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Studies in Judaism, First Series

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Title: Studies in Judaism, First Series

Author: S. Schechter


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN JUDAISM, FIRST SERIES ***





                            Studies in Judaism

                               First Series

                                    by

                     Solomon Schechter, M.A., Litt.D.

                               Philadelphia

                The Jewish Publication Society of America

                                   1911





CONTENTS


Preface
Introduction
I. The Chassidim
II. Nachman Krochmal and the “Perplexities Of The Time”
III. Rabbi Elijah Wilna, Gaon
IV. Nachmanides
V. A Jewish Boswell
VI. The Dogmas Of Judaism
VII. The History of Jewish Tradition
VIII. The Doctrine of Divine Retribution in Rabbinical Literature
IX. The Law And Recent Criticism
X. The Hebrew Collection of the British Museum
XI. Titles of Jewish Books
XII. The Child in Jewish Literature
XIII. Woman in Temple and Synagogue
XIV. The Earliest Jewish Community in Europe
Index
Footnotes






                               [Cover Art]

[Transcriber’s Note: The above cover image was produced by the submitter
at Distributed Proofreaders, and is being placed into the public domain.]





TO

THE EVER‐CHERISHED MEMORY

OF

THE LATE DR. P. F. FRANKL, RABBI IN BERLIN

THESE STUDIES ARE REVERENTLY

DEDICATED





PREFACE


These studies appeared originally in their first form in _The Jewish
Quarterly_ and _The Jewish Chronicle_. To the Editors of these periodicals
my best thanks are due for their readiness in placing the articles at my
disposal for the purposes of the present volume. The Introductory Essay is
new. I desire to express my sincere gratitude to Mr. J. G. Frazer, Fellow
of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Dr. J. Sutherland Black, of London, for
their great kindness in revising the proofs, and for many a valuable
suggestion. To Mr. Claude G. Montefiore I am indebted for the English
version of the Essay on “Chassidim”—my first literary effort in this
country, written at his own suggestion.

In the transliteration of Hebrew names, I have given the familiar English
forms of the authorised version. As regards post‐Biblical names, I have
with few exceptions followed Zedner’s _Catalogue of the Hebrew Books in
the Library of the British Museum_. A Hebrew word will be found here and
there in the text; I have purposely avoided bewildering devices for
representing the actual sound of the word, contenting myself with the
ordinary Roman alphabet, in spite of its shortcomings.

The authorities used for the various Essays will be found indicated in the
Notes at the end of the volume, where the reader will also find short
biographical and bibliographical notices, together with brief explanations
of technical terms for which no exact equivalent exists in English. The
index will, it is hoped, facilitate reference.

_S. S._

CAMBRIDGE, _February 1896_.





INTRODUCTION


The essays published in this volume under the title of _Studies in
Judaism_ have been written on various occasions and at long intervals.
There is thus no necessary connection between them. If some sort of unity
may be detected in the book, it can only be between the first three
essays—on the Chassidim, Krochmal, and the Gaon—in which there is a
certain unity of purpose. The purpose in view was, as may easily be
gathered from the essays themselves, to bring under the notice of the
English public a type of men produced by the Synagogue of the Eastern
Jews. That Synagogue is widely different from ours. Its places of worship
have no claims to “beauty of holiness,” being in their outward appearance
rather bare and bald, if not repulsive; whilst those who frequent them are
a noisy, excitable people, who actually dance on the “Season of Rejoicing”
and cry bitterly on the “Days of Mourning.” But among all these
vagaries—or perhaps because of them—this Synagogue has had its moments of
grace, when enthusiasm wedded to inspiration gave birth to such beautiful
souls as Baalshem, such fine sceptics as Krochmal, and such saintly
scholars as Elijah Wilna. The Synagogue of the West is certainly of a more
presentable character, and free from excesses; though it is not devoid of
an enthusiasm of its own which finds its outlet in an ardent and self‐
sacrificing philanthropic activity. But owing to its practical tendency
there is too little room in it for that play of intellectual forces which
finds its extravagant expression in the saint on the one hand, and the
learned heretic on the other.

Eight of these essays are more or less of a theological nature. But in
reading the proofs I have been struck by the fact that there is assumed in
them a certain conception of the Synagogue which, familiar though it be to
the Jewish student, may appear obscure and even strange to the general
English reader. For brevity’s sake I will call it the High Synagogue,
though it does not correspond in all details to what one is accustomed to
understand under the term of High Church. The High Synagogue has a history
which is not altogether without its points of interest.

Some years ago when the waves of the Higher Criticism of the Old Testament
reached the shores of this country, and such questions as the
heterogeneous composition of the Pentateuch, the comparatively late date
of the Levitical Legislation, and the post‐exilic origin of certain
Prophecies as well as of the Psalms began to be freely discussed by the
press and even in the pulpit, the invidious remark was often made: What
will now become of Judaism when its last stronghold, the Law, is being
shaken to its very foundations?

Such a remark shows a very superficial acquaintance with the nature of an
old historical religion like Judaism, and the richness of the resources it
has to fall back upon in cases of emergency.

As a fact, the emergency did not quite surprise Judaism. The alarm signal
was given some 150 years ago by an Italian Rabbi, Abiad Sar Shalom
Bazilai, in his pamphlet _The Faith of the Sages_. The pamphlet is, as the
title indicates, of a polemical character, reviewing the work of the
Jewish rationalistic schools; and after warming up in his attacks against
their heterodox views, Bazilai exclaims: “Nature and simple meaning, they
are our misfortune.” By “nature and simple meaning” Bazilai, who wrote in
Hebrew, understood what we would call Natural Science and Philology. With
the right instinct of faith, Bazilai hit on the real sore points. For
though he mostly argues against the philosophical systems of Aristotle and
his commentators, he felt that it is not speculation that will ever
seriously endanger religion. There is hardly any metaphysical system, old
or new, which has not in course of time been adapted by able dialecticians
to the creed which they happened to hold. In our own time we have seen the
glorious, though not entirely novel spectacle, of Agnosticism itself
becoming the rightful handmaid of Queen Theology. The real danger lies in
“nature” (or Natural Science) with its stern demand of law and regularity
in all phenomena, and in the “simple meaning” (or Philology) with its
inconsiderate insistence on truth. Of the two, the “simple meaning” is the
more objectionable. Not only is it very often at variance with Tradition,
which has its own code of interpretation, but it is constantly increasing
the difficulties raised by science. For if words could only have more than
one meaning, there would be no objection to reading the first words of
Genesis, “In _a_ beginning God _evolved_.” The difficulties of science
would then be disposed of easily enough. Maimonides, who was as bold an
interpreter as he was a deep metaphysician, hinted plainly enough that
were he as convinced of the eternity of matter as he was satisfied of the
impossibility of any corporeal quality in the deity, he would feel as
little compunction in explaining (figuratively) the contents of the first
chapter of Genesis as he did in allegorising the anthropomorphic passages
of the Bible. Thus in the end all the difficulties resolve themselves into
the one great difficulty of the “simple meaning.” The best way to meet
this difficulty was found to be to shift the centre of gravity in Judaism
and to place it in the secondary meaning, thus making religion independent
of philology and all its dangerous consequences.

This shifting work was chiefly done, perhaps not quite consciously, by the
historical school which followed upon that of Mendelssohn and his first
successors. The historical school, which is still in the ascendant,
comprises many of the best Jewish writers who either by their learning or
by their ecclesiastical profession as Rabbis and preachers in great
communities have acquired some important position among their brethren.
The men who have inaugurated this movement were Krochmal (1785‐1841),
Rapoport (1790‐1867), and Zunz (1794‐1886).

It is not a mere coincidence that the first representatives of the
historical school were also the first Jewish scholars who proved
themselves more or less ready to join the modern school of Bible
Criticism, and even to contribute their share to it. The first two,
Krochmal and Rapoport, early in the second quarter of this century
accepted and defended the modern view about a second Isaiah, the post‐
exilic origin of many Psalms, and the late date of Ecclesiastes; whilst
Zunz, who began (in 1832) with denying the authenticity of Ezekiel,
concluded his literary career (1873) with a study on the Bible
(_Gesammelte __ Schriften_, i. pp. 217‐290), in which he expressed his
view “that the Book of Leviticus dates from a later period than the Book
of Deuteronomy, later even than Ezekiel, having been composed during the
age of the Second Temple, when there already existed a well‐established
priesthood which superintended the sacrificial worship.” But when
Revelation or the Written Word is reduced to the level of history, there
is no difficulty in elevating history in its aspect of Tradition to the
rank of Scripture, for both have then the same human or divine origin
(according to the student’s predilection for the one or the other
adjective), and emanate from the same authority. Tradition becomes thus
the means whereby the modern divine seeks to compensate himself for the
loss of the Bible, and the theological balance is to the satisfaction of
all parties happily readjusted.

Jewish Tradition, or, as it is commonly called, the Oral Law, or, as we
may term it (in consideration of its claims to represent an interpretation
of the Bible), the Secondary Meaning of the Scriptures, is mainly embodied
in the works of the Rabbis and their subsequent followers during the
Middle Ages. Hence the zeal and energy with which the historical school
applied itself to the Jewish post‐biblical literature, not only
elucidating its texts by means of new critical editions, dictionaries, and
commentaries, but also trying to trace its origins and to pursue its
history through its gradual development. To the work of Krochmal in this
direction a special essay is devoted in this volume. The labours of
Rapoport are more of a biographical and bibliographical nature, being
occupied mostly with the minor details in the lives and writings of
various famous Jewish Rabbis in the Middle Ages; thus they offer but
little opportunity for general theological comment. Of more importance in
this respect are the hints thrown out in his various works by Zunz, who
was just as emphatic in asserting the claims of Tradition as he was
advanced in his views on Bible criticism. Zunz’s greatest work is _Die
Gottesdienstlichen Vorträge_—an awkward title, which in fact means “The
History of the Interpretation of the Scriptures as forming a part of the
divine service.” Now if a work displaying such wide learning and critical
acumen, and written in such an impartial spirit can be said to have a
bias, it was towards bridging over the seemingly wide gap between the
Written Word (the Scriptures) and the Spoken Word (the Oral Law or
Tradition), which was the more deeply felt, as most of Zunz’s older
contemporaries were men, grown up in the habits of thought of the
eighteenth century—a century distinguished both for its ignorance of, and
its power of ignoring, the teachings of history. Indeed it would seem that
ages employed in making history have no time for studying it.

Zunz accomplished the task he set himself, by showing, as already
indicated, the late date of certain portions of the Bible, which by
setting the early history of Israel in an ideal light betray the
moralising tendency of their authors, and are, in fact, little more than a
traditional interpretation of older portions of Scripture, adapted to the
religious needs of the time. Placing thus the origin of Tradition in the
Bible itself, it was a comparatively easy matter for Zunz to prove its
further continuity. Prophecy and Interpretation are with him the natural
expressions of the religious life of the nation; and though by the loss of
Israel’s political independence the voice of the prophets gradually died
away, the voice of God was still heard. Israel continues to consult God
through the medium of the Scriptures, and He answers His people by the
mouth of the Scribes, the Sages, the Interpreters of the Law; whilst the
liturgy of the Synagogue, springing up at the time when Psalms were still
being composed, expands in its later stages through the work of the Poets
of the Synagogue into such a rich luxuriance “that it forms in itself a
treasure of history, poetry, philosophy; and prophecy and psalms are again
revived in the hymnology of the Middle Ages.” This is in brief the lesson
to be learned from Zunz’s _Gottesdienstliche Vorträge_ as far as it deals
with the significance of Tradition; and it is in the introduction to this
work that Zunz expresses himself to the following effect: Indispensable is
the free Spoken Word. Mankind has acquired all its ideal treasures only by
Word of Mouth; an education continuing through all stages of life. In
Israel, too, the Word of Instruction transmitted from mouth to mouth was
never silenced.

The historical school has never, to my knowledge, offered to the world a
theological programme of its own. By the nature of its task, its labours
are mostly conducted in the field of philology and archæology, and it pays
but little attention to purely dogmatic questions. On the whole, its
attitude towards religion may be defined as an enlightened Scepticism
combined with a staunch conservatism which is not even wholly devoid of a
certain mystical touch. As far as we may gather from vague remarks and
hints thrown out now and then, its theological position may perhaps be
thus defined:—It is not the mere revealed Bible that is of first
importance to the Jew, but the Bible as it repeats itself in history, in
other words, as it is interpreted by Tradition. The Talmud, that wonderful
mine of religious ideas from which it would be just as easy to draw up a
manual for the most orthodox as to extract a vade‐mecum for the most
sceptical, lends some countenance to this view by certain controversial
passages—not to be taken seriously—in which “the words of the scribes” are
placed almost above the words of the Torah. Since then the interpretation
of Scripture or the Secondary Meaning is mainly a product of changing
historical influences, it follows that the centre of authority is actually
removed from the Bible and placed in some _living body_, which, by reason
of its being in touch with the ideal aspirations and the religious needs
of the age, is best able to determine the nature of the Secondary Meaning.
This living body, however, is not represented by any section of the
nation, or any corporate priesthood, or Rabbihood, but by the collective
conscience of Catholic Israel as embodied in the Universal Synagogue. The
Synagogue “with its long, continuous cry after God for more than twenty‐
three centuries,” with its unremittent activity in teaching and developing
the word of God, with its uninterrupted succession of prophets, Psalmists,
Scribes, Assideans, Rabbis, Patriarchs, Interpreters, Elucidators,
Eminences, and Teachers, with its glorious record of Saints, martyrs,
sages, philosophers, scholars, and mystics; this Synagogue, the only true
witness to the past, and forming in all ages the sublimest expression of
Israel’s religious life, must also retain its authority as the sole true
guide for the present and the future. And being in communion with this
Synagogue, we may also look hopefully for a safe and rational solution of
our present theological troubles. For was it not the Synagogue which even
in antiquity determined the fate of Scripture? On the one hand, for
example, books like Ezekiel, the Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes, were
only declared to be Holy Writ in virtue of the interpretation put upon
them by the Rabbis: and, on the other hand, it was the veto of the Rabbis
which excluded from the canon the works that now pass under the name of
Apocrypha. We may, therefore, safely trust that the Synagogue will again
assert its divine right in passing judgment upon the Bible when it feels
called upon to exercise that holy office. It is “God who has chosen the
Torah, and Moses His servant, and Israel His people.” But indeed God’s
choice invariably coincides with the wishes of Israel; He “performeth all
things” upon which the councils of Israel, meeting under promise of the
Divine presence and communion, have previously agreed. As the Talmud
somewhere expresses itself with regard to the Book of Esther, “They have
confirmed above what Israel has accepted below.”

Another consequence of this conception of Tradition is that it is neither
Scripture nor primitive Judaism, but general custom which forms the real
rule of practice. Holy Writ as well as history, Zunz tells us, teaches
that the law of Moses was never fully and absolutely put in practice.
Liberty was always given to the great teachers of every generation to make
modifications and innovations in harmony with the spirit of existing
institutions. Hence a return to Mosaism would be illegal, pernicious, and
indeed impossible. The norm as well as the sanction of Judaism is the
practice actually in vogue. Its consecration is the consecration of
general use,—or, in other words, of Catholic Israel. It was probably with
a view to this communion that the later mystics introduced a short prayer
to be said before the performance of any religious ceremony, in which,
among other things, the speaker professes his readiness to act “in the
name of all Israel.”

It would be out of place in an introductory essay to pursue any further
this interesting subject with its far‐reaching consequences upon Jewish
life and Jewish thought. But the foregoing remarks may suffice to show
that Judaism did not remain quite inactive at the approach of the great
religious crisis which our generation has witnessed. Like so many other
religious communities, it reviewed its forces, entrenched itself on the
field of history, and what it lost of its old devotion to the Bible, it
has sought to make up by a renewed reverence for institutions.

In this connection, a mere mention may suffice of the ultra‐Orthodox
party, led by the late Dr. S. R. Hirsch of Frankfort (1808‐1889) whose
defiance of reason and criticism even a Ward might have envied, and whose
saintliness and sublimity even a Keble might have admired. And, to take an
example from the opposite school, we must at least record the name of that
devout Jew, Osias Schorr (1816‐1895), in whom we have profound learning
combined with an uncompromising disposition of mind productive of a
typical champion of Radicalism in things religious. These men are,
however, representative of two extremes, and their followers constitute
mere minorities; the majority is with the historical school.

How long the position of this school will prove tenable is another
question. Being brought up in the old Low Synagogue, where, with all
attachment to tradition, the Bible was looked upon as the crown and the
climax of Judaism, the old Adam still asserts itself in me, and in
unguarded moments makes me rebel against this new rival of revelation in
the shape of history. At times this now fashionable exaltation of
Tradition at the expense of Scripture even impresses me as a sort of
religious bimetallism in which bold speculators in theology try to keep up
the market value of an inferior currency by denouncing loudly the bright
shining gold which, they would have us believe, is less fitted to
circulate in the vulgar use of daily life than the small cash of
historical interpretation. Nor can I quite reconcile myself to this
alliance of religion with history, which seems to me both unworthy and
unnatural. The Jew, some writer aptly remarked, was the first and the
fiercest Nonconformist of the East, and so Judaism was always a protesting
religion. To break the idols, whether of the past or of the present, has
always been a sacred mission of Judaism, and has indeed been esteemed by
it as a necessary preliminary to the advent of the kingdom of God on
earth. One of its daily prayers was and still is: “We therefore hope in
Thee, O Lord our God, that we may speedily behold the glory of Thy might,
when ... the idols will be cut off, when the world will be perfected under
the kingdom of the Almighty.” It bowed before truth, but it had never made
a covenant with facts only because they were facts. History had to be re‐
made and to sanctify itself before it found its way into its sacred
annals. Nor did Judaism make a virtue of swallowing down institutions.
Such institutions as crept into it in course of time had, when the
Synagogue was conscious of their claims to form part of religion, to
submit to the laborious process of a thorough adaptation to prophetic
notions before they were formally sanctioned. But when this process was
deemed impossible or impracticable, Judaism boldly denounced the past in
such fierce language as the prophets used and as still finds its echo in
such passages of the liturgy as “First our ancestors were worshippers of
idols and now God has brought us near to His service”; or “But of a truth,
we and our ancestors have sinned.”

However, it would be unfair to argue any further against a theological
system which, as already said, was never avowed distinctly by the
historical school—a school, moreover, with which speculation is a matter
of minor importance. The main strength of this school lies in its
scientific work, for which Judaism will always be under a sense of deep
gratitude. And living as we do in an age in which history reigns supreme
in all departments of human thought, we may hope that even its theology,
as far as it goes, will “do” for us, though I neither hope nor believe
that it will do for those who come after us. I may, however, humbly
confess that the sixth essay in this volume was written in a spirit of
rebellion against this all‐absorbing Catholic Israel, with its decently
veiled scepticism on the one hand, and its unfortunate tendency with many
people to degenerate into a soulless conformity on the other hand. There
is, I am afraid, not much to be said in favour of this essay. It is
deficient both in matter and in style. It proved to be a futile attempt to
bring within the compass of an essay what a whole book could hardly do
justice to. The Hebrew documents bearing upon the question of dogma which
I have collected from various manuscripts and rare printed books, would
alone make a fair‐sized volume. I only venture to offer it to the public
in the absence of anything better; since, so far as I know, no other
attempt has ever been made to treat the subject even in its meagrest
outlines. I even venture to hope that, with all its shortcomings, it will
contribute something towards destroying the illusion, in which so many
theologians indulge, that Judaism is a religion without dogmas. To declare
that a religion has no dogmas is tantamount to saying that it was wise
enough not to commit itself to any vital principles. But prudence, useful
as it may be in worldly affairs, is quite unworthy of a great spiritual
power.

