VIII. THE MENDELSSOHN EPOCH…

VIII. THE MENDELSSOHN EPOCH

Renaissance of the Jewish Race--Moses Mendelssohn--His Youth-- Improves Hebrew Style--Lessing and Mendelssohn--Mendelssohn's Writings--The Bonnet-Lavater Controversy--Kölbele--The Burial Question--Reimarus--Anonymous Publication of his Work--Lessing's "Nathan the Wise"--Mendelssohn in "Nathan" --Mendelssohn's Pentateuch--Opposition to it--The "Berlin Religion"--Montesquieu--Voltaire--Portuguese Marranos in Bordeaux--Isaac Pinto--His Defense of Portuguese Jews-- Dohm and Mendelssohn--Joseph II of Austria--Michaelis-- Mendelssohn's "Jerusalem"--Wessely: his Circular Letter-- Mendelssohn's Death.

1750-1786 C. E.

Can "a nation be born at once"--or can a people be regenerated? If the laboriously constructed organism of a nation has lost vitality, if the bonds connecting the individual parts are weakened, and internal dissolution has set in, even the despotic will which keeps the members in a mechanical union being wanting; in short, if death comes upon a commonalty in its corporate state, and it has been entombed, can it be resuscitated and undergo a revival? This doom has overtaken many nationalities of ancient and modern times. But if in such a people a new birth should take place, i.e., a resurrection from death and apparent decomposition, and if this should occur in a race long past its youthful vigor, whose history has spread over thousands of years,--then such a miracle deserves the most attentive consideration from every man who does not stolidly overlook what is marvelous.

The Jewish race has displayed miraculous phenomena, not only in ancient days, the age of miracles, but also in this matter-of-fact epoch. A community which was an object of mockery not merely to the malicious and ignorant, but almost more to benevolent and cultured men; despicable in its own eyes; admirable only by reason of its domestic virtues and ancient memories, both, however, disfigured beyond recognition by trivial observances; scourging itself with bitter irony; of which a representative member could justly remark, "My nation has become so estranged from culture, that the possibility of improvement is doubtful"--this community nevertheless raised itself from the dust! It revived with marvelous rapidity from its abjection, as if a prophet had called unto it, "Shake thyself from the dust; arise ... loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion!" And who caused this revival? One man, Moses Mendelssohn, who may be considered the incarnation of his race--stunted in form, awkward, timid, stuttering, ugly, and repulsive in appearance. But within this race-deformity breathed a thoughtful spirit, which only when misled pursued chimeras, and lost its self-esteem only when proscribed. No sooner did it understand that it was the exponent of the truth, than it dismissed its visionary fancies, its spirit transfigured the body, and raised the bent form erect, the hateful characteristics disappeared, and the scornful nickname of "Jew" was changed almost into a title of honor.

This rejuvenescence or renaissance of the Jewish race, which may be unhesitatingly ascribed to Mendelssohn, is noteworthy, inasmuch as the originator of this great work neither intended nor suspected it; in fact, as already remarked, he almost doubted the capacity for rejuvenescence in his brethren. He produced this altogether unpremeditated glorious result not by means of his profession or his public position. He was not a preacher in the wilderness, who urged the lost sons of Israel to a change of mind; all his life he shrank from direct exercise of influence. Even when sought after, he avoided leadership of every kind with the oft-repeated confession, that he was in no way fitted for the office. Mendelssohn played an influential part without either knowing or desiring it: involuntarily, he aroused the slumbering genius of the Jewish race, which only required an impulse to free itself from its constrained position and develop. The story of his life is interesting, because it typifies the history of the Jews in recent times, when they raised themselves from lowliness and contempt to greatness and self-consciousness.

Moses Mendelssohn (born at Dessau, August, 1728, died in Berlin, January 4, 1786) was as insignificant and wretched an object as almost all poor Jewish children. At this time even infants seemed to possess a servile appearance. For quick-witted boys there was no period of youth; they were early made to shiver and shake by the icy breath of rough life. They were thus prematurely awakened to think, and hardened for their struggle with unlovely reality. One day Mendelssohn, a weakly, deformed lad in his fourteenth year, knocked at the door in one of the gates of Berlin. A Jewish watchman, a sort of police officer, the terror of immigrant Jews, who was ordered to refuse admission to those without means of subsistence, harshly addressed the pale, crippled boy seeking admission. Fortunately, he managed bashfully to stammer out that he desired to enroll himself among the Talmudical pupils of the new rabbi of Berlin. This was a kind of recommendation, and enabled him to dispense with a full purse. Mendelssohn was admitted, and directed his steps towards the house of the rabbi, David Fränkel, his countryman and teacher, who had shortly before been called from Dessau to the rabbinate of Berlin.

He took an interest in the shy youth, allowed him to attend his rabbinical lectures, provided for his maintenance, and employed him in copying his Commentary to the Jerusalem Talmud, because Mendelssohn had inherited a beautiful handwriting as his only legacy from his father, a writer of scrolls of the Law. Even if Mendelssohn learnt from Fränkel nothing besides the Talmud, yet the latter exerted a favorable influence upon the mind of his disciple, because his method, exercising itself upon virgin soil, the Jerusalem Talmud, was not so distorted, hair-splitting, and perverse as that of most expounders of the Talmud, who made the crooked straight, and the straight crooked. Mendelssohn's innate honesty and yearning for truth were not suppressed or hindered by his first teacher, and this was of value.

Like the majority of Talmud disciples (Bachurim) Mendelssohn led the life of poverty which the Talmud in a measure makes a stipulation for study:--

"Eat bread with salt, drink water by measure, sleep upon the hard earth, live a life of privations, and busy thyself with the Law."

His ideal at this time was to perfect himself in the knowledge of the Talmud. Was it chance that implanted in Berlin the seed destined to produce such luxuriant fruit? Or would the result have been the same, if he had remained with Fränkel in Dessau, or if the latter had been called to Halberstadt, or Fürth, or Metz, or Frankfort? It is highly improbable. Retired though Mendelssohn's life was, yet a fresh breeze was wafted from the Prussian capital into the narrow chambers of his Rabbinical studies. With the accession of Frederick the Great, who besides war cultivated the Muses (though in a French garb), literary dilettanteism, French customs, and contempt for religion began to grow into fashion among Berlin Jews. Although their condition under Frederick was restricted, yet, because several became wealthy, the new spirit did not pass over them without leaving an impression, however inadequate and superficial. An impulse towards culture, the spirit of innovation, and imitation of Christian habits began to manifest themselves.

A Pole first introduced Mendelssohn to the philosophical work of Maimuni, which for him and through him became a "Guide of the Perplexed." The spirit of the great Jewish thinker, whose ashes had lain in Palestine for more than five hundred years, came upon young Mendelssohn, inspired him with fresh thoughts, and made him, as it were, his Elisha. What signified to Mendelssohn the long interval of many centuries? He listened to the words of Maimuni as if sitting at his feet, and imbibed his wise instruction in deep draughts. He read this book again and again, until he became bent by constant perusal of its pages. From the Pole, Israel Zamosc, he also learned mathematics and logic, and from Aaron Solomon Gumpertz a liking for good literature. Mendelssohn learned to spell and to philosophize at the same time, and received only desultory assistance in both. He principally taught and educated himself. He cultivated firmness of character, tamed his passions, and accustomed himself, even before he knew what wisdom was, to live according to her rules. In this respect also Maimuni was his instructor. By nature Mendelssohn was violent and hot-tempered; but he taught himself such complete self-mastery that, a second Hillel, he became distinguished for meekness and gentleness.

As if Mendelssohn divined it to be his mission to purify the morals and elevate the minds of his brethren, he, still a youth, contributed to a Hebrew newspaper, started by associates in sympathy with him for the purpose of ennobling the Jews. The firstlings of his intellect are like succulent grass in the early spring. He abandoned the ossified, distorted, over-embellished Hebrew style of his contemporaries, which had debased the Hebrew language into the mere mumbling of a decrepit tongue. Fresh and clear as a mountain-stream the Hebrew outpourings of Mendelssohn welled forth. Philosophical-religious views pervaded these early works, not only where he desired to depict trust in God and the inefficacy of evil, but also the rejuvenescence of nature in her spring vesture, and the delight of the pure mind of man at this beautiful change. The school of suffering through which he had passed for so many years, instead of dragging him down, had awakened, elevated, and ennobled his spirit. His struggles for a livelihood ceased when he obtained the situation as tutor in a rich family (that of Isaac Bernard), which, though not over-lucrative, sufficed for his frugal habits. His journeyman days were, however, not yet at an end. The old and the new, tradition and original views agitated his mind; clearness and self-consciousness were to flow into it from another source.

To the great minds which Germany produced in the eighteenth century belongs Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. He was the first free-thinking man in Germany, probably more so than the royal hero Frederick, who had indeed liberated himself from bigotry, but still had idols to whom he sacrificed. With his gigantic mind, Lessing burst through all bounds and regulations which depraved taste, dry-as-dust science, haughty orthodoxy, and pedantry of every kind had desired to set up and perpetuate. The freedom that Lessing brought to the Germans was more solid and permanent than that which Voltaire aroused in depraved French society with his biting sarcasm; for, his purpose was to ennoble, and his wit was only a means to this end. Lessing wished to exalt the theatre to a pulpit, and art to a religion. Voltaire degraded philosophy into light gossip for the drawing-room.

It was an important moment for the history of the Jews, when these two young men, Mendelssohn and Lessing, became acquainted. It is related that a passionate lover of chess, named Isaac Hess, brought them together at the chess-board (1754). The royal game united two monarchs in the kingdom of thought. Lessing, the son of a pastor, was of a democratic nature: he sought the society of outcasts, and those despised by public opinion. As shortly before he had mixed with actors in Leipsic, and as afterwards he associated with soldiers in Breslau, so now he was not ashamed to converse in Berlin with despised Jews. He had before this dedicated the first-fruits of his art, which to him appeared the highest art, to the pariah nation. By his drama, "The Jews," he desired to show that a Jew can be unselfish and noble, and he thereby aroused the displeasure of cultivated Christian circles. The ideal of a noble Jew which Lessing had in mind while composing this drama, he saw realized in Mendelssohn, and it must have pleased him to find that he was not mistaken in his portraiture, and that reality did not disprove his dream.

As soon as Lessing and Mendelssohn became acquainted, they learned to respect and love each other. The latter admired in his Christian friend his ability and unconstraint, his courage and perfect culture, his overflowing spirit, and the vigor which enabled him to bear a new world upon his broad shoulders; and Lessing admired in Mendelssohn nobility of thought, a yearning for truth, and firmness of character based upon a moral nature. They were both so imbued with lofty nobility of mind that the one prized in the other whatever perfection he could not attain to equally with his friend. Lessing suspected in his Jewish friend "a second Spinoza, who would do honor to his nation." Mendelssohn was completely enchanted by Lessing's friendship. A friendly look from him, he confessed, had such power over his mind that it banished all grief. They exerted perceptible influence upon each other. Lessing, at that time a mere "Schöngeist," as it was termed, aroused in Mendelssohn an interest for noble forms, æsthetic culture, poetry, and art; the latter in return stimulated Lessing to philosophical thought. Thus they reciprocally gave and received, the true relationship in a worthy friendship. The bond of amity became so strong, and united the two friends so sincerely, that it lasted beyond the grave.

The stimulus that Mendelssohn received from his friend was extraordinarily fruitful both for him and for the Jews. It maybe said without exaggeration that Lessing's influence was greater in ennobling the Jewish race than in elevating the German people, due to the fact that the Jews were more eager for study and more susceptible to culture. All that Mendelssohn gained by intercourse with his friend benefited Judaism. Through his friend, who by reason of a genial, sympathetic nature exerted great attraction upon talented men, Mendelssohn was introduced into his circle, learned the forms of society, and threw off the awkwardness which was the stamp of the Ghetto. He now devoted himself zealously to the acquisition of an attractive German style--a difficult task, as the German language was strange to him, and the German vocabulary in use among Jews was antiquated and misleading. Nor had he any pattern to follow; for, before Lessing enriched German style with his genius, it was unwieldy, rugged, and ungraceful. But Mendelssohn overcame all difficulties. He withdrew, as he expressed it, "a portion of his love from the worthy matron (philosophy), to bestow it upon a wanton maiden (the so-called belles-lettres.)" Before a year's intimacy with Lessing elapsed, he was able to compose in excellent form his "Philosophical Conversations" (the beginning of 1755), in which he, the Jew, blamed the Germans, because, misapprehending the depth of their own genius, they bore the yoke of French taste: "Will, then, the Germans never recognize their own worth? Will they always exchange their gold for the tinsel of their neighbors?" This rebuke was applicable even to the philosophical monarch Frederick II, who could not sufficiently scorn native talent, nor sufficiently admire that of foreign lands. The Jew was more German than most of the Germans of his time.

His patriotic feelings for Judaism did not suffer diminution thereby; they were united in his heart with love for German ideals. Although he could never overcome his dislike to Spinoza's revolutionary system, yet in his first work he strove to save the latter's birthright in the new metaphysics. The "Philosophical Conversations" Mendelssohn handed to his friend, with the jesting remark that he could produce something like Shaftesbury, the Englishman. Without his knowledge Lessing had them printed, and thus contributed the first leaves to his friend's crown of laurel. Through Lessing's zeal to advance him in every way, Mendelssohn became known in the learned circle in Berlin. When a "Coffee-house of the Learned," for an association of about one hundred men of science, was established in the Prussian capital, hitherto deficient in literary interests, the founders did not pass over the young Jewish philosopher, but invited him to join them. Every month some member delivered a discourse upon a scientific subject. Mendelssohn, however, was prevented from reading in public by modesty and an imperfection of speech; he presented his contribution in writing. His essay was called an "Inquiry into Probability," which must replace certainty in the limited sphere of human knowledge. While it was being read aloud, he was recognized as the author, and was applauded by the critical audience. Thus Mendelssohn was made a citizen in the republic of literature, took an active part in the literary productions of the day, and contributed to the "Library of the Fine Arts," which had been founded by his friend Nicolai. His taste became more refined every day, his style grew nobler, and his thoughts more lucid. His method of presentation was the more attractive because he seasoned it with incisive wit.

That which the Jews had lost through the abasement of thousand years of slavery, Mendelssohn now recovered for them in a short space of time. Almost all, with the exception of a few Portuguese and Italian Jews, had lost pure speech, the first medium of intellectual intercourse, and a childish jargon had been substituted, which, a true companion of their misfortunes, appeared unwilling to forsake them. Mendelssohn felt disgust at the utter neglect of language. He saw that the Jewish corrupt speech contributed not a little to the "immorality of the average man," and he hoped for good results from the attention beginning to be paid to pure language. It was one of the consequences of the debasement of language, that the German and Polish Jews had lost all sense of form, taste for artistic beauty, and æsthetic feeling. Oppression from without and their onerous duties, which had reduced them to veritable slaves, had banished from their midst these, together with many other, ennobling influences. Mendelssohn recovered these lost treasures for his brethren. He acquired so remarkable a sense for the beautiful, that he was afterwards recognized by the Germans as a judge in questions of taste. The perverse course of study pursued by the Jews since the fourteenth century had blunted their minds to simplicity. They had grown so accustomed to all that was artificial, distorted, super-cunningly wrought, and to subtleties, that the simple, unadorned truth became worthless, if not childish and ridiculous, in their eyes. Their train of thought was mostly perverted, uncultivated, and defiant of logical discipline. He who in a short time was to restore their youthful strength, so schooled himself that twisted methods and thoughts became repugnant to him. With his refined appreciation for the simple, the beautiful, and the true, he acquired a profound understanding of biblical literature, whose essence is simplicity and truth. Through the close layers of musty rubbish, with which commentaries and super-commentaries had encumbered it, he penetrated to the innermost core, and was able to cleanse the beautiful picture from dust, and to understand and render comprehensible the ancient Revelation as if it were a new one. Though not gifted with the ability of expressing his thoughts poetically or rhythmically, he had a delicate perception of the poetic beauties of every literature, especially of those in the holy language. And what formed the crowning-point of these attainments was, that his moral views were characterized by extreme delicacy; he was painfully conscientious and truthful, as if there flowed through his veins the blood of a long series of noble ancestors, who had chosen for their life's task all that is honorable and worthy. Almost childlike modesty adorned him, modesty quite remote however from self-despising subservience. He combined in himself so many innate and hardly acquired qualities, that he formed a striking contrast to the caricatures which German and Polish Jews of the time presented. There was but one feeling wanting in Mendelssohn--and this deficiency was detrimental to the near future of Judaism. He lacked an appreciation for history, for things petty on close view, but great in perspective, for the comic and tragic course of the human race during the progress of time. "What do I know of history!" he observed, in half-apologetic, half-scornful tones; "whatever is called history, political history, history of philosophers, I cannot understand." He shared this deficiency with his prototype Maimuni, and infected his surroundings with it.

Some of his brilliant qualities shone out from Mendelssohn's eyes and features, and won him more hearts than if he had striven to gain them. Curiosity about "this Jew" began to be aroused even at the court of Frederick the Great. He was considered the embodiment of wisdom. The dauntless Lessing infused such courage into him, that he ventured to criticise in a periodical the poetical works of the Prussian sovereign, and gently hint at their faults (1760). Frederick the Great, who regarded verse-making as poetry, and dogmatism as philosophy, worshiped the Muse in the court language of the day, thoroughly despised the German tongue, at this time pregnant with real poetry, and mocked at intellectual treasures sacred to solid thinkers. Mendelssohn, the Jew, felt hurt at the king's hatred of German, as well as by his superficial judgments. However, as one dare not tell the truth to monarchs, he cleverly, through the trumpet of praise, emitted a soft note of blame, clear enough to the acute reader.

Skillfully as Mendelssohn had concealed his censure of the king, yet a malicious courtier, the preacher Justi, discovered it, and also the name of the fault-finder, and denounced him, "a Jew, who had thrown aside all reverence for the most sacred person of His Majesty in insolent criticism of his poetry." Suddenly, Mendelssohn received a harsh command to appear on a Saturday at Sans-Souci; an act in accordance with the coarseness of the age. Full of dread, Mendelssohn made his way to Potsdam to the royal castle, was examined, and asked whether he was the author of the disrespectful criticism. He admitted his offense, and excused himself with the observation, that "he who makes verses, plays at nine-pins, and he who plays at nine-pins, be he monarch or peasant, must be satisfied with the judgment of the boy who has charge of the bowls as to the merit of his playing." Frederick was no doubt ashamed to punish the Jewish reviewer for his subtle criticism in the presence of the French cynics of his court, and thus Mendelssohn escaped untouched.

Fortune was extraordinarily favorable to this man, unwittingly the chief herald of the future. It gave him warm friends, who found true delight in exalting him, though a Jew, in public opinion. It secured for him a not brilliant, yet fairly independent situation as book-keeper in the house where he had hitherto held the toilsome position of resident tutor. It bestowed on him a trusty, tender, and simple life companion, who surrounded him with tokens of devoted love. Fortune soon procured a great triumph for him. The Berlin Academy had offered a prize for an essay upon the subject, "Are philosophical (metaphysical) truths susceptible of mathematical demonstration?" Modestly Mendelssohn set to work to solve this problem. He did not belong to the guild of the learned, had not learnt his alphabet until grown up, at an age when conventionally educated youths have their heads crammed with Latin. When he became aware that his friend, the young, highly-promising scholar Thomas Abt, was also a competitor, he almost lost courage, and desired to withdraw. Still his work gained the prize (June, 1763), not alone over Abt, but even over Kant, whose essay received only honorable mention. Mendelssohn obtained the prize of fifty ducats and the medal. The Jew, the tradesman, had defeated his rivals of the learned guild. Kant's disquisition went deeper into the question, but that of Mendelssohn had the advantage of clearness and comprehensibility. "He had torn the thorns from the roses of philosophy." Compelled to acquire each item of his knowledge by great labor, and having only with difficulty become conversant with the barbarous dialect of the schools, he did not content himself with dry formulæ, but exerted himself to render intelligible, both for himself and others, metaphysical conceptions and truths. This circumstance gained him the victory over his much profounder opponent. His essay, which together with that of Kant was translated into French and Latin at the expense of the Academy, earned for him assured renown in the learned world, which was enhanced by the fact that the prize-winner was a Jew.

In the same year (October, 1763), he received a distinction from King Frederick, characteristic of the low condition of the Jews in Prussia. This honor was the privilege of being a protected Jew (Schutz-Jude), i. e., the assurance that he would not some fine day be expelled from Berlin. Hitherto, he had been tolerated in Berlin only as a retainer of his employer. The philosophical King Frederick sympathized with the antipathy of his illustrious enemy Maria Theresa to the Jews, and issued anti-Jewish laws worthy of the Middle Ages rather than of the eighteenth century, so boastful of its humanity. He wished to see the Jews of his dominions diminished in number, rather than increased. Frederick's "general privilege" for the Jews was an insult to the age. Marquis d'Argent, one of Frederick's French courtiers, who in his naïveté could not conceive that a wise and learned man like Mendelssohn might any day become liable to be driven out of Berlin by the brutal police, urged Mendelssohn to sue for the privilege of protection, and the king to grant it. However, a long time elapsed before the dry official document granting it reached him. At last Mendelssohn became a Prussian "Schutz-Jude."

The philosophical "Schutz-Jude" of Berlin now won great success with a work, which met with almost rapturous admiration from his contemporaries in all classes of society. Two decades later this production was already obsolete, and at the present day has only literary value. Nevertheless, when it appeared, it justly attained great importance. Mendelssohn had hit upon the exact moment to bring it forward, and he became one of the celebrities of the eighteenth century. For almost sixteen centuries Christianity had educated the nations of Europe, governed them, and almost surfeited them with belief in the supernatural. It had employed all available means to effect its ends, and finally, when the thinkers awakened from their slumber induced by its lullabies, to inquire into the certainty secured by this announcement of salvation which promised so much, serious people said with regret--whilst sceptics chuckled with brutal delight--that it offered delusive fancies in the place of truth.

In serious compositions, or in satires, the French thinkers of the eighteenth century--the whole body of Materialists--had revealed the hollowness of the doctrine, in which the so-called civilized peoples had found comfort and tranquillity for many centuries. The world was deprived of a God, the heavens were enshrouded in mist; all that had hitherto seemed firm and incapable of being displaced was turned topsy-turvy. The doctrine of Jesus had lost its power of attraction, and become degraded in the eyes of the earnest and thoughtful to the level of childish fables. Infidelity had become a fashion. With the undeifying of Jesus appeared to go hand-in-hand the dethronement of God, and doubt of the important dogma of the immortality of the soul, which Christian theology had borrowed from Greek philosophy and, as always, adorning itself with strange feathers, had claimed as its original creation. Thereupon depended not merely the confidence of mankind in a future existence, but also the practical morals of the present. If the soul is mortal and transient, they thought in the eighteenth century, then the acts of man are of no consequence! Whether he be good or evil, virtuous or criminal, on the other side of the grave there was no retribution. Thus, after the long dream of many centuries, the civilized portion of mankind again fell into the despondency prevalent in the Roman society of the empire; they were without God, without support, without moral freedom, without stimulus to a virtuous life. Man had been degraded to a complicated machine.

Mendelssohn was also biased by the prejudice that the dignity of man stands and falls with the question of the immortality of the soul. He therefore undertook to restore this belief to the cultured world, to discover again the lost truth, to establish it so firmly and ward off materialistic attacks upon it so decisively, that the dying man should calmly look forward to a blissful future and to felicity in the after-life. He composed a dialogue called "Phædon, or the Immortality of the Soul." It was to be a popular book, a new doctrine of salvation for the unbelieving or sceptical world. Therefore he gave to his dialogue an easily comprehensible, attractive style, after the pattern of Plato's dialogue of the same name, from which he copied also the external form. But Plato supplied him with the mere form. Mendelssohn caused his Socrates to give utterance to the philosophy of the eighteenth century through the mouth of his pupil, Phædon.

His starting-point, in proving the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, is the fact of the existence of God, of which he has the highest possible certainty. The soul is the work of God, just as the body is; the body does not actually perish after dissolution, but is transformed into other elements; much less, then, can the soul, a simple essence, be decomposed, and perish. Further, God has acquainted the soul with the idea of immortality, has implanted it in the soul. Can He, the Benevolent and True One, practice deception?

"If our soul were mortal, then reason would be a dream, which Jupiter has sent us that we may forget our misery; and we would be created like the beasts, only to seek food and die."

Every thought inborn in man must for that reason be true and real.

In demonstrating the doctrine of immortality, Mendelssohn had another noble purpose in view. He thought to counteract the malady of talented youths of the day, the Jerusalem-Werthers, who, without a goal for their endeavors, excluded from political and elevating public activity, lost in whimsical sentimentality and self-created pain, sank to thoughts of suicide, which they carried out, unless courage, too, was sicklied over. Mendelssohn, therefore, in his "Phædon" sought to inculcate the conviction, that man, with his immortal soul, is a possession of God, and has no manner of right to decide arbitrarily about himself and his life, or about the separation of his soul from his body--feeble argumentation, but sufficient for that weakly, effeminate generation.

With his "Phædon," Mendelssohn attained more than he had intended and expected, viz., "conviction of the heart, warmth of feeling," in favor of the doctrine of immortality. "Phædon" was the most popular book of its time, and was perused with heart and soul. In two years it ran through three editions, and was immediately translated into all the European languages, also into Hebrew. Theologians, philosophers, artists, poets, such as Herder, Gleim, and Goethe, then but a youth, statesmen, and princes--men and women--were edified by it, reanimated their depressed religious courage, and, with an enthusiasm which would to-day appear absurd, thanked the Jewish sage who had restored to them that comfort which Christianity no longer afforded. The deliverance by Mendelssohn, the Jew, was as joyfully welcomed by the world grown pagan, as in an earlier epoch that effected by the Jews, Jesus and Paul of Tarsus, was welcomed by the heathens. His contemporaries were delighted both with the contents and the form, with the glowing, fresh, vigorous style, a happy, artistic imitation of Plato's dialogues. From all sides letters of congratulation poured in upon the modest author. Everyone of the literary guild who passed through Berlin eagerly sought out the Jewish Plato, as one of the greatest celebrities of the Prussian capital, to have a word with him. The Duke of Brunswick seriously thought of securing the services of Mendelssohn for his state. The Prince of Lippe-Schaumburg treated him as a bosom friend. The Berlin Academy of Sciences proposed him as a member. But King Frederick struck the name of Mendelssohn off the list, because, as it was said, he desired at the same time to have the Empress Catherine admitted into the learned body, and she would be insulted in having a Jew as a companion. Two Benedictine friars-- one from the convent of Peter, near Erfurt, the other from the convent of La Trappe--addressed Mendelssohn, the Jew, as the adviser of their conscience, for instruction in moral and philosophical conduct. The book "Phædon," out of date in twenty years, as remarked above, raised its author to the height of fame. He was fortunate, because he introduced it to the world exactly at the right moment.

An incident vexatious in itself served to exalt Mendelssohn to an extraordinary degree in the eyes of his contemporaries, and to invest him with the halo of martyrdom. John Caspar Lavater, an evangelical minister of Zürich, an enthusiast who afterwards joined the Jesuits, thought that he had found in Mendelssohn's intellectual countenance a confirmation of his deceptive art, the reading of the character and talents of a man from his features. Lavater asserted that in every line of Mendelssohn's face the unprejudiced could at once recognize the soul of Socrates. He was completely enchanted with Mendelssohn's head, raved about it, desiring to possess a well-executed model, in order to bring honor upon his art. Mendelssohn having caused his Phædon to speak in so Greek a fashion that no one could have recognized the author as a Jew, Lavater arrived at the fantastic conclusion that Mendelssohn had become entirely estranged from his religion. Lavater had learned that certain Berlin Jews were indifferent to Judaism, and forthwith reckoned Mendelssohn amongst their number. There was the additional fact that, in a conversation reluctantly entered upon with Lavater, Mendelssohn had pronounced calm, sober judgment upon Christianity, and had spoken with a certain respect of Jesus, though with the reservation, "if Jesus of Nazareth had desired to be considered only a virtuous man." This expression appeared to Lavater the dawning of grace and belief. What if this great man, this incarnation of wisdom, who had become indifferent towards Judaism, could be won over to Christianity! This was the train of thought which arose in Lavater's mind after reading "Phædon." Ingenuous or cunning, he spread his net for Mendelssohn, and thus showed how ignorant he was of his true character. About this time, a Geneva professor, Caspar Bonnet, had written in French a weak apology, entitled "Investigation into the Evidences of Christianity against Unbelievers." This work Lavater translated into German, and sent to Mendelssohn, with an awkward dedication, which looked like a snare (September 4, 1769). Lavater solemnly adjured him to refute publicly Bonnet's proofs of Christianity, or, if he found them correct, to do "what sagacity, love of truth, and honesty would naturally dictate, what a Socrates would have done, if he had read this treatise, and found it unanswerable." If Lavater had been really acquainted with the secrets of the heart, as he prided himself, he would have understood that, even if Mendelssohn had severed all connection with Judaism, Christianity was still more repugnant to him, and that sagacity, that is to say, regard to profit and the advantages of a pleasant existence, was altogether lacking in his character. Lavater did not desire to expose him before the public, but he wished to create a sensation, without thinking what pain he was causing the shy scholar of Berlin.

Mendelssohn later had reason to thank Lavater for having through thoughtlessness or pious cunning drawn him out of his diffidence and seclusion. Mendelssohn had indeed expressed his relations to Judaism and his co-religionists so vaguely that onlookers might have been misled. In public life he was a philosopher and an elegant writer, who represented the principles of humanity and good taste, and apparently did not trouble about his race. In the darkness of the Ghetto he was a strictly orthodox Jew, who, apparently unconcerned about the laws of beauty, joined in the observance of every pious custom. Self-contained and steadfast though he was in reality, he seemed to be a twofold personality, revealing the one or the other as he was in Christian or in Jewish society. He could not stand up in defense of Judaism without, on the one hand, affronting Christianity by his philosophical convictions, and, on the other, showing, if ever so lightly, his dissatisfaction with the chaotic traditions of the synagogue, and so offending the sensibility of his co-religionists and quarreling with them. Neither of these courses, owing to his peace-loving character, entered his mind. He would have been able to pass his life in an attitude of silence, if Lavater's rude importunity had not dragged him out of this false position, altogether unworthy of a man with a mission. Painful as it was to reveal his innermost thoughts upon Judaism and Christianity, he could not hold his peace at this challenge, without being considered a coward even by his friends. These reflections weighed heavily upon him, and caused him to take up the glove.

He skillfully carried on the contest thus forced upon him, and was ultimately victorious. At the end of 1769, in a public letter addressed to Christendom and Lavater, its representative, Mendelssohn in the mildest form wrote most cutting truths, whose utterance in former times would inevitably have led to bloodshed or the stake. Mendelssohn had examined his religion since the days of his youth, and found it true. Philosophy and belles-lettres had with him never been an end, but the means to prepare him for testing Judaism. He could not possibly expect advantage from adherence to it; and as for pleasure--

"O my worthy friend, the position assigned to my co-religionists in civil life is so far removed from all free exercise of spiritual powers, that one's satisfaction is not increased by learning the true rights of man. He who knows the state in which we now are, and has a humane heart, will understand more than I can express."

If the examination of Judaism had not produced results favorable to it, what would have chained him to a religion so intensely and universally despised, what could have prevented him from leaving it? Fear of his co-religionists, forsooth? Their secular power was too insignificant to do any harm.

"I do not deny that I have noticed in my religion certain human additions and abuses, such as every religion accepts in course of time, which unfortunately dim its splendor. But of the essentials of my faith I am so firmly and indisputably assured, that I call God to witness that I will adhere to my fundamental creed as long as my soul does not assume another nature."

He was as opposed to Christianity as ever, for the reason which he had communicated to Lavater verbally, and which the latter should not have concealed, namely, that its founder had declared himself to be God.

"Yet, for my part, Judaism might have been utterly crushed in every polemical text-book, and triumphantly arraigned in every school composition, without my ever entering into a controversy about it. Without the slightest contradiction from me, any scholar or any sciolist in subjects Rabbinic might have constructed for himself and his readers the most ridiculous view of Judaism out of worthless books which no rational Jew reads, or knows of. The contemptible opinion held of Jews I would desire to shame by virtue, not by controversy. My religion, my philosophy, and my status in civil life are the weightiest arguments for avoiding all religious discussion, and for treating in public writings of truths equally important to all religions."

Judaism was binding only upon the congregation of Jacob. It desired proselytes so little, that the rabbis had ordained that any person who offered to unite himself to this religion was to be dissuaded from his design.

"The religion of my fathers does not care to be spread abroad; we are not to send missions to the two Indies or to Greenland, to preach our belief to remote nations. I have the good fortune to possess as friends many excellent men not of my creed. We love each other dearly, and never have I said in my heart, 'What a pity for that beautiful soul!' It is possible for me to recognize national prejudices and erroneous religious opinions among my fellow-citizens, and nevertheless feel constrained to remain silent, if these errors do not directly affect natural religion or natural law (morality), but are only accidentally connected with the advancement of good. It is true that the morality of our actions does not deserve the name, if based upon error.... But as long as truth is not recognized, as long as it does not become national, so as to work as powerful an effect upon the great mass of the people as ingrained prejudice, the latter must be almost sacred to every friend of virtue. These are the reasons that religion and philosophy give me to shun religious disputes."

Besides, being a Jew, he had to be content with toleration, because in other countries even this was denied his race. "Is it not forbidden, according to the laws of your native city," he ask Lavater, "for your circumcised friend even to visit you in Zürich?" The French work of Bonnet he did not find so convincing, he said, as to cause his convictions to waver; he had read better defenses of Christianity written by Englishmen and Germans; also it was not original, but borrowed from German writings. The arguments were so feeble and so little tending to prove Christianity that any religion could be equally well or badly defended by them. If Lavater thought that a Socrates could have been convinced of the truth of Christianity by this treatise, he only showed what power prejudice exerts over reason.

If the evangelical consistory, before whom Mendelssohn offered to lay his letter for censorship before printing it, did not regret granting him permission to print whatever he pleased, "because they knew his wisdom and modesty to be such that he would write nothing that might give public offense," still he undoubtedly did give offense to many pious persons.

Mendelssohn's epistle to Lavater naturally made a great sensation. Since the appearance of Phædon, he belonged to the select band of authors whose works every cultivated person felt obliged to read. Besides it happened that the subject of the controversy was attractive at the time. The free-thinkers--by no means few at this time-- were glad that at last some one, a Jew at that, had ventured to utter a candid word about Christianity. Owing to his obtrusiveness and presumptuous advocacy of Christianity, Lavater had many enemies. These read Mendelssohn's clever reply to the zealous conversionist with mischievous delight. The hereditary prince of Brunswick, who, as said above, was charmed with Mendelssohn, expressed (January 2, 1770) his admiration, that he had spoken "with such great tact and so high a degree of humanitarianism" upon these nice questions. Bonnet himself, less objectionable than his servile flatterer, admitted the justice of Mendelssohn's cause, and complained of Lavater's injudicious zeal. A letter of his dated January 12, 1770, was almost a triumph for Mendelssohn. He said that his dissertation, with which Lavater had desired to convert the Jew, had not been addressed to the honorable "House of Jacob," for which his heart entertained the sincerest and warmest wishes; much less had it been his intention to give the Jewish philosopher a favorable opinion of Christianity. He was full of admiration for the wisdom, the moderation, and the abilities of the famous son of Abraham. He indeed desired him to investigate Christianity, as it could only gain by being subjected to a close inquiry by the wise son of Mendel. But he did not wish to fall into Lavater's mistakes, and make it burdensome for him. However, in spite of his virtuous indignation, Bonnet perpetrated a bit of knavery against Mendelssohn. Lavater himself was obliged in a letter to publicly beg Mendelssohn's pardon for having placed him in so awkward a position, entreating him at the same time to attest that he had not intentionally been guilty of any indiscretion or perfidy. Thus Mendelssohn had an opportunity of acting magnanimously towards his opponent. On the subject proper under dispute, however, he remained firm; he did not surrender an iota of his Judaism, not even its Talmudical and Rabbinical peculiarities, and with every step his courage grew.

Mendelssohn did not wish to let pass this propitious opportunity of glorifying Judaism, which was so intensely contemned, and make it clear that it was in no way opposed to reason. Despite the warnings of timid Jews, to allow the controversy to lapse, so as not to stir up persecutions, he pointed out with growing boldness the chasm which Christianity had dug between itself and reason, whereas Judaism in its essence was in accord with reason. "The nearer I approach this so highly-esteemed religion," he wrote in his examination of Bonnet's "Palingénésie," "the more abhorrent is it to my reason." It afforded him especial delight when strictly orthodox Christians thought that they were abusing Judaism by declaring it to be equivalent to natural religion (Deism).

"Blessed be God, who has given unto us the doctrine of truth. We have no dogmas contrary to, or beyond reason. We add nothing, except commandments and statutes, to natural religion; but the fundamental doctrines of our religion rest upon the basis of understanding." "This is our glory and our pride, and all the writings of our sages are full of it."

Frankly Mendelssohn spoke to the hereditary prince of Brunswick of the untenability of Christian, and the reasonableness of Jewish, dogmas. He thought that he had not yet done enough for Judaism.

"Would to God, another similar opportunity were granted me; I would do the same.... When I consider what we ought to do for the recognition of the sanctity of our religion."

Those who had not wholly parted company with reason declared Mendelssohn to be in the right, and his defense to be just. They beheld with astonishment that Judaism, so greatly despised, was yet vastly superior to celebrated, official, orthodox Christianity. Through its noble son, Judaism celebrated a triumph. The unhappy ardor of Lavater, and the refined yet daring answer of Mendelssohn for a long time formed the topic of conversation in cultured circles in Germany, and even beyond its borders. The journals commented upon it, and noted every incident. Anecdotes passed backwards and forwards between Zürich and Berlin. It was said that Lavater had asserted that if he were able to continue for eleven days in a state of complete holiness and prayer, he would most positively succeed in converting Mendelssohn to Christianity. When Mendelssohn heard this saying--whether authentic or not it is characteristic of Lavater--he smilingly said, "If I am permitted to sit here in my armchair and smoke a pipe philosophically, I have no objections!" There was more talk of the contest between Mendelssohn and Lavater than of war and peace. Every fair brought pamphlets written in German and French, unimportant productions, which did not deserve to live long. Only a few were on Mendelssohn's side, the majority took the part of Christianity and its representatives against the "insolence of the Jew," who did not consider it an honor to be offered admission into the Christian community.

The worst of these was by a petty, choleric author, named John Balthasar Kölbele, of Frankfort-on-the-Main, who, from hatred of the Jews, or from distemper of body and soul, hurled such coarse insults against Mendelssohn, the rabbis, the Jews, and Judaism, that his very violence paralyzed his onslaught. Kölbele had on a previous occasion attacked Mendelssohn, and jeered at him by means of a lay figure in one of his forgotten romances. He desired to write, or said that he had written, an "Anti-Phædon" against Mendelssohn's "Phædon." His whole gall was vented in a letter to "Mr. Mendelssohn upon the affair of Lavater and Kölbele" (March, 1770). Against the assertions of Mendelssohn as to the purity of Judaism, he brought forward the calumnies and perversions of his brother in feeling, Eisenmenger. Mendelssohn's pure, unselfish character was known in almost all cultivated and high circles of Europe. Nevertheless, Kölbele cast the suspicion upon him of adhering to Judaism from self-interest, "because a Jewish bookkeeper is in a better position than a Christian professor, and the former besides derives some profit from attendance in the antechambers of princes." To Mendelssohn's asseveration that he would cling to Judaism all his lifetime, the malignant fool or libeler rejoined, "How little value Christians attach to the oath of a Jew!" Mendelssohn disposed of him in a few words in the postscript of a letter addressed to Lavater. Nothing more was required; Kölbele had condemned himself. Mendelssohn profited by these vilifying attacks, inasmuch as respectable authors, who in their hearts were not a little irritated by his independent and bold action, left him in peace, rather than be associated with Kölbele. Mendelssohn emerged victorious from this conflict, trifling only at first sight, which had lasted for nearly two years; he rose in public opinion, because he had manfully vindicated his own religion.

It had brought upon him also the reproaches of pious Jews. That which his discernment had feared took place. From love of truth he had publicly declared, that he had found in Judaism certain human additions and abuses, which only served to dim its splendor. This expression offended those who reverenced every custom, however un-Jewish, as a revelation from Sinai, because it was sanctified by time and the code. The entire Jewish world, including the Berlin community, with the exception of the few who belonged to Mendelssohn's circle, would not admit that rust had accumulated upon the noble metal of Judaism. He was therefore questioned on this point, probably by Rabbi Hirschel Lewin, and asked for an exact explanation of the phrase. He was very well able to give a reply, which probably satisfied the rabbi, who was no zealot. But his orthodoxy was still suspected by the strictly pious people whom he termed "the Kölbeles of our co-religionists." He was obliged to exculpate himself from the imputation of having pronounced the decisions of Talmudical sages "as worthless trash." Young Poles, adventurous spirits, thirsting for knowledge, "with good minds, but confused thoughts," both pure and impure elements, forced themselves upon Mendelssohn, and brought him into bad repute. The majority had broken not alone with the Talmud, but also with religion and morality; they led a dissolute life, and considered it the mark of philosophy and enlightenment. Out of love to mankind and independent thought, Mendelssohn entered into relations with them, held discussions with them, advanced and aided them, which also cast a false light upon his relations to Judaism. The frivolity and excesses of these young men were imputed to him, and they were regarded as his protégés and disciples.

He soon gave occasion for an increase of this suspicion. The Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, to avoid the dangers of premature interment, had in a mild, fatherly way (April, 1772) forbidden the Jews of his land to bury the dead at once, according to Jewish usage. Jewish piety towards the deceased, which forbids keeping the dead above the earth long enough for decomposition to set in--a feeling petrified in the ritual code--was affronted by this edict, as though the duke had commanded disregard of a religious practice. The representatives of the congregations of Schwerin supplicated Jacob Emden, of Altona, the aged champion of orthodoxy, to demonstrate from Talmudic and Rabbinic laws, that prolonged exposure of a corpse was an important infringement of Jewish law. Emden, who knew his inability to compose a memorial in German, referred the people of Schwerin to Mendelssohn, whose word had great influence with princes. They followed his advice. How astounded were they to learn, from a letter of Mendelssohn's (May, 1772), that he agreed with the ducal order, that the dead should not be buried before the third day; because, according to the experience of competent physicians, cases of apparent death were possible; and that it was right, in fact, compulsory, to rescue human life in spite of the most stringent ordinances of the religious code! Mendelssohn proved besides that in Talmudical times precautions were taken for the prevention of hasty burial in doubtful cases. His opinion was, with the exception of one blunder, faultlessly elaborated in the Rabbinical manner. Nevertheless, true to his peaceful, complaisant nature, he sent the formula of a petition to the duke to mitigate the decree. Emden, however, in his orthodox zeal, stamped this disputed question almost as an article of faith. A custom so universal among Jews, among Italians and Portuguese as well as Germans and Poles, could not be lightly set aside. Not much value was to be attached to the sayings of doctors. Mendelssohn's Talmudical proofs were not conclusive. In a letter Emden gave him clearly to understand that he was reproving him for his own benefit, to remove the suspicion of lukewarm belief, which he had aroused by his evil surroundings. Thus arose petty discord between Mendelssohn and the rigidly orthodox party, which afterwards increased.

Meanwhile, his friend Lessing, just before his death, had unintentionally stirred up a storm in Germany which caused the Church to tremble, and, under the spell of discontent and an artistic impulse, he had glorified Mendelssohn, together with all Jews, in a perfect poetic creation. The first cause of this tempest, which shook Christianity to its core, was Mendelssohn's dispute with Lavater. Lessing was so indignant at the certainty of victory assumed by the representative of Church Christianity that he had strenuously encouraged his Jewish friend to engage in valorous conflict.

"You alone dare and are able to write and speak thus upon this matter, and are therefore infinitely more fortunate than all other honest people, who cannot achieve the subversion of this detestable structure of unreason otherwise than under the pretense of building a new substructure."

He did not suspect that even then he was holding a thunderbolt in his hands, which he would soon be in a position to hurl against the false gods who thought that they had conquered heaven. During his restless life, which corresponded to his constantly agitated spirit, Lessing came to Hamburg, where he made the acquaintance of the respected and free-thinking family of Reimarus. Hermann Samuel Reimarus, a profound inquirer, indignant at the fossilized and insolent Lutheran Christianity of the Hamburg pastors, had written a "Defense of the Rational Worshipers of God," in which he rejected every revealed religion, endeavoring to secure to reason the rights denied it, and depreciating particularly the founder of Christianity. Reimarus, however, had not courage to utter boldly what he recognized as true, and lay bare publicly, in accordance with his convictions, the weaknesses of the dominant religion. He left this treatise, which contained dangerous and inflammatory material, to his family and to a secret order of free-thinkers, as a legacy. Eliza Reimarus, a noble daughter worthy of her father, handed fragments of this incendiary manuscript to Lessing, who read them with interest, and thought of publishing them. However, he had not sufficient confidence in himself to give a decision upon points of theological discussion, and, therefore, sent these fragments to his Jewish friend, who was capable of judging them. Mendelssohn did not, indeed, find this work very convincing, because the author, embittered by the credulity of the Church, had fallen into the opposite error of advocating the most spiritless form of infidelity, and, according to the shortsighted view of that age, of finding only petty intrigues in great historical movements. Despite Mendelssohn's judgment, his friend continued to think that this book would be of service in humiliating the Church. He seriously thought of hurling the inflammatory writings of Reimarus, under a false name, at the Church. But the Berlin censorship would not allow them to be printed. Then Lessing formed another plan. His position as superintendent of the ducal library of Brunswick in Wolfenbüttel permitted him to publish the manuscript treasures of this rich collection. In the interest of truth he perpetrated a falsehood, asserting that he had discovered in this library these "Fragments of an Unknown," the work of an author of the last generation. Under this mask, and protected by his immunity from censorship in publishing contributions "to history and literature from the treasures of the library at Wolfenbüttel," he began to issue them. He proceeded step by step with the publication of these fragments. The first installments were couched in an entreating tone, asking for support of the religion of reason against the religion of the catechism and the pulpit. He then ventured a step further--to prove the impossibility of the miracles upon which the Church was based, and especially to make apparent the unhistorical character and incredibility of the resurrection of Jesus, one of the main pillars of Christianity, with which it stands and falls. Finally, Lessing produced the most important of the fragments at the beginning of 1778, "Upon the Aim of Jesus and His Disciples." Herein it was explained that Jesus had only desired to announce himself as the Jewish Messiah and King of the Jews. To this end he had made secret preparations with his disciples, formed conspiracies to kindle a revolution in Jerusalem, and attacked the authorities in order to cause the downfall of the High Council (the Synhedrion). But when this plan of subversion failed, and Jesus had to suffer death, his disciples invented another system, and declared that the kingdom of Jesus was not of this world. They proclaimed him the spiritual redeemer of mankind, and gave prominence to the hope of his speedy reappearance; thus the Apostles had concealed and disfigured the original system of Jesus.

This treatment of the early history of Christianity, fairly calculated to overthrow the whole edifice of the Church, descended like a lightning-flash. It was sober, convincing, scientifically elaborated, yet comprehensible by everyone. Amazement and stupefaction were the effect, especially on the publication of the last fragment. Statesmen and citizens were as much affected as theologians. Public opinion upon the matter was divided. Earnest youths about to begin a theologic career hesitated; they did not care to yield their life's activity to what was perhaps only a dream, and chose another vocation. Some affirmed that the proofs against Christianity were irrefutable. The anonymity of the writer heightened the excitement. Conjectures were made as to who the author might be; Mendelssohn's name was publicly mentioned. Only a few knew that this blow had been struck by Reimarus, revered by theologians, too. The anger of the zealots was discharged upon the publisher, Lessing. He was attacked by all parties, and had no companion in arms. His Jewish friend would willingly have hastened to his assistance, but how could he mix himself up in these domestic squabbles of the Christians? Among the numerous slanders circulated by the orthodox about Lessing it was said that the wealthy Jewish community of Amsterdam had paid him one thousand ducats for the publication of the Wolfenbüttel fragments. Accustomed to single-handed combat against want of taste and reason, Lessing was man enough to protect himself. It was a goodly sight to behold this giant in the fray, dealing crushing strokes with light banter and graceful skill. He defeated his enemies one after the other, especially one who was the type of blindly credulous, arrogant, and malicious orthodoxy, the minister Göze in Hamburg. As his pigmy opponents could not overcome this Hercules by literary skill, they summoned to their aid the secular arm. Lessing's productions were forbidden and confiscated, he was compelled to deliver up the manuscripts of the "Fragments," his freedom from censorship was withdrawn, and he was expected not to write any more upon this subject (1778). He struggled against these violent proceedings, but he was vulnerable in one point. The greatest man whom Germany had hitherto produced was without means, and his position as librarian being imperiled, he was obliged to seek for other means of support. During one of his sleepless nights (August 10, 1778), a plan struck him which would simultaneously relieve him from pecuniary embarrassments and inflict a worse blow than ten "Fragments" upon the Lutheran theologians. They thundered against him from their church pulpits; he would try to answer them from his theatre pulpit. The latest, most mature, and most perfect offspring of his Muse, "Nathan the Wise," should be his avenger. Lessing had carried this idea in his mind for several years; but he could not have executed it at a more favorable time.

To the annoyance of the pious Christians who, with all their bigotry, uncharitableness, and desire for persecution, laid claim to every virtue on account of their belief in Jesus, and denounced the Jews, one and all, as outcasts, Lessing represented a Jew as the immaculate ideal of virtue, wisdom, and conscientiousness. This ideal he had found embodied in Moses Mendelssohn. He illumined him and the greatness of his character by the bright light of theatrical effects, and impressed the stamp of eternity upon him by his immortal verses. The chief hero of Lessing's drama is a sage and a merchant, like Mendelssohn, "as good as he is clever, and as clever as he is wise." His nation honors him as a prince, and though it calls him the wise Nathan, he was above all things good:

"The law commandeth mercy, not compliance. And thus for mercy's sake he's uncomplying: ... How free from prejudice his lofty soul-- His heart to every virtue how unlocked-- With every lovely feeling how familiar.... ... O what a Jew is he! yet wishes Only to pass as a Jew."

A son of Judaism, Nathan had elevated himself to the highest level of humane feeling and charitableness, for such his Law prescribed. In a fanatical massacre by Crusaders, ferocious Christians had slaughtered all the Jews in Jerusalem, with their wives and children, and his beloved wife and seven hopeful sons had been burnt. At first he raged, and murmured against fate, but anon he spake with the patience of Job:

"This also was God's decree: So be it!"

In his terrible grief a mounted soldier brought him a young, tender Christian child, an orphan girl, and Nathan took it, bore it to his couch, kissed it, flung himself upon his knees, and thanked God that the lost seven had been replaced by at least one. This Christian maiden he loved with all the warmth of a fatherly heart, and educated her in a strictly conscientious manner. Not one religion in preference to another, still less his own, did he instil into the young soul of Recha, or Blanche, but only the doctrines of pure fear of God, ideal virtue, and morality. Such was the representative of Judaism.

How did the representative of Christianity behave? The Patriarch of Jerusalem, who, with his church, was tolerated in the Mahometan city by the magnanimous Sultan Saladin, by virtue of a solemnly ratified treaty, meditates treacherous plans against the sultan, concocts intrigues against him:

"But what is villainy in human eyes May, in the sight of God, the patriarch thinks, Not be villainy."

For Nathan, he desires to kindle a pyre, because he has fostered, loved, and raised to a lovely, spiritual maiden, a forsaken Christian child. Without the compassion of the Jew, the child would have perished:

"That's nothing! The Jew must still be burnt."

Daya, another representative of Church Christianity, who knows Recha's Christian origin, has misgivings when she sees the Christian child basking in the warm love of a Jew. She is won over from these scruples by costly presents, but she still contemplates depriving Nathan of the most precious object to which his soul clings, even though danger should thereby befall him.

The Templar, Leon of Filnek, represents yet another phase of Christianity. A soldier and at the same time a cleric, who, spared by Saladin although he had broken his word, rescues Recha, the supposed Jewish maiden; he behaves with Christian insolence towards Nathan, speaking roughly and harshly to him, whilst the latter is pouring forth heartfelt gratitude for the rescue of his adopted daughter. Then, gradually, through the wonderful power of love, the Templar lays aside the coarse, hateful garb of Christian prejudice. In his veins there flows Mahometan blood. Only the holy simplicity of the friar Bonafides combines human kindness with monastic ecclesiasticism; but he knows only one duty--obedience--and at the command of the fanatically cruel Patriarch would commit the most horrible crimes.

These lessons Lessing preached from his theatre pulpit to the obdurate minds of the followers of Christ. The wise Jew, Nathan--Mendelssohn--has arrived at the highest level of human sympathy; while the best Christian, the Templar, every cultivated Christian--the Nicolais, the Abts, the Herders--have yet to free themselves from their thick-skinned prejudices, to attain to that height. It is a delusion to claim the possession of the one true religion and the only means of salvation. Who possesses the real ring? How can the real one be detected from the false? Only by meekness, heartfelt tolerance, true benevolence, and most fervent devotion to God; in short, by all those qualities which the official Christianity of the time did not display, and which were perfectly realized in Mendelssohn.

In every way Lessing scourged fossilized, persecuting Christianity, and glorified Judaism through its chief representative. As if this splendid drama, the beautiful first-fruits of German poetry, was to belong to the Jews, although given to the world by a Christian poet, a son of Israel aided its production. Lessing, besieged by theological foes, and fighting against dire necessity, would not have been able to complete it, if, during its composition, he had not been enabled to live without anxiety. He required a loan, and found no helper among the Christians. Moses Wessely, in Hamburg, the brother of the neo-Hebraic poet, Naphtali Wessely, who afterwards made a name for himself in Jewish history, advanced the desired sum, although he was not a wealthy Jew, and only wished to have the honor of possessing something in Lessing's handwriting.

Lessing had not been wrong in thinking that this drama would vex pious Christians much more than ten controversial pamphlets against Göze. As soon as it appeared (spring, 1779), intense wrath was felt against the poet, as if he had degraded Christianity. The "Fragments" and his polemics against Göze had not made him so many enemies as "Nathan." Even his friends greeted him coldly, shunned him, excluded him from the social reunions he loved, and left him to the persecution of his adversaries. Through this silent excommunication he felt himself aggrieved, lost more and more of his bright humor and elasticity of spirit, and became wearied, downcast, and almost stupefied. The treatment of pious Christians terribly embittered the last year of his life. He died in vigorous manhood like an aged man, a martyr to his love of truth. But his soul-conquering voice made itself heard on behalf of tolerance, and gradually softened the discordant notes of hatred and prejudice. In spite of the ban placed upon "Nathan," as well as upon its author, both in Protestant and Catholic countries, this drama became one of the most popular in German poetry, and as often as the verses inspired by conviction resound from the stage, they seize upon the hearts of the audience, loosening the links of the chain of Jew-hatred in the minds of Germans, who find it most difficult to throw off its shackles. "Nathan" made an impression on the mind of the German people, which, despite unfavorable circumstances, has not been obliterated. Twenty years before, when Lessing produced his first drama of "The Jews," an arrogant theologian censured it, because it was altogether too improbable that among a people like the Jews, so noble a character could ever be formed. At the appearance of "Nathan" no reader thought that a noble Jew was possible. Even the most stubborn dared not assert so monstrous an absurdity. The Jewish ideal sage was a reality, and lived in Berlin, an ornament not alone to the Jews, but to the German nation. Without Mendelssohn, the drama of "Nathan" would not have been written, just as without Lessing's friendship Mendelssohn would not have become what he did to German literature and the Jewish world. The cordiality of the intimacy between these two friends showed itself after Lessing's death. His brothers and friends, who only after his demise realized his greatness, turned, in the anguish of their loss, to Mendelssohn, as if it were natural that he should be the chief mourner. And in very sooth he was; none of his associates preserved Lessing's memory with so sorrowful a remembrance and religious a reverence. He was beyond all things solicitous to protect his former friend against misapprehension and slander.

As Mendelssohn, without knowing or desiring it, stimulated Lessing to create an ideal, and through him helped to dispel the bias against Jews, so at the same time, without aiming at it, he inaugurated the spiritual regeneration of his race. The Bible, especially the Pentateuch--the all in all of the Jews--although very many knew it by heart, had become as strange to them, as any unintelligible book. Rabbinical and Kabbalistic expositors had so distorted the simple biblical sense of the words, that everything was found in it except the actual contents.

Polish school-masters--there were no others--with rod and angry gestures, instructed Jewish boys in tender youth to discover the most absurd perversities in the Holy Book, translating it into their hateful jargon, and so confusing the text with their own translation, that it seemed as if Moses had spoken in the barbarous dialect of Polish Jews.

The neglect of all secular knowledge, which increased with every century, had reached such a pitch that every nonsensical oddity, even blasphemy, was subtly read into the verses of Scripture. What had been intended as a comfort to the soul was changed into a poison. Mendelssohn acutely felt this ignorance and wresting of Bible words, for he had arrived at the enlightened view that Holy Writ does not contain "that which Jews and Christians believe they can find therein," and that a good, simple translation would be an important step towards the promotion of culture among Jews. But in his modesty and diffidence it did not occur to him to employ these means to educate his brethren. He compiled a translation of the Pentateuch for his children, to give them a thorough education and to introduce the word of God to them in an undisfigured form, without troubling (as he observed) "whether they would continue to be compelled, in Saxe-Gotha, on every journey, to pay for their Jewish heads at a game of dice, or to tell the story of the three rings to every petty ruler." It was only at the urgent request of a man whose word carried weight with Mendelssohn, that he decided to publish his translation of the Pentateuch into German (in Jewish-German characters) for Jewish readers. It cost him an effort, however, to attach his name to it.

He knew his Jewish public too well not to understand that the translation, however excellently it might be done, would meet with little approval, unless it were accompanied by a Hebrew exposition. Of what value to the depraved taste of Jewish readers was a book without a commentary? From time immemorial, since commentaries and super-commentaries had come into existence, these had been much more admired than the most beautiful text. Mendelssohn, therefore, obtained the assistance of an educated Pole, named Solomon Dubno, who, a praiseworthy exception to his countrymen, was thoroughly acquainted with Hebrew grammar, to undertake the composition of a running commentary. The work was begun by securing the necessary subscribers, without whom no book could at that time be issued. It became apparent that Mendelssohn had already many supporters and admirers among his brethren, within and beyond Germany. His undertaking, which was to remove from the Jews the reproach of ignorance of their own literature, and of speaking a corrupt language, was hailed with joy. Most of the subscribers came from Berlin and Mendelssohn's native town, Dessau, which was indeed proud of him. From Poland also orders for the Germanized "Torah" arrived, mostly from Wilna, where Elijah Wilna, to a certain extent a liberal thinker, and the visionary perversities of the New-Chassidim had drawn attention to the Holy Scriptures. As a sign of the times, it may also be noticed that the translation was purchased by Christians, professors, pastors, court preachers, consistorial councilors, court councilors, and the nobility. Mendelssohn's Christian friends were, indeed, extraordinarily active in promoting his work. Eliza Reimarus, Lessing's noble friend, even collected subscriptions.

Glad as were Mendelssohn's admirers to receive the news of a Pentateuch translation from his hand, so disturbed were the rigid adherents to antiquity and obsolete habit. They felt vividly, without being able to think it out clearly, that the old times, with their ingenuous credulity--which regarded everything with unquestioned faith as an emanation from a Divine source--would now sink into the grave.

No sooner was a specimen of the translation published, than the rabbis of the old school were prejudiced against it, and planned how to keep the enemy from the house of Jacob. To these opponents of Mendelssohn's enterprise belonged men who brought honor upon Judaism, not alone by their Rabbinical scholarship and keen intellects, but also by their nobility of character. There were especially three men, Poles by birth, who had as little appreciation of the innovations of the times as of beauty of form and purity of speech. One of them, Ezekiel Landau (chief rabbi of Prague, from the year 1752; died in 1793), enjoyed great respect both within and outside his community. He was a clever man, and learned in time to swim with the tide. The second, Raphael Cohen, the grandfather of Riesser (born 1722, died 1803), who had emigrated from Poland, and had been called from Posen to the rabbinate of the three communities of Hamburg, Altona, and Wandsbeck, was a firm, decided character, without guile or duplicity, who as judge meted out justice without respect to persons, considering justice the support of God's throne. The third and youngest was Hirsch Janow, a son-in-law of Raphael Cohen, who, on account of his profound acumen in Talmudical discussions, was called the "keen scholar" (born 1750, died 1785). His acute mind was equally versed in the intricate problems of mathematics as in those of the Talmud. He was thoroughly unselfish, the trifling income that he received from the impoverished community of Posen he gave away to the unfortunate; he distributed alms with open-handed benevolence, and without asking questions whether the recipients were orthodox or heretics, whilst he himself starved. He contracted debts to save the needy from misery. Solomon Maimon, a deep thinker, who had opportunities of knowing men from their worst side, called this rabbi of Posen and Fürth "a godly man," an epithet not to be considered an exaggeration from such lips. To these three rabbis a fourth kindred spirit may be added, Phineas Levi Hurwitz (born 1740; died 1802), rabbi of Frankfort-on-the-Main, also a Pole, educated in the Chassidean school. These men, and others who thought like them, and who regarded the perusal of a German book as a grievous sin, from their point of view were right in opposing Mendelssohn's innovation. They perceived that the Jewish youth would learn the German language from the Mendelssohn translation more than an understanding of the "Torah"; that the former would strongly tend to become the chief object of study; the attention to Holy Writ would degenerate into an unimportant secondary matter, whilst the study of the Talmud would be completely suppressed. Though Mendelssohn himself enjoyed good repute from a religious point of view, his adherents and supporters were not invariably free from reproach. Unworthy men, who had broken with Judaism, and conceitedly termed themselves Mendelssohnians, were energetic in advancing the sale of the translation, and thus brought it into suspicion with the rigidly orthodox party.

Raphael Cohen, of Hamburg, a man of hasty temper, was the most zealous agitator against the German version of the Bible. But as Mendelssohn had relatives on his wife's side in this town, and also many admirers, no action could be taken against him there or in Prague, where there were freethinkers among the Jews. Fürth, therefore, was looked upon as the fittest place whence the interdict (about June, 1779) against "the German Pentateuch of Moses of Dessau" should be launched. All true to Judaism were forbidden, under penalty of excommunication, to use this translation.

Meanwhile the conflict between the old and the new Judaism was conducted with calmness, and no violent symptoms showed themselves. If Jacob Emden had been alive, the contest would have raged more fiercely, and evoked more disturbance. Mendelssohn was too unselfish, too gentle and philosophically tranquil to grow excited on hearing of the ban against his undertaking, or to solicit the aid of his Christian friends of high rank in silencing his opponents. He was prepared for opposition. "As soon as I yielded to Dubno to have my translation printed, I placed my soul in my hands, raised my eyes to the mountains, and gave my back to the smiters." He regarded the play of human passions and excessive ardor for religion as natural phenomena, which demanded quiet observation. He did not wish to disturb this peaceful observation by external influence, by threats and prohibitions, or by the interference of the temporal power. "Perhaps a little excitement serves the best interests of the enterprise nearest to my heart." He suggested that if his version had been received without opposition, its superfluity would have been proved. "The more the so-called wise men of the day object to it, the more necessary it is. At first, I only intended it for ordinary people, but now I find that it is much more needful for rabbis." On the part of his opponents, however, no decided efforts were made to suppress his translation, which appeared to them so dangerous, or to denounce its author. Only in certain Polish towns, such as Posen and Lissa, it was forbidden, and it is said to have been publicly committed to the flames. Violent action was to be feared only from the indiscreet, resolute Rabbi Raphael Cohen. He seems, however, to have delayed action until the whole appeared, in order to obtain proofs of deserved condemnation. Mendelssohn, therefore, sought help to counteract his zeal. He prevailed upon his friend, Augustus von Hennigs, Danish state councilor and brother-in-law of his intimate friend, Eliza Reimarus, to try to induce the king of Denmark and certain courtiers to become subscribers to the work; this would quench the ardor of the zealot. Hennigs, a man of hasty action, forthwith turned to the Danish minister, Von Guldberg, to fulfill the request of Mendelssohn. To his astonishment and Mendelssohn's, he received an insulting reply, to the effect that the king and his illustrious brothers were prepared to subscribe if the minister could assure them that the translation contained nothing against the inspiration and truth of the Holy Scriptures, so that the Jews might not afterwards say "that Moses Mendelssohn was an adherent to the (ill-famed) religion of Berlin."

This "Berlin religion" was at the time the terror of the orthodox, both in the Church and the Synagogue, and it cannot be said to have been an idle fear. To keep at a distance this scoffing tendency against religion, over-zealous rabbis tried to block every possible avenue of approach to the houses of the Jews. Events of the immediate future proved that the rabbis were not pursuing a phantom. Mendelssohn, in his innocent piety, did not recognize the enemy, although it passed to and fro through his own house. At length, the interdict against Mendelssohn's translation of the Pentateuch was promulgated by Raphael Cohen (July 17th); it was directed against all Jews who read the new version. The author himself was not excommunicated, either out of consideration for his prominence, or from weakness and half-heartedness. However, before the blow fell, Mendelssohn had warded off its consequences. He persuaded Von Hennigs that he need have no scruples about obtaining the king's subscription for the translation, and it was done. At the head of the list of contributors stood the names of King Christian of Denmark and the Crown Prince. By this means Raphael Cohen was effectually foiled in his endeavors to condemn and destroy a work which he regarded as heretical.

His adversaries nevertheless struck Mendelssohn a blow, to hinder the completion of the translation. They succeeded in alienating Solomon Dubno, his right-hand man, which caused Mendelssohn serious perplexity. That his work might not remain unfinished, he had to undertake the commentary to the Pentateuch himself, but finding the work beyond his strength he was obliged to seek for assistants. In Wessely he found a co-operator of similar disposition to his own; but he did not care to undertake the whole burden, and thus Mendelssohn was compelled to entrust a portion to Herz Homberg, his son's tutor, and to another Pole, Aaron Jaroslav. The former was not altogether a congenial associate. He knew that Homberg in his heart was estranged from Judaism, and that he would not execute the holy work according to his method and as a sacred duty, as he himself felt it to be. But he had no alternative. Owing to Homberg's participation in the work, the translation, finished in 1783, was discredited by the orthodox; and they desired to exclude it altogether from Jewish houses.

This severity roused opposition. Forbidden fruit tastes sweet. Youthful students of the Talmud seized upon the German translation behind the backs of their masters, who depreciated the new influence, and in secret learned at once the most elementary and the most sublime lessons--the German language and the philosophy of religion, Hebrew grammar and poetry. A new view of the world was opened to them. The Hebrew commentary served as a guide to a proper understanding of the translation. As if touched by a magic wand, the Talmud students, fossils of the musty schoolhouses, were transfigured, and upon the wings of the intellect they soared above the gloomