, either
in form or content; some are evidently identical with German songs,
while a few are Slavic borrowings.
But there are two classes of songs peculiarly Jewish: the mnemonic lines
for the study of Hebrew words, and those that depict the ideal course of
a boy's life. To the second belongs:
A klēine Weile wöllen mir spielen,
Dem Kind in Cheeder wöllen mir führen,
Wet er lernen a Pāar Schures,
Wöllen mir hören gute Pschures,
Gute Pschures mit viel Mailes,
Zu der Chupe paskenen Schailes,
's 'et sein gefällen der ganzer Welt,
Chossen-kale--a vulle Geld,
A vulle Geld mit Masel-broche,
Chossen-kale--a schoene Mischpoche,
Schoene Mischpoche mit schoenem Trest,
Ābgestellt auf drei Jahr Köst.
A little while we shall play, we shall lead the child to school;
there he will learn a few lines, and we shall get good reports,
good reports with many good things, and he will settle religious
disputes upon his wedding day. The whole world will be
satisfied,--bridegroom and bride--a purse full of money; full of
money, may it bring blessings; bridegroom and bride--a fine family;
a fine family with fine apparel, and at their house you'll stay
three years.
The man's career used to run in just such a stereotyped manner: at a
tender age, when children have not yet learned to properly articulate
their speech, he was sent to the Cheeder, the elementary Jewish school;
long before the romantic feeling has its rise in youth, he was betrothed
and married; but unable to earn a livelihood for the family with which
he prayed to be blessed, he had to stay for a number of years with his
parents or parents-in-law, eating 'Köst,' or board; this time he
generally passed in the Talmud school, perfecting himself in the
casuistry of religious discussion, while the woman at once began to care
for her ever-increasing family. Under such conditions love could not
flourish, at least not that romantic love of which the young Gentiles
dream and which finds its utterance in their popular poetry. The word
'love' does not exist in the Judeo-German dictionary, and wherever that
feeling, with which they have become acquainted only since the middle
of this century, is to be named, the Jews have to use the German word
'Liebe.' The man's hope was to marry into some 'schoene Mischpoche,' a
good and respected family, while the girl's dream was to get a husband
who was well versed in 'rabonische Tōre,' _i.e._ Jewish lore. While the
boy, by his occupation with the Bible and the Talmud, was taught to look
on marriage as on an act pleasing to God, the girl was freer to allow
her fancy to roam in the realms bordering on the sensations of love:
Schoen bin ich, schoen, un' schoen is' mein Nāmen:
Redt män mir Schiduchim vun grōsse Rabonim.
Rabonische Tōre is' sēhr grōss,
Un' ich bei mein Mamen a züchtige Rōs'.
A Rōs' is' auf'n Dach,
A lichtige Nacht,
Wasser is' in Stub, Holz is' in Haus,
Welchen Bocher hāb' ich feind, treib' ich ihm araus!
Fischelach in Wasser, Kräppelach in Puter,
Welchen Bocher hāt mich feind, a Ruch in sein Mutter!
Pretty I am, pretty, and pretty is my name; they talk of great
rabbis as matches for me. Rabbi's learning is very great, but I am
a treasured rose of my mother's. A rose upon the roof, a clear
night; water is in the room, wood is in the house,--If I love not a
boy, I drive him away! Fish in the water, fritters in butter,--If a
boy love me not, cursed be his mother!
But such an exultation of free choice could be only passing, as the
match was made without consulting her feelings in the matter; her
greatest concern was that she might be left an old maid, while her
companions passed into the ordained state of matrimony. Songs embodying
this fear are quite common; the following is one of them:
Sitz' ich mir auf'n Stēin,
Nemmt mir ān a grōss Gewēin:
Alle Maedlach hāben Chassene,
Nor ich bleib' allēin.
Oi wēh, Morgenstern!
Wenn well ich a Kale wer'n,
Zi heunt, zi morgen?
A schoene Maedel bin ich doch
Un' a reichen Taten hāb' ich doch!
I sit upon a stone, and am seized by great weeping: all girls get
married, but I remain single. Woe to me, morning star! When shall I
become a bride, to-day or to-morrow? I surely am a pretty girl, and
I have a rich father!
In the more modern songs in which the word 'love' is used, that word
represents the legitimate inclination for the opposite sex which
culminates in marriage.
Now that love and love matches are not uncommon, it is again woman who
is the strongest advocate of them; love songs addressed by men to women
are rare, and they may be recited with equal propriety by the latter.
The chief characteristic of woman's love, as expressed in them, is
constancy and depth of feeling.
Schwarz bist du, schwarz, asō wie a Zigeuner,
Ich hāb' gemēint, as du we'st sein meiner;
Schwarz bist du, āber mit Cheen,
Für wemen du bist mies, für mir bist du schoen;
Schoen bist du wie Silber, wie Gold,--
Wer's hāt dich feind un' ich hāb' dich hold.
Vun alle Fehlern känn a Doktor ābhēilen,
Die Liebe vun mein Herzen känn ich var Kēinem nit derzaehlen.
Black you are, black as a Gypsy, I thought you would always be
mine; black you are, but with grace,--for others you may be homely,
but for me you are handsome; handsome you are, like silver, like
gold,--let others dislike you, but I love you. Of all troubles a
doctor can cure, the love in my heart I can tell to no one.
Many are the songs of pining for the distant lover; they show all the
melancholy touches of similar Slavic love ditties, and are the most
poetical of all the Jewish songs. They range from the soft regrets of
the lover's temporary absence to the deep and gloomy despair of the
betrothed one's death, though the latter is always tempered by a
resignation which comes from implicit faith in the ways of Heaven. Here
are a few of them in illustration of the various forms which this pining
assumes:
Bei 'm Breg Wasser thu' ich stēhn
Un' känn zu dir nit kummen,
Oi, vun weiten rufst du mich,
Ich känn āber nit schwimmen!
At the water's edge I do stand, and I cannot get to you. Oh, you
call me from afar, but I cannot swim!
Finster is' mein' Welt,
Mein' Jugend is' schwarz,
Mein Glück is' verstellt,
Es fault mir mein Harz.
Es zittert mir jetwider Eewer,
Es kühlt mir dās Blut,
Mit dir in ēin Keewer
Wet mir sein gut.
Ach, wās willst du, Mutter, hāben,
Wās mutschest da dein Kind?
Wās willst du mir begrāben?
Für wāssere Sünd'?
Ich hāb' kēin Nachas geha't,
Nor Leiden un' Kummer,
Ich welk' wie ein Blatt,
Wie ein Blum' Ssof Summer.
Wu nemm' ich mein' Freund
Chotsch auf ēin Scho?
Alle hāben mir feind
Un' du bist nit dā!
Dark is my world; my youth is black, my fortune is veiled, my heart
is decaying.--Every limb of mine is trembling; my blood grows
cold; I should feel well with you in one grave.--Oh, what do you
want of me, mother? Why do you vex your child? Why do you wish to
bury me? For what sins of mine?--I have had no joy, only suffering
and sorrow. I am fading like a leaf, like a flower at the end of
summer.--Where shall I find my friend but for one hour? No one
loves me, and you are not here.
With the same feeling that prompts the Jewish woman to repeat the
prayer, 'O Lord, I thank Thee that Thou hast created me according to Thy
will!' while the man prays, 'I thank Thee that Thou hast created me a
man,' she regards her disappointments in love as perfectly natural; and
the inconstancy of man, which forms the subject of all songs of unhappy
love, does not call forth recriminations and curses, which one would
expect, but only regrets at her own credulity.
One would imagine that the wedding day must appear as the happiest in
the life of the woman, but such is not the case. With it begin all the
tribulations for which she is singled out; and the jest-maker, who is
always present at the ceremony of uniting the pair, addresses the bride
with the words:
Bride, bride, weep! The bridegroom will send you a pot full of
horseradish, and that will make you snivel unto your very teeth,
inviting her to weep instead of smiling, and he follows this doggerel
with a discussion of the vanities of life and the sadness of woman's
lot. Even if her marital happiness should be unmarred by any
unfaithfulness of her husband,--and Jewish men for the greater part are
good husbands and fathers,--there are the cares of earning the daily
bread, which frequently fall on the woman, while the stronger vessel is
brooding over some Talmudical subtleties; there are the eternal worries
over the babies, and, worst of all, the proverbial mother-in-law, if
the wife chances to board with her for the first few years after
marriage. The ideal of the Jewess is but a passing dream, and no one can
escape the awakening to a horrible reality:
A Maedele werd a Kale
In ēin Rege, in ēin Minut,
Mit ihr freuen sich Alle
Die Freud' is' nor zu ihr.
Der Chossen schickt Presenten,
Sie werd gār neu geboren,
Wenn sie thut sich ān,
Wünscht sie ihm lange Jāhren.
Sie gēht mit'n Chossen spazieren
Un' thut in Spiegele a Kuck,
Stēhen Ōlem Menschen
Un' seinen mekane dem Glück.
Ot führt män sie zu der Chupe,
Un' ot führt män sie zurück,
Stēhen a Kupe Maedlach
Un' seinen mekane dem Glück.
Auf morgen nāch der Chupe,
Die Freimut is' noch in Ganzen:
Der Chossen sitzt wie a Meelach
Un' die Kale gēht sich tanzen.
Drei Jāhr nāch der Chupe
Der Freimut is schōn arāb:
Die junge Weibel gēht arum
Mit a zudrēhter Kopp.
* * * * *
"Oi wēh, Mutter, Mutter,
Ich will vun dir nit hören,
Ich wollt' schōn besser wöllen
Zurück a Maedel wer'n!"
A girl is made a bride in a moment, in a minute,--all rejoice with
her, with her alone.--The groom sends presents, she feels all
new-born, when she attires herself, she wishes him long
years.--She gets ready to walk with the bridegroom, and looks into
the mirror,--there stands a crowd of people who envy her her good
luck.--Now she is led to the baldachin, now she is led back
again,--there stands a bevy of girls who envy her her luck.--The
next day after the marriage,--the joy is still with them: the
bridegroom sits like a king, the bride is a-dancing.--Three years
after the marriage,--the joy has left them: the young woman walks
around with a troubled head.... 'Woe to me, mother, mother, I do
not want to hear of you,--I should like, indeed, to be a young girl
again.'
Pathetic are the recitals of suffering at the house of her husband's
parents, where she is treated worse than a menial, where she is without
the love of a mother to whom she is attached more than to any one else,
and where she ends miserably her young years:[41]
Mein' Tochter, wu bist du gewesen?
Bei'm Schwieger un' Schwähr,
Wās brummt wie a Bär,
Mutter du liebe, du meine!
Mein Tochterl, awu hāst du dorten gesessen?
Auf a Bank,
Kēinmāl nit geramt,
Mutter du liebe, du meine!
Mein' Tochter, awu hāst du dorten geschlāfen?
Auf der Erd,
Kēinmāl nit gekehrt, etc.
Tochterulu, wās hāt män dir gegeben zu Koppen?
A Säckele Hēu,
In Harzen is' wēh, etc.
Tochterulu, in wās hāt män dir geführt?
In kowanem Wāgen,
Mit Eisen beschlāgen, etc.
Tochterl, über wās hāt män dir geführt?
Über a Brück',
Kēinmāl nit zurück, etc.
Tochterulu, mit wās hāt män dir geführt?
Mit a Ferd,
Jung in der Erd',
Mutter du liebe, du meine!
My daughter, where have you been?--At mother-in-law's and
father-in-law's, who growls like a bear, mother dear, mother
mine!--My daughter, where did you sit there?--Upon a bench never
cleaned, mother dear, mother mine!--My daughter, where did you
sleep there?--Upon the ground, never swept, etc.--Daughter dear,
what did they lay under your head?--A bag of hay, in my heart there
is a pain, etc.--Daughter dear, in what did they drive you?--In a
wagon covered with iron bands, etc.--Daughter dear, over what did
they lead you?--Over a bridge, never back, etc.--Daughter dear,
with what did they drive you?--With a horse, young into the earth,
mother dear, mother mine!
Equally pathetic are the songs that sing of widowhood. This is a far
more common occurrence among Jews than among other people and causes
much greater inconveniences to the helpless woman. It is caused either
by the natural occurrences of death or by self-assumed exile to escape
military service which is naturally not to the tastes of the Jew, as we
shall see later, or frequently by ruthless abandonment. This latter case
is the result of early marriages in which the contracting parties are
not considered as to their tastes; often the young man finds awakening
in himself an inclination for higher, Gentile, culture, but he finds his
path impeded by the ties of family and the gross interests of his
consort. If he can, he gets a divorce from her, but more frequently he
leaves her without further ado, escaping to Germany or America to pursue
his studies. His wife is made an _Agune_, a grass-widow, who, according
to the Mosaic law, may not marry again until his death has been duly
certified to:
Auf'n Barg stēht a Täubele,
Sie thut mit ihr Pāar brummen,
Ich hāb' geha't a guten Freund
Un' kann zu ihm nit kummen.
Bächen Trähren thuen sich
Vun meine Äugen rinnen,
Ich bin geblieben wie a Spändele
Auf dem Wasser schwimmen.
Gār die Welt is auf mir gefallen,
Seit ich bin geblieben allēin,
Sitz' ich doch Tāg un' Nacht
Jāmmerlich un' wēin'.
Teichen Trähren thuen sich
Rinnen vun meine Äugen,
Ich soll hāben Fliegelach,
Wollt' ich zu ihm geflōgen.
Lēgt sich, Kinderlach, alle arum mir,
Euer Tate is' vun euch vertrieben.
Klēine Jessomim sent ihr doch
Un' ich bin ein Almone geblieben.
On the mountain stands a dove; she is cooing to her brood: I have
had a good friend, and I cannot get to him.--Brooks of tears flow
out of my eyes; I am left like a piece of wood swimming on the
water.--The whole world has fallen upon me since I am left alone; I
sit day and night and weep bitterly.--Rivers of tears pour forth
from my eyes. If I had wings I should fly to him.--Lie down,
children, all around me! Your father has been taken away from you:
You are now young orphans, and I am left a widow.
As sad as the widow's is the lot of the orphan. Fatherless and
motherless, he seems to be in everybody's way, and no matter what he
does, he is not appreciated by those he comes in contact with. There are
many songs of the dying mother who finds her last moments embittered by
the thought that her children will suffer privations and oppression from
their stepmother and from other unkind people. There are also beggar's
songs which tell that the singers were driven to beggary through loss of
parents. The following verses, touching in their simplicity, recite the
sad plight of an orphan:
Wasser schaumt, Wasser schaumt,
Thut män ganz weit hören,--
Wenn es starbt der Vāter-Mutter,
Giesst der Jossem mit Trähren.
Der Jossem gēht, der Jossem gēht,
Der Jossem thut gār umsüst,--
Leut' schatzen, Leut' sāgen,
As der Jossem täug' gār nischt
Der Jossem gēht, der Jossem gēht,
Un' in Zar un' in Pein,--
Leut' schatzen, Leut' sāgen,
As der Jossem is' schicker vun Wein.
Bei meine Freund', bei meine Freund'
Wachst Weiz un' Körner,--
Bei mir Jossem, bei mir Jossem
Wachst doch Grās un' Dörner.
Gottunju, Gottunju,
Gottunju du mein,
Wās hāst du mich nit beschaffen
Mit dem Masel wie meine Freund?
Water foams, water foams, one can hear afar. When father and mother
die the orphan sheds tears.--The orphan goes, the orphan goes, the
orphan does all in vain. People judge, people say that the orphan
is good for nothing.--The orphan goes, the orphan goes, in pain and
in sorrow. People judge, people say that the orphan is drunk with
wine.--With my friends, with my friends there grows wheat and
grain. With me, orphan, with me, orphan, there grow but grass and
thorns.--Dear God, dear God, dear God of mine! Why have you not
created me with the same luck as my friends have?
The tender feelings of love, replete with sorrows and despair, are left
almost entirely to women; men are too busy to sing of love, or less
romantic in their natures. But they are not entirely devoid of the
poetic sentiment, and they join the weaker sex in rhythmic utterance,
whenever they are stirred to it by unusual incidents that break in on
their favorite attitude of contemplation and peaceful occupations. Such
are military service, the _pogroms_, or mob violence, and riots
periodically instituted against the Jewish population, expatriation, and
the awful days of Atonement. On these occasions they rise to all the
height of feeling that we have found in the other productions, and the
expression of their attachment to their parents, wives, and children is
just as tender and pathetic. The Russian Jew is naturally averse to the
profession of war. He is not at all a coward, as was demonstrated in the
Russo-Turkish War, in which he performed many a deed of bravery; but
what can be his interest to fight for a country which hardly recognizes
him as a citizen and in which he cannot rise above the lowest ranks in
civil offices or in the army, although he is called to shed his blood on
an equal footing with his Christian or Tartar fellow-soldier? Before the
reign of Nicholas he was regarded beyond the pale of the country's
attention and below contempt as a warrior; he was expected to pay toward
the support of the country, but was not allowed to be its defender in
times of war. He easily acquiesced in this state of affairs, and learned
to regard the payment of taxes as a necessary evil and the exemption
from enlistment as a privilege. Things all of a sudden changed with the
ukase of Emperor Nicholas, by which not only military service was
imposed on all the Jews of the realm, but the most atrocious regime was
inaugurated to seize the persons who might elude the vigilance of the
authorities. A whole regiment of _Chapers_, or catchers, were busy
searching out the whereabouts of men of military age, tearing violently
men from wives, fathers from infant children, minors from their parents.
The terror was still increased by the order of 'cantonment,' by which
young children of tender age were stolen from their mothers to be sent
into distant provinces to be farmed out to peasants, where it was hoped
they would forget their Hebrew origin and would be easily led into the
folds of the Greek-Catholic Church.[42]
This sad state of affairs is described in a long poem, a kind of a
rhymed chronicle of the event; it lies at the foundation of many later
lyrical expressions dealing with the aversion to military service, even
at a time when it was divested of the horrors of Nicholas' regime. Under
the best conditions, the time spent in the service of the Czar might
have been more profitably used for the study of the Bible and
commentaries to the same, is the conclusion of several of such poems:
Ich gēh' arauf auf'n Gass'
Derlangt män a Geschrēi: "A Pass, a Pass!"
A Pass, a Pass hāb' ich gethān verlieren,
Thut män mir in Prijom areinführen.
Führt män mir arein in ersten Cheeder,
Thut män mir aus mein' Mutters Kleider.
Och un' wēh is' mir nischt geschehn,
Wās ich hāb' mir nit arumgesehn!
Führt män mir arein in andern Cheeder,
Thut män mir ān soldatske Klēider.
Och un' wēh is' mir nit geschehn, etc.
Führt män mir arein in Schul' schwören,
Giesst sich vun mir Teichen Trähren.
Och un' wēh is mir nit geschehn, etc.
Ēhder zu trāgen dem Kēissers Hütel,
Besser zu lernen dem Kapitel,
Och un' wēh is' mir nit geschehn, etc.
Ēhder zu essen dem Kēissers Kasche,
Besser zu lernen Chumesch mit Rasche.
Och un' wēh is mir nit geschehn,
Wās ich hāb' mir nit arumgesehn!
I walk in the street,--they cry: "A passport, a passport!" The
passport, the passport I have lost. They take me to the enlisting
office. They lead me into the first room. They take off the clothes
my mother made me. Woe unto me that I have not bethought myself in
time!--They lead me into the second room; they put on me a
soldier's uniform. Woe unto me, etc.--They lead me into the
synagogue to take my oath, and rivers of tears roll down my face.
Woe unto me, etc.--Rather than wear the cap of the Czar--to study a
chapter of religious lore. Woe unto me, etc.--Rather than eat the
Czar's buckwheat mush--to study the Bible with its commentaries.
Woe unto me that I have not bethought myself in time!
Other soldier songs begin with a detailed farewell to parents, brothers,
sisters, and friends, after which follows a recital of the many
privations to which the Jewish soldier will be subjected; in all of
these, the forced absence from wife or bride is regarded as the greatest
evil.
The cup of bitterness has never been empty for the Jews that inhabit the
present Russian Empire; they had been persecuted by Poland, massacred by
the Cossacks, and are now exiled from the central provinces of Russia.
Each massacre, each 'pogrom,' has given rise to several poems, in which
God is invoked to save them from their cruel tormentors, or in which
there are given graphic descriptions of the atrocities perpetrated on
the unwary. Like the soldier songs, they vary in form from the chronicle
in rhymes to the metrical lyric of modern times. The oldest recorded
rhymed chronicle of this kind is the one that tells of the blood bath
instituted in the Ukraine in the middle of last century. The simple,
unadorned recital of inhumanities concocted by the fertile imagination
of a Gonto, a Silo, a Maxim Zhelezniak, produces a more awful effect
than any studied poem could do.[43]
It is no wonder, then, that the Jew takes a gloomy view of life, and
that whenever he rises to any generalizations, he gives utterance to the
blackest pessimism. One such poem depicts the vanities of human life,
into which one is born as into a prison, from which one is freed at best
at the Biblical age of three score and ten, to leave all the gold and
silver to the surviving orphans. There is but one consolation in life,
and that is, that _Tōre_, 'learning,' will do one as much good in the
other world as it does in this. And yet, under all these distressing
circumstances, the Jew finds pleasure in whole-hearted laughter. His
comical ditties may be divided into two classes,--those in which he
laughs at his own weaknesses, and those in which he ridicules the
weaknesses of the Khassidim, the fanatical sect, among whom the Rabbis
are worshipped as saints and are supposed to work miracles. This sect is
very numerous in Poland and South Russia, is very ignorant, and has
opposed progress longer than the Misnagdim, to which sect the other
German Jews in Russia belong. As an example of the first class may serve
a poem in which poverty is made light of:
Ferd' hāb' ich vun Paris:
Drei ohn' Köpp', zwēi ohn' Füss'.
Ladrizem bam, ladrizem bam.
A Rock hāb' ich vun guten Tuch,
Ich hāb' vun ihm kein Bröckel Duch.
Ladrizem, etc.
Stiewel hāb' ich vun guten Leder,
Ich hāb' vun see kein Bröckel Feder.
Ladrizem, etc.
Kinder hāb' ich a drei Tuz',
Ich hāb' vun see kein Bröckel Nutz.
Ladrizem, etc.
Jetzt hāb' ich sich arumgetracht
Un' hāb' vun see a Barg Asch' gemacht.
Ladrizem bam, ladrizem bam.
Horses I have from Paris, three without heads, and two without
feet,--ladrizem bam, etc.--A coat I have of good cloth,--I have not
a trace left of it.--Boots I have of good leather, not a feather's
weight have I left of them.--Children I have some three dozen,--I
get no good out of them.--So I fell a-thinking and made a heap of
ashes of them.
The sensuality, intemperance, and profound ignorance and superstition of
the _Rebe_, or Rabbi, of the Khassidim, and the credulity and
lightheartedness of his followers, form, perhaps, the subject of the
most poems in the Judeo-German language, as they also form the main
subject of attack in the written literature of the last forty years.
V. PRINTED POPULAR POETRY
The author of a recent work on the history of culture among the Galician
Jews[44] has pointed out how at the end of the last century the
Mendelssohnian Reform, and with it worldly education, took its course
through Austria into Galicia, to appear half a century later in Russia.
This quicker awakening in the South was not due to geographical position
alone, but in a higher degree to political and social causes as well.
The language of enlightenment was at first naturally enough a modernized
form of the Hebrew, for the literary German was not easily accessible to
the Jews of Galicia in the period immediately following the division of
Poland. Besides, although books had been printed in Judeo-German for the
use of women and 'less knowing' men, the people with higher culture, to
whom alone the Mendelssohnian Reform could appeal, looked with disdain
on the profane dialect of daily intercourse. When, however, the time had
come to carry the new instruction to the masses, the latter had become
sufficiently familiar with the German language to be able to dispense
with the intermediary native Jargon.[45] Consequently little opportunity
was offered here for the development of a dialect literature.
While the Jews of the newly acquired provinces were becoming more and
more identified with their coreligionists of German Austria, their
Russian and Polish brethren in the Russian Empire were by force of
circumstances departing gradually from all but the religious union with
them, and were drifting into entirely new channels. Previous to the
reign of Nicholas I., their civil disabilities barred them from a closer
contact in language and feeling with their Gentile fellow-citizens,
while their distance from Germany excluded all intellectual relations
with that country. The masses were too downtrodden and ignorant to
develop out of themselves any other forms of literature than the one of
ethical instruction and stories current in the previous century. In the
meanwhile the Haskala, as the German school was called, had found its
way into Russia through Galicia, and such men as J. B. Levinsohn, A. B.
Gottlober, M. Gordon, Dr. S. Ettinger, had become its warmest advocates.
They threw themselves with all the ardor of their natures upon the new
doctrine, and tried to correct the neglected education of their
childhood by a thorough study of German culture. It was but natural for
them to pass by the opportunities offered in their country's language
and to seek enlightenment abroad: the Jews were a foreign nation at
home, without privileges or duties, except those of paying taxes, while
from Germany, their former abiding-place, there shone forth the promise
of a salvation from obscurantism and spiritual death. Henceforth the
word 'German' became in Russia the synonym of 'civilized,' and a
'German' was tantamount to 'reformed' and 'apostate' with the masses,
for to them culture could appear only as the opposite of their narrow
Ghetto lives and gross superstition.
The inauguration of the military regime by Nicholas was in reality only
meant as a first step in giving civil rights to the Jews of his realm;
this reform was later followed by the establishment of Rabbinical
schools at Wilna and Zhitomir, and the permission to enter the Gymnasia
and other institutions of learning. The Jews were, however, slow in
taking advantage of their new rights, as they had become accustomed to
look with contempt and fear on Gentile culture, and as they looked with
suspicion on the Danaid gifts of the government. The enlightened
minority of the Haskala, anxious to lead their brethren out of their
crass ignorance and stubborn opposition to the cultural efforts of the
Czar, began to address them in the native dialects of their immediate
surroundings and to elicit their attention almost against their will.
Knowing the weakness of the Jews for tunable songs, they began to supply
them with such in the popular vein, now composing one with the mere
intention to amuse, now to direct them to some new truth.[46] These
poems, like the dramas and prose writings by this school of writers
previous to the sixties, were not written down, but passed orally or in
manuscript form from town to town, from one end of Russia to the other,
often changing their verses and forming the basis for new popular
creations. The poet's name generally became dissociated from each
particular poem; nay, in the lapse of time the authors themselves found
it difficult to identify their spiritual children. An amusing incident
occurred some time ago when the venerable and highly reputed poet, J. L.
Gordon, had incorporated a parody of Heine's 'Two Grenadiers' among his
collection of popular poems, for a plain case was made out against him
by the real parodist. Gordon at once publicly apologized for his
unwitting theft by explaining how he had found it in manuscript among
his papers and had naturally assumed it to be his own production.[47]
Another similar mistake was made by Gottlober's daughter, who named to
me a dozen of current songs which she said belonged to her father,
having received that information from himself, but which on close
examination were all but one easily proven as belonging to other
poets.[48]
Most difficult of identification are now Gottlober's poems,[49] he
having never brought out himself a collective volume of his verses,
although he certainly must have written a great number of them as early
as the thirties when he published his comedy 'Dās Decktuch.' Those that
have been printed later in the periodicals are either translations or
remodellings of well-known poems in German, Russian, and Hebrew; but
even they have promptly been caught by the popular ear. The one
beginning 'Ich lach' sich vun euere Traten aus,' in which are depicted
humorously the joys of the Jewish recluse, has been pointed out by
Katzenellenbogen as a remodelling of a poem that appeared in a Vienna
periodical;[50] the sources of some of the others he mentions himself,
while the introductory poem in his comedy is a translation of Schiller's
'Der Jüngling am Bache.' From these facts it is probably fair to assume
that most, if not all, of his other poems are borrowings from other
literatures, preëminently German. This is also true of his other
productions, which will be mentioned in another place. Nevertheless he
deserves an honorable place among the popular poets, as his verses are
written in a pure dialect of the Southern variety,--he is a native of
Constantin in the Government of Volhynia,--and as they have been very
widely disseminated.
No one has exercised a greater influence on the succeeding generation of
bards than the Galician Wolf Ehrenkranz, better known as Welwel Zbarżer,
_i.e._ from Zbaraż, who half a century ago delighted small audiences in
Southern Russia with his large repertoire. There are still current
stories among those who used to know him then, of how they would entice
him to their houses and treat him to wine and more wine, of which he was
inordinately fond, how when his tongue was unloosened he would pour
forth improvised songs in endless succession, while some of his hearers
would write them down for Ehrenkranz's filing and finishing when he
returned to his sober moods. These he published later in five volumes,
beginning in the year 1865 and ending in 1878. While there had
previously appeared poems in Judeo-German in Russia, he did not dare to
publish them in Galicia except with a Hebrew translation, and this
method was even later, in the eighties, adopted by his countrymen
Apotheker and Schafir. Ehrenkranz has employed every variety of folksong
known to Judeo-German literature except historical and allegorical
subjects. Prominent among them are the songs of reflection. Such, for
example, is 'The Nightingale,' in which the bird complains of the
cruelty of men who expect him to sing sweetly to them while they enslave
him in a cage, but the nightingale is the poet who in spite of his
aspiration to fly heavenwards must sing to the crowd's taste, in order
to earn a living. In a similar way 'The Russian Tea-machine,' 'The
Mirror,' 'The Theatre,' and many others serve him only as excuses to
meditate on the vanity of life, the inconstancy of fortune, and so
forth.
'The Gold Watch' is one of a very common type of songs of dispute that
have been known to various literatures in previous times and that are
used up to the present by Jewish bards. They range in length from the
short folksong consisting of but one question and answer to a long
series of stanzas, or they may become the subject of long discussions
covering whole books. In 'The Gold Watch' the author accuses the watch
of being unjust in complaining and in allowing its heart to beat so
incessantly, since it enjoys the privilege of being worn by fine ladies
and gentlemen, of never growing old, of being clad in gold and precious
stones. Each stanza of the question ends with the words:
Wās fehlt dir, wās klapt dir dās Herz?
The watch's answer is that it must incessantly work, that it is
everybody's slave, that it is thrown away as useless as soon as it
stops. So, too, is man. Upon this follows what is generally known as a
_Zuspiel_, a byplay, a song treating the contrary of the previous matter
or serving as a conclusion to the same. The _Zuspiel_ to 'The Gold
Watch' is entitled ''Tis Best to Live without Worrying.' There is a
series of songs in his collection which might be respectively entitled
'Memento mori' and 'Memento vivere.' Such are 'The Tombstone' and 'The
Contented,' 'The Tombstone-cutter' and 'The Precentor,' 'The Cemetery,'
and 'While you Live, you Must not Think of Death.' The cemetery, the
gravedigger, the funeral, are themes which have a special fascination
for the Jewish popular singers, who nearly all of them have written
songs of the same character.
Another kind of popular poetry is that which deals with some important
event, such as 'The Cholera in the Year 1866,' or noteworthy occurrence,
as 'The Leipsic Fair,' which, however, like the previously mentioned
poems, serves only as a background for reflections. There are also,
oddly enough, a few verses of a purely lyrical nature in which praises
are sung to love and the beloved object. These would be entirely out of
place in a Jewish songbook of the middle of this century had they been
meant solely as lyrical utterances; but they are used by Ehrenkranz only
as precedents for his 'Zuspiele,' in which he makes a Khassid contrast
the un-Jewish love of the reformed Jew with his own blind adoration of
his miracle-working Rabbi. These latter, and the large number of Khassid
songs scattered through the five volumes, form a class for themselves.
The lightheartedness, ignorance, superstitions, and intemperance of
these fanatics form the butt of ridicule of all who have written in
Judeo-German in the last fifty years, but no one has so masterfully
handled the subject as Ehrenkranz, for he has treated it so deftly by
putting the songs in the mouth of a Khassid that half the time one is
not quite sure but that he is in earnest and the poems are meant as
glorifications of Khassidic blissfulness. It is only when one reads the
fine humor displayed in 'The Rabbi on the Ocean' that one is inclined to
believe that the extravagant miracles performed by the Rabbi were
ascribed to him in jest only. Owing to this quality of light raillery,
the songs have delighted not only the scoffers, but it is not at all
unusual to hear them recited by Khassidim themselves.
Ehrenkranz also has some songs in which are described the sorrows of
various occupations,--a kind of poetry more specially cultivated by
Berel Broder. Of the latter little is known except that he composed his
songs probably at a time anterior to those just mentioned, that he had
lived at Brody, hence his name, and that he had never published them.
They were collected by some one after his death and published several
times; however, it is likely that several of them are of other
authorship, as is certainly the case with 'The Wanderer,' which belongs
to Ehrenkranz. As has been said above, he prefers to dwell on the many
troubles that beset the various occupations of his countrymen, of the
shepherd, the gravedigger, the wagon-driver, the school teacher, the
go-between, the usurer, the precentor, the smuggler. They are all
arranged according to the same scheme, and begin with such lines as: 'I,
poor shepherd,' 'I, lame beadle,' 'I, miserable driver,' 'I, wretched
school teacher,' and so forth. The best of these, and one of the most
popular of the kind, is probably the 'Song of the Gravedigger.' Of the
two songs of dispute, 'Day and Night' and 'Shoemaker and Tailor,' the
first is remarkable in that each praises the other, instead of the more
common discussions in which the contending parties try to outrival one
another in the display of their virtues.
The style of these two Galicians and their very subject-matter were soon
appropriated by a very large class of folksingers in Russia who amuse
guests at wedding feasts. Before passing over to the writers in Russia
we shall mention the two other Galicians who, writing at a later time,
have remained unknown beyond their own country, but one of whom at least
deserves to be known to a larger circle of readers. The one, David
Apotheker, in his collection 'Die Leier,' pursues just such aims as his
Polish or Russian fellow-bards and is entirely without any local
coloring. The poems are written in a pure dialect, without any
admixture of German words, but their poetic value is small, as they are
much too didactic. Of far higher importance and literary worth are the
productions of his contemporary, Bajrach Benedikt Schafir. Being well
versed in German and Polish literature, he generally imitates the form
of the best poems in those languages and often paraphrases them for his
humble audiences. His language is now almost the literary German, now
his native dialect, according as he sings of high matters or in the
lighter vein. In the introduction to one of his earlier pamphlets
written in a pure German, he says that in Germanizing his native dialect
it has been his purpose so to purify the Jargon that it should become
intelligible even to German Jews. The most of his songs were collected
in 'Melodies from the Country near the River San.' These he divided into
four parts: Jewish national songs, songs of commemoration, songs of
feeling, and comical songs,--the first three, with an elegy on the death
of Moses Montefiore, forming the first part, the comical songs the
second part, of the collection.
The most of the comical songs are in the form of dialogues in which a
German, _i.e._ a Jew of the reformed church, discusses with a Khassid
the advantage of education; in others he describes the ignorance of the
latter. Many of them do not rise above the character of theatre
couplets, but in the lyrical part the tone is better, and in some of his
songs he rivals the best folksingers of Russia. His 'Midnight Prayer'
and 'Greeting to Zion' are touching expressions of longing for the
ancient home, just as 'Przemysl, You my Dear Cradle,' and
'Homesickness,' are full of yearning for his native country. Of the four
songs of commemoration, two deal on the famous accusation, in 1883, of
the use of Gentile blood by the Jews in the Passover ceremony, one
describes the fire in the Vienna Ring theatre, while another narrates a
similar catastrophe in the town of Sheniava.
As early as 1863[51] there was printed in Kiev a volume of songs under
the name of 'The Evil-tongued Wedding-jester,' by Izchak Joel Linetzki.
Before me lies a somewhat later edition of the book: it is published in
a form of rare attractiveness for those days and bears on the title-page
a picture of two men, one in European dress, the other in the garments
of a Khassid, in the attitude of discussion. This illustration has
appeared on all the subsequent editions of the same work; it expresses
the author's purpose, which becomes even more patent in his prose works,
to instruct the Khassidim in the advantages of culture, however, the few
poems in the book devoted to this differ from the usual unconditional
praise of reform, in that they point out that the servile imitator of
the Gentiles is no better than the stubborn advocate of the old regime.
Two of the poems are versified versions of the Psalms, and there are
also the usual songs of reflection, and a song of dispute between the
mirror and the clock. Two of the poems sing of the joys of May,
presenting the rare example of pure lyrics at that early time. These
alone will hold a comparison with the best of Ehrenkranz's songs; the
others are somewhat weak in diction and loose in execution.
Few poets have been so popular in Russia as Michel Gordon and S.
Berenstein were in the past generation, the first singing in the
Lithuanian variety of the language, the second in a southern dialect.
Both published their collections in Zhitomir in 1869, and Gordon wrote
an introductory poem for the book of his friend Berenstein. In this he
indicates the marked contrast that exists in the productions of the two.
While the first writes to chide superstition and ignorance, the other
sings out of pity for his suffering race; while the one sounds the
battle-cry of progress, the other consoles his brothers in their misery;
the one, fearing prosecution from the fanatic Khassidim whom he attacks,
sent his poems out into the world anonymously, the other signed his name
to them. And yet, however unlike in form and content, they were both
pervaded by a warm love for their people whom they were trying to
succor, each one in his own way.
Gordon's[52] poems are of a militant order:[53] he is not satisfied with
indicating the right road to culture, he also sounds the battle-cry of
advance. The keynote is struck in his famous 'Arise, my People!' 'Arise,
my people, you have slept long enough! Arise, and open your eyes! Why
has such a misfortune befallen you alone, that you are asleep until the
midday hour? The sun has now long been out upon the world; he has put
all men upon their feet, but you alone lie crouching and bent and keep
your eyes tightly closed.' In this poem he preaches to his race that
they should assimilate themselves in manners and culture to the ruling
people, that they should abandon their old-fashioned garments and
distinguishing characteristics of long beard and forelock, and that they
should exchange even the language in which he sings to them for the
literary language of the country.
Assimilation was the cry of all the earnest men among the Russian Jews
before the eighties, when the course of events put a damper on the
sanguine expectations from such a procedure. Many of his other poems are
of a humorous nature and have been enormously popular. In 'The Beard,' a
woman laments the loss of that hirsute appendage of her husband, who, by
shaving it off, had come to look like a despised 'German.' 'The Turnip
Soup' and 'I Cannot Understand' are excellent pictures of the ignorance
and superstitious awe of the Khassidim before their equally ignorant and
hypocritical Rabbis; other poems deal with the stupidity of the teachers
of children, and the undue use of spirituous drinks on all occasions of
life.
Two of his earliest poems are devoted to decrying the evil custom of
early marriages, in which the tastes of the contracting parties are not
at all considered. In the one entitled 'From the Marriage Baldachin,' he
paints in vivid colors the course of the married life of a Jew from the
wedding feast through the worries of an ever-increasing family, and the
helplessness of the father to provide for his children, with the
consequent breaking up of the family ties. The catching tune to which
the poem is sung, and all folksongs are naturally set to music,
generally by the authors themselves, and the lifelike picture which it
portrays, have done a great deal to diminish the practice; while the
other, 'My Advice,' addressed to a girl, advising her to exercise her
own free will and reasonable choice of her life's companion, has helped
to eliminate misery and to introduce the element of love in the marital
stage.
In his advocacy of reform, Gordon had in mind the clearing of the Jewish
religion from the accumulated superstitions of the ages which had almost
stifled its virgin simplicity, not an abandonment of any of its
fundamental principles in the ardent desire for assimilation. True
culture is, according to him, compatible with true piety, and a surface
culture, with its accompanying slackness of religious life, is
reprehensible. When he saw that so many had misunderstood the precepts
of those who taught a closer union with the Gentiles in that they
adopted the mere appearances of the foreign civilization and overthrew
the essential virtues of their own faith, he expressed his indignation
in 'The True Education and the False Education,' of which the final
stanza is:
True culture makes good and mild,
False culture makes bad and wild.
The truly-cultured is a fine man,
The falsely-cultured is a charlatan.
Gordon has also written a ballad, 'The Stepmother,' which has given rise
to a large number of popular imitations. In this he tells of a mother
whose rest in the grave is disturbed by the tears of her child. Upon
learning that the child has been maltreated by his stepmother, she sends
up her voice to God, interceding in her son's behalf, and then addresses
herself to her weeping child, assuring him that God has heard her
prayer.
Berenstein was no less cultured a man than Gordon. His acquaintance with
German literature is evidenced by his motto from Körner, an occasional
quotation from Schiller, and his several epigrams which he frankly
acknowledges as translations or adaptations of German originals. Thus
it happens that Schiller's 'Hoffnung' has been popularized among the
Russian Jews in the form of a stanza of a long poem, 'The False Hope.'
Except for these literary allusions, Berenstein wrote in the true
popular vein. His 'The Cradle,' in which he makes use of the well-known
verses, 'Hinter Jankeles Wiegele,' has become as universal as the oral
cradle song. Its last stanza enjoins the child to sleep well in order to
gather strength for the sufferings of the next day, and this pessimistic
view of life becomes ever after the prevailing tone in the many cradle
songs that have been written by younger men.[54] 'The Sleep' is a
variation on the motto from Körner's 'Tony,' which is put at the head of
it: 'Der Schlummer ist ja ein Friedenhauch vom Himmel--Schlummern kann
nur ein spiegelreines Herz.' 'Young Tears' is one of the very few love
lyrics that appeared in print before the second half of the eighties. In
'The Bar of Soap' Gordon shows that with soap one cannot wash off the
blot from his brow, the sorrow from his heart. 'The Empty Bottle'
describes the loneliness of him who has lost his wealth, and with it his
friends. As a 'byplay' to it follows a pretty lyric, 'Consolation.' A
'byplay' bearing the same name follows an elegy upon the death of an
only son. Several of the poems are devoted to the praise of the
Sabbath, and only two are given to sarcastic attacks on the Khassidim.
In the latter, the words are put in the mouth of a Khassid, who prays to
God that he may send again darkness instead of the victorious light in
order that his kind may the more securely shear their sheep.
Another very popular poet of the sixties was Abraham Goldfaden,[55] who,
in 1876, became the founder of the Jewish theatre. His literary activity
may be roughly divided into the period before, and the period after, the
establishment of the theatre. The first only is the subject of our
present discussion. Like the other two, he published his works in
Zhitomir, which, on account of the Rabbinical school opened there in the
forties, had come to be the rallying ground of all those who were
advocating a progressive Judaism. As the title of his first collection,
'The Jew,' indicates, his poems are all devoted to strictly Jewish
matters. Although he occasionally has recourse to the method of
Ehrenkranz, or, foreshadowing his future career, even descends to the
use of theatre couplets, yet the most of his poems have an individual
character, differing from all of his predecessors. He treats with great
success, and in a large variety of rhymes, the allegorical and the
historical song, sometimes as separate themes, more often by combining
them.
One of the best allegorical poems is the triad, 'The Aristocratic
Marriage.' In the first part, 'The Betrothal,' he tells us how the
humble Egyptian slave, Israel, was betrothed to his aristocratic bride
on Mount Sinai. God was the father who gave away the Law to his son, and
Moses was the _Schadchen_, the go-between, the never-failing concomitant
of a Jewish marriage. The second part describes a typical Jewish
wedding--Israel's entrance into Jerusalem; while the third shows how
Israel has misused his opportunity while living in the house of his
wife's father during the years that immediately follow the marriage. He
committed adultery with idolatry, and God drove him out of his home, but
out of regard for his pious ancestry He allowed him to take his wife
along with him on his wanderings, and promised him that after ages of
repentance He would send him the Messiah to restore him to his former
home.
A similar triad, but of a historical nature, is his well-known 'That
Little Trace of a Jew,' in which he successively portrays the virtues,
the sufferings, and the vices of his race. The last part is identical in
sentiment with Gordon's 'Arise, my People,' and inculcates tolerance for
the various religious parties of the Jews and love of worldly learning.
'The Firebrand' relates the destruction of the Temple; 'Rebecca's Death'
gives a Talmudical version of the event; and 'Cain' tells of his
wanderings over the face of the earth after his killing of his brother,
and his vain search of death. The latter is the most popular of his
Biblical songs. Among the other poems, many of which are of sterling
worth, there must be mentioned his lullaby, whose widespread
dissemination is only second to Berenstein's cradle song.
The poems which Goldfaden has written during his lifetime would fill
several large volumes; they can be found scattered through various
periodicals which have appeared in the last thirty years, and in the
greater part of the dramas which he has composed for the stage which he
has created. Most of these are mere street ballads, but there are some
of a serious nature; of these mention will be made in the chapter on the
theatre. To the best productions of his first, the most original period
of his poetical activity, belong the poems touching women, contained in
the volume entitled 'The Jewess.' From the contents we learn that one of
them is a translation from Béranger, the other from the Russian. It is
also characteristic of the history of Jewish folk-music that one of the
songs, as we are informed in the same place, is to be sung to the tune
of a well-known Russian lullaby, the other with a Little-Russian melody,
while for a third, is mentioned one of M. Gordon's songs.
All the above-mentioned poets belong to what might be termed the German
school. These men were more or less intimately acquainted with German
literature, and frequently borrowed their subject-matter from that
source. They all were active at a time when the conflict between the old
religious life of the Russian Jews and the modern tendencies was at the
highest. They looked for a solution in the reform which, since the days
of Mendelssohn, has become the watchword of progress in Germany. They
hoped finally to substitute even the German language for the
Judeo-German, which they regarded as a corrupted form of German, and,
therefore, named Jargon, an appellation that has stuck to it ever since.
In the meanwhile, the better classes were receiving their instruction in
Russian schools that alienated them alike from the German influence and
from a closer contact with their humble coreligionists. Even such men as
had begun in the forties and fifties as folk-poets, were abandoning
their homely dialect for the literary language of the country. Jehuda
Loeb Gordon, the Hebrew scholar and poet, had given promise of becoming
the greatest of popular singers. Yet, in the seventies, he wrote only in
Hebrew and Russian, and it was only in the eighties, when the riots and
expatriations of the Jews had destroyed all hopes that had been placed
in assimilation, that he returned to compose songs for the consolation
of his humble and unfortunate brothers.[56] J. L. Gordon has written but
few Judeo-German poems, and, of these, not more than nine or ten are
folksongs; but they represent the highest perfection of the older school
of the popular bards. He has not been surpassed by any of them in
simplicity of diction, warmth of feeling, and purity of language. Two of
his oldest poems, 'A Mother's Parting,' and 'A Story of Long-Ago,'
relate, the first, the hardships of a Jewish soldier in the forties; the
second, the horrors of the regime of _Chapers_, the dishonesty and
inhumanity of the _Kahal_, the representative body of the Jewish
community. The newer poems are all of a humoristic nature, except the
one devoted to the praise of 'The Law Written on Parchment' that has
been the consolation of the Jews during their many wanderings and
persecutions.
Parallel with the German school, now overlapping its territory, now
pursuing its own course, ran the class of poetry that had for its
authors the _Badchens_ or _Marschaliks_[57]--the wedding jesters. In
medieval times the jester's function was to amuse the guests at the
wedding, while the more serious discourses were delivered by the Rabbi
and the bridegroom. In Russia he had come to usurp all these functions.
He improvised verses upon the various stages of the marriage ceremony,
delivered the solemn discourses to bridegroom and bride, and furnished
the wit during the banquet. His improvisations were replete with
Biblical and Talmudical allusions, and cabbalistic combinations of the
Hebrew letters of the names of the married couple. His verses were mere
rhyming lines, without form or rhythm, and his jests were often of a low
order and even coarse. The name of 'badchen' came to be the byname of a
coarse, uncultured jester. A change for the better was made in the
second half of the fifties by Eliokum Zunser,[58] then but in his teens,
who had conceived the idea of making the badchen a singer of songs,
rather than a merry person. He was, no doubt, led to make this
innovation through the many new folksongs, by Gordon, Ehrenkranz, and
Berel Broder, that were then current among the people, and that were
received with so much acclamation, both on account of their pleasing
contents and the excellent tunes to which they had been set. In 1861, he
published eight of his songs which he had been singing at weddings. One
of these, at least, 'The Watch,' is merely a differently versified form
of Ehrenkranz's 'The Gold Watch,' which must have reached him in its
oral form, as it was printed only in 1865. Zunser possessed an excellent
voice, and had received a good musical training, and his songs and tunes
spread with astonishing rapidity throughout the whole length and breadth
of Russia, wherever Jews lived, and became also popular in Galicia and
Roumania. This innovation came to stay, and, within a short time, the
host of badchens throughout the country began to sing songs at wedding
feasts. Whoever could, composed songs of his own; whoever was not gifted
with the power of versification, sang the songs of others. These
badchens were the most potent factors in the dissemination of the songs
of the above-mentioned poets, long before they were accessible in a
printed form.
Since it was the badchen's business to amuse, it was natural for Zunser
to adopt the manner of Ehrenkranz and Berel Broder, rather than that of
his countrymen, Gordon and Goldfaden. But to the Russian Jew, that is
amusing which gives him food for reflection, and nature and its
manifestations are interesting to him only in so far as they interpret
man in all his aspects of life and vicissitudes of fortune. It is this
facile power of dissolving external facts in the alembic of his
introspective imagination, that has brought Zunser so near to the
people, and that has made him so popular. He does not possess the
poetical instincts of his contemporaries, Gordon and Ehrenkranz; and
many of his poems are mere plagiarisms from other singers. Yet they
have become better known in the form in which he has sung them than in
their original verses.
All the characteristics of the poets whom he imitates are repeated in
Zunser: we have the dispute in 'The Countryman and the Townsman,' 'The
Old World and the New,' 'Song of Summer and Winter.' The best of his
songs of reflection is 'The Flower,' in which the Jew is compared with a
neglected flower; other poems of the same category are 'The Railroad,'
'The Ferry,' 'The Iron Safe,' 'The Clock,' 'The Bird.' There are also
songs in which he scourges the hypocrite, the usurer, the inordinate
love of innovations and fashion, and some give good pictures of various
incidents in the life of a Russian Jew.
Zunser has had many imitators, and their name is legion; few of them
have been so versatile or have become so popular as he. They delight in
their vocation of badchen, and take pains to mention their profession on
the title-pages of the pamphlets which they publish, and frequently they
try to make their publications more attractive by giving them the title
of 'The Lame Marschalik,' 'The Marschalik with One Eye,' and so forth.
Many of the improvisations of the badchen never see daylight, but pass
in manuscript form to their brothers in the profession. Although, in the
eighties, there has arisen a new class of singers who sing in the manner
of the poets of the literary languages, yet the badchens still recite in
the old style, frequently, however, reflecting the new conditions of
life in their poems. A strange departure has taken place in the
badchen's profession in America, where, under more favorable conditions
of existence and increased well being, there has come to be a greater
demand for amusement; the wedding day is no longer the one day of joy,
but the 'jester' is now invited to entertain companies at any and all
pleasurable meetings. He is now no longer required to create new poems,
but to sing well the current couplets of the day.
VI. OTHER ASPECTS OF POETRY BEFORE THE EIGHTIES
The popular poem, _i.e._ the tunable song, had only two purposes, to
amuse and to prepare a way for the Reform. But these did not exhaust all
the possibilities of poetic compositions and, in fact, were not the only
ones to task the powers of the Judeo-German versifiers. An opportunity
for more extended themes was given the badchens in their songs of
contemplation, in which the moralizing tendency needed only to be
developed at the expense of the allegory, in order to change the song
into a rhymed sermon. Nor was the public unprepared for serious matters,
for the greater part of all Judeo-German literature had been merely
treatises of an ethical character in which the element of sadness caused
by centuries of suffering predominated. The perfection of art is to the
mind of a Jew its ability to move to tears. It is expected of the
violinist that he shall play the saddest tunes in the minor key, such as
will make his hearers weep like 'beavers'; the precentor's reputation
depends on his powers to crush his audience, to call forth contrition of
spirit, to make the hearts bleed; and the author who can make his reader
dissolve in tears, no matter how absurd the story, is sure to become
popular with a Jewish public. We have seen how the badchen at the
marriage ceremony bade the bride to weep, and it has also been mentioned
that he delivered the more serious discourses upon that occasion. It was
then that he would spin out hundreds of stanzas upon such subjects as
'The Unhappy Man,' 'Pity,' 'Dialogue of the New-born Soul with the Angel
of Life,' 'Sorrow,' and the like.
In the meanwhile, the old rhymed moral treatises continued in force and
gave rise to compositions of a more regular structure. Two authors must
here be specially mentioned, S. Sobel and Elieser Zwi Zweifel. The first
published, in 1874, a book under the title of 'Destiny, or Discussions
for Pleasant Pastime,' in which he makes use of the popular method of
disputes between various objects in order to inculcate a series of moral
truths. He excels in the use of a vigorous, idiomatic language, while
Zweifel has shown what strength there lies in the employment of the
simplest words for a similar kind of literature. Zweifel's[59] older
productions, only two in number, are, one, a translation from the
Hebrew, the other probably an imitation of a foreign model. The first
contains a series of aphorisms, while the other teaches the wisdom of
life in the testament of a dying father. These verses, like his prose
works, belong among the most cherished writings of the Russian Jews and
have been reprinted in a large number of editions. After his death
another one of his poems was published which differs from its
predecessors in that it is somewhat more elaborate and is entirely
original.
Considering the love of verse on the one hand and the great demand on
the other for a Judeo-German prayer-book for women, which has never
ceased to be a necessity, the book-firm Eisenstadt and Schapiro had the
happy idea to ask the then famous author Abramowitsch[60] to make a
trial translation of a part of the Psalms in verse. This appeared to
them so successful that they had him proceed with the Sabbath-prayers
and the hymns, which were then printed in 1875 at Zhitomir. By the
machinations of the great firm of Romm, in Wilna, who were afraid that
such an excellent translation might seriously interfere with their sale
of their old, stereotyped form of the prayer-book, Abramowitsch was made
to desist from finishing the meritorious task that he had begun, and
even the two books printed were for a long time kept out of circulation.
The Sabbath-prayers he gave not merely in a versified form, but the most
prosaic passages, by slight additions and remodellings, he so changed
that they resemble the songs in a Gentile hymn-book. Still greater has
been the work that he had to perform in making poetry out of the laconic
hymns, for that could be accomplished only by amplifying them to ten and
twenty times their original size. For this purpose he has availed
himself of the current commentaries to the hymns, and this he has done
in such a way that the hymns, in their original form, occur as
conclusions to the poems. Except for a certain monotony of the masculine
rhymes which are employed in them, they are masterpieces of religious
poetry, and it is only a pity that the author has not published yet a
translation of the Psalms, which certainly lend themselves more easily
to poetic diction.
While these sacred poems were being printed in Zhitomir, there appeared
in Warsaw another poetical production by the same author, in its way the
most remarkable work in the whole range of Judeo-German literature. It
bears the title of 'Judel, a Poem in Rhymes,' and in about four
thousand verses tells the unfortunate course of the life of Judel,--the
Jew. When examining it closely, one discovers that, like Goldfaden's
'The Aristocratic Marriage,' it is an allegorical story of the
historical vicissitudes in the development of Judaism and of the
sufferings of the Jew through the centuries. Not only is the story told
unobtrusively, so that one does not at all suspect the allegory, but the
wonderment increases when upon a second and third perusal one becomes
aware of the wealth of Biblical allusions upon which alone the whole
plot is based. The future commentator of this classic will, when it
shall be fully appreciated, find his task made much easier by the many
references to Biblical passages which Abramowitsch has himself made in
footnotes. The value of this gem is still more enhanced by the refined
language used in it,--a characteristic of all of Abramowitsch's works.
Ten years later Goldfaden returned to the allegory of his 'Aristocratic
Marriage,' completing it, after the example of Abramowitsch, in a poem
of about six hundred lines, entitled 'Schabssiel, a Poem in Ten Chapters
(Thoughts after the Riots in Russia).' The master's influence on this
poem is not to be mistaken, for it serves as a pendant to the previous
work; it is as it were a continuation of it. Abramowitsch's poem ends
with the futile attempt of Mephistopheles to tempt Judel to a course of
vice, when he discovers Judel's wife, _i.e._ the Law, faithfully by his
side. In Schabssiel, the sufferings of the Jew are ascribed to his
having departed from the Law, to his having desecrated the Sabbath.
Though somewhat fantastic in its plot, and far from reaching his
predecessor's philosophic grasp of the Jew's history, his work is full
of fine passages and may be counted among the best of his productions.
At about the same time, another young writer, M. Lew, made use of the
form of 'Judel' in a poem whose title 'Hudel' seems to indicate its
obligation to the prototype. There is in this even less of a
philosophical background than in the verses just mentioned, and by its
subject-matter it clearly belongs to the following period, for it
describes not a purely Jewish theme, but one of a more general
character, namely the fall of an orphan who is left to shift for herself
in the world. It is, however, given in this place as being, at least in
outward form, a direct descendant of Abramowitsch's 'Judel.' While not
of the highest poetic value, it is written in a good style and gives
promise of better things should the author choose to proceed in his
poetic career. Mention must here also be made of a versified story,
'Lemech, the Miracle Worker,' by M. Epstein, to which we shall return
later.
Like the allegory, the fable has been a favorite subject of imitation
among the writers from the beginning of this century. We possess such,
partly translations or adaptations, partly original, from Suchostawer,
Dr. Ettinger, Gottlober, Reichersohn, Katzenellenbogen. Of
Suchostawer's, only one, a translation of one of Krylov's fables, 'The
Cat and the Mice,'[61] has come down to us. It was written in 1829, and,
like the fables by Ettinger, circulated in the thirties and forties, is
far superior to any translation from Krylov that has appeared before
1880. The most original production is that by Gottlober called 'The
Parliament,' a poem of more than one thousand lines, in which he gives
an explanation why the lion had been chosen king of all the animals.
While some of the matter contained in it is unquestionably borrowed from
other sources, yet the whole is moulded in so novel a form, with such a
pronounced Jewish setting and biting wit, that it occupies a place by
itself in the history of fables. After the candidacy of all the beasts,
from the donkey to the wolf, had been rejected as incompatible with the
highest security of the rest, the lion appears on the scene, and by his
majestic presence at once silences the contending parties; and he is at
once and unanimously chosen to his high post. "He rules in fairness,
does no wrong, not a sigh is heaved by any of the animals against him;
the forest is ruled as of yore: the weak lie still, the strong go free,
the great are great, the humble are humble: well to him who has sharp
teeth! It has been so of old, and you cannot change the course of
things. But no one need complain of the lion as long as he feels no
hunger in his stomach, for then he is all peace and rest,--God grant
there be many such!"
The whole of Krylov was translated into Judeo-German, though with but
moderate success, in 1879 by Zwi Hirsch Reichersohn, and more weakly
still in 1890 by Israel Singer. Two of the fables have been admirably
rendered by Katzenellenbogen, who has also produced a number of
excellent poems in the popular style which surpass those of Goldfaden in
regularity of structure. He has also translated a few poems from the
Russian and Hebrew, all with the same degree of care displayed in the
renderings from Krylov. His songs have not been disseminated among the
people, the most of them not having been published until quite lately.
The most unique person in Judeo-German literature of the first half of
this century is Dr. Ettinger.[62] All that is known about him is given
in the scanty literary recollections by Gottlober. He there says that
Dr. Ettinger had studied medicine at Lemberg, where he became acquainted
with the Judeo-German writings of Mendel Lefin, who is regarded as the
first man of modern times to use the dialect of everyday life for
literary purposes. He then settled in Zamoszcz, which had been a seat of
Hebrew learning of the Haskala. Being prohibited to practise medicine
with his foreign diploma, he became a colonist in the newly formed
Jewish colonies of the South, but not being successful there, he finally
settled in Odessa. This is all that is given of his biography. It is
further known that he wrote his comedy 'Serkele' in the twenties and
that he composed a large number of poems, a few of which were published
in the _Kol-mewasser_ in the sixties, a few in the _Volksblatt_ in the
eighties. In 1889 his family issued a volume of his poetical works which
forms the basis of our discussion. In this book are contained sixty
fables, a number of poems of various character, and epigrams. About
one-half of the collection consists of translations from the German;
among these are fables and epigrams by Lessing, ballads and poems by
Schiller, Blumauer, and others. The other half is made up of original
compositions. All are of equal excellence both as to the language used
in them and the more mechanical structure of the verses.
In all these poems there is nothing specifically Jewish except the
language, and they might as well have been written in any other language
without losing the least part of their significance. Dr. Ettinger is
thus an exceptional phenomenon among his confreres, but exceptional only
in appearance, as the cause for it is not far to seek. From the few data
of his life we have learned that he received his training in the
beginning of this century in Galicia, where at that time the influence
of the Mendelssohnian school was most potent. He brought with him to
Russia not only a love for enlightenment, but also what then was a
necessary concomitant of that culture, a love for German learning; hence
his exclusive imitation of German originals. At first the privileges of
Western education were not only enjoyed by a small number of learned
men, but there was no attempt made at introducing them to the masses at
large, for that would have been a hazardous occupation for those who
entered in an unequal combat with the superstitious people. It was only
after J. B. Levinsohn had pointed out in his Hebrew works the
desirability of educating them, and after he had undertaken to do so
single-handed, that the other writers, late in the thirties and in the
forties, began to approach the masses in the least offensive manner, by
means of the folksong. Dr. Ettinger's activity, however, fell in the
period preceding the militant energy of the Haskala. If he wished at all
to write in Judeo-German, he could appear only as the interpreter of
German culture to a public imbued with a love for it. What in the
beginning was only a pastime of his leisure hours, soon became a passion
to try his ingenuity, and he proceeded in writing original poems, and
continued that practice even at a time when the main purpose of
Judeo-German literature was to educate the people.
Judeo-German poetry has developed in Russia in precisely the opposite
direction from the one generally taken by that branch of literature
among other nations. Whereas the usual course would have been to pass
from the simple utterings of the folksong to more and more elaborate
forms, the process among the Jews in Russia has been inverted. The first
poetical expressions were those of Dr. Ettinger, who may be regarded as
a dialectic continuator of Schiller and Lessing. After that followed the
school of popular poets of the Gordons, Goldfaden, Linetzki, Ehrenkranz,
Berel Broder. In the seventies a few traces of that school are still to
be found, but the majority of songs produced then smack of the badchen's
art, while Goldfaden himself has deteriorated into a writer of theatre
couplets. The explanation of this is found in the fact that in the
sixties the efforts of the folk-singers were crowned with success. The
Rabbinical schools had graduated several classes of men trained in the
Reform, the Gymnasia and Universities had been thrown wide open to the
Jewish youths, and in the next decade a large number of them had availed
themselves of the highest advantages offered in these institutions of
learning. The cloud of a stubborn ignorance had been successfully
dispelled, the light shone brightly over the whole land. The bard's task
was done; he had no need to spur the people on to progress, for that
duty was now devolved on the large host of younger men who had tasted
the privileges of a Russian education. But these had been identifying
themselves with Russian thought, with Russian ideals. For them German
culture had little of significance, except as it appeared in universal
literature, or had affected Russian ideas. Still less were they
interested in Jewish letters, whether in Hebrew, or in Judeo-German. On
the contrary, they were trying hard to forget their humble beginnings.
Neither for these nor by these could the Judeo-German language be
employed for any literary purposes. The masses had become accustomed to
look with favor on the new education, and one by one the better elements
were disappearing from the narrow world of the Ghetto. There was still
left a large proportion of those who could not avail themselves of the
benefits offered them. They knew no other language than the homely
dialect of their surroundings, and they were still thirsting for
entertainment such as the folk-singers have offered to them. The older
men, the champions of the Haskala, were dead, or too old to write; the
younger men had other interests at heart, and thus it was left to a
mediocre class of writers to supply them with poetry. This part
naturally fell to the badchens. Another quarter of a century, and
Judeo-German literature would have run its course; even the badchen
would have been silenced. But it suddenly rose from its ashes with
renewed vigor after the riots against the Jews in 1881.
VII. POETRY SINCE THE EIGHTIES IN RUSSIA
The latest blood-bath was instituted against the Jews of Russia in 1881.
In the same year there was started in St. Petersburg a weekly
periodical, _Jüdisches Volksblatt_, by the editor of the _Kol-mewasser_
which had gone out of existence ten years before. The purpose of the new
publication was to focus all the available forces that had been
dispersed in the decade preceding through the agencies that made for
assimilation, and to prepare the way for a renewed activity among the
people. These no longer needed to be urged on to progress, but had to be
comforted in the misfortunes that had befallen them, and in the dangers
that awaited them. In the first number of the new periodical there
appeared the poem of J. L. Gordon on 'The Law written on Parchment,'
while the second brought one by the same author, outlining his plan to
sing words of encouragement to his suffering, hard-working brothers and
sisters. However, very soon after all singing ceased. The year 1882 had
been one of too much suffering, when even consolation is out of place.
Two years later S. Rabinowitsch, who was destined by his unresting
energy and good example to cause a revival of Judeo-German literature,
justly exclaimed in the same weekly[63] in a poem 'To Our Poet': "Arise,
thou Poet! Where have you been all this time? Send us from afar your
words of wisdom! For what other pleasure have your brothers if not your
sweet and consoling songs?"
While no other singers were forthcoming, Rabinowitsch composed himself a
series of songs, although he was preparing himself to be a novelist. His
heart was with the poetry of the Russian Nekrasov, and his native
Judeo-German gave him Michel Gordon for a model. He imitated both,
taking the structure from the Russian, and the manner of the folksong
from Gordon. When his talent was just reaching its fullest development,
he abandoned this branch of literature to devote his undivided attention
to prose. Only twice afterwards he returned to the use of rhythm, once
in a poem, entitled 'Progress, Civilization,' an imitation of Nekrasov's
'Who lives in Russia Happily,' and at another time in a legend in blank
verse. The first has never been finished, the other appeared in a
collective volume of poetry published in 1887 by M. Spektor, his friend
and rival in the resuscitation of Judeo-German letters.
That volume, named 'Der Familienfreund,' was intended as an attempt to
bring together all those who wrote poetry; but we find in it only names
that had been known to us from the previous period: M. Gordon, Zunser,
Goldfaden, Linetzki.[64] To these must be added the name of Rabinowitsch
just mentioned, and of Samostschin, who had furnished a few poems to the
_Kol-mewasser_ nearly twenty years before. In the _Volksblatt_ there
were published in the meanwhile a few songs by various authors, most
prominently by Moses Chaschkes. He also printed in 1889 a volume of his
poems at Cracow, under the name of 'Songs from the Heart,' in which are
contained a number of reflections on the riots in Russia. There are some
good thoughts in them, although the technique is not always faultless.
He, too, belongs to the older type of folk-singers.
The Jews had at that time furnished three names to Russian poetry: those
of Nadson, Vilenkin (Minski), and Frug. Of these the first had a
Christian mother and died at the early age of twenty-four, in 1886. The
second had begun his poetical career in the seventies, after having
received a thorough Russian education. There was only Frug left, who had
not entirely broken with his Jewish traditions, for he had gone directly
from the Jewish farmer colony where he had been born to St. Petersburg
to engage in literary work. His first Russian poem was published in
1879. In 1885 he began to compose also in Judeo-German, continuing to do
so to the present time.[65] Like many other Jewish writers he had become
convinced that his duties were above all with his race, as long as it
was oppressed and persecuted, and his energy was thus unfortunately
split in two by writing in two languages. For the same reason such poets
as Perez, Winchevsky, Rosenfeld, have taken to Judeo-German, which is
understood by few and which in a few decades is doomed to extinction,
except in countries of persecution. They adorn their humble literature,
but they would have been an honor to other literatures as well, and from
these they have been alienated.
When Frug began to write in his native dialect, he had already acquired
a reputation in a literary language. He had passed the severe school of
the poet's technique, had been trained in the traditions of his
vocation. One could not expect that in descending to speak to his
coreligionists in their own tongue, he would return to the more
primitive methods of the popular bard. He simply changed the language,
but nothing of his art. By this transference he only gains in
reputation, although he loses in popularity, for the accusation
frequently brought against him, that he confines himself to too narrow a
sphere, falls to the ground when he intends that that narrow sphere
alone should be his audience. Half a century had gone by since Dr.
Ettinger had introduced the form and subject-matter of German poetry,
and since those days no such harmony had been heard to issue from the
mouth of a Jewish poet. There were no literary traditions to fall back
upon, except the folksong of the preceding generation; there scarcely
existed a poetical diction for Judeo-German, and a variety of dialects
were striving for supremacy. What he and the people owed to Michel
Gordon, he expressed in two poems entitled 'To Michel Gordon' and 'On
Michel Gordon's Grave'; both collectively he named 'One of the Best.' In
an allegorical series, 'Songs of the Jewish Jargon,' he sings of the
history of the language which is identical with that of his downtrodden
race. The prologue is a model of beautiful style. The Slavic dactyllic
diminutives, grafted on German stems, the gentle cadence of words, the
simplicity of the diction, remind one rather of mellifluous Italian than
of a disorderly mixture which, in the poem, he compares to the bits of
bread in a beggar's wallet, or which, according to another part in the
same allegory, excludes the deceased Jew from heaven, as the angel at
the gate cannot understand him.
There are a few poems in his collection in which he bewails the lot of a
Jewish poet who has only tears for his subject, but the most deal with
incidents in the life of his oppressed coreligionists, now painting
pictures of their misery, their poverty, their lack of orderliness, now
giving them words of consolation. He never passes the narrow frame of
his people's surroundings, no matter what he sings. Even when he chooses
nature of which to sing, it appears to him transformed under a heavy
cloud of his own sufferings superinduced by the persecution of his
brethren. The best of his poems are those entitled 'Night Songs,' in
which he depicts a few night scenes. Here is the way he describes the
Melamed, the teacher of children in those miserable quarters called a
school: "Behold the palace, oh, how beautiful, how magnificent: ivory
and velvet, silk, leather, bronze, cedar wood ... here lives a Jewish
teacher.... Of velvet is his skullcap--it glistens and shines from afar;
the fescue is made of ivory; his girdle is of silk; the candelabrum is
of bronze; the knout is of leather; the stool, the stool is cut out of
cedar wood!" One can easily see that the rest of the picture is in
keeping with the glory just described. There is gloom everywhere in his
songs. And how could it be otherwise? It was proper for Ettinger to
smile and to jest, for he was active at the dawn of better days; it was
natural for the poets of the thirties and fifties to battle against
superstitions and to sound the cry of progress; for the poets of the
eighties there was nothing left but tears.
It has been Frug's ambition to be a continuator of the bards who sang
for the masses, to be a folk-poet, and the people look upon him as such,
although he hardly appeals to them in the manner of the older bards. He
is entirely too literary to be understood without previous training, and
his allegory is not so easily unravelled. His greatest faults are,
perhaps, an absence of dramatic qualities and a certain coldness of
colors. Nevertheless, he is one of the best poets in Judeo-German
literature, who may also claim recognition by a wider class of readers.
The year 1888 is momentous in the history of Judeo-German literature: it
gave birth to two annuals, _Die jüdische Volksbibliothēk_ and _Der
Hausfreund_, around which were gathered all the best forces that could
be found among the Jewish writers. The first, under the leadership of S.
Rabinowitsch, started out with the purpose of clearing away all rubbish
from the field of Jewish letters and to prepare it for a new, a better
harvest; the second set out to serve the people with the best existing
literary productions. The latter was doomed to a certain mediocrity on
account of the bounds which it had placed around itself; the first, in
exercising a severe criticism on the productions presented for
publication, and in purifying the public taste, attracted from the start
the best talent obtainable and encouraged young promising men to try
themselves in Jargon letters. In the _Volksbibliothēk_ appeared the
firstling from the pen of Leon Perez, the poet and novelist, who must be
counted among the greatest writers not only of Judeo-German literature,
but of literature in general at the end of the nineteenth century. If he
had written nothing else but 'The Sewing of the Wedding Gown,' his name
would live as long as there could be found people to interpret the
language in which he sings. But he has produced several large volumes
of admirable works in prose and in verse.
Leon Perez, or Izchok Leibusch Perez, as he proudly prefers to be
called, was born in 1855 in Zamoszcz, the city which has been the
birthplace of so many famous men in Hebrew and Judeo-German letters, the
home of Zederbaum and Ettinger. He obtained his education in a curious
way. In his town there had lived a surgeon's assistant who, on becoming
rich, had collected a library on all kinds of subjects, numbering nearly
three thousand volumes. There came reverses to him, and his books were
stored away pell mell in the loft. Perez somehow got hold of the key to
that room, and without choice took to reading, until the whole library
was swallowed up by his omnivorous appetite. He read everything he could
get hold of, and he learned German through a work on physics which he
had discovered in the loft. Then he passed on from science to science,
all by himself. Then he studied Heine by heart, then Shelley, and then
he became a mystic. This history of his education is also the history of
his genius. There is reflected in it the subtleness of the Talmud, the
wisdom of the ancients, the sparkle of Heine, the transcendency of
Shelley, the mysticism of Hauptmann. He has treated masterfully the
Talmudical legend, has composed in the style of the Romancero, and has
carried allegory to the highest degree of perfection.
Perez is even less of a popular poet than Frug. He has entirely parted
company with the people. Although he started with the avowed purpose of
aiding his race to a better recognition of itself, yet his talents are
of too high an order, where language, feelings, and thoughts soar far
above the understanding of the masses. He can hardly be properly
appreciated even by those who enjoy the advantages of a fair school
education, not to speak of those who are merely lettered. It is only an
unfortunate accident, the persecutions of the Jews, that has thrown him
into so unpromising a field as that of Judeo-German letters, where to be
great is to be unknown to the world at large and to be subjected to the
jealous attacks of less gifted writers. He could easily gain a
reputation in any other language, should he choose to try for it, but,
like many of his predecessors, he is pursued by the merciless
allurements of the Jewish Muse. Her enchantment is the more powerful on
her devotees since she appears to them only in the garb of their own
weaving. They spend so much work in creating the outer form and
fashioning a poetic diction that they get fascinated by their creative
labor, and stick to their undertaking, even though they have but few
hearers for their utterances.
'Monisch' is the name of the ballad with which Perez made his debut ten
years ago.[66] It is the old story of Satan's recovery of power over the
saint by tempting him with an earthly love. But the setting of the story
is all new and original. The fourth chapter, beginning with
Andersch wollt' mein Lied geklungen
'ch soll far Goim goisch singen,
Nischt far Jüden, nischt Žargon
(My song would sound quite differently, were I to sing to Gentiles
in their language, not to Jews in Jargon)
is the best of all. He describes there the difficulty of singing of love
in a dialect that has no words for 'love' and 'sweetheart'; nevertheless
he acquits himself well of his task to tell of Monisch's infatuation,
for which, of course, a saint and a Jew can only become Satan's prey.
Perez has written a number of stories in verse. Some of them are mosaics
of gems, in which the unity of the whole is frequently marred by a
mystic cloud which it is hard to penetrate. Such, for example, is his
'He and She,'[67] a story of the Spanish inquisition, and 'Reb
Jossel,'[68] the temptation of a teacher of children by his hostess, the
wife of a shoemaker. The latter poem is very hard to grasp at one
reading, but the details, such as the description of the teacher, his
pale and ailing pupil with his endless school superstitions, the jolly
shoemaker, are drawn very well. Much more comprehensible are his 'The
Driver'[69] and 'Jossel Bers and Jossel Schmaies.'[70] The first is a
sad picture of a Jewish town in Poland, in which the inhabitants have
lost, one after the other, their means of subsistence after the railroad
had connected them with Warsaw. The drivers, the merchants, the artisans
who throve at their honest professions before, have become impoverished
and are driven to despised occupations, only to keep body and soul
together. It is a very sad picture indeed. In the other, the author
tells of two boys who had been fellow-students out of the same
prayer-book, but who soon separated at the parting of the roads. The
one, a faithful believer in all the teacher told him, becomes a Rabbi;
the other asks for facts and reasons to fortify the statements of his
mentor, and subjects himself to many privations in order to acquire
worldly wisdom in the gymnasium and the university. The final picture
is placed in Roumania (or Russia, had the censor permitted it), where
the student is driven through the streets by a mob, while the Rabbi,
unconscious of the outer world, is somewhere thinking hard over the
solution of a question of ritual.
The shorter poems are either translations from the Russian poet Nadson,
or imitations of Heine. They are well done, though some suffer somewhat
by their veiled allegory, at least at a superficial reading. The best of
these are those that deal with social questions, or describe the
laborer's sufferings. Preëminent among them is 'The Sewing of the
Wedding Gown.'[71] If Thomas Hood's 'Song of the Shirt' is to be
compared to a fine instrument, then this poem is a whole orchestra, from
the sounds of which the walls of Jericho would fall. Instead of a
criticism, a short review of the story will be given here. The scene is
at a dressmaker's; the cast: the modiste, two dressmakers, and
sewing-girls. The modiste tells of the care with which the wedding gown
has to be sewed. The choir of sewing-girls sing the song of the prison.
The first dressmaker speaks of the beauty of the gown, and compares the
bride to an angel from heaven, whereupon the choir sings of the misery
at home, of asking the 'angel' to advance a rouble on the work, of the
'angel's' cruel refusal, of the pawning of her silks for a loaf of
bread, and of the girl's arrest by the 'angel.' "And the angel has taken
care of me during the great frosts, and for three months has provided me
with board and lodging." The second dressmaker compares the rustle of
the silk to the noise made by her tired bones, speaks of the diamond
buttons that will be sewed on the gown "as large as tears of the poor,"
and bids the wheel of the machine to drown the noise of her breaking
bones. The choir sings the song of the grave, where no sewing is done,
where all go down in a shroud forever. The second dressmaker continues
the song, whereupon a girl, named 'Fond-of-Life,' protests, telling of
her good health, of her desire to pass her youth in pleasure. The choir
chides her with the Ragpicker's song, in which 'Fond-of-Life's' future
is portrayed, and the conclusion to the song is given by the first
dressmaker. The first dressmaker contrasts the luxury of the bride's bed
with her straw bed on the floor, the bride's splendor of light in her
parlor with the two candles at her head when she is dead. The modiste,
oppressed by the sad songs that portray their own unhappiness, bids them
sing of other people's happiness. To this the choir responds by singing
the happiness of the bride, but the modiste sees in this only the girls'
jealousy, whereupon the choir tells of the obedient daughter who is
advised by her mother to scorn sweetness, getting the promise of a
gilded nut if she behaves properly. When the nut is brought and cracked
it is found to be wormy and bitter. Of course, that is a picture of a
match made by the parents for their daughter. The modiste answers that
happiness does not always dwell in high places; and the first dressmaker
tells the story of labor, which is quite unique: There lived two
brothers happily together. A stranger, who is no other than the Biblical
serpent, visits them; he is clad in diamonds and costly stones, and
dazzles the older brother with his splendor. He, too, would like to be
rich. He follows the stranger out into the woods, and seats himself at
his side to inquire of the manner of acquiring such wealth. "What a fool
you are to allow your opportunities to slip by," says the serpent. "You
do not know that the sweat of your brother is nothing but diamonds, the
tears are brilliants, his blood pearls." The elder brother returns home,
beats his younger brother to elicit blood and sweat and tears. His
wealth grows, but not his happiness, for he suffers as much from fear of
his hoarded riches as his brother sighs under tears. They finally fall
to blows,--but here the poet purposely breaks his story, for he will not
undertake to tell the end of their hostility. The choir sings the ten
o'clock song, when all must go to rest: "You are rested, and at times
you dream of--a loaf of bread! The clock strikes ten, the work is
done,--good night, madame!" The modiste answers: "Be back early in the
morning!"
This is the bare skeleton of the poem, of whose painful beauties nothing
but a perusal in the original can give an adequate idea. There is the
making of a great poet in one who can sing like that; but Perez has
chosen, like Rabinowitsch, to devote his best energies to prose, and to
this part of his activity we shall return later. Of the minor poems of
this period there might be mentioned those by David Frischmann, Rosa
Goldstein, M. W. Satulowski, M. M. Penkowski, W. Kaiser, Paltiel
Samostschin. Frischmann has produced but a few poems, but they are all
of excellent quality. His best is a ballad, 'Ophir,'[72] but he has also
written some clever satires in verse. Samostschin,[73] who had begun
composing in the sixties, has translated several poems, especially from
the Hebrew of J. L. Gordon, and has written some clever feuilletons in
rhymes. Minchas Perel has published a small collection of poems on the
Fall of Jerusalem, of which the first, 'The Night of the Destruction of
Jerusalem,' is a very spirited and dramatic story of the event. Another
good book of poems is 'The Harp,' by G. O. Hornstein. Although some of
them are in the style of the coupletists, others betray original talent
that might be well developed. The best of these is the ballad, 'The Cat
and the Mouse,' an allegory of Jewish persecutions, in which the Jew is
represented as a mouse living on the fat of the oil candelabrum in the
Temple at Jerusalem, and the Romans and other nations are represented as
cats who drive the mouse out of her abiding place.
The riots of the early part of the eighties affected the whole mental
attitude of the Jews of Russia by rousing them to a greater
consciousness of themselves and by rallying them around distinctly
Jewish standards. For hundreds of thousands life had become impossible
at home, and they emigrated to various countries, but mostly to America,
where, under the influence of entirely new conditions, Judeo-German
literature, and with it poetry, developed in new channels.
VIII. POETRY SINCE THE EIGHTIES IN AMERICA
Judeo-German poetry has developed in two directions in
America,--downwards and upwards. Many of the poets left Russia in the
beginning of the eighties, together with the involuntary emigration of
the Russian Jews, to escape the political oppression at home; but once
in America they came in contact with conditions not less undesirable
than those they had just left; for, instead of the religious persecution
to which they had been subjected there, they now began to experience the
industrial oppression of the sweat-shops into which they were driven in
order to earn a livelihood. At the same time, the greater political
liberty which they enjoy makes it possible for them to give free
utterance to their feelings and thoughts, without veiling them in the
garb of a far-fetched allegory. However, they have not all suffered who
have come here. Many have found on the hospitable shores of the United
States opportunities to earn what to their humble demands appears as a
comfortable income. With the increased well-being, there has come a
stronger desire to be entertained. The wedding day, Purim, and the Feast
of the Rejoicing of the Law no longer suffice as days of amusements, and
Goldfaden's theatre, which had been proscribed in Russia, has found an
asylum in New York. Soon one theatre was not large enough to hold the
crowd that asked for admission; and three companies, playing every
evening, were doing a good business. But qualitatively the theatres
rapidly deteriorated to the level of dime shows. The theatre, as
established by Goldfaden, has never been of an elevated character even
in Europe, except as it treated the Biblical and the historical drama.
Still, it reflected in a certain respect the inner life of the Ghetto.
In the New World, the Jewish life of the Russian Ghetto is rapidly
losing all interest, and that part of New York which in common parlance
is known as the Ghetto, deserves its name only in so far as it is
inhabited by former denizens of other Ghettos. There is taking place a
dulling of Jewish sensibilities which will ultimately result in the
absorption of the Russian Jews by the American people. This lowered
Jewish consciousness finds its expression in poetry in the development
of the theatre couplet in imitation of the American song of the day. As
in Russia, the plays are written by a host of incompetent men, not so
much for the purpose of carrying out a plot as in order to weave into
them songs of which Jews have always been fond. Nearly all the plays are
melodramas, in which the contents go for nothing or are too absurd to
count for anything. But the couplets have survived, and are fast
becoming street ballads or folksongs, according to the quality of the
same. Goldfaden's songs, in which there is always a ring of the true
folksong, are giving place to the worthless jingles of Marks, Hurwitz,
Awramowitsch, Mogulesco, and the like, and the old national poems are
being superseded by weak imitations of 'Daisy Bell,' 'Do, do, my
Huckleberry, Do,' 'The Bowery Girl,' and other American ballads. Now and
then a couplet of a national character may be heard in the theatres, and
more rarely a really good poem occurs in these dramatic performances,
but otherwise the old folksong is rapidly decaying.
I. Reingold, of Chicago, is a fruitful balladist who at times strikes a
good note in his songs; but in these he generally painfully resembles
certain passages in Rosenfeld's poetry, from whom he evidently gets his
wording if not his inspiration. Side by side with this deteriorated
literature there goes on a more encouraging folk-singing. Zunser, who
now owns a printing-office in New York, continues his career as a
popular bard as before, and has written some of his best poems in the
New World. It is interesting to note how America affects his Muse, for
he sings now of the 'Pedlar' and the 'Plough.' The latter, a praise of
the farmer's life, to which he would encourage his co-religionists, has
had the honor of being translated into Russian. Among his later poetry
there is also one on 'Columbus and Washington,' in which, of course,
both are lauded. The Stars and Stripes have been the subject of many a
song by Judeo-German poets, which is significant, since not a single ode
has been produced praising Russia or the Czar.
Goldfaden, too, has written some of his songs in America, and
Selikowitsch has furnished two or three translations and adaptations
that may be classed as folksongs. Still more encouraging is the class of
poetry which has had its rise entirely in America or in England, for
among these poets it has received the highest development yet attained.
The volume entitled 'Jewish Tunes,' by A. M. Sharkansky, contains a
number of real gems in poetry. Sharkansky has a good ear for rhythm and
word jingling, and in this he always succeeds. But he is not equally
fortunate in his ideas, for he either over-loads a picture so as to
bury the meaning of the poem in it, or else he does not finish his
thought, leaving an impression that something ought to follow. Now and
then, however, he produces a fine song. Among his best are 'Jewish
Melodies,' in which he says that they must always be sad, and 'Songs of
Zion,' of similar contents. 'Jossele Journeys to America,' which is a
parody on Schiller's 'Hektor and Andromache,' and 'The Cemetery,' a
translation of Uhland's 'Das Grab,' give evidence of a great mastery of
his dialect. It is hardly possible to suspect the second poem of being a
translation. Sharkansky has for some reason ceased to sing, which is to
be regretted, for with a little more care in the development of his
ideas he might have come to occupy an honorable place among the best
Judeo-German poets.
New York is the place of refuge not only of the laboring men among the
Russian Jews, but also of their cultured and professional people. These
had at home belonged to liberal organizations, which in monarchical
countries are of necessity extreme, either Socialistic or Anarchistic.
Such advanced opinions they shared in Russia with their Gentile
companions, with whom they identified themselves by their education.
Their relations to the Jewish community were rather loose, for the
tendency of the somewhat greater privileges which the Jews enjoyed in
the sixties and the seventies had been to obliterate old lines of
demarkation between Jew and Gentile. They had almost forgotten that
there were any ties that united them with their race, when they were
roused from their peaceful occupations, to which they had been devoting
themselves, to the realization of their racial difference. They then
heard for the first time that they were pariahs alike with the humblest
of their brethren. The same feeling which prompted the Russian poet Frug
to take up his despised Judeo-German, drove many a man into the
Judeo-German literary field, who not only had never before written in
that language, but who had hardly ever spoken it. In England and America
such men could only hope to be understood by a Jewish public, and those
who felt themselves called to write poetry wrote it in Judeo-German. But
with them the language could only be the accidental vehicle of their
thought, without confining them to the narrow circle of their nation's
life. Their interests, like those of young Russia in general, are with
humanity at large, not with the Jew in his Ghetto, and their songs would
not have lost a particle of their significance had they been written in
any other tongue. They suffer with the Jew, not because he is a Jew, but
because, like many other oppressed people, he has a grievance, and they
propose remedies for these according to their political and social
convictions.
David Edelstadt was the poet of the Anarchistic party, as Morris
Winchevsky represents Socialistic tendencies. The influence of both on
their respective adherents has been great, but the latter has been a
power for good among a wider circle of readers, within and without his
party. Both show by the language which they use that it was mere
accident that threw them into the ranks of Judeo-German writers, for
while usually the diction of the older poets abounds in words of Hebrew
origin, theirs is almost entirely free from them, so that one can read
their productions with no other knowledge than that of the literary
German language.
Edelstadt mastered neither his poetical subjects nor the dialect. The
latter is a composition of the literary German with dialectic forms, and
his rhythms are halting, his ideas one-sided. There is not a poem among
the fifty that he has written that is not didactic. Many of these are in
praise of Anarchists and heroes of freedom who have fallen in the
unequal combat with the present conditions of society. There are poems
in memory of Sophia Perovskaya, Louise Michel, John Brown, and even
Albert Parsons and Louis Ling. He sings of the eleventh of November, the
Fall of the Bastile, of strikes, misery, and suffering. Most of these
are a call to war with society. They are neither of the extreme
character that one generally ascribes to the Anarchists, nor do they
sound any sincere notes. They seem to be written not because Edelstadt
is a poet, but because he belongs to the Anarchistic party. In all his
collection there is one only in which he directs himself especially to
the Jews, and one of its stanzas is significant, as it lies at the
foundation of much of Rosenfeld's poetry: it tells that they have
escaped the cruel Muscovite only to be jailed in the dusky sweat-shops
where they slowly bleed at the sewing-machine.
Morris Winchevsky is a poet of a much higher type. He is a man of high
culture, is conversant with the literatures of Russia, France, Germany,
and England, is pervaded by what is best in universal literature,
follows carefully all the rules of prosody and poetic composition, and
above all is master of his dialect. His Socialistic bias is pronounced,
but it does not interfere with the pictures that he portrays. They are
true to life, though somewhat cold in coloring. His mastery of
Judeo-German, nearly all of German origin, is displayed in his fine
translation of Thomas Hood's 'Song of the Shirt' and some of Victor
Hugo's poems. His other songs show the same care in execution and are
as perfect in form as can be produced in his dialect. Winchevsky began
his poetical career in England, where he was also active as a
Socialistic agitator. The small collection of his poetical works
(unfortunately unfinished) contains almost entirely songs which were
written there. His American poems appeared in the _Emeth_, which he
published in Boston in 1895 and in other periodicals. Although he has
tried himself in all kinds of verses, he prefers dactyllic measures,
which in 'A Broom and a Sweeping' he uses most elaborately. The poems
all treat on social questions and describe the misery of the lower
strata of society. He speaks of the life of the orphan whose home is in
the street, of the eviction of the wretched widow, of the imprisonment
of the small boy for stealing a few apples, of the blind fiddler, of
night-scenes on the Strand, of London at night. A large number of songs
are devoted more strictly to Socialistic propaganda, while a series of
forty-eight stanzas under the collective title 'How the Rich Live' is a
gloomy kaleidoscope through which pass in succes
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/46729