Jewish mysticism in the Middle Ages and in modern times is represented in
this volume by two essays (“The Chassidim” and “Nachmanides”). But in
order to avoid mistakes which might be implied by my silence, I think it
desirable to state that there are also to be found many mystical elements
in the old Rabbinic literature. Mysticism, not as a theosophic system or
as an occult science, but as a manifestation of the spiritual and as an
expression of man’s agonies in his struggle after communion with God, as
well as of his ineffable joy when he receives the assurance that he has
found it, is not, as some maintain, foreign to the spirit of old Rabbinic
Judaism. There was no need for the mediæval Rabbi to borrow the elements
of such a mysticism from non‐Jewish sources. The perusal of the old
Homilies on the Song of Songs, and on the Lessons from the Prophets, or
even a fair acquaintance with the Jewish liturgy would, in itself, suffice
to refute such baseless assertions. Those who are at all familiar with old
Rabbinic literature hardly need to be told that “the sea of the Talmud”
has also its gulf stream of mysticism which, taking its origin in the
moralising portions of the Bible, runs through the wide ocean of Jewish
thought, constantly commingling with the icy waters of legalism, and
unceasingly washing the desolate shores of an apparently meaningless
ceremonialism, communicating to it life, warmth, and spirituality. To draw
attention to this fact a humble attempt has been made in the ninth essay,
“The Law and Recent Criticism,” a subject which I have essayed to expound
in a series of essays on “Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology,” now
appearing in _The Jewish Quarterly Review_.

The last five essays touch rather on certain social and familiar aspects
of Judaism, and need no further comment. They are mere _causeries_ and
hardly deserve the name of studies. Perhaps it may be useful for those who
judge of the heaviness of a work by its bulk to know that there is also a
lighter side of Rabbinic literature.

But I shall be better pleased if the more serious side of this
volume—Jewish mysticism and Rabbinic theology—should attract the attention
of students, and so draw some fellow‐workers into a field which is utterly
neglected. Notwithstanding the numerous Manuals and Introductions which
all more or less touch on the subject of Rabbinic theology, there is,
after nearly 250 years, not a single work among them which, either in
knowledge of facts or in their interpretation, is a single step in advance
of the Cambridge Platonist, John Smith, in his _Select Discourses_. But
those who try so hard to determine the miraculous distance of Christianity
by the eclipses in Rabbinism, should, if they wish to be just or prove
themselves worthy scholars, also endeavour to make themselves acquainted
with the numberless bright stars that move in the wide universe of Jewish
thought. We are often told that no creed or theological system which has
come down to us from antiquity can afford to be judged by any other
standard than by its spiritual and poetic _possibilities_: this indulgence
Judaism is as justly entitled to claim as any other religion. The great
and saintly Franz Delitzsch who, born with an intellect of admirable
temper, was also endowed by Heaven with a soul—and a beautiful soul it
was—was one of the few theologians who, partly at least, admitted this
claim, and sought earnestly and diligently after these spiritual and
poetic possibilities, and was amply rewarded for his labours.





I. THE CHASSIDIM(1)


Throughout the whole of that interesting field of Theological Literature
which deals with the genesis and course of religious movements, there is
probably none whose history, even whose name, is so little known to
English students, as that of the Chassidim. And yet it would be difficult
to point, in comparatively recent times, to a Dissenting movement more
strikingly complete in its development, more suggestive of analogy, more
full of interest in its original purpose, more pregnant of warning in its
decay.

The Hebrew word “Chassidim”(2) merely means “the Pious,” and appears to
have been complacently adopted by the early apostles of the sect. But the
thing—Chassidism—was, in its inception at all events, a revolt among the
Jews of Eastern Europe against the excessive casuistry of the contemporary
Rabbis. It was in fact one more manifestation of the yearning of the human
heart towards the Divine idea, and of its ceaseless craving for direct
communion with God. It was the protest of an emotional but uneducated
people against a one‐sided expression of Judaism, presented to them in
cold and over‐subtle disquisitions which not only did they not understand,
but which shut out the play of the feelings and the affections, so that
religion was made almost impossible to them.

Some account of the sect is the more necessary because, although the
Chassidim have not been wholly ignored by historians or novelists, the
references to them have generally, for perfectly intelligible reasons,
been either biassed or inaccurate. The historians who have treated of them
have been almost exclusively men saturated with Western culture and
rationalism. To them the rude and uncouth manifestations of an
undisciplined religious spirit could not be other than repellent; to them
Chassidism was a movement to be dismissed as unæsthetic and irrational.

To the purposes of fiction the romantic side of Chassidism lends itself
readily, but the novelists who have used this material have confined
themselves to its externals. Indeed, to have done more would have involved
a tedious and unremunerative study of difficult Hebrew texts, an
undertaking not to be expected from the most conscientious writers of this
class. Thus Franzos in his references to the Jews of Barnow describes
faithfully the outer signs of the man, his long coat and tangled curls,
but the inner life, the world in which the Chassid moved and had his
being, was unknown to him and is therefore unrecorded.

As to my treatment of the subject, I confess that there was a time when I
loved the Chassidim as there was a time when I hated them. And even now I
am not able to suppress these feelings. I have rather tried to guide my
feelings in such a way as to love in Chassidism what is ideal and noble,
and to hate in it what turned out bad and pernicious for Judaism. How far
I have been successful is another question. At least I have endeavoured to
write this paper in such a spirit. But of one thing I must warn the
reader—the desire to give some clear notion of the leading ideas of
Chassidism has compelled me to quote some passages in which the Chassidim
have spoken in very offensive terms of their opponents. In justice to
these I must remark that unfortunately religious struggles are usually
conducted on the most irreligious principles. Thus the Chassidim imputed
to their antagonists, the contemporary Rabbis, many vices from which they
were free. Certainly, there was, as one can read in every history of
Jewish religion, something wrong in the state of Judaism. But I know
people who maintain that there is something very wrong in the present
state of Judaism, and who despair of a regeneration. But surely this is a
silly exaggeration. The Chassidim also exaggerated. It would be better to
take but little notice of their accusations and dwell more on that which
was spoken in a kind and loving spirit.

As to the literature of the subject, I can only say here that I have made
use of every book I could consult, both in English and in foreign
libraries. But I cannot pledge myself to be what early Jewish writers
called “a donkey which carries books.” I exercise my own choice and my own
judgment on many points.

As an active force for good, Chassidism was short‐lived. For, as I propose
to show, there lurked among its central tenets the germs of the degeneracy
which so speedily came upon it. But its early purposes were high, its
doctrines fairly pure, its aspirations ideal and sublime.

The founder of the sect was one Israel Baalshem,(3) and the story of his
parentage, birth, and childhood, and the current anecdotes of his
subsequent career play a considerable part in Chassidic literature. But
the authentic materials for his biography are everywhere interwoven with
much that is pure legend and with much more that is miraculous. This was,
perhaps, inevitable, and is certainly not an unfamiliar feature in the
personal histories of religious reformers as presented by their followers
and devotees.

The sayings and doings of Baalshem are an essential—perhaps the most
essential—portion of any account of the sect. For Baalshem is the centre
of the Chassidic world, and Chassidism is so intimately bound up with the
personality of its founder that any separation between them is well nigh
impossible. To the Chassidim Baalshem is not a man who established a
theory or set forth a system; he himself was the incarnation of a theory
and his whole life the revelation of a system.

Even those portions of his history which are plainly legendary have their
uses in indicating the ideals and in illustrating the aspirations of the
early Chassidim; while their circulation and the ready credence they
received are valuable evidence of the real power and influence of
Baalshem’s personality.

In the tale as told by the sect little is omitted of those biographical
accessories which are proper to an Avatar. There is all the conventional
heralding of a pre‐ordained advent; all the usual signs and portents of a
new dispensation may be recognised in the almost preternatural virtues of
Baalshem’s parents, in the miraculous annunciation and exceptional
circumstances of his nativity, and in the early indication of a strong and
fearless individuality. Everywhere it seems to be suggested that Baalshem
from his infancy was conscious of a lofty mission. It is already in tender
years that he is made to give evidence of an indifference to conventional
restraints and accepted ideals.

Rabbi Eliezer and his wife, the parents of Baalshem, dwelt, as the story
goes, in Moldavia. They are described as a pious and God‐fearing couple,
who, when they had already reached old age, were still childless. They are
accredited with a spotless rectitude, which was unimpaired by a long
series of strange vicissitudes and misfortunes.

Ultimately, an angel of God appeared to Eliezer and announced that, as he
had successfully withstood all the temptations and sufferings by which he
had been tried, God was about to reward him with a son, who was destined
to enlighten the eyes of all Israel. Therefore his name should be Israel,
for in him the words of Scripture were to be fulfilled, “Thou art my
servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” In due course the promise
was fulfilled, and to the aged couple a son was born, who was named Israel
according to the angel’s word. The date of Baalshem’s birth is about 1700;
his birthplace, in Bukowina, in a hitherto unidentified village which the
authorities call Ukop, then still belonging to Roumania. The child’s
mother died soon after he was weaned, and his father did not long survive
her. But before Eliezer died he took his child in his arms, and blessing
him, bade him fear naught, for God would always be with him.

As Eliezer had been greatly honoured in the community in which he lived,
his orphan son was carefully tended and educated. He was early supplied
with an instructor in the Holy Law. But though he learned with rare
facility, he rejected the customary methods of instruction. One day, while
still quite young, his teacher missed him, and on seeking found him
sitting alone in the forest that skirted his native village, in happy and
fearless solitude. He repeated this escapade so often that it was thought
best to leave him to follow his own bent. A little later we find him
engaged as assistant to a schoolmaster. His duty was not to teach, but to
take the children from their homes to the synagogue and thence on to the
school. It was his wont while accompanying the children to the synagogue
to teach them solemn hymns which he sang with them. In the synagogue he
encouraged them to sing the responses, so that the voices of the children
penetrated through the heavens and moved the Divine father to compassion.
Satan, fearing lest his power on earth should thereby be diminished,
assumed the shape of a werewolf, and, appearing before the procession of
children on their way to the synagogue, put them to flight. In consequence
of this alarming incident the children’s services were suspended. But
Israel, recollecting his father’s counsel to fear naught, besought the
parents to be allowed to lead the children once more in the old way. His
request was granted, and when the werewolf appeared a second time Israel
attacked him with a club and routed him.

In his fourteenth year Israel became a beadle at the Beth Hammidrash.(4)
Here he assiduously but secretly pursued the study of the Law. Yet, being
anxious that none should know his design, he read and worked only at
night, when the schoolroom was empty and the usual scholars had retired.
During the daytime he slept, so that he was popularly believed to be both
ignorant and lazy. Despite these precautions, however, his true character
was revealed to one person. A certain holy man, the father of a young
student at the college, had discovered some old manuscripts which
contained the deepest secrets. Before his death he bade his son repair to
Ukop, Israel’s birthplace, telling him that he would find one Israel, son
of Eliezer, to whom the precious documents were to be entrusted. They
possessed, so the old man declared, a certain mystic and heavenly affinity
with Israel’s soul. The student carried out his father’s instructions, and
at last discovered the object of his search in the beadle of the Beth
Hammidrash. Israel admitted him to his friendship and confidence on the
condition of secrecy as to his real character. The student, however, paid
dearly for this acquaintance with Israel. Contrary to Baalshem’s advice,
he entered upon a dangerous incantation in the course of which he made a
mistake so serious that it cost him his life.

Upon the death of his friend, Baalshem left his native village and settled
as a teacher in a small town near Brody. Here, although his true mission
and character were still unknown, he became much respected for his rigid
probity, and was frequently chosen as umpire in disputes among Jews. On
one of these occasions he arbitrated with so much learning and
impartiality that not only did he satisfy both parties, but one of them, a
learned man of Brody, named Abraham, offered him his own daughter in
marriage. Israel, to whom it had been revealed that Abraham’s daughter was
his predestined wife, immediately accepted the offer and the act of
betrothal was drawn up. But wishing his true character to remain unknown
he stipulated that Abraham, although a “Talmid Chacham” (student)(5)
himself and therefore presumably desirous that his daughter should marry a
scholar, should omit from the betrothal‐deed all the titles of honour
usually appended to the name of a learned bridegroom. While returning to
Brody, Abraham died, and Gershon his son, a scholar still greater and more
celebrated than his father, was surprised and shocked to find a deed of
betrothal among his father’s papers, from which it appeared that his
sister was to wed a man with apparently no claim to scholarship or
learning. He protested to his sister, but she declined to entertain any
objections to a marriage which her father had arranged. When the time for
the wedding was at hand, Israel gave up his post as teacher, and repaired
to Brody. Disguised as a peasant he presented himself before his future
brother‐in‐law, who was then fulfilling some high judicial function.
Gershon taking him for a beggar offered him alms, but Israel, refusing the
money, asked for a private interview, stating that he had an important
secret to reveal. He then, to Gershon’s surprise and disgust, explained
who he was and that he had come to claim his bride. As the girl was
determined to obey her father’s will the affair was settled and the day
fixed. On the morning of the wedding Israel revealed to his bride his real
character and mission, at the same time enjoining secrecy. Evil fortunes
would befall them, he said, but a better time would eventually follow.

After the wedding, Gershon, having in vain attempted to instruct his
seemingly ignorant brother‐in‐law, decided to rid himself of his presence.
He gave his sister the choice of being separated from her husband, or of
leaving the town in his company. She chose the latter, and thereupon the
two left Brody and began a life of hardship and suffering. Israel chose
for his new home a spot on one of the spurs of the Carpathian Mountains.
No Jews lived there, and Israel and his wife were thus separated from the
society of their fellows in a life of complete and unchanging solitude.
Israel dug lime in the ravines among the mountains, and his wife conveyed
it for sale to the nearest town. Their life at this period seems to have
been one of great privation, but the harder Israel’s outward lot, the more
he increased in spiritual greatness. In his solitude he gave himself up
entirely to devotion and religious contemplation. His habit was to climb
to the summit of the mountains and wander about rapt in spiritual
ecstasies. He fasted, prayed, made continual ablutions, and observed all
the customary outward and inward exercises of piety and devotion.

After seven years, Gershon, who was well aware of the bitter poverty which
his sister endured, relented and brought her and her husband back to
Brody. At first he employed Baalshem as his coachman, but as he proved
wholly unfit for this work Gershon rented a small inn in a remote village,
and there established his sister and her husband. The business of the inn
was managed by the wife, while Baalshem passed most of his time in a hut
in a neighbouring forest. Here he once more gave himself up to meditation
and preparation for his future work, and here, a little later, when nearly
forty‐two years of age, to a few chosen spirits, afterwards his most
fervent disciples, he first revealed his true character and mission.

From this point unfortunately the materials for a continuous biography are
wanting; we next hear of Baalshem discharging the functions of an ordinary
Rabbi at Miedziboz in Podolia, but for the remainder of his personal
history we have to be content with detached anecdotes and fragmentary
passages in his life, the sum total of which goes to show that he resided
in Podolia and Wallachia, teaching his doctrines to his disciples and
“working Wonders.” He does not seem to have figured as a public preacher,
nor has he left behind him any written work. He appears rather to have
used the method, familiar to students of Greek philosophy, of teaching by
conversations with his friends and disciples. These conversations, and the
parables with which they were largely interspersed, were remembered and
stored up by his hearers. By his neighbours the country folk, Baalshem was
regarded simply as “a man of God.” He was allowed to pursue his course
undisturbed by persecution of the serious character which his more
aggressive successors provoked. Such of the Rabbis as were aware of his
existence despised him and his ways, but the Rabbinical world was at that
time too much occupied in the controversy between Eybeschütz and Emden to
concern itself with the vagaries of an obscure and apparently “unlearned”
eccentric. Baalshem also took part in the disputes which were held in
Lemberg, the capital of Galicia (1757?), between the Rabbis and the
Frankists,(6) who denounced the Talmud to the Polish Government and wanted
to have all the Rabbinical books destroyed. Baalshem suffered from this
excitement in a most terrible way. The abrogation of the Oral Law meant
for him the ruin of Judaism.

Baalshem, in forming the little band of devoted followers who were
destined to spread a knowledge of his creed, travelled considerably about
Wallachia. He at one time decided to make a pilgrimage to Palestine, but
when he reached Constantinople he felt himself inspired to return and
continue his work at home. He died at Miedziboz on the eve of Pentecost,
1761.

After his death his disciples, of whom one Beer of Mizriez was the most
prominent, undertook the proselytising mission for which Baalshem had
prepared them, but from which he himself appears to have abstained. They
preached and taught in all the provinces of Russia where Jews may reside,
and in Roumania, and Galicia. The number of the sect at the present day is
probably about half a million.

Returning now to Baalshem the founder, it may be noted that his appearance
as a teacher and reformer was accompanied and justified by a customary and
adequate number of miracles. To one disciple he revealed secrets which
could have become known to him only by divine revelation; to another he
appeared with a nimbus round his head. On the evidence of the Chassidim we
learn that Baalshem performed all the recognised signs and marvels which
have ever been the customary minor characteristics of men of similar type
in similar environment. When Baalshem desired to cross a stream, he spread
forth his mantle upon the waters, and standing thereupon passed safely to
the other side. Ghosts evacuated haunted houses at the mere mention of his
name. Was he alone in the forest on a wintry night, he had but to touch a
tree with his finger tips and flames burst forth. When his spirit wandered
through the angelic spheres, as was frequently the case, he obtained
access to Paradise for millions of pining souls who had vainly waited
without through long thousands of mournful years. These and other miracles
need not be examined. Here, as in the case of other such blissful seasons
of grace, they were the ephemeral though important accessories in
establishing the inspired character of his utterances and the authority of
his injunctions. It is not as a worker of miracles, but as a religious
teacher and reformer, that Baalshem is interesting.

Properly to understand the nature and special direction of his teaching,
it is necessary in some measure to realise the character of the field in
which he worked; to consider, in other words, the moral and religious
condition of the Jews in those districts where Chassidism first took root.

In a Hebrew Hymn, written about 1000 A.C., and still recited in the
synagogue on the Day of Atonement, the poet expresses the strange and
bitter fortunes of his race in touching words of mingled sorrow and
exultation.


    Destroyed lies Zion and profaned,
    Of splendour and renown bereft,
    Her ancient glories wholly waned,
    One deathless treasure only left;
        Still ours, O Lord,
        Thy Holy Word.


And this Divine Word it was, which a persecuted religion has sought to
preserve intact through so many centuries of persecution, and for the sake
of which no labour seemed too severe, no sacrifice too large. “Bethink
Thee, O God,” exclaimed one of our Jewish sages who flourished about the
same period, “bethink Thee of Thy faithful children who, amid their
poverty and want, are busy in the study of Thy Law. Bethink Thee of the
poor in Israel who are willing to suffer hunger and destitution if only
they can secure for their children the knowledge of Thy Law.” And so
indeed it was. Old and young, weak and strong, rich and poor, all pursued
that single study, the Torah. The product of this prolonged study is that
gigantic literature which, as a long unbroken chain of spiritual activity,
connects together the various periods of the Jews’ chequered and eventful
history. All ages and all lands have contributed to the development of
this supreme study. For under the word Torah was comprised not only the
Law, but also the contributions of later times expressing either the
thoughts or the emotions of holy and sincere men; and even their honest
scepticism was not entirely excluded. As in the canon of the Bible,
Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon found place in the same volume that
contains the Law and the Prophets, so at a later time people did not
object to put the philosophical works of Maimonides and the songs of Judah
Hallevi on the same level with the Code of the Law compiled by R. Isaac
Alfasi, and the commentaries on the Bible by R. Solomon b. Isaac.(7) None
of them was declared infallible, but also to none of them, as soon as
people were convinced of the author’s sincerity, was denied the homage due
to seekers after truth. Almost every author was called Rabbi (“my master”)
or Rabbenu (“our master”),(8) and nearly every book was regarded more or
less as a contribution to the great bulk of the Torah. It was called
Writ,(9) and was treated with a certain kind of piety. But, by a series of
accidents too long to be related here, sincerity ceased and sport took its
place. I refer to the casuistic schools commonly known by the name of
Pilpulists(10) (the “seasoned” or the “sharp” ones), who flourished in the
last two centuries preceding ours. To the authors of this unhappy period,
a few glorious exceptions always allowed, the preceding Jewish literature
did not mean a “fountain of living waters,” supplying men with truth and
religious inspiration, but rather a kind of armoury providing them with
juristic cases over which to fight, and to out‐do each other in sophistry
and subtlety. As a consequence they cared little or nothing for that part
of the Jewish literature that appeals less to the intellect than to the
feelings of men. In short, religion consisted only of complicated cases
and innumerable ordinances, in which the wit of these men found delight.
But the emotional part of it, whose root is the Faith and Love of men, was
almost entirely neglected.

But it was precisely these higher religious emotions that were Baalshem’s
peculiar province, and it was to them that he assigned in his religious
system a place befitting their importance and their dignity. And the
locality where his ministration lay was curiously adapted for such
propaganda. To that universal study of the Law of which I have just spoken
there was one exception. That exception was amongst the Jews in the
territories which bordered on the Carpathian Mountains, and comprise the
principalities of Moldavia, and Wallachia, Bukowina, and the Ukraine.

It is historically certain that the first arrival of the Jews in Roumania
was at a very early date, but there is no trace of any intellectual
productivity among the immigrants until recent times, and it is admitted
that the study of the Law was almost entirely neglected. It was in these
districts of mental, and perhaps we might add of even spiritual, darkness
that Chassidism took its rise and achieved its first success. “The sect of
the Chassidim,” says one of the bitterest but most trustworthy of their
opponents, “first gained ground in the most uncivilised provinces; in the
wild ravines of Wallachia and the dreary steppes of the Ukraine.”

Apart from the genius of its founder, Chassidism owed its rapid growth to
the intellectual barrenness of these districts as compared with the
intellectual fertility of the other regions where Jews most thickly
congregated. The Roumanian Jews were to some extent under the jurisdiction
of the Rabbis of Poland. Now the Poles were celebrated even in Germany for
the elaboration of their casuistry. These over‐subtle Rabbis, delighting
in the quibbles of their sophistry, and reducing religion to an unending
number of juristic calculations and all sorts of possibilities and
impossibilities, were but too apt to forget the claims of feeling in their
eager desire to question and to settle everything. They may have been
satisfactory guides in matters spiritual to the men of their own stamp,
but they were of no avail to their Roumanian brethren who failed to
recognise religion in the garb of casuistry. It was, therefore, not
surprising that a revolt against the excess of intellectualism should have
sprung up and flourished in those districts where the inhabitants were
constitutionally incapable of appreciating the delights of argument. The
field was ready, and in the fulness of time came the sower in the person
of Baalshem.

In the above estimate of the Polish Rabbis there undoubtedly lurks a touch
of exaggeration. But it represents the view which the Chassidim took of
their opponents. The whole life of Baalshem is a protest against the
typical Rabbi thus conceived. The essential difference in the ideals of
the two parties is perhaps best illustrated in those portions of their
biographical literature where legend treads most closely upon the heels of
fact.

The hero of Polish Rabbinic biography at five years of age can recite by
heart the most difficult tractates of the Talmud; at eight he is the
disciple of the most celebrated teacher of the time, and perplexes him by
the penetrative subtlety of his questions; while at thirteen he appears
before the world as a full‐fledged Doctor of the Law.

The hero of the Chassidim has a totally different education, and his
distinctive glory is of another kind. The legendary stories about
Baalshem’s youth tell us little of his proficiency in Talmudic studies;
instead of sitting in the Beth Hammidrash with the folios of some
casuistic treatise spread out before him, Baalshem passes his time singing
hymns out of doors, or under the green trees of the forest with the
children. Satan, however, says the Chassid, is more afraid of these
innocent exercises than of all the controversies in the Meheram Shiff.(11)
It was through external nature, the woods of his childhood, the hills and
wild ravines of the Carpathians where he passed many of his maturer years,
that Baalshem, according to his disciples, reached his spiritual
confirmation. The Chassidic hero had no celebrated Rabbi for his master.
He was his own teacher. If not self‐taught, it was from angelic lips, or
even the Divine voice itself, that he learned the higher knowledge. From
the source whence the Torah flowed Baalshem received heavenly lore. His
method of self‐education, his ways of life, his choice of associates were
all instances of revolt; not only did he teach a wholly different theory
and practice, but he and his disciples seem to have missed no opportunity
of denouncing the old teachers as misleading and ungodly. Among the many
anecdotes illustrating this feature, it is told how once, on the evening
before the great Day of Atonement, Baalshem was noticed by his disciples
to be, contrary to his usual custom, depressed and ill at ease. The whole
subsequent day he passed in violent weeping and lamentations. At its close
he once more resumed his wonted cheerfulness of manner. When asked for the
explanation of his behaviour, he replied that the Holy Spirit had revealed
to him that heavy accusations were being made against the Jewish people,
and a heavy punishment had been ordained upon them. The anger of heaven
was caused by the Rabbis, whose sole occupation was to invent lying
premisses and to draw from them false conclusions. All the truly wise
Rabbis of the olden time (such as the Tannaim, the Amoraim(12) and their
followers, whom Baalshem regarded as so many saints and prophets) had now
stood forth as the accusers of their modern successors by whom their words
were so grossly perverted from their original meaning. On this account
Baalshem’s tears had been shed, and his prayers as usual had been
successful. The impending judgment was annulled. On another occasion, when
he overheard the sounds of eager, loud discussion issuing from a
Rabbinical college, Baalshem, closing his ears with his hands, declared
that it was such disputants who delayed the redemption of Israel from
captivity. Satan, he said, incites the Rabbis to study those portions of
Jewish literature only on which they can whet the sharpness of their
intellects, but from all writings of which the reading would promote piety
and the fear of God he keeps them away. “Where there is much study,” says
a disciple of Baalshem, “there is little piety.” “Jewish Devils”(13) is
one of the numerous polite epithets applied to the Rabbis by the friends
of Baalshem. “Even the worst sinners are better than they; so blind are
they in the arrogance of their self‐conceit that their very devotion to
the Law becomes a vehicle for their sin.” It will be found when we deal
with the most positive side of Baalshem’s teaching that this antagonism to
the attitude and methods of the contemporary Rabbis is further emphasised,
and it will readily be seen that his whole scheme of religion and of
conduct in relation to God and man rendered this acknowledged hostility
inevitable. In approaching this part of our subject it should be
remembered that, as stated above, Baalshem himself wrote nothing. For a
knowledge of his sayings we are therefore dependent on the reports of his
friends and disciples. And it is not unfrequently necessary to supplement
these by the teaching of his followers, whom we may suppose in large
measure to have caught the spirit of their master. Unfortunately the
original authorities are in a difficult Hebrew patois which often obscures
the precise meaning of whole passages.

The originality of Baalshem’s teaching has been frequently impugned,
chiefly by the suggestion that he drew largely from the Zohar (Book of
Brightness).(14) This mystical book, “the Bible of the Cabbalists,”
whether we regard its subject‐matter or its history and influence, is
unique in literature. Its pretended author is Simeon ben Yochai, a great
Rabbi of the second century, but the real writer is probably one Moses de
Leon, a Spanish Jew, who lived eleven centuries later. The book is one of
the most interesting literary forgeries, and is a marvellous mixture of
good and evil. A passage of delicate religious fancy is succeeded by
another of gross obscenity in illustration and suggestion; true piety and
wild blasphemy are strangely mingled together. Baalshem undoubtedly had
studied the Zohar, and he even is reported to have said that the reading
of the Zohar had enabled him to see into the whole universe of things.
But, for all that, Baalshem was no copyist; and the Zohar, although it may
have suggested a hint to him here and there, was not the source whence his
inspiration was drawn.

Its attraction for Baalshem is sufficiently explained by the fantastic,
imaginative, and emotional nature of its contents. It lent itself more
easily than the older Rabbinical literature to new explanations unthought
of by its author. But even the Talmud and its early commentaries became
apocalyptic to the heroes of Chassidism. Nay, the driest and most legal
disquisitions about _meum_ and _tuum_ could be translated into parables
and allegories and symbols full of the most exalted meanings. Baalshem,
like every other religious reformer, was partially the product of his age.
The influences of the past, the history and literature of his own people,
helped to make him what he was. But they do not rob him of his
originality. He was a religious revivalist in the best sense; full of
burning faith in his God and his cause; convinced utterly of the value of
his work and the truth of his teaching.

Although there can be no real doubt of Baalshem’s claim to originality, it
should be borne in mind that his teaching is not only distinctively
Jewish, but that for every part of it parallels and analogies could be
found in the older Hebrew literature. Indeed it is not wonderful that in a
literature, extending over 2000 years, of a people whose chief thoughts
have been religion, and who have come in contact with so many external
religious and philosophic influences, the germs can be discovered of
almost every conceivable system, and the outline of almost every
imaginable doctrine.

The keynote of all Baalshem’s teachings is the Omnipresence, or more
strictly the Immanence, of God. This is the source from which flows
naturally every article of his creed; the universality of the Divinity is
the foundation of the entire Chassidic fabric. The idea of the constant
living presence of God in all existence permeates the whole of Baalshem’s
scheme; it is insisted on in every relation; from it is deduced every
important proposition and every rule in conduct of his school.

All created things and every product of human intelligence owe their being
to God. All generation and all existence spring from the thought and will
of God. It is incumbent upon man to believe that all things are pervaded
by the divine life, and when he speaks he should remember that it is this
divine life which is speaking through him. There is nothing which is void
of God. If we imagine for a moment such a thing to be, it would instantly
fall into nothingness. In every human thought God is present. If the
thought be gross or evil, we should seek to raise and ennoble it by
carrying it back to its origin. So, if a man be suddenly overwhelmed by
the aspect of a beautiful woman, he should remember that this splendour of
beauty is owing to the all‐pervading emanation from the divine. When he
remembers that the source of corporeal beauty is God, he will not be
content to let his thought abide with the body when he can rise to the
inward contemplation of the infinite soul of beauty, which is God. A
disciple of Baalshem has said: Even as in the jewels of his beloved the
lover sees only the beauty of her he loves, so does the true lover of God
see in all the appearances of this world, the vitalising and generative
power of his divine master. If you do not see the world in the light of
God you separate the creation from its Creator. He who does not fully
believe in this universality of God’s presence has never properly
acknowledged God’s Sovereignty, for he excludes God from an existing
portion of the actual world. The word of God (to Baalshem, a synonym for
God himself), which “is settled in heaven” and “established on earth,” is
still and always speaking, acting, and generating throughout heaven and
earth in endless gradations and varieties. If the vitalising word were to
cease, chaos would come again. The belief in a single creation after which
the Master withdrew from his completed work, is erroneous and heretical.
The vivifying power is never withdrawn from the world which it animates.
Creation is continuous; an unending manifestation of the goodness of God.
All things are an affluence from the two divine attributes of Power and
Love, which express themselves in various images and reflections.

This is the doctrine of universality in Chassidism. God, the father of
Israel, God the Merciful, God the All‐powerful, the God of Love, not only
created everything but is embodied in everything. The necessity of
believing this doctrine is the cardinal Dogma. But as creation is
continuous so also is revelation. This revelation is only to be grasped by
faith. Faith, therefore, is more efficacious than learning. Thus it is
that in times of persecution, the wise and the foolish, the sinner and the
saint, are wont alike to give up their life for their faith. They who
could render no answer to the questions of the casuist are yet willing to
die the most cruel of deaths rather than deny their faith in the One and
Supreme God. Their strength to face danger and death is owing to that
divine illumination of the soul which is more exalted than knowledge.

We should thus regard all things in the light of so many manifestations of
the Divinity. God is present in all things; therefore there is good,
actual or potential, in all things. It is our duty everywhere to seek out
and to honour the good, and not to arrogate to ourselves the right to
judge that which may seem to be evil. In thinking therefore of a fellow‐
man, we should above all things realise in him the presence of the spirit
of good. Whence we have the Doctrine that each of us, while thinking
humbly of himself, should always be ready to think well, and always slow
to think evil, of another. This explains the Chassidic attitude towards
erring humanity. Baalshem viewed human sin and infirmity in a very
different light from that of the ordinary Rabbi. Ever conscious of the
Divine side of Humanity, he vigorously combated the gratuitous assumption
of sinfulness in man which was a fertile subject with contemporary
preachers. They, among the Roumanian Jews as in other communities,
delighted chiefly to dwell on the dark side of things, and found their
favourite theme in elaborate descriptions of the infernal punishments that
were awaiting the sinner after death. It is related how on one occasion
Baalshem rebuked one of these. The preacher had been denouncing woe to an
audience of whom he knew nothing whether for evil or for good. Baalshem,
indignant at this indiscriminative abuse and conceited arrogation of the
divine office of judgment, turned on him in the following words: “Woe upon
thee who darest to speak evil of Israel! Dost not know that every Jew,
when he utters ever so short a prayer at the close of day, is performing a
great work before which the angels in heaven bow down?” Great, as it would
seem, was the value set by Baalshem upon the smallest evidence of the
higher nature in man, and few there were, as he believed, who, if their
spirit was not darkened by pride, did not now and again give proof of the
divine stamp in which God had created them. No sin so separates us from
God that we need despair of return. From every rung of the moral ladder,
no matter how low, let man seek God. If he but fully believe that nothing
is void of God, and that God is concealed in the midst of apparent ruin
and degradation, he will not fear lest God be far from him. God is
regained in a moment of repentance, for repentance “transcends the limits
of space and time.” And he who leads the sinner to repentance causes a
divine joy; it is as though a king’s son had been in captivity and were
now brought back to his father’s gaze.

Baalshem refused to regard any one as wholly irredeemable. His was an
optimistic faith. God was to be praised in gladness by the dwellers in
this glorious world. The true believer, recognising the reflection of God
in every man, should hopefully strive, when that reflection was obscured
by sin, to restore the likeness of God in man. The peculiar detestability
of sin lies in this, that man rejects the earthly manifestations of the
Divinity and pollutes them. One of Baalshem’s disciples delighted in the
saying that the most hardened sinners were not to be despaired of, but
prayed for. None knows the heart of man, and none should judge his
neighbour. Let him who burns with zeal for God’s sake, exercise his zeal
on himself, not others. Baalshem said, “Let no one think himself better
than his neighbour, for all serve God; each according to the measure of
understanding which God has given him.”

From this position it is a natural step to Baalshem’s view of prayer. He
is reputed to have said that all the greatness he had achieved was the
issue not of study but of prayer. But true prayer “must move,” as Baalshem
phrased it, “in the realms above,” and not be concerned with affairs
sublunary. Your prayer should not be taken up with your wishes and needs,
but should be the means to bring you nigh to God. In prayer man must lay
aside his own individuality, and not even be conscious of his existence;
for if, when he prays, Self is not absolutely quiescent, the object of
prayer is unattainable. Indeed it is only through God’s grace that after
true prayer man is yet alive; to such a point has the annihilation of self
proceeded.

It may be necessary to caution the reader against ascribing to Baalshem
any modern rationalistic notions on the subject of prayer. The power of
prayer, in the old‐fashioned sense, to produce an answer from God was
never doubted by Baalshem for a moment. Baalshem’s deity is not restricted
towards any side by any philosophic considerations. All Baalshem meant was
that any reference or regard to earthly requirements was unworthy and
destructive of this communion of man with God. The wise man, says
Baalshem, does not trouble the king with innumerable petitions about
trifles. His desire is merely to gain admission into the king’s presence
and to speak with him without a go‐between. To be with the king whom he
loves so dearly is for him the highest good. But his love for the king has
its reward; for the king loves him.

It has already been implied that, with regard to our duty towards our
fellow‐man, we must not only honour him for the good, and abstain from
judging the evil that may be in him, but must pray for him. Furthermore we
must work for his spiritual and moral reclamation. In giving practical
effect in his own life to this doctrine, Baalshem’s conduct was in
striking contrast to that of his contemporaries. He habitually consorted
with outcasts and sinners, with the poor and uneducated of both sexes,
whom the other teachers ignored. He thus won for his doctrines a way to
the heart of the people by adapting his life and language to their
understanding and sympathies. In illustration of this, as well as of his
hatred of vanity and display, it is told how, on the occasion of his being
accorded a public reception by the Jews on his arrival at Brody, instead
of addressing to them in the conventional fashion some subtle discourse
upon a Talmudical difficulty, he contented himself with conversing upon
trivial topics in the local dialect with some of the less important
persons in the crowd.

This incident is perhaps the more noteworthy because it occurred in Brody,
which was at that time a seat of learning and Rabbinic culture,—a place
where, for that very reason, Chassidism was never able to gain a foothold.
It is probable enough that Baalshem in his visits to this town kept aloof
from the learned and the wise, and sought to gather round him the
neglected and humbler elements of Jewish society. It is well known that
Baalshem consorted a good deal with the innkeepers of the district, who
were held in very low repute among their brethren. The following remark by
one of his followers is very suggestive in this respect. Just as only
superficial minds attach a certain holiness to special places, whilst with
the deeper ones all places are alike holy, so that to them it makes no
difference whether prayers be said in the synagogue or in the forest; so
the latter believe that not only prophecies and visions come from heaven,
but that every utterance of man, if properly understood, contains a
message of God. Those who are absorbed in God will easily find the divine
element in everything which they hear, even though the speaker himself be
quite ignorant of it.

This line of conduct gave a fair opening for attack to his opponents, an
opportunity of which they were not slow to avail themselves. Baalshem was
pointed at as the associate of the lowest classes. They avenged themselves
for his neglect of and hostility to the learned by imputing the worst
motives to his indifference to appearances. He was accused of idling about
the streets with disreputable characters, and one polemical treatise draws
the vilest inferences from his apparent familiarity with women. To this
charge Baalshem’s conduct, innocent in itself, gave some colour; for his
views and habits in relation to women marked a strong divergence from
current customs. The position of women in contemporary circles was neither
debased nor inevitably unhappy, but it was distinctly subordinate. Their
education was almost entirely neglected, and their very existence was
practically ignored. According to the Chassidic doctrine of Universality,
woman was necessarily to be honoured. “All Jews,” says one Chassid, “even
the uneducated and the women, believe in God.” Baalshem frequently
associated with women, assigning to them not only social equality, but a
high degree of religious importance.

His own wife he reverenced as a saint; when she died he abandoned the hope
of rising to heaven while yet alive, like Elijah of old, saying mournfully
that undivided such translation might have happened, but for him alone it
was impossible. Then again in a form of religion utilising so largely the
emotions of Faith and Love there was a strong appeal to the female mind.
The effect of this was soon evident, and Baalshem did not neglect to
profit by it. Among the most devoted of his early adherents were women.
One of them was the heroine of a favourite anecdote concerning Baalshem’s
work of Love and Rescue. It is related that in a certain village there
dwelt a woman whose life was so disgraceful that her brothers at last
determined to kill her. With this object they enticed her into a
neighbouring wood, but guided by the Holy Spirit Baalshem intervened at
the critical moment, and dissuading the men from their purpose rescued the
sinner. The woman afterwards became a sort of Magdalen in the new
community.

Above I have endeavoured to throw together in some order of sequence the
doctrines and practical rules of conduct which Baalshem and his early
disciples seem to have deduced from their central idea of the omnipresence
of God. This was necessary in order to give a connected idea of their
creed, but it is right to say that nowhere in Chassidic literature have
these deductions been logically co‐ordinated. Perhaps their solitary
attempt to formulate and condense their distinctive views is confined to a
statement of their idea of piety or service of God, and an examination of
three cardinal virtues, Humility, Cheerfulness, and Enthusiasm. What the
Chassidim held as to true service brings into relief Baalshem’s
characteristic manner of regarding the Law.

By the service of God was generally understood a life which fulfilled the
precepts of the written and oral law. Baalshem understood by it a certain
attitude towards life as a whole. For, as God is realised in life, each
activity of life when rightly conceived and executed is at once a
manifestation and a service of the Divine. All things have been created
for the glory and service of God. The smallest worm serves Him with all
its power. Thus, while eating, drinking, sleeping, and the other ordinary
functions of the body are regarded by the old Jewish moralists as mere
means to an end, to Baalshem they are already a service of God in
themselves. All pleasures are manifestations of God’s attribute of love;
and, so regarded, they are at once spiritualised and ennobled. Man should
seek to reach a higher level of purity and holiness before partaking of
food and drink, than even before the study of the Law. For when the Torah
had once been given by God the whole world became instinct with its grace.
He who speaks of worldly matters and religious matters as if they were
separate and distinct, is a heretic.

Upon the continual and uninterrupted study of the Law, Baalshem lays but
little stress. He accepted the ordinary belief that the Law (under which
term are included not only the Pentateuch, but the whole Old Testament and
the major portion of the old Rabbinic literature) was a revelation of God.
But, as the world itself is equally a divine revelation, the Torah becomes
little more than a part of a larger whole. To understand it aright one
needs to penetrate to the inward reality—to the infinite light which is
revealed in it. We should study the Law not as we study a science for the
sake of acquiring knowledge (he who studies it so has in truth been
concerning himself with its mere outward form), but we should learn from
it the true service of God. Thus the study of the law is no end in itself.
It is studied because, as the word of God, God is more easily discerned
and absorbed in this revelation of Him than in any other. The Torah is
eternal, but its explanation is to be made by the spiritual leaders of
Judaism. It is to be interpreted by them in accordance with the Attribute
of the age. For he regarded the world as governed in every age by a
different Attribute of God—one age by the Attribute of Love, another by
that of Power, a third again, by Beauty, and so on—and the explanation of
the Torah must be brought into agreement with it. The object of the whole
Torah is that man should become a Torah himself. Every man being a Torah
in himself, said a disciple of Baalshem, has got not only his Abraham and
Moses, but also his Balaam and Haman: he should try to expel the Balaam
and develop the Abraham within him. Every action of man should be a pure
manifestation of God.

The reason why we should do what the Law commands is not to gain grace
thereby in the eyes of God, but to learn how to love God and to be united
to Him. The important thing is not how many separate injunctions are
obeyed, but how and in what spirit we obey them. The object of fulfilling
these various ordinances is to put oneself, as it were, on the same plane
with God, and thus, in the ordinary phrase of the religious mystic, to
become one with Him, or to be absorbed in Him. People should get to know,
says Baalshem, what the unity of God really means. To attain a part of
this indivisible unity is to attain the whole. The Torah and all its
ordinances are from God. If I therefore fulfil but one commandment in and
through the love of God, it is as though I have fulfilled them all.

I have now briefly to refer to the three virtues to which the Chassidim
assigned the highest place of honour. Of these the first is called in
Hebrew “Shiphluth,”(15) and is best rendered by our word “Humility,” but
in Chassidic usage it includes the ideas of modesty, considerateness, and
sympathy. The prominence given to these qualities is in sharp contrast to
the faults of conceit, vanity, and self‐satisfaction, against which
Baalshem was never weary of protesting. He regarded these as the most
seductive of all forms of sin. But a few minutes before his death he was
heard to murmur, “O vanity, vanity! even in this hour of death thou darest
to approach me with thy temptations: ‘Bethink thee, Israel, what a grand
funeral procession will be thine because thou hast been so wise and good.’
O vanity, vanity! beshrew thee.” “It should be indifferent to man,” says
the master, “whether he be praised or blamed, loved or hated, reputed to
be the wisest of mankind or the greatest of fools. The test of the real
service of God is that it leaves behind it the feeling of humility. If a
man after prayer be conscious of the least pride or self‐satisfaction, if
he think, for instance, that he has earned a reward by the ardour of his
spiritual exercises, then let him know that he has prayed not to God but
to himself. And what is this but disguised idolatry? Before you can find
God you must lose yourself.” The Chassidim treated Shiphluth from two
sides: a negative side in thinking humbly of oneself, a positive in
thinking highly of one’s neighbour, in other words the love for our
fellow‐man.

He who loves the father will also love his children. The true lover of God
is also a lover of man. It is ignorance of one’s own errors that makes one
ready to see the errors of others. “There is no sphere in heaven where the
soul remains a shorter time than in the sphere of merit, there is none
where it abides longer than in the sphere of Love.”

The second Cardinal Virtue is “Cheerfulness,” in Hebrew “Simchah.”(16)
Baalshem insisted on cheerfulness of heart as a necessary attitude for the
due service of God. Once believe that you are really the servant and the
child of God and how can you fall again into a gloomy condition of mind?
Nor should the inevitable sins which we all must commit disturb our glad
serenity of soul. For is not repentance ready at hand by which we may
climb back to God? Every penitent thought is a voice of God. Man should
detect that voice in all the evidence of his senses, in every sight and
sound of external nature. It is through his want of faith in the
universality of God’s presence that he is deaf to these subtle influences
and can read only the lessons which are inscribed in books.

The reader will be prepared to learn that Baalshem, taking this cheerful
view of things, was opposed to every kind of asceticism. Judaism, or
rather Israelitism, it is true, was not originally much of an ascetic
religion. But there can be little doubt that in the course of history
there came in many ascetic doctrines and practices, quite enough at least
to encourage such tender souls the bent of whose minds lay in this
direction. To one of these, a former disciple, Baalshem wrote: “I hear
that you think yourself compelled from religious motives to enter upon a
course of fasts and penances. My soul is outraged at your determination.
By the counsel of God I order you to abandon such dangerous practices,
which are but the outcome of a disordered brain. Is it not written ‘Thou
shalt not hide thyself from thine own flesh?’ Fast then no more than is
prescribed. Follow my command and God shall be with you.” On another
occasion Baalshem was heard to observe that it is a machination of Satan
to drive us into a condition of gloom and despondency in which the
smallest error is regarded as a deadly sin. Satan’s object is to keep us
away from the true service of God, and God can only be truly served from a
happy and confident disposition. Anxious scrupulosity in details is
therefore to be avoided. It is the counsel of the Devil to persuade us
that we never have done and shall never do our duty fully, and that moral
progress is impossible. Such ideas beget melancholy and despair, which are
of evil.

The third virtue is called in the Hebrew Chassidic literature
“Hithlahabuth,”(17) and is derived from a verb meaning “to kindle” or “set
on fire.” The substantive “Hithlahabuth,” so far as I am aware, was first
coined by Baalshem’s followers. It is best rendered by our word
“Enthusiasm.” Every religious action, to be of any avail, must be done
with enthusiasm. A mere mechanical and lifeless performance of an
ordinance is valueless. A man is no step nearer the goal if he thinks,
forsooth, that he has done his duty when he has gone through the whole
round of laws in every section of the code. This essential enthusiasm is
only begotten of Love. The service of fear, if not wholly useless, is yet
necessarily accompanied by a certain repulsion and heaviness, which
effectually prevent the rush and ardour of enthusiasm. The inspiration of
true service is its own end. There is no thought of this world, and there
is none of the world to come. In the Talmud there is frequent reference to
one Rabbi Elisha ben Abuyah, an apostate from Judaism, who, when urged to
repent, replied that repentance was useless, and that for this mournful
belief he had direct divine authority. For he had been told by a voice
from heaven that even though he repented he would be excluded from sharing
the happiness of the world to come. Of him it was said by one of the
Chassidim, “This man indeed missed a golden opportunity. How purely could
he have served God, knowing that for his service there could never be a
reward!”

From the conception of Enthusiasm springs the quality of mobility,
suggesting spiritual progress, and commonly opposed by Baalshem and his
followers to the dull religious stagnation of self‐satisfied
contemporaries. Man should not imagine himself to have attained the level
of the righteous; let him rather regard himself as a penitent who should
make progress every day. Always to remain on the same religious plane,
merely repeating to‐day the religious routine of yesterday, is not true
service. There must be a daily advance in the knowledge and love of the
Divine Master. Mere freedom from active sin is not sufficient; such
negative virtue may be but another word for the chance absence of
temptation. What boots it never to have committed a sin if sin lies
concealed in the heart? It is only the uninterrupted communion with God
which will raise and ennoble your thoughts and designs, and cause the
roots of sin to die. The patriarch Abraham, without any command from God,
fulfilled the whole Torah, because he perceived that the Law was the life
of all created things. In the Messianic age the law will no longer seem to
man as something ordained for him from without; but the law will be within
the hearts of men; it will seem natural and self‐evident to them, because
they will realise that God and life are manifested through the law.

Baalshem, who dealt largely in parable, has left the following, which we
may fitly add to our somewhat inadequate presentation of his doctrine.

There was once a king who built himself a glorious palace. By means of
magical illusion it seemed as if the palace were full of devious corridors
and mazes, preventing the approach to the royal presence. But as there was
much gold and silver heaped up in the entrance halls, most people were
content to go no further, but take their fill of treasure. The king
himself they did not notice. At last the king’s intimate had compassion
upon them and exclaimed to them, “All these walls and mazes which you see
before you do not in truth exist at all. They are mere illusions. Push
forward bravely, and you shall find no obstacle.”

We must not interpret the parable to mean that Baalshem denied the reality
or even the importance of the actual phenomenal world. The very contrary
is the truth. The world is for him full of God, penetrated through and
through by the divine, and therefore as real as God himself. It was quite
in Baalshem’s manner when one of his disciples declared that only fools
could speak of the world as vanity or emptiness. “It is in truth a
glorious world. We must only learn how rightly to make use of it. Call
nothing common or profane: by God’s presence all things are holy.”

Above we have reviewed the essential doctrines of Baalshem and his
immediate followers; we have now to see how they fared at the hands of the
sect which he founded. This is a sad part of our task, for the subsequent
history of Chassidism is almost entirely a record of decay. As formulated
by its founder the new creed amounted to a genuine Reformation, pure and
lofty in ideal. After his death unhappily it was rapidly corrupted and
perverted. This was due almost exclusively to the dangerous and
exaggerated development of a single point in his teaching. That point, the
honour due to the divine in man, was relatively a minor article in the
original creed. But the later Chassidism has given it a distorted and
almost exclusive importance wholly out of proportion to the grander and
more essential features of Baalshem’s teaching, until the distinctive
feature of the Chassidism of to‐day is an almost idolatrous service of
their living leaders. What little there is to say of the history of the
sect after Baalshem’s death would be unintelligible without some
explanation of the origin and growth of this unfortunate perversion.

It has been explained that Baalshem laid but little stress upon the study
of the Law or the observance of its precepts in themselves, but regarded
them only as means to an end. The end is union with God. Man has to
discover the presence of God in the Divine word and will. Now this
mystical service of God, although perhaps sufficing to sensitive and
enthusiastic natures, is scarcely plain or definite enough for ordinary
men. Few can realise abstractions: and yet fewer can delight in them and
find in their contemplation sufficient nurture for their religious needs.
What then had Chassidism to offer to the ordinary majority who could not
recognise God in all the plenitude of His disguise? The want of something
tangible whereon to fix the minds of the people, which has confronted the
teachers of so many creeds, was also encountered by the Chassidim, and
they unfortunately found their way out of the difficulty by relying on and
developing their doctrine of man’s position in the Universe. Man’s ideal
is to be a law himself; himself a clear and full manifestation of God.
Now, not only is he God’s servant and child, but in highest development he
becomes himself a part of God, albeit in human shape, so that he may
become wholly one with his divine Father. But if man may reach this
highest level of holiness, he is virtually a kind of God‐man, whom his
fellow‐men of lower levels perceive by reason of his manhood, but his
essential office consists in raising them up to God by reason of his
Divinity.

The few chosen spirits who through the successful persistency with which
they have sought God in all things have become, though yet on earth,
absorbed in Him, are known in Chassidic literature by the name of the
“Zaddikim.” The Hebrew word Zaddik(18) means “just” or “righteous,” and
the term was probably chosen in conscious opposition to the title of
Rabbinic heroes, “disciples of the wise.” For the Zaddik is not so much
the product of learning as of intuition: his final consummation is reached
by a sudden and direct illumination from God. The Zaddik not only
resembles Moses, but, in virtue of his long communion with the Divine, he
is also the true child of God. He is, moreover, a vivifying power in
creation, for he is the connecting bond between God and his creatures. He
is the source of blessing and the fount of grace. Man must therefore learn
to love the Zaddik, so that through the Zaddik he may win God’s grace. He
who does not believe in the Zaddik is an apostate from God. Here then we
have the fatal exaggeration to which I have alluded, and here its logical
consequence. The step to man‐worship is short.

This peculiar doctrine of the Intermediary soon became the distinguishing
feature of Chassidism. By a Chassid was understood not a man who held such
and such opinions in theology and religion, but a believer in the Zaddik,
and one who sought to attain salvation through the worship of the Zaddik.
Every other doctrine of Chassidism was rapidly pushed into the background
and overlooked. Even the grand and fundamental doctrine of Omnipresence in
the Creation was veiled by the special presence in the Zaddik. Chassidism
became mere Zaddikism, and its subsequent history is identical with the
downward development of that cult.

Whether Baalshem named his successor is doubtful. But the lead after his
death was assumed by his disciple Beer of Mizriez. This man’s conversion
to Chassidism was an important event for the new community; his piety and
learning were beyond dispute, and, whereas during Baalshem’s life
Chassidism had found its chief adherents among the lower classes of
society, Beer managed to gather round him many of the most learned among
his contemporaries. It was to these new and ardent disciples of Beer that
the expansion of Chassidism was chiefly due. They came together from many
quarters, and after Beer’s death separated and preached the new doctrine
far and wide. Many even went forth during the lifetime of their master,
and at his command, to found fresh branches of the new sect. Like Beer
himself, they directed their efforts mainly to winning over the educated
sections of the Jews. The elder men paid little heed to their word, but
the youths, just fresh from their casuistic studies, which had sharpened
their wits and starved their souls, lent a ready ear and an eager heart to
the new doctrine. The uneducated were by no means excluded; to them
Chassidism held out a deeper consolation and a grander hope than the
current Rabbinism of the age; they therefore joined the young community in
large numbers without any special effort being necessary to gain them
over.

In their methods of Prayer the Chassidim most conspicuously differed from
the older communities. Laying as they did supreme stress on the importance
and efficacy of prayer, they soon found it necessary to secede from the
existing synagogues and erect separate buildings for themselves. The usual
salaried Reader “with the beautiful voice and empty head,” who naturally
regarded his function as a matter of business, was done away with and his
place taken either by the Zaddik himself or by some other distinguished
person in the community. The Chassidim also effected many changes in the
liturgy. Instead of the German they adopted the Spanish ritual. They
excised many prayers which, lacking the authority of antiquity, were
cumbrous in form or objectionable in matter. They inserted new prayers and
hymns of their own. They paid little regard to the prescribed hours at
which public worship should be held. Prayer began when they had got
themselves into the proper devotional frame of mind. Frequent ablutions,
perusal of mystical writings, introspective meditation were the means by
which they sought to gain the befitting mood. The prayers themselves were
accompanied by the usual phenomena of religious excitement. Some in the
zeal of their devotion began to dance; others were rapt in a motionless
ecstasy; some prayed aloud; others in solemn silence. They justified their
abrogation of fixed hours for prayer by saying that you cannot order a
child when to speak with its father: such restraint were fit only for
slaves.

As a rule the larger number of the younger Chassidim were able to devote
their whole time to religious exercises. It was the custom among the Jews
in Eastern Europe for the young men to live at the expense of their own or
their wives’ parents, in order that they might give themselves up entirely
to religious study. According to the old notions, this meant the study of
the Talmud and its Commentaries; the Chassidim who cared little for the
legal side of Jewish literature betook themselves to the literature of
edification and mysticism. No small part of their time was taken up with
endless conversations about the Zaddik, his piety, goodness, and self‐
sacrifice and the wonderful miracles which he had wrought. If a Zaddik was
living in his own town, the youthful Chassid spent as many hours as he
could in the Zaddik’s company, in order to observe and study this embodied
Torah as constantly as possible. Where no Zaddik was at hand, periodical
pilgrimages were made to the town in which he lived, and endless were the
tales which were afterwards repeated, to those who were obliged to stay at
home, of the Zaddik’s marvellous wisdom and extraordinary deeds. The last
hours of the Sabbath day were looked upon as a special season of grace,
and the Chassidim were therefore in the habit of collecting together in
the waning of the Sabbath and celebrating the so‐called “Supper of the
Holy Queen.” The meal was accompanied by the usual conversations as well
as by hymns and prayers.

The Chassidim were second to no other sect in their loyalty and affection
for each other. No sacrifice for a brother Chassid was too great. They
knew no difference of rich and poor, old and young, wise and ignorant; for
they all, with one accord, worshipped one common ideal, the Zaddik, who in
his exalted position was equally raised above them all. Before him all
minor differences of rank disappeared. When a Chassid travelled, he had no
scruple in asking for lodging or entertainment in the house of any Chassid
who could afford to give them. If he was in money difficulties the purse
of his host was at his disposal. If that was not sufficient, it was
supplemented by a grant from the fund of the community. These gifts were
not looked upon in the light of charity either by giver or receiver; they
were made to the Zaddik, to whom all Chassidim alike were debtors. It
sometimes even happened that a Zaddik said that the son of some rich
merchant was to marry the daughter of a poor schoolmaster, and both
parties were equally delighted to fulfil the wish of their beloved chief.

It may easily be imagined that the innovations of the Chassidim provoked
the wrath of the orthodox communities. But in their detestation of the
Rabbis the Chassidim returned in full measure all the hatred they
received. The Zaddik is the Moses of his age: the Rabbis its Korah and
Abiram. Where the Chassidic party in any community gained the upper hand,
the Rabbi was deposed and a Zaddik, if that was possible, elected in his
place. The issue of these bitter attacks upon the old nobility of the
Jewish race was a rigorous persecution. In many places the Chassidim were
excommunicated, in others their leaders were publicly scourged and put
into the stocks. Their books were burnt and their synagogues forcibly
closed. But persecution produced only the usual result of increasing the
popularity and the numbers of the sect. The devotion of the Chassidim to
each other and to their common cause was increased a hundred‐fold by
suffering. In one case a distinguished Zaddik was accused of treason,
before the Russian authorities, and was thrown into prison. In Russia,
however, the power of money is considerable, and on payment of a large
ransom not only was the beloved Zaddik released but as an obvious
consequence his reputation greatly profited: the day of his release was
celebrated as a yearly festival, while his sufferings were regarded by his
followers as a sin‐offering that atoned for the iniquities of his age.
From this time the government maintained a purely neutral attitude towards
the new sect, and ere long the persecution by the orthodox ceased.

The cessation of persecution may possibly be accounted for by the fact
that Chassidism as a secession soon ceased to be formidable. There were
early divisions within the sect. Even Beer’s disciples began to quarrel
over theological differences and to found separate communities. When once
the course of corruption and spiritual decay had begun, it was the
interest of the false Zaddikim to accentuate these differences. Each
Zaddik sought to have a whole little sect to himself, from which to draw
an undivided revenue. And each deluded little sect as it arose boasted of
the exclusive possession of the true Zaddik.

It must not be supposed that these strictures apply to the whole class of
Zaddikim. The greater number of Baalshem’s leading disciples as well as
Beer’s were beyond question men of pure, unalloyed piety, who would have
rejected with scorn any idea of making a trade of their sacred profession.
Their motives and their zeal were alike ideal. Many gave up highly paid
posts as Rabbis when they joined the new sect. Some emigrated to Palestine
to lead a holy life on holy ground, others sought to become religious
specialists, following out practically, although with some exaggeration, a
favourite doctrine of the Founder, that he who observes but one
commandment devotedly and lovingly, may reach the goal desired: the union
with God. Thus one Zaddik made it his business never to tell the smallest
falsehood, whatever the cost or the inconvenience of truth might be. It is
related that the Russian Government, suspecting the Jews of his town of
smuggling, consented to withdraw the charge if he declared his brethren
innocent. Having no alternative but either to bring misfortune on his
brethren or to tell an untruth, he prayed to God to save him from this
dilemma by sending death upon him. And lo! when the officials came to
fetch him before the law court they found him dead. Another, thinking that
the commandment in Exodus xxiii. 3, relating to the help that should be
given to a neighbour or enemy when “his ass is lying under its burden,”
was practically unobserved, devoted himself to its fulfilment. He was
continually to be seen in the streets, helping one man to load his waggon,
and another to drag his cart out of the mire. A third made the service of
the oppressed his religious specialty. It is said that one day his wife,
having had a quarrel with her maid, was setting out to the magistrate of
the town to obtain satisfaction. Noticing that her husband was about to
accompany her, she asked him whither he was bound. He replied, “to the
magistrate.” His wife declared that it was below his dignity to take any
part in a quarrel with a servant. She could deal with the matter herself.
The Zaddik replied, “That may be, but I intend to represent your maid, who
when accused by my wife will find no one willing to take her part.” And
then, bursting into a passion of tears, he quoted Job xxxi. 13: “If I did
despise the cause of my man‐servant or of my maid‐servant, when they
contended with me, what shall I do when God riseth up?”

Several Zaddikim were learned men and thinkers of no ordinary kind. The
works of Solomon Ladier or of Mendel Witipsker, read with attention and
without Western preconceptions, certainly give the impression of both
originality and depth of thought. But most characteristic of all is the
passionate yearning of authors such as these towards the Divine. The
reader is astonished and moved by the intense sincerity and ardour of
their longing after God. But, despite the adherence of these worthy men,
the fate of Chassidism, as a regenerative force, was sealed from the day
when Zaddikism replaced the original doctrines of the sect.

For, apart from the obvious theological considerations already suggested,
there are two points of inherent weakness in the cult of the Zaddik which
naturally doomed it to perversion and failure. The necessary
qualifications for “Zaddikship” are wholly undefined. We hear a great deal
about what a Zaddik actually is, but we hear very little about what he
should be. The Zaddik has many virtues, but we are nowhere told what are
his indispensable qualifications. Moreover, the Zaddik is a being who can
be comprehended by the understanding as little as an angel, or as God
Himself. He is realised by faith, not conceived by thought. Hence there is
no human test of a true Zaddik except the test of miracles; and every
student of religious history knows the deceitful character of that test.

The second source of danger arose from the Chassidim holding it to be
their sacred duty to provide for the Zaddik a life of comfort and ease.
The Zaddik must pursue his divine avocations undisturbed by grosser cares.
But what were the consequences? The Chassidim believed they could win the
grace and blessing of the Zaddik by the richness and variety of their
gifts. A Zaddik’s career became a very profitable concern. The result of
both defects was that not only was the opportunity given for every
scheming charlatan to become a Zaddik, but inducements were offered to
make the deception lucrative. Hence the anxiety of the false Zaddikim,
already noticed, to found separate communities.

Among the Chassidim of to‐day there is not one in ten thousand who has the
faintest conception of those sublime ideas which inspired Baalshem and his
immediate disciples. It is still the interest of the wretched ringleaders
of a widely spread delusion to crush and keep down every trace of
reflection and thought so that they may play at will with the conscience
and purses of their adherents. The new scientific movement, inaugurated by
such men as Krochmal, Zunz, and others who came under the influence of the
German critical spirit, found in them its hottest and most fanatical
opponents. That the cult of the Zaddikim has not led to still more
disastrous consequences is solely due to the fact that the Chassidim in
general have remained faithful to the Law. It is the Law, against the
excessive study of which the original Chassidim protested, that has put
limits to the license of its modern false prophets.

Amid much that is bad, the Chassidim have preserved through the whole
movement a warm heart, and an ardent, sincere faith. There is a certain
openness of character and a ready friendliness about even the modern
Chassidim which are very attractive. Religion is still to them a matter of
life and death. Their faith is still real enough to satisfy the demands of
a Luther, but it is diverted and wasted upon unworthy objects. If
Chassidism is to be reformed, its worship must no longer be of man; it
must be brought back again to the source of all Beauty, all Wisdom, and
all Goodness; it must be restored to God.





II. NACHMAN KROCHMAL AND THE “PERPLEXITIES OF THE TIME”


In her good‐natured panegyric of mediocrity which is known under the title
of _Scenes of Clerical Life_, George Eliot remarked: “Let us hope that
there is a saving ignorance.”

Strange as this demand may sound, the wish of the great novelist to see
her favoured mediocrities “saved,” has been shared by the great majority
of mankind. I know that I, at least, echo that desire with all my heart.
And I am afraid that I am prompted by some rather selfish reasons. It
would be somewhat hard, when one is born with small abilities, but a great
desire for being saved, to be deprived of the hope held out by the author
of _Adam Bede_.

But there are some, I am afraid, who are not satisfied with this dictum of
George Eliot. They show a strong tendency to make salvation a monopoly of
ignorance. This is a little too selfish. With all due respect to every
form of ignorance, sacred as well as profane, we ought, I think, to
believe that there is also such a thing as a saving knowledge. Nay, we
might go even farther. There may be certain epochs in history when there
is hardly any other path to salvation than knowledge, and the deep search
after truth.

We all know the words of the Psalmist, “The Lord preserveth the simple.”
But as there are periods in the life of the individual when naïveté has to
give way to sagacity and reflection, so there are times in history at
which Providence does not choose to leave men in simplicity. At such times
doubts arise, as though of themselves; questions suddenly become open when
they had been supposed solved for centuries; and the human mind is stirred
by a sceptical breeze of which no man can tell whence it came. One may
under those circumstances be indifferent, but one can be simple no more.

Even in such cases, however, man has no cause to despair. When our dearest
beliefs are shaken by all kinds of doubts, Providence sends us also great
thinkers, earnest lovers of truth, who devote their lives to enlightening
our puzzled minds. Not that these men try to answer all the questions by
which we feel perplexed. They endeavour to satisfy us, partly by showing
that many of our difficulties are not difficulties at all, but merely
arise from superficiality, and partly by proving that the great cause
about which we feel so much anxiety does not exactly depend on the
solution of the questions that are troubling us. They give to the things
which are dearer to us than our life a fresh aspect, which enables us to
remain attached to them with the same devotion and love as before. To
speak again in the words of the Psalmist: “Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit,
and they are created, and Thou renewest the face of the earth.”

This spirit that renews the face of things is what I understand by “saving
knowledge.” As men of that saving knowledge we may regard Rabban Johanan
ben Zaccai(19) and his disciples, who made it possible for Judaism to
survive the destruction of the Temple, which some believed to involve the
end of the religion. As such men we may look upon R. Saadiah Gaon and his
followers, who worked at a time when Judaism was menaced in its inner
life, namely in the tradition, by the attempts of the narrow‐minded
Caraites to convert it into a bookish religion.(20) Such men were
Maimonides and his successors, who came to the aid of religion when it had
got into dogmatic troubles by reason of its coming into contact with
various philosophical systems. And in order to approach the subject of the
present essay, I venture to say that a man of such saving knowledge was
also Nachman Krochmal, who lived and laboured in the first half of the
present century, when Judaism had been terribly shaken by the scepticism
of Voltaire, and the platitudes of the so‐called Mendelssohnian school.

Nachman Krochmal was born on the 17th of February in the year 1785. His
father, Solomon Krochmal, was a merchant of Brody, a commercial frontier
town in the north‐east of Galicia in Austria. In his early years Solomon
often used to visit Berlin for business purposes. He is said to have seen
Mendelssohn there on one occasion, and to have learned greatly to revere
the Jewish sage. And it is not unlikely that Nachman’s subsequent
admiration for Mendelssohn was partly due to his father’s influence.

Solomon was a man of considerable wealth, and he, therefore, endeavoured
to give his son the best possible education. But as a respectable member
of a Polish community a hundred years ago, Solomon had to follow the
fashion adopted by his neighbours, and the best possible education
consisted in affording the child an opportunity to study the Talmud and
other Rabbinical works. All other languages and their literatures were
sealed books to the child—a very absurd and regrettable fashion indeed.
But let us not be too hard on Polish Jews. I have been told that there are
countries on our globe where people have been driven by the force of
fashion into the opposite extreme; where, with few exceptions, they think
that the Talmud, as well as the whole Hebrew literature, must needs be
excluded from the programme of a gentleman’s education.

Happily, or the reverse, Krochmal’s childhood did not last long, for in
the year 1798 we find that Nachman, a boy of fourteen, was already married
to a Miss Haberman in Zolkiew. As a result of this foolish custom of
marrying at so very early an age, Nachman was hardly ever a boy; we have
at once to deal with him as a man.

It was then customary in Poland, and perhaps is so still, for the father
of the bride to provide for the support of the young couple for some years
after their marriage. In order to reduce the expense of this arrangement,
the bridegroom had to reside in the same house as his father‐in‐law. Thus
we see Krochmal removing from Brody to Zolkiew, the native town of his
wife. Here Krochmal lived in the house of her father for many years,
entirely devoted to his studies; and he certainly needed all his time for
them. For he now began to expand the sphere of his education, to embrace
subjects quite new to him. By his marriage Nachman seems to have gained a
certain amount of independence, and the first use he made of it was to
study the _Guide of the Perplexed_(21) of Maimonides, the _Commentaries_
of Ibn Ezra on the Bible,(22) and other more or less philosophical works
written in the Hebrew language. His next step was to learn German; but, as
his biographers inform us, he was not able to follow this course without
undergoing many struggles, and overcoming many obstacles.

It would lead us too far to give a full account of the difficulties which
the young scholar had to conquer while pursuing his new studies. They will
be sufficiently characterised by the following extract from a Hebrew
letter of his disciple, Solomon Leb Rapoport, who, writing in 1841
concerning his master and friend, remarks: “Consider this, ye inhabitants
of Germany”—and, I may add, ye inhabitants of England—“and you will be
astounded. It is easy for you to avoid being one‐sided, and to study
different sciences, for you possess many schools and teachers from every
branch of learning. It is not so in Poland and Russia even at present,
much less was it so forty years ago. There is no teacher, no guide, no
supporter, for the Jew who desires any sort of improvement. The Jew who
wishes to enter on a new path of learning has to prepare the road for
himself. And when he has entered on it, his friend will come to him and
ask, ‘Is it true that you have got scientific books in your house? Mind
you do not mention it to any one. There are enough bigots in the town to
persecute you and all your family if they get scent of it.’ ” It was under
these conditions that Krochmal pursued his studies, which were by no means
few or easy, for he was not content with a knowledge of only the lighter
portions of German literature. He soon began to read the works of Lessing,
Mendelssohn, and more especially of Kant, who always remained his
favourite philosopher. In his later years he also became acquainted with
the writings of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. But to the last he could not
console himself for having missed the advantages of a systematic
university education.

After having learned German, Krochmal proceeded to acquire a knowledge of
Latin and French, and to read the best books written in those languages.
To deepen his knowledge of Hebrew, he studied Arabic and Syraic, but we
are unable to say how far he succeeded in mastering these languages. With
these studies, which appear to have occupied our philosopher for an
interval of ten years after his marriage, the first period of his life
seems also to end. But the hard work of ten years did not pass over the
delicate youth without undermining his health for ever. At the age of
twenty‐four, Krochmal fell sick of an illness which compelled him to
interrupt his work. He was forced to go to Lemberg to consult the doctors
of that town, and he had to remain there for a long time. And now began
Krochmal’s career as a teacher. For during his stay at Lemberg there
gathered round him a band of young scholars whom Krochmal’s fame had
already reached. It is useless to enumerate the names of all these
students. Among them figured Isaac Erter, Samson Bloch, A. Bodek, and many
others. The most gifted of them was undoubtedly Rapoport, who afterwards
became even more famous than his master Krochmal. It is not easy to define
accurately the relation that subsisted between these two men. Graetz, in
his history, calls Rapoport a disciple of Krochmal. Rapoport himself, in
his memoir of Krochmal, describes the latter as a dear friend with whom he
was wont to discuss literary topics. Zunz does not mention Rapoport at all
in his account of our author. It seems to me that this relation may be
most aptly defined by the Talmudic term “Talmid‐Chaber,”(23) “disciple‐
colleague.”

Indeed, Krochmal’s whole method of teaching was rather that of a companion
than of a professor. He gave no set lectures on particular subjects, but
conveyed his instruction rather by means of suggestive conversations with
his younger friends. His usual habit was to walk with his pupils in the
neighbourhood of the town, and to try to influence their minds each in
accordance with its bent. If any of his disciples showed an inclination
for poetry, Krochmal sought to refine his taste by directing his attention
to the best works in Hebrew and German literature. To another, whose fancy
strayed into mysticism, he recommended the writings of Philo and Ibn Ezra,
at the same time suggesting how the works of the latter should be
interpreted. A third who, like Rapoport, was interested in historical
researches, Krochmal instructed in the methods of critical inquiry.

There must have been some fascinating charm in Nachman’s personality,
which made him irresistible to all who came into contact with him.
Rapoport has described his first interview with Krochmal. “It is more than
thirty years since I first made his acquaintance, and beheld the glory of
his presence. Though he was in weak health, still his soul was strong; and
as soon as I conversed with him there came over me a spirit of judgment
and knowledge. I felt almost transformed into another man.” Elsewhere the
same writer says: “Oh, how sweet to me were these walks with
Krochmal—sweeter than all the pleasures of this world. I could never have
enough of his wisdom; with his every word he conveyed a new lesson.”

After a lengthy stay at Lemberg, Krochmal partially, though not entirely,
recovered from his severe illness; he remained weak and pale for the rest
of his days. His antagonists, the Chassidim, believed him to be possessed
by a demon who could find no better dwelling‐place than in the person of
this arch‐heretic. Had it been in their power they would probably have
dragged him to some exorcist for the purpose of driving out his German,
French, Latin, and other symptoms of demoniacal heresy. Happily the
orthodox were powerless to do this, so Krochmal was left unmolested, and
was allowed to resume his walks and studies. It may be here remarked that
Krochmal in general avoided giving the Chassidim any cause for reasonable
complaint. Rapoport asserts that his master was “deeply religious and a
strict observer of the law. He was zealously anxious to perform every
ordinance, Biblical or Rabbinical.” The only liberty that Krochmal claimed
for himself and his disciples was the right to study what they thought
best and in the way they thought best. When this liberty was attacked, he
showed a firmness and resolution which would hardly have been expected
from this quiet and gentle man. To one of his pupils, who made concessions
to the Chassidim and their Zaddikim worship, Krochmal wrote: “Be firm in
this matter unless you wish to earn the contempt of every honest man. One
who is afraid of these people, and debases himself before them bears a
mean soul that was born to slavery. The man that wishes to rise above the
mob, with its confused notions and corrupt morality, must be courageous as
a lion in conquering the obstacles that beset his path. Consideration of
what people will say, what bigots will whisper, what crafty enemies will
scheme—questions such as these can have but one effect,—to darken the
intellect and confuse the faculty of judgment.”

So Krochmal continued his studies without interruption till 1814, when the
death of his wife’s mother brought his period of ease and comfort to an
end. His father‐in‐law seems to have died some time before, and Krochmal
was forced to seek his own living. He became a merchant, but it is to be
regretted that he did not prove as successful a man of business as he was
a man of letters. He found it a hard struggle to earn a living. But the
severest trial which he had to undergo was the death of his wife in 1826.
In a letter, dating from about this time, to a friend who had asked him
for assistance in his philosophical inquiries, Krochmal wrote—“How can I
help you now? I am already an old man; my head is gray, and my health is
broken. In the last three years I have met with many misfortunes. My
beloved wife died after a long illness. My daughter will soon leave me to
get married, my elder son will depart to seek his livelihood, and I shall
be left alone with only a child of ten years, the son of my old age. I
will lift up mine eyes unto the hills: From whence shall my help come?”

Nachman was evidently in very low spirits at this time, but he was in too
true a sense a philosopher to despair. He turned for comfort to his
studies, and at this dark epoch of his life he first became acquainted
with the Philosophy of Hegel, whose system he was wont to call the
“Philosophy of Philosophies.”

For the next ten years the works of Hegel and inquiries into Jewish
history appear to have absorbed all the leisure that his mercantile
occupation left him. We shall presently see what the result of these
studies was. No fresh subjects were undertaken by Krochmal in the last
years of his life; he had already acquired a fund of knowledge vast enough
to engage all his thoughts. There are, however, some remaining points in
his private circumstances which it may not be uninteresting to mention.

Krochmal, as has been already related, was not prosperous in his business.
Things went from bad to worse, and he was compelled in 1836 to seek a
situation. “There ought to be literary men poor,” some writer has
maintained, “to show whether they are genuine or not.” This test Krochmal
successfully passed through. Even as a young man Nachman’s strength of
character was admired by his contemporaries not less than his rare
learning. In his subsequent distress, he gave evidence of the truth of
this judgment. Despite his poverty, his friends could not prevail upon him
to accept the post of Rabbi in any Jewish community. “I am unwilling,” he
wrote to a friend, “to be the cause of dissensions in any Jewish
congregation. I should prefer to die of hunger rather than become a Rabbi
under present circumstances.” He expressed his views on this subject even
more decidedly on a later occasion when the Berlin congregation offered
him the post of Chief Rabbi in that town. In a letter, conveying his
refusal of this honourable office, he says: “I never thought of becoming
the Conscience‐counsellor (_Gewissensrath_) of men. My line of studies was
not directed to that end, nor would it accord with my disposition and
sentiments. The only post that I should care to accept would be that of
teacher in the Jewish Theological Seminary, which, as I was informed, you
were thinking of establishing in Berlin.” The plan to found such an
institution was not realised till forty years later, and in the interval
Nachman had to look for his living in other regions than Jewish theology.
Being in poor circumstances, and as his children and friends had left him,
he felt very lonely at Zolkiew. “Nobody cares for me here,” he writes,
“and I am equally indifferent.” His one desire was to obtain a situation
at Brody, possibly as book‐keeper with a salary of some thirty pounds a
year, on condition that he would be expected to devote only half the day
to his business duties, thus securing for himself leisure for
philosophical studies.

His terms were accepted, and he obtained the humble post he sought. He
remained in Brody for the next two years, 1836‐8, but at the end of 1838
he fell so dangerously ill that he could no longer resist the pressing
request of his daughter to live with her at Tarnopol. She had urged him to
take this step even previous to his removal to Brody, but he had declined
on the plea that he preferred to live by the labour of his hands. Now,
however, he yielded to her wish, and betook himself to Tarnopol, where for
two years longer he lived affectionately tended by his children and
respected by all who knew him. In May 1840, Krochmal’s illness began to
develop fatal symptoms, and he died in the arms of his daughter on the
31st of July (the first of Ab), at the age of fifty‐five. As Zunz happily
remarked: “This great man was born on the 7th of Adar, the birthday of
Moses (according to Jewish tradition), and died on the first of Ab, the
anniversary of the death of Aaron, the High Priest.”

I have tried in the foregoing remarks to give a short sketch of our
Rabbi’s life according to the accounts of Zunz, Rapoport, and Letteris.
There is one other point to which I must allude, as it involves a
consideration on which Letteris seems to lay much stress. This biographer
appears to think that Krochmal was in his youth greatly influenced by the
society in which he moved, consisting as it did of many learned and
enlightened men. There is, too, the oft‐quoted saying of Goethe:—


    Wer den Dichter will verstehen
    Muss in Dichters Lande gehen.


And I am probably expected to give some account of the state of society in
which Nachman grew up. I regret that I must ask to be excused from doing
so. I cannot consent to take the reader to Krochmal’s land. And if I might
venture to give him my humble advice, I should only say, “By all means
stop at home.” Goethe may be right about the poet, but his remark does not
apply to the case of the scholar. It may be true, as some think, that
every great man is the product of his time, but it certainly does not
follow that he is the product of his country. Nor could I name any other
country of which Krochmal was the product. Many a city no doubt boasted
itself a town full of “_Chakhamim_ and _Sopherim_”(24) as the Hebrew
phrase is, or, as we would express it, “a seat of learning,” full of
scholars of the ancient and modern schools. But neither these ancient
scholars nor the modern were of a kind to produce a real scholar and an
enlightened thinker like Krochmal. There were many men who knew by heart
the whole of the Halachic works of Maimonides, the Mishnah, and even the
whole of the Babylonian Talmud. This is very imposing. But if you look a
little closer, you will find that with a few exceptions—such as the school
of R. Elijah Wilna—these men, generally speaking, hardly deserve the name
of scholars at all. They were rather a sort of studying engines. The
steam‐engine passes over a continent, here through romantic scenery, there
in the midst of arid deserts, by stream and mountain and valley, always
with the same monotonous hum and shriek. So these scholars went through
the Talmud with never changing feelings. They did not rejoice at the
description which is given in tractate _Biccurim_(25) of the procession
formed when the first‐fruits were brought into the Holy Temple. They were
not much saddened when reading in tractate _Taanith_(26) of the unhappy
days so recurrent in Jewish history. They were not delighted by the wisdom
of _Seder Nezikin_,(27) which deals with civil law; nor were they vexed of
_Seder Taharoth_,(28) which treats of the laws of cleanliness and
uncleanliness, that by their exaggeration gave cause to much dissension in
the time of the Temple. The pre‐Talmudic literature, such as the _Siphra_,
_Siphré_, and _Mechilta_(29)—the only existing means of obtaining an
insight into the Talmud—were altogether neglected. All that these readers
cared for was to push on to the end, and the prayer recited at the close
was of more importance to them than the treatise they had perused.

Not less melancholy was the spectacle presented by the so‐called men of
“Enlightenment” (_Aufklärung_). They belonged chiefly to the rationalistic
school of Mendelssohn, but they equalled their master neither in knowledge
nor in moral character. It was an enlightenment without foundation in real
scholarship, and did not lead to an ideal life, though again I must add
that there were exceptions. These men were rather what Germans would term
_Schöngeister_, a set of dilettanti who cared to study as little as
possible, and to write as much as possible. They wrote bad grammars,
superficial commentaries on the Bible, and terribly dull poems. Of this
literature, with the exception of Erter’s _Watchman_,(30) there is
scarcely a work that one would care to read twice. Most of them despised
Rabbinism, but without understanding its noblest forms as they are to be
traced in the Talmud and later Hebrew literature. They did not dislike
Judaism, but the only Judaism they affected was one “which does not oppose
itself to anything in particular”; or, as Heine would have described it,
“Eine reinliche Religion.” In one respect these little men were great: in
mutual admiration, which reached such a pitch that such titles as “Great
Luminary,” “World‐famed Sage,” were considered altogether too
insignificant and commonplace.

I will now pass to the writings of Krochmal. It must be premised that
Krochmal was not a voluminous author. All his writings, including a few
letters which were published in various Hebrew periodicals, would scarcely
occupy four hundred pages. Krochmal used to call himself “der ewige
Student” (the perpetual pupil). He did not read books, nor study
philosophical systems, with the object of writing books of his own on
them. He read and studied in order that he might become a better and a
wiser man. Besides, he did not think himself competent to judge on grave
subjects, nor did he consider his judgment, even if he formed one, worthy
of publication. He counselled his friends to be equally slow in publishing
their views to the world. “Be not,” he wrote to a correspondent,—“be not
hasty in forming your opinions before you have studied the literature of
the subject with care and devotion. This is no easy matter, for no man can
obtain any real knowledge of the Torah and philosophy unless he is
prepared to give himself up in single‐hearted devotion to his studies.”
Severe though he was to his friends, he was still more severe to himself.
Though he had been collecting materials on subjects of Jewish history and
philosophy from his early youth, it was not until he had endured much
persuasion and pressure from his friends that he began to write down his
thoughts in a connected form. We thus possess only one work from the pen
of this author; but that work is the _Guide of the Perplexed of the
Time_,(31) a posthumous book published in 1851, eleven years after
Krochmal’s death. His work had been much interrupted by illness during the
last years of his life, and as a necessary consequence many parts of his
treatise finally remained in an unfinished state. Krochmal commissioned
his children to hand over his papers to Zunz, who was to arrange and edit
them as best he might. Zunz, who in his reverence for Krochmal went so far
as to call him the man of God, gladly accepted the task, in which he was
aided by Steinschneider. Unfortunately, the work was published in Lemberg,
a place famous for spoiling books. Even the skill of these two great
masters did not suffice to save Krochmal’s work from the fate to which all
the books printed in Lemberg seem inevitably doomed. Thus Krochmal’s work
is printed on bad paper, and with faint ink; it is full of misprints and
the text is sometimes confused with the notes. A second edition appeared
in Lemberg in 1863; but, it is scarcely necessary to add, the reprint is
even worse than the original issue.

The work occupies some 350 pages, and is divided into seventeen chapters.
The opening six treat of Religion in general. The author first indicates
the opposite dangers to which men are liable. On the one hand, men are
exposed to extravagant phantasy (_Schwärmerei_), superstition and
ceremonialism (_Werkheiligkeit_). Some, on the other hand, in their
endeavour to avoid this danger, fall into the opposite extreme,
materialism, unbelief, and moral degeneracy as a consequence of their
neglect of all law. He proceeds to say: Even in the ritual part of
religion, such as the regulations of the Sabbath, the dietary laws and so
forth, we find abstract definitions necessary, and differences of opinions
prevalent. In the dogmatic aspects of religion, dealing as they do with
the grave subjects of metaphysics, the mystery of life and death, the
destiny of man, his relation to God, reward and punishment, the inner
meaning of the laws,—in these spiritual matters, the difficulty of
accurate definition must be far greater and the opportunities for
difference of opinion more frequent and important. What guide are we to
follow, seeing that every error involves the most dangerous consequences?
Shall we abandon altogether the effort of thinking on these grave
subjects? Such a course is impossible. Do not believe, says Krochmal, that
there ever was a time when the religious man was entirely satisfied by
deeds of righteousness, as some people maintain. On the contrary, every
man, whether an independent thinker or a simple believer, always feels the
weight of these questions upon him. Every man desires to have some ideal
basis for his actions which must constitute his real life in its noblest
moments. Krochmal here quotes a famous passage from the Midrash.(32) The
Torah, according to one of our ancient sages, may be compared to two
paths, the one burning with fire, the other covered with snow. If a man
enters on the former path he will die by the heat; if he walks by the
latter path he will be frozen by the snow. What, then, must he do? He must
walk in the middle, or, as we should say, he must choose the golden mean.
But, as Krochmal suggests, the middle way in historical and philosophical
doubts does not consist, as some idle heads suppose, in a kind of
compromise between two opposing views. If one of two contending parties
declares that twice two make six, while his opponent asserts that twice
two make eight, a sort of compromise might be arrived at by conceding that
twice two make seven. But such a compromise would be as false as either
extreme; and the seeker after the truth must revert to that mean which is
the heart of all things, independently of all factions, placing himself
above them.

Having dealt with the arguments relating to the existence of God as
elaborated in the philosophical systems of his time, Krochmal leads up to
his treatment of the History of Israel by a chapter on the ideal gifts
bestowed upon the various ancient nations, which, possessed by them
through many centuries, were lost when their nationality ceased. We next
come, in Chapter VII., to the ideal gifts of Israel. These are the
religious gift and the faculty and desire for seeking the ideal of all
ideals, namely, God. But Israel, whose mission it was to propagate this
ideal, was, even as other nations, subject to natural laws; and its
history presents progress and reaction, rise and decline. Krochmal devotes
his next three chapters to showing how, in the history of Israel, as in
other histories, may be detected a triple process. These three stages are
the budding, the period of maturity, and the decay. As the history of
Israel is more a history of religion than of politics and battles, its
rise and decline correspond more or less with Israel’s attachment to God,
and its falling away from Him. The decay would be associated with the
adoption of either of the extremes, the dangerous effects of which have
been already mentioned. But “through progress and backsliding, amid
infectious contact with idolatry, amid survival of old growths of
superstition, of the crude practices of the past; amid the solicitation of
new aspects of life; in material prosperity and in material ruin,” Israel
was never wholly detached from God. In the worst times it had its judges
or its prophets, its heroes or its sages, its Rabbis or its philosophers,
who strove to bring Israel back to its mission, and who succeeded in their
efforts to do so. Even in its decay traces of the Divine spirit made
themselves felt, and revived the nation, which entered again on a triple
course and repeated its three phases. The first of these three‐fold epochs
began, according to Krochmal’s eighth chapter, with the times of the
Patriarchs, and ended with the death of Gedaliah after the destruction of
the first Temple. Next, in the following two chapters, Krochmal finds the
second triple movement in the interval between the prophets of the exile
in Babylon and the death of Bar‐Cochba about 135 A.C. The author also
hints at the existence of a third such epoch beginning with R. Judah the
Patriarch, the compiler of the Mishnah (220 A.C.),(33) and ending with the
expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492). This idea is not further
developed by Krochmal; but it would be interesting to ask, by the way, in
which phase of the three‐fold process—rise, maturity, or decay—are we at
the present time?

The next five chapters may be regarded as an excursus on the preceding
two. Krochmal discusses the Biblical books which belong to the period of
the Exile and of the Second Temple, such as the Second Isaiah, certain
Exilic and Maccabean psalms, Ecclesiastes, certain Apocryphal books, and
the work of the Men of the Great Synagogue. They contain, again,
researches on the various sects, such as the Assideans, Sadducees,
Pharisees, Essenes, the Gnostics, the Cabbalists and their relation to the
latter, and the Minim,(34) who are mentioned in the Talmud. In another
part of this excursus Krochmal describes the systems of the Alexandrian
Jewish philosophers, such as Philo and Aristobulus, and discusses their
relation to certain theosophic ideas in various Midrash‐collections. The
author also attempts to prove the necessity of Tradition; he shows its
first traces in the Bible, and explains the term Sopherim (scribes); and
he points out the meaning of the phrase “A law unto Moses from Mount
Sinai,”(35) and similar expressions. He gives a summary of the development
of the Halachah in its different stages, the criteria by which the older
Halachahs may be discriminated; he seeks to arrive at the origin of the
Mishnah, and deals with various cognate topics. In another discourse
Krochmal endeavours to explain the term Agadah,(36) its origin and
development; the different kinds of Agadah and their relative value.
Chapter XVI. contains the Prolegomena to a philosophy of the Jewish
religion in accordance with the principles laid down by Hegel. In the
seventeenth and last chapter the author gives a general introduction to
the Philosophy of Ibn Ezra, and quotes illustrative extracts.

The space of an essay does not permit me to give further details of
Krochmal’s book. I am conscious that the preceding outline is deficient in
quality as well as in quantity. Yet, even from this meagre abstract, the
reader will gather that Krochmal reviews many of the great problems which
concern religion in general and Judaism in particular. Zunz somewhere
remarks that Krochmal was inspired in his work by the study of Hegel, just
as Maimonides had been by the study of Aristotle. I give this statement
solely on the authority of Zunz, as I myself have never made a study of
the works of the German philosopher, and am therefore unable to express an
opinion on the question.

Now there is no doubt that Krochmal’s book is not without defects. The
materials are not always well arranged, there is at times a want of
proportion in the length at which the various points are treated, and the
author occasionally seems to wander from the subject in hand. But we shall
be better able to account for these and similar technical faults, as well
as to appreciate the real value of the author’s work, if we consider the
following fact. Nachman Krochmal’s object was to elaborate a philosophy of
Jewish history, to trace the leading ideas that ran through it, and the
ultimate causes that led to its various phases. But, unfortunately, at the
time when Krochmal began to write, there did not exist a Jewish history at
all. The labours of Zunz were conducted in an altogether different field.
Not to mention the names of the younger scholars then unborn, Graetz, the
author of the _History of the Jews_, and Weiss, who wrote a history of the
Tradition, were still studying at college. Frankel’s masterly essays on
the Essenes and the Septuagint, his well‐known work, _Introduction to the
__ Mishnah_, and the results of Geiger’s most interesting and suggestive
researches on the older and later Halachah, and on the Pharisees and
Sadducees, had yet to be written. Rapoport’s great treatise, _Erech
Millin_,(37) had not been published at that time, and Steinschneider was
not yet working at his historical sketch of Jewish literature. It was not
till six years after Krochmal’s death (viz. in 1846) that Landauer’s
memorable studies on the Jewish mystics were given to the world. Even the
bad books of Julius Fürst, such as his _History of the Canon_, and his
still worse _History of Jewish Literature in Babylon_, were then
unwritten. Neither the most charlatanic _History of the Opinions and
Teachings of All the Jewish Sects_, by Peter Beer, the universal provider,
nor Jost’s most honest but narrow‐minded and superficial _History of the
Jews_, was of much use to Krochmal. Jost’s more scholarly works were not
published till long afterwards. Krochmal was thus without the guidance of
those authorities to which we are now accustomed to turn for information.
Excepting the aid that he derived from the writings of Azariah de
Rossi,(38) Krochmal was therefore compelled to prosecute all the necessary
research for himself; he had to establish the facts of Jewish history as
well as to philosophise upon them. Hence, in the very midst of his
philosophical analysis, the author was bound to introduce digressions on
historical subjects, in order to justify as well as to form the basis of
that analysis. He had to survey the ground and to collect the materials,
besides constructing the plan of the edifice and working at its erection.
Nevertheless, it is precisely for these historical excursuses that
Krochmal has deserved the gratitude of posterity. He it was who taught
Jewish scholars how to submit the ancient Rabbinic records to the test of
criticism and the way in which they might be utilised for the purpose of
historical studies; he it was who enabled them to trace the genesis of the
tradition, and to watch the inner germination of that vast organism. He
even indicated to them how they might continue to connect their own lives
with it, how they might derive nourishment from it, and in their turn
further its growth. I may assert with the utmost confidence that there is
scarcely a single page in Krochmal’s book that did not afterwards give
birth to some essay or monograph or even elaborate treatise, though their
authors were not always very careful about mentioning the source of their
inspiration. Thus Krochmal justly deserves the honourable title assigned
to him by one of our greatest historians, who terms him the Father of
Jewish Science.

So far, I have been speaking of the importance of Krochmal’s treatise and
of its significance in the region of Jewish Science. It is necessary, I
think, to add a few words with regard to the general tendency of his whole
work. I have already alluded to the characteristic modesty of Krochmal; I
have pointed out how little he cared for publicity, how dearly he loved
retirement. The question accordingly presents itself—What can have been
the real and sufficient causes that prevailed upon him to yield to the
solicitations of his friends and to write upon what the Talmud would term
“matters standing on the heights of the world”?

The answer to this question may, I think, be found in the title of
Krochmal’s book, the _Guide of the Perplexed of the Time_. It is indeed a
rather unusual coincidence for the title of a Hebrew book to have any
connection with its subject matter. The same merit is possessed by the
_Guide of the Perplexed_ of Maimonides, the title of which undoubtedly
suggested that of Krochmal’s treatise. There is, however, one little
addition in Krochmal’s title that contains a most important lesson for us.
I mean the words “of the Time.” By these words Krochmal reminds us that,
great as are the merits of the immortal work of Maimonides—and it would be
difficult to exaggerate its value and importance—still it will no longer
suffice for us. For, as Krochmal himself remarks, every time has its own
perplexities, and therefore needs its own guide. In order to show that
these words are no idle phrase, I shall endeavour to illustrate them by
one example at least. In the _Guide of the Perplexed_ of Maimonides, Part
II., Chapter XXVI., occurs a passage which runs thus: “In the famous
chapters known as the ‘Chapters of R. Eliezer the Great,’(39) I find R.
Eliezer the Great saying something more extraordinary than I have ever
seen in the utterances of any believer in the Law of Moses. I refer to the
following passage: ‘Whence were the heavens created? He (God) took part of
the light of His garment, He stretched it like a cloth, and thus the
heavens were extending continually, as it is said (Ps. civ. 2): He
covereth Himself with light as with a garment, He stretcheth the heavens
like a curtain. Whence was the earth created? He took of the snow under
the throne of glory, and threw it; according to the words (in Job xxxvii.
6), He said to the snow be thou earth.’ These are the words given there
(in the ‘Chapters of R. Eliezer the Great’), and I, in my surprise, ask,
What was the belief of this sage? Did he think it impossible that
something be produced from nothing?... If the terms ‘the light of His
garment’ and the ‘snow of glory’ mean something eternal (as matter) they
_must_ be rejected.... In short, it is a passage that greatly confuses the
notions of all intelligent and religious persons. I am unable to explain
it sufficiently.”

So far Maimonides; and we are quite able to conceive his perplexity in
dealing with this passage. On one side, Maimonides himself believed that
Judaism is a dogmatic religion, and that one of its dogmas is the
principle of _Creatio ex nihilo_. On the other side, he found R.
Eliezer—one of the greatest authorities of the early part of the second
century—apparently denying this dogma. The perplexity was indeed a serious
one for Maimonides, but we find no difficulty whatever in extricating
ourselves from it. In the first place, there are many who cling to the
theory which holds that there are no dogmas in Judaism at all, and to them
Maimonides’ difficulty would have no relevance. Secondly, those who
believe that there are dogmas in Judaism may regard such expressions as
those quoted above from the “Chapters of R. Eliezer” in the light of mere
poetical metaphors, or may call them fairy tales or legends, or include
them in some other section of literature, known under the name of
folklore, which is an excuse for every absurdity, the fortunate authors of
which are responsible neither to philosophy nor to religion, and sometimes
not even to common sense. But there is a third consideration that affords
the best solution of the difficulty. The “Chapters of R. Eliezer,” despite
their pompous title, are not the work of R. Eliezer at all. Criticism has
taught us to attach no importance to the heading of a chapter or the
title‐page of a book. We are now in a position to judge from the tone,
style, and contents of the work, that the “Chapters of R. Eliezer” is a
later compilation of the eighth century, and that its author could not
have been R. Eliezer, the teacher of R. Akiba, in the second century. In
this way, these particular difficulties of Maimonides solve themselves for
us in a sufficiently easy way. But it is just these solutions that open up
new difficulties and perplexities which did not exist for the generation
of the great Spanish philosopher. Suppose that we accept the view that
Judaism is not a dogmatic religion. But how are we to conceive a religion
without dogmas, or, if you prefer the expression, without principles or
bases of belief? Or is Judaism, as some platitudinarians think, a mere
national institute with some useful dietary and sanitary laws, but with
nothing that makes for the sanctification of man, with no guidance to
offer us in the great problems of our life, and in the greatest anxieties
of the human soul? On the other hand, granted that we may consider certain
things as mere legend, how are we to discriminate between these and the
things that must be taken seriously? Does it depend on the nature of the
subject, or on the position of the book in the canon of Hebrew literature?
In the thirteenth century symbolical meanings were given to certain
difficult passages in the Talmud; but the process was carried further, and
the Biblical narratives were subjected by philosophers to a like
treatment. R. Solomon ben Adereth and his colleagues (in the thirteenth
century) settled the question by indiscriminately excommunicating all
young men who should study philosophy; but this method is scarcely one to
be commended for present use.

The third, or the philological solution of difficulties, leads to fresh
troubles. A hundred years ago men were in that happy state of mind in
which they knew everything. They knew the exact author and date of every
Psalm; they knew the author of each and every ancient Midrash; they knew
the originator of every law and ordinance; they even knew the writer of
the Zohar, and of other mystical books. There were certainly a few who did
not know all these things, among them Ibn Ezra, Azariah de Rossi, and the
two Delmedigos.(40) But they were merely a miserable historical blunder,
men who had no right to be born when they were. But the philological
method has swept away all this knowingness as by a deluge from heaven, and
men find that they know nothing. True, there linger on a few who still
know all these things, but it is they who are now the anachronism. These,
and such as these, are the perplexities of our time, to the resolution of
which the labours of Krochmal and of a noble band of scholars have been
directed in this century.

Have these perplexities, we must ask, and these puzzles been solved by
Krochmal and his coadjutors? We may with all certainty answer: They have
only pointed out the way, it is for ourselves to proceed by it. It would
be unreasonable to expect that difficulties which have been accumulating
during the course of thousands of years should be solved by the men of one
or two generations. Again, we live in a century in which excavations and
discoveries in other fields have added at once to our knowledge and to our
uncertainty. Each country, we might almost say, over and above the
perplexities that trouble mankind in general, has its own special
difficulties which are entirely unknown to those who dwell outside its
frontiers. I am not disposed to discuss these difficulties in this place.
Nor have I the ability to do so. But of two things I am perfectly certain:
the first is, that for a solution of these difficulties which, in the
language of Maimonides, “confuse the notions of all intelligent and
religious persons,” the only hope is in true knowledge and not in
ignorance; and secondly, this knowledge can only be obtained by a
combination of the utmost reverence for religion and the deepest devotion
to truth. The poor old Rabbis who have been so foully decried by their
calumniators as hedonists, and so foolishly praised by sorry apologists as
materialistic optimists, strongly insisted that when a man woos the truth,
his suit can only prosper if he is influenced by the purest and most
single‐hearted affection. “A man,” says the Siphré, “must not say: ‘I will
study the Torah in order that I may attain the title of Rabbi or savant,
or that I may become rich by it, or that I may be rewarded for it in the
world to come.’ He must study for love’s sake.” Such a knowledge, which is
free from all taint of worldliness and of other‐worldliness, a knowledge
sought simply and solely for pure love of God, who is Truth,—such a
knowledge is in the highest sense a saving knowledge, and Nachman Krochmal
was in possession of it.





III. RABBI ELIJAH WILNA, GAON


The three great stars of German literature are usually characterised by
German scholars in the following way: Goethe they say represents the
beautiful, Schiller the ideal, while Lessing represents truth. I think
that we may apply the same characteristics to the three great luminaries,
with which the Jewish middle ages ceased—for as Zunz somewhere remarked,
the Jewish middle ages lasted till the beginning of the eighteenth
century—and the modern age of Judaism opened. I am thinking of Mendelssohn
in Germany, Israel Baalshem, the founder of the sect of the Chassidim in
Podolia, and Elijah Wilna, or as he is more frequently called, the
Gaon,(41) the Great One, in Lithuania.

As to Mendelssohn, enough, and perhaps more than enough, has already been
written and spoken about his merits in awakening the sense for the
beautiful and the harmonious which was almost entirely dormant among the
Jews of his age. In regard to the second, namely, Israel Baalshem, I have
only to refer the reader to the first essay in this volume. The subject of
the present essay will be R. Elijah Wilna, who, among the Jews, as Lessing
among the Germans, represented truth, both by his life and by his literary
activity.

I say that the Gaon represented truth, but these words must be taken _cum
grano salis_. For I do not mean at all to say that he was in possession of
the whole truth, still less in _exclusive_ possession of it. It is true as
we shall learn in the course of this essay, that the Gaon was a genius of
the first order. But there are matters of truth, the obtaining of which
cannot be accomplished by genius alone. R. Elijah Wilna did not know any
other language than Hebrew. Truths, therefore, which are only to be
reached through the medium of other languages, remained a secret to him.
Again, records of ancient times which are buried in the shelves of remote
libraries or under the ruins of past civilisations are not always a matter
of intuition. Even the most gifted of men have to wait patiently till
these are brought to light by the aid of spade and shovel, or the pen of
some obscure copyist. But R. Elijah lived at a time when excavation had as
yet done very little for Semitic studies, and when a Jew scarcely got
admittance into the great libraries of Europe. Thus much truth which we
get now in a very easy way was beyond this seer’s eye.

But even if all the libraries on earth had been at his disposal, even if
he had read all the cuneiform writings which ornament the British Museum,
and had deciphered all the Hieroglyphics which the Louvre possesses, even
in that case we should not be justified in terming him a representative of
the truth, without qualifying our words.

“Truth,” said the old Rabbis, “is the Seal of the Holy One, praised be
He.” But Heaven has no Lord Chancellor. Neither men nor angels are trusted
with the great Seal. They are only allowed to catch a glimpse of it, or
rather to long after this glimpse. However, even the longing and effort
for this glimpse will bring man into communion with God, and make his life
divine. And the life of the Gaon was, as we shall see, one long effort and
unceasing longing after the truth.

Again, if I say that the Gaon represented truth, you must not think that
he lacked the two other qualities. A life entirely devoted to such a great
cause as that of seeking the truth is, _ipso facto_, ideal and harmonious.
It is only in his influence on Judaism—more particularly on the Jews in
the North of Europe—that this feature in his life becomes more prominent
than his other admirable qualities.

In what this truth consisted, how the Gaon arrived at it, and by what
means he conveyed it to others, we shall see in the course of this essay.

R. Elijah was born at Wilna in the year 1720. His father, Solomon Wilna,
is called by his biographers the great Rabbi Solomon, and is said to have
been the descendant of R. Moses Rivkas, the author of a learned work,
containing notes to the Code of the Law by R. Joseph Caro.(42)

Having quoted the biographers, I must point out that there are only two
biographies of the Gaon: the one by Finn, in his book _Faithful City_,(43)
on the celebrities of Wilna, the other by Nachman of Horodna, in his book
_Ascension of Elijah_.(44) The former is a very honest account of the
Gaon’s life, but a little too short. The latter is too long, or rather too
much intermixed with that sort of absurd legend, the authors of which are
incapable of marking the line which separates the monster from the hero.

Even in the region of imagination we must not for a moment forget the good
advice given to us by one of our greatest scholars who had to deal with a
kindred subject: “He,” says this scholar, “who banishes the thought of
higher and lower from his study, degrades it into a mere means of
gratifying his curiosity, and disqualifies it for the lofty task which it
is called upon to perform for modern society.” We shall thus cling to the
higher and stop at the hero.

Our hero was the first‐born of five brothers. They were all famous men in
their little world. According to the tradition in Wilna, Elijah was a
lovely child, with beautiful eyes, and goodly to look at, or as it is
expressed in another place, “as beautiful as an angel!” The tradition, or
rather the legend, relates that as a child of six years he was already the
pupil of R. Moses Margalith, the famous author of a commentary on the
Talmud of Jerusalem. At the age of seven years he is said to have already
perplexed the Chief Rabbi of his native town by his controversial skill in
Talmudical subjects. At the early age of nine he was acquainted with the
contents of the Bible, the Mishnah, the Talmud and its ancient
commentaries; and even the Cabbalistic works of R. Isaac Loria were no
secret to the youthful scholar.(45) At the age of twelve years he is said
to have acquired the seven liberal arts, and to have puzzled the scholars
of Wilna by his astronomical knowledge. At thirteen, when according to
Jewish law he attained his majority, he was already the accomplished or
“the great one” (Gaon); so far tradition. I am afraid that tradition is
here, against all experience, too exact in its dates. But we may learn
from it that the child Elijah showed many signs of the future Gaon, and
was therefore considered as the prodigy of his age. Again it is likewise
pretty certain that no man could boast of having been the master of
Elijah. He was not the product of any school, nor was he biassed by the
many prejudices of his time. He was allowed to walk his own way in his
struggle after truth.

It is rather an unfortunate thing that history is so much made up of
parallels and contrasts that the historian or even the biographer cannot
possibly point out the greatness of some men without touching, however
slightly, on the smallness of others. It is only natural that every strong
shining object should push the minor lights of its surroundings into the
background and darken them. Thus, when we are speaking of the superiority
of the Gaon, we cannot escape hinting at least at the shortcomings of his
contemporaries, as well as of his predecessors.

To indicate briefly in what this superiority consisted, I will premise
here a few words from a _Responsum_ by one of his great predecessors, the
Gaon Rabbi Hai.(46) Consulted by a student as to the meaning of certain
mystical passages in the tractate _Chagigah_,(47) Rabbi Hai, in warning
his correspondent not to expect from him a long philosophical
dissertation, writes as follows: “Know that it never was our business to
palliate matters and explain them in a way of which the author never could
have thought. This is fashionable with other people, but our method is to
explain the words of this or that authority in accordance with his own
meaning. We do not pledge ourselves that this meaning is ‘right rule’ in
itself, for there _do_ exist statements made by the old authorities that
cannot be accepted as norm.” Thus far the words of the Gaon of the tenth
century, which speak volumes. The Gaon of the eighteenth century followed
the same course. All his efforts were directed to this point; namely, to
find out the true meaning of the Mishnah, the true meaning of the
Gemara,(48) the true meaning of the Gaonim, the true meaning of the great
codifiers, and the true meaning of the commentators on the ancient
Rabbinical literature. Whether this meaning would be acceptable to us
mattered very little to him. His only object was to understand the words
of his predecessors, and this he obtained, as we shall soon see, by the
best critical means. This was the method of the Gaon; that of other
scholars (at least of the great majority) was dictated by entirely
different considerations. They would not suffer the idea that the great
man could be wrong at times. To them, all that he said was “right rule.”
Now suppose a great author like Maimonides had overlooked an important
passage in the Talmud or any other statement by a great authority, the
alternative remaining to them was either to explain away the passage of
the Talmud or to give the words of Maimonides a strange meaning. This led
originally to the famous method of the _Pilpul_ (casuistry), a kind of
spiritual gymnastic, which R. Liva of Prague in the sixteenth century, and
many others condemned as most pernicious to Judaism and leading to the
decay of the study of the Torah.

Now it is beyond doubt that the method of the two Gaonim is the only right
one. But, in justice to the casuistic school, which includes many a great
name, it is only right to remember that this impartiality towards
acknowledged authorities as maintained by our hero is not at all such an
easy matter as we imagine. We quote often with great satisfaction the
famous saying, _Amicus Plato, amicus Socrates, sed magis amica veritas_,
“Plato is our friend, so is Socrates, but Truth is, or rather ought to be,
our greatest friend.” This sounds very nicely, but let us only realise
what difficulties it involves. To be a friend of Socrates or Plato means
to know them, or in other words to have a thorough knowledge of the
writings of the one and the recorded utterances of the other. But such a
knowledge can with most men only be obtained by devoting one’s _whole_
life to the study of their works, so that there is not left much time for
new friendships. And the few who are able to save a few years after long
wanderings with these Greek philosophers, seldom see the necessity of new
friendships. For what else did those long courtships of Plato or Aristotle
mean except that those who conducted them thought that thereby they would
wed Truth?

This impartiality is the more difficult when these friends are invested
with a kind of religious authority where humility and submission are most
important factors. The history of Lanfranc, the predecessor of Anselm of
Canterbury, gives a striking example of what this submission meant in the
Middle Ages. One day, we are told, when he was still an ordinary monk, he
was reading at the table and pronounced a word as it ought to be
pronounced, but not as seemed right to the person presiding, who bade him
say it differently; “as if he had said _docēre_, with the middle syllable
long, as is right, and the other had corrected it into _docĕre_, with the
middle short, which is wrong; for that Prior was not a scholar. But the
wise man, knowing that he owed obedience rather to Christ than to Donatus,
the grammarian, gave up his pronunciation, and said what he was wrongly
told to say; for to make a short syllable long, or a long one short, he
knew to be no deadly sin, but not to obey one set over him in God’s behalf
was no light transgression.”(49)

But this admiration—and here we turn again to the Gaon—must not prevent us
from believing that Providence is not confined to such ungrammatical
Priors, and that the men who are really working on behalf of God are those
who teach us to pronounce rightly, and to think rightly, and to take
matters as they are, not as we desire them to be on account of our
friends.

As for the critical means to which I have alluded, the Gaon himself said
somewhere that simplicity is the best criterion of truth, and this is the
most characteristic feature of all his literary career. The Gaon studied
Hebrew grammar in order to obtain a clear notion of the language in which
the Scriptures are written. He tried to attain to the knowledge of the
Bible by reading the Bible itself; and was not satisfied to become
acquainted with its contents from the numerous quotations which are made
from it in Rabbinical literature. Again, he studied mathematics,
astronomy, and philosophy, as far as they could be found in Hebrew books.
Certainly the Gaon did not study these subjects for their own sake, and
they were considered by him only as a means to the end, or as the phrase
goes, as the “hand‐maidens” of Theology, the queen of all sciences. But it
may be looked upon as a mark of great progress in an age when Queen
Theology had become rather sulky, continually finding fault with her hand‐
maidens, and stigmatising every attention paid to them as conducive to
disloyalty. To these accusations the Gaon answered that Queen Theology
does not study her own interests. Knowledge of all arts and sciences, the
Gaon maintained, is necessary for the real understanding of the Torah
which embraces the whole of them. From his own writings it is evident that
he himself was familiar with Euclid, and his _Ayil Meshulash_ contains
several original developments of Euclid. It was at his suggestion that a
certain Baruch of Sclow translated Euclid into the Hebrew language.

Another way which led the Gaon to the discovery of many truths was his
study of the pre‐Talmudic literature, and of the Jerusalem Talmud. By some
accident or other it came to pass that only the Babylonian Talmud was
recognised as a guide _in the practices of religious life_. As the great
teachers and their pupils cared more for satisfying the religious wants of
their flocks than for theoretic researches, the consequence was that a
most important part of the ancient Rabbinic literature was almost entirely
neglected by them for many centuries. And it was certainly no
exaggeration, when R. Elijah said that even the Gaonim and Maimonides,
occupied as they were with the practical part of the law, did not pay
sufficient attention to the Talmud of Jerusalem and the Tosephta.(50) The
Gaon was no official head of any Jewish community, and was but little
troubled by decisions of questions which concern daily life. He was thus
in a position to leave for a little while the Babylonian Talmud and to
become acquainted with the guides of the guide. I refer to Siphra, Siphré,
Mechilta, Tosephta, the Seder Olam,(51) the Minor Tractates,(52) and above
all the Talmud of Jerusalem, which, regarded from an historical and
critical point of view, is even of more importance than its Babylonian
twin‐brother. But by this means there came a new light upon the whole of
ancient Rabbinic literature. The words of the Torah, the Midrash says, are
poor in one place, but we shall find them rich in another place. The Gaon
by his acquaintance with the _whole_ of the Torah had no difficulty
whatever in discovering the rich places. If there was a difficult passage
in this or that Tractate, he showed, by giving a reference to some other
place, that it was wanting in some words or lines. Obscure passages in the
Mishnah he tried to elucidate by parallel passages in the Tosephta. The
too complicated controversies of the Babylonian Talmud he tried to explain
by comparing them with the more ancient and more simple Talmud of
Jerusalem.

There is little to be told of the Gaon’s private affairs. Even the date of
his marriage with a certain Miss Anna of Kaidon is not mentioned by his
biographers. But it may be taken for granted that, in accordance with the
custom in Poland, he married at a very early age, say about eighteen
years. It was also when a young man that he travelled for some years
through Poland and Germany. It is rather difficult to say what his object
may have been in making these travels—for the Gaon was not the man to
travel for pleasure’s sake. Perhaps it was to become acquainted with the
great Rabbis of these countries. It is also possible, as others maintain,
that the Gaon considered the many privations which a traveller had to
endure a hundred and fifty years ago, as an atonement for his imaginary
sins. Indeed we find in many ascetic books that travelling, or as they
term it “receiving upon oneself to be banished into the exile,”(53) is
recommended as a very successful substitute for penance. At least it seems
that the coachmen whom the Gaon employed on his journeys looked at it from
this point of view. One of them went so far in adding to the privations of
the Gaon as to run away with his carriage when the Rabbi alighted from it
in order to read his prayers. But the reading of the Eighteen
Benedictions(54) must not be interrupted excepting in the case of danger;
and the Gaon did not consider it very dangerous to be left without money
and without luggage.

These travels ended in the year 1745. The Gaon left Wilna again at a later
date with the purpose of going to Palestine and settling there. But he
found so many obstacles on his way that he was soon compelled to give up
his favourite plan and to return to his native town. It is not known
whether he left Wilna again.

The position which the Gaon occupied in Wilna was, as already hinted, that
of a private man. He could never be prevailed upon to accept the post of
Rabbi or any other office in a Jewish community. I am unable to give the
reason for his declining all the offers made to him in this direction. But
it may be suggested here that it was in the time of the Gaon that there
arose a bitter struggle between the Rabbi and the Jewish wardens of his
native town, which ended in the abolition of the office of Rabbi. The
history of the struggle is the more irritating, as it arose from the
pettiest reasons imaginable. People actually discovered that there was no
light in the house of the Rabbi after the middle of the night, which fact
might lead to the conclusion that he did not study later than 12 o’clock
P.M. What an idle man! And this idleness was the less pardonable in the
eyes of the community, as the Rabbi’s wife was so unfortunate as not to
have been polite enough to some Mrs. Warden. Under such circumstances we
must not wonder if the Gaon did not find it very desirable to meddle with
congregational affairs in an official capacity. The relation of the Gaon
to his contemporaries resembles rather the position in the olden times of
a Tanna or Amora,(55) who neither enjoyed the title of Nasin or that of Ab
Beth Din.(56) Like R. Akiba, or Mar Samuel, the Gaon became influential
among his contemporaries only by his teaching and his exemplary life.

It must be said in praise of the Jews of Wilna that, notwithstanding their
petty behaviour towards their ecclesiastical chief, they willingly
submitted to the authority of the Gaon (who was devoid of all official
authority). They revered him as a saint. To converse with the Gaon was
considered as a happy event in the life of a Jew in Wilna, to be of any
use to him as the greatest distinction a man could attain on earth. But
what is remarkable is the readiness with which even scholars acknowledged
the authority of the Gaon. Scholars are usually more slow in recognising
greatness than simple mortals. Every new luminary does not only outshine
their minor lights and thus hurt their personal vanity, but it threatens
also sometimes to obscure certain traditions which they wish to keep
prominently in view. But the literary genius of the Gaon was too great to
be opposed with success, and his piety and devotion to religion far above
suspicion. Thus the Gaon was very soon recognised by his contemporaries as
their master and guide; not only in literary questions, but also in
matters of belief and conduct.

It would lead me too far to name here all the Gaon’s disciples. It seems
as if all the great scholars in his country considered themselves to be
more or less his pupils. The Gaon used to give in the Beth Hammidrash,
which he founded, public lectures on various subjects, and the students
who attended these lectures also claimed the honour of being called his
pupils. I shall mention here only his greatest disciple, R. Chayim
Walosin, who, after the Gaon, influenced his countrymen more than any
other scholar of that time. This R. Chayim also did not occupy any
official post among his brethren. He was a cloth manufacturer by
profession, and was very prosperous in his business. But it did not
prevent him from being devoted to Hebrew literature, and he enjoyed a
wide‐spread fame as a great scholar. But as soon as the fame of the Gaon
reached him, he left cloth manufactory and scholarship behind, and went to
Wilna to “learn Torah” from the mouth of the great master. It must be
noticed that even the giving up of his claim to scholarship was no little
sacrifice. All our learning, said some scholar in Wilna, disappeared as
soon as we crossed the threshold of the Gaon’s house. He made every
disciple who came into close contact with him begin at the beginning. He
taught them Hebrew grammar, Bible, Mishnah, and many other subjects, which
were, as already mentioned, very often neglected by the Talmudists of that
time. R. Chayim had also to go through all this course. Some would have
considered such treatment a degradation. R. Chayim, however, became the
more attached to his master for it.

In such a way the life of the Gaon was spent, studying by himself or
teaching his pupils. It must be understood that to learn Torah meant for
the Gaon more than mere brain work for the purpose of gaining knowledge.
To him it was a kind of service to God. Contemporaries who watched him
when he was studying the Torah observed that the effect wrought on the
personality of the Gaon was the same as when he was praying. With every
word his countenance flushed with joy; with every line he was gaining
strength for proceeding further. Only by looking at matters from this
point of view shall we be able to understand the devotion and the love of
the Gaon for study.

There has been, no doubt, among the Russian Jews a strong tendency to
exaggerate the intellectual qualities of the Gaon. But one can readily
excuse such a tendency. He was gifted by nature with such a wonderful
memory that, having read a book once, he was able to recite it by heart
for the rest of his life. Not less admirable was his sure grasp. The most
complicated controversies in the Talmud, into which other scholars would
require whole days and weeks to find their way, the Gaon was able to read
by a glance at the pages. Already as a boy he is said to have gone through
in a single night the tractates _Zebachim_ and _Menachoth_,(57) containing
not less than two hundred and thirty pages, the contents of which are
sometimes so difficult as to make even an aged scholar despair of
understanding them. Again, he possessed so much common‐sense that all the
intellectual tricks of the casuistic schools did not exist for him. And
nevertheless his biographers tell us that he was so much occupied by his
studies, that he could not spare more than one hour and a half for sleep
out of twenty‐four hours. This is, no doubt, an exaggeration. But let us
say five hours a day. He had not time to take his meals regularly. He used
also, according to tradition, to repeat every chapter in the Bible, every
passage in the Talmud, hundreds of times, even if they presented no
difficulty at all. But it was, as already said, a matter of love for the
Gaon; of love, not of passing affection.

Nothing on earth could be more despicable to the Gaon than amateurs who
dabble with ancient literature. To understand a thing clearly made him
happy. He is said to have spent more than six months on a single Mishnah
in the tractate _Kilayim_,(58) and felt himself the happiest man when he
succeeded in grasping its real meaning. Not to be able to go into the
depth of a subject, to miss the truth embedded in a single passage, caused
him the most bitter grief. A story told by his pupil, R. Chayim, may
illustrate this fact. One Friday, narrates R. Chayim, the servant of the
Gaon came to him with the message that his master wanted to see him as
soon as possible. R. Chayim went instantly. When he came into the house,
he found the Gaon lying in bed with a bandage on his head and looking very
ill. The wife of the Gaon also reported to him that it was more than three
days since her husband had taken any food, and that he had hardly enjoyed
any sleep all this time. All this misery was caused by reason of not
having been able to understand some difficult passages in the Talmud of
Jerusalem. The Gaon now asked his disciples to resume with him their
researches. Heaven, he said, might have mercy upon them and open their
eyes, for it is written, “Two are better than one”: and lo! Heaven did
have mercy on them; they succeeded in getting the true meaning of the
passage. The Gaon recovered instantly, and master and disciple had a very
joyful Sabbath.

He is also reported to have said on one occasion, he would not like to
have an angel for his teacher who would reveal to him all the mysteries of
the Torah. Such a condition is only befitting the world to come, but in
_this_ world only things which are acquired by hard labour and great
struggle are of any value. The German representative of truth expressed
the same thought in other words, which are well worth repeating here: “Did
the Almighty,” says Lessing, “holding in His right hand Truth and in His
left Search after Truth, deign to tender me the one I might prefer, in all
humility and without hesitation I should select Search after Truth.”

This absorption of all his being in the study of the Torah may also, I
think, account for the fact that his biographers have so little to say
about the family of the Gaon. Of his wife, we know only that she died in
the year 1783. Not much fuller is our knowledge about his children. The
biographers speak of them as of the family “which the Lord has blessed,”
referring to his two sons, Rabbi Aryeh Leb and Rabbi Abraham, who were
known as great scholars and very pious men. The latter one is best known
by his edition of a collection of smaller Midrashim. Mention is also made
of the Gaon’s sons‐in‐law, especially one Rabbi Moses of Pinsk. But this
is all, and we are told nothing either about their lives or their
callings. From his famous letter which he sent to his family when on his
way to Palestine, we see that he was rather what one may call a severe
father. He bids his wife punish his children most severely for swearing,
scolding, and speaking untruth. He also advises her to live as retired a
life as possible. Retirement he considers as a condition _sine qua non_
for a religious life. He even advises his daughter to read her prayers at
home, for in the synagogue she may get envious of the finer dresses of her
friends, which is a most terrible sin. The only tender feature in this
letter is perhaps where he implores his wife to be kind to his mother on
account of her being a widow, and it were a great sin to cause her the
least annoyance. From other passages we may gather that his family had at
times to suffer hunger and cold by the excessive occupation of their
father with the study of the Torah and other religious works. In short,
the Gaon was a one‐sided, severe ascetic, and would never have deserved
the title of a good father, a good husband, an amiable man or any other
appellation derived from those ordinary “household decencies” which, as
Macaulay informs us, half of the tombstones claim for those who lie behind
them. But I am very much afraid that many a great man who has made his
mark in history could never claim these household virtues as his own. I do
not want to enter here into the question whether Judaism be an ascetic
religion or not. But even those who think Judaism identical with what is
called “making the best of this life,” will not dispute the fact that
Jewish literature contains within it enough ascetic elements to justify
the conduct of our greatest men whose lives were one long‐continued self‐
denial and privation. “The Torah,” says the Talmud, “cannot be obtained
unless a man is prepared to give his life for it,” or as the Talmud puts
it, in another place, “if it be thy desire not to die, cease to live
before thou diest.” This was the principle by which the Gaon’s life was
actuated. And as he did not spare himself, he could not spare others. We
could not expect him to act differently. The Scriptures tell us: “Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” But how is it with the man who never
loved himself, who never gave a thought to himself, who never lived for
himself, but only for what he considered to be his duty and his mission
from God on earth? Such a man we cannot expect to spend his time on
coaxing and caressing us. As to the charge of one‐sidedness at which I
have hinted, if the giving up of everything else for the purpose of
devoting oneself to a scholarly and saintly life is one‐sidedness, the
Gaon must certainly bear this charge; but in a world where there are so
many on the other side, we ought, I think, to be only too grateful to
Providence for sending us from time to time great and strong one‐sided
men, who, by their counterbalancing influence, bring God’s spoilt world to
a certain equilibrium again. To appease my more tender readers, I should
like only to say that there is no occasion at all for pitying Mrs. Gaon.
It would be a miserable world indeed if a good digestion and stupidity
were, as a certain author maintained, the only conditions of happiness.
Saints are happy in their sufferings, and noble souls find their happiness
in sacrificing themselves for these sufferers.

Another severe feature in the life of the Gaon showed itself in his
dispute with the Chassidim. I regret not to be able to enter here even
into a brief account of the history of this struggle. I shall only take
leave to say that I am afraid each party was right, the Gaon as well as
the Chassidim; the latter, in attacking the Rabbis of their time, who
mostly belonged to the casuistic schools, and in their intellectual
pursuits almost entirely neglected the emotional side of religion; but
none the less was the Gaon right in opposing a system which, as I have
shown above, involved the danger of leading to a worship of men.

Excepting this incident, the Gaon never meddled with public affairs. He
lived in retirement, always occupied with his own education and that of
his disciples and friends. It is most remarkable that, in spite of his
hard work and the many privations he had to endure, he enjoyed good health
almost all his life. He never consulted a doctor. It was not until the
year 1791, in the seventieth year of his life, that he began to feel the
decline of his health. But he was not much interrupted by the failure of
his powers. As a means of recovery, he esteemed very highly the
conversation of the preacher Jacob of Dubna, better known as the Dubna
Maggid,(59) whose parables and sallies of wit the Gaon used to enjoy very
much. On the eve of the Day of Atonement in the year 1797, he fell very
ill and gave his blessing to his children. He died on the third day of the
Feast of Tabernacles, with the branch of the Lulab(60) in his hands. The
Feast of Joy, relates a contemporary, was turned into days of mourning. In
all the streets of Wilna were heard only lamenting and crying voices. The
funeral orations delivered on this occasion in Wilna, as well as in other
Jewish communities, would form a small library. His disciples wept for
their master, the people of Wilna for the ornament of their native town,
and the feeling of the Jews in general was that “the Ark of God was taken
away.”

After the foregoing sketch, the reader will hardly expect me to give an
account of the Gaon’s literary productions. The results of so long a life
and such powers of mind devoted to one cause with such zeal and fervour,
would furnish by themselves the subject of a whole series of essays. The
tombstone set on his grave by his pious admirers bears the inscription,
“The Gaon gave heed and sought and set in order”—that is to say, he wrote
commentaries or notes on—“the Bible, the Mishnah, both Talmuds, the
Siphré, Siphra, the Zohar, and many other works.” Inscriptions on
tombstones are proverbial for exaggeration, and we all know the saying,
“as mendacious as an epitaph.” But a glance at the catalogue of the
British Museum under the heading of Elijah Wilna, will show that this
inscription makes a praiseworthy exception. We will find that this list
might be lengthened by many other works of great importance for Jewish
life and thought. His commentary to the Code of R. Joseph Caro, in which
one will find that in many cases he knew the sources of the religious
customs and usages, put together in this work, better than its compiler
himself, would have been sufficient to place him at the head of Halachic
scholarship, whilst his notes and textual emendations to the Tosephta and
Seder Olam, to the restoration of which he contributed so much, would have
sufficed to establish his fame as a critic of the first order. And this is
the more astonishing when we consider that all this was done without
manuscripts or any other aid, and by mere intuition. We cannot wonder that
scholars who had the opportunity of visiting great libraries and saw how
the emendations of the Gaon agreed sometimes with the readings given in
the best manuscripts exclaimed very often: “Only by inspiration could he
have found out these secrets.” We have no need to go so far; we shall
simply say with the Talmud, “The powers of the real sage surpass those of
the prophet.” Nay, even had we possessed only his _Gleanings_, which form
a kind of _obiter dicta_ on various topics of Jewish literature, the Gaon
would have remained a model of clear thinking and real ingenuity for all
future generations.

However, a real appreciation of the Gaon’s greatness as a scholar would
only be possible either by a thorough study of his works, to which I have
alluded, or by giving many specimens of them. The short space I am limited
to makes such an undertaking impossible. I shall therefore use what
remains to me to say a few words on the salutary influence the Gaon had on
his countrymen, the Russian Jews.

The Russian Jew is still a riddle to us. We know this strange being only
from the Reports of the Board of Guardians or from bombastic phrases in
public speeches; for he has always been the victim of platform orators,


    So over violent or over civil,
    That every man with them is God or Devil.


From all, however, that I can gather from the best Jewish writers in
Russia, I can only judge that the Russian Jew, when transplanted to a
foreign soil, where he is cut off from the past and uncertain of his
future, is for the time at least in a position in which his true character
cannot be truly estimated. His real life is to be sought in his own
country. There, amidst his friends and kinsmen who are all animated by the
same ideals, attached to the same traditions, and proud of the same
religious and charitable institutions, everything is full of life and
meaning to him. Thus, a certain Russian writer addresses his younger
colleagues who find so much fault with the bygone world: “Go and see how
rich we always were in excellent men. In every town and every village you
would find scholars, saints, and philanthropists. Their merits could
sustain worlds, and each of them was an ornament of Israel.” And he
proceeds to give dozens of names of such excellent men, who are not all
indeed known to us, but with whom the Russian Jew connects many noble and
pious reminiscences of real greatness and heroic self‐denial, and of whom
he is justly proud.

The focus, however, of all this spiritual life is the Yeshibah (Talmudical
College)(61) in Walosin. I hope that a glance at its history and
constitution will not be found uninteresting. The intellectual originator
of this institution which bears the name _Yeshibah Ets Chayim_ (Tree of
Life College),(62) was the Gaon himself. Being convinced that the study of
the Torah is the very life of Judaism, but that this study must be
conducted in a scientific, not in a scholastic way, he bade his chief
disciple, the R. Chayim already mentioned, to found a college in which
Rabbinical literature should be taught according to his own true method.
It would seem that, as long as the Gaon was alive, R. Chayim preferred to
be a pupil rather than a teacher. When, however, the Gaon died, R. Chayim
did not rest till he had carried out the command of his master, and in the
year 1803 the College was opened in Walosin. The cloth manufacturer and
disciple now became Rabbi and master. He began on a small scale, teaching
at first only a few pupils. But even for the sustenance of a small number
he had not sufficient means, and his pious wife sold her jewellery to help
him in accomplishing his favourite plan. This is the best refutation of
the French proverb _Avare comme une Rabbine_. The number, however,
increased daily, and before he died (1828), he was fortunate enough to
lecture to a hundred students. The number of students in the year 1888
amounted to 400, and the Russian Jews are thus right in asserting that
they have the greatest Talmudical College in the world. It is evident that
no private charity by a single man, however great, could suffice to
maintain such large numbers. Thus R. Chayim was already compelled to
appeal to the liberality of his Russian brethren. The name of R. Chayim,
and the still greater name of his master, were recommendation enough, and
besides private offerings, many communities promised large sums towards
supporting the students in Walosin. From time to time also messengers are
sent out by the committee to promote the interests of the Yeshibah. The
writers to whom I owe these data tell us that these messengers travel to
all parts of the world to collect offerings for Walosin: so that it is a
standing joke with the students that the existence of the mythical river
Sambatyon(63) may be questioned after all, otherwise it must long have
been discovered by these messengers who explore the whole world in their
journeys. But it would seem that this world is only a very small one. For
the whole income of the Yeshibah has never exceeded the sum of about
£1800. Of this a certain part is spent in providing the salaries of the
teaching staff and proctors, and on the repairs of the building; whilst
the rest is distributed amongst the students. Considering that no
scholarship exceeds £13—it is only the forty immortals of Walosin who
receive such high stipends—considering again that the great majority of
the students belong to the poorer classes and thus receive no remittance
from their parents, we may be sure that the words of the Talmud: “This is
the way to study the Torah; eat bread and salt, drink water by measure,
sleep on the earth, and live a life of care,” are carried out by them
literally. But it would seem that the less they eat and the less they
sleep, the more they work. Indeed the industry and the enthusiasm of these
Bachurim (_alumni_)(64) in the study of the Torah is almost unsurpassable.
The official hours alone extend from nine in the morning until ten in the
evening, while many of the students volunteer to continue their studies
till the middle of the night, or to begin the day at three in the morning.

As to the subject of these studies, it is confined, as may be imagined, to
the exploration of the old Rabbinic literature in all its branches. But it
would be a mistake to think that the modern spirit has left Walosin quite
untouched. It would be impossible that among 400 thinking heads there
should not be a few who are interested in mathematics, others again in
philosophy or history, while yet others would conjugate the irregular
verbs of some classical language when moving to and fro over their Talmud
folios and pretending to “_learn_.” Indeed, almost all the writers who
demand that these subjects should be introduced as obligatory into the
programme of Walosin, belonged themselves to this Yeshibah. And it is
these writers who betray the secret how secular knowledge is now invading
the precincts of Walosin, as well as of other Talmudical Colleges in spite
of all obstacles and prohibitions. In conquering these difficulties seem
to consist the pleasures of life of many Bachurim at Walosin. Look only at
that undergraduate, how, after a heavy day’s work he is standing there in
the street reading Buckle’s _History of Civilisation_ in the moonlight!
Poor man, he is not so romantic as to prefer the moonlight to a cheerful,
warm room, with the more prosaic light of a candle, but he has got tired
of knocking at the door, for his landlady, to whom he has neglected to pay
rent for the last three terms, made up her mind to let him freeze to‐
night. But still more cruel to him is his fellow‐sufferer, who is also
wandering in the streets with an overloaded brain and empty stomach; he
roughly shakes him out of his dreams by telling him that Buckle is long
ago antiquated, and that he had better study the works of Herbert Spencer,
who has spoken the last word on every vital subject in the world. Still
these two starving and freezing representatives of English thought in
Walosin form only an exception. The general favourites are the
representatives of Jewish thought. That such books as the _Guide of the
Perplexed_, by Maimonides, the Metaphysical Researches of Levi b.
Gershom,(65) and other philosophical works of the Spanish school are read
by the Walosin students it is needless to say. These books now form a part
of the Rabbinic literature, and it would be almost unorthodox to suspect
their readers. But is worth noticing that even the productions of the
modern historico‐critical school, such as the works of Zunz, Frankel,
Graetz, Weiss, are very popular with the Bachurim, being much read and
discussed by them.

Thus Walosin deserves rightly to be considered as the centre of Jewish
thought in Russia, in which the spirit of the Gaon is still working.

I have very often, however, heard doubts expressed as to the continuance
of this spirit when, as it is to be hoped, better times come for the Jews
in Russia. Is it not to be feared that liberty and emancipation will
render untenable ideas and notions which arose under entirely different
circumstances? There is no need of entertaining such fears. Rabbi Jedaiah
of Bedres(66) concludes his philosophical work _Examination of the World_,
with the following words: “The conclusion of the whole matter is, go
either to the right, my heart, or go to the left, but believe all that R.
Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides) has believed, the last of the Gaonim by
time, but the first in rank.” About five hundred years have passed away
since these lines were written. Time, as we have seen, has brought another
Gaon, and probably Time will favour us in future with still another. But
times have also altered. The rebellious hearts of a liberal age are not
likely to obey always the command, “believe all that the Gaon said.” But
the heart of man will in all ages retain idealism enough to love and
revere the greatest of men and to follow what was best in them.





IV. NACHMANIDES(67)


R. Chayim Vital, in his _Book of the Transmigrations of Souls_, gives the
following bold characteristic of the two great teachers of Judaism,
Maimonides and Nachmanides. Their souls both sprang forth from the head of
Adam—it is a favourite idea of the Cabbalists to evolve the whole of ideal
humanity from the archetype Adam—but the former, Maimonides, had his
genius placed on the left curl of Adam, which is all judgment and
severity, whilst that of the latter, Nachmanides, had its place on the
right curl, which represents rather mercy and tenderness.

I start from these words in order to avoid disappointment. For Nachmanides
was a great Talmudist, a great Bible student, a great philosopher, a great
controversialist, and, perhaps, also a great physician; in one word, great
in every respect, possessed of all the culture of his age. But, as I have
already indicated by the passage quoted by way of introduction, it is not
of Nachmanides in any of these excellent qualities that I wish to write
here. For these aspects of his life and mind I must refer the reader to
the works of Graetz, Weiss, Steinschneider, Perles, and others. I shall
mostly confine myself to those features and peculiarities in his career
and works which will illustrate Nachmanides the tender and compassionate,
the Nachmanides who represented Judaism from the side of emotion and
feeling, as Maimonides did from the side of reason and logic.

R. Moses ben Nachman, or Bonastruc de Portas, as he was called by his
fellow‐countrymen, or Nachmanides, as he is commonly called now, was born
in Gerona about the year 1195. Gerona is a little town in the province of
Catalonia in Spain. But though in Spain, Gerona was not distinguished for
its philosophers or poets like Granada, Barcelona, or Toledo. Situated as
it was in the North of Spain, Gerona was under the influence of Franco‐
Jewish sympathies, and thus its boast lay in the great Talmudists that it
produced. I shall only mention the name of R. Zerahiah Hallevi Gerundi—so‐
called after his native place—whose strictures on the Code of R. Isaac
Alfasi, which he began as a youth of nineteen years, will always remain a
marvel of critical insight and independent research. Nachmanides is
supposed by some authors to have been a descendant of R. Isaac ben Reuben
of Barcelona, whose hymns are still to be found in certain rituals. The
evidence for this is insufficient, but we know that he was a cousin of R.
Jonah Gerundi, not less famous for his Talmudic learning than for his
saintliness and piety. Nachmanides thus belonged to the best Jewish
families of Gerona. Various great men are mentioned as his teachers, but
we have certainty only about two, namely R. Judah ben Yakar, the
commentator of the prayers, and R. Meir ben Nathan of Trinquintaines. The
mystic, R. Ezra (or Azriel), is indeed alleged to have been his instructor
in the Cabbalah, and this is not impossible, as he also was an inhabitant
of Gerona; but it is more probable that Nachmanides was initiated into the
Cabbalah by the R. Judah just mentioned, who also belonged to the mystical
school.

Whoever his masters were, they must have been well satisfied with their
promising pupil, for he undertook, at the age of fifteen, to write
supplements to the Code of R. Isaac Alfasi. Nor was it at a much later
date that he began to compose his work, _The Wars of the Lord_, in which
he defends this great codifier against the strictures of R. Zerahiah, to
which we have referred above. I shall in the course of this essay have
further occasion to speak of this latter work; for the present we will
follow the career of its author.

Concerning the private life of Nachmanides very little has come down to
us. We only know that he had a family of sons and daughters. He was not
spared the greatest grief that can befall a father, for he lost a son; it
was on the day of the New Year.(68) On the other hand, it must have been a
great source of joy to him when he married his son Solomon to the daughter
of R. Jonah, whom he revered as a saint and a man of God. As a token of
the admiration in which he held his friend, the following incident may be
mentioned. It seems that it was the custom in Spain to name the first
child in a family after his paternal grandfather; but Nachmanides ceded
his right in behalf of his friend, and thus his daughter‐in‐law’s first
son was named Jonah. Another son of Nachmanides whom we know of was
Nachman, to whom his father addressed his letters from Palestine, and who
also wrote Novellæ to the Talmud, still extant in MS. But the later
posterity of Nachmanides is better known to fame. R. Levi ben Gershom was
one of his descendants; so was also R. Simeon Duran;(69) whilst R. Jacob
Sasportas, in the eighteenth century,(70) derived his pedigree from
Nachmanides in the eleventh generation.

As to his calling, he was occupied as Rabbi and teacher, first in Gerona
and afterwards in Barcelona. But this meant as much as if we should say of
a man that he is a philanthropist by profession, with the only difference
that the treasures of which Nachmanides disposed were more of a spiritual
kind. For his livelihood he probably depended upon his medical practice.

I need hardly say that the life of Nachmanides, “whose words were held in
Catalonia in almost as high authority as the Scriptures,” was not without
its great public events. At least we know of two.

The one was about the year 1232, on the occasion of the great struggle
about Maimonides’ _Guide of the Perplexed_, and the first book of his
great Compendium of the Law. T

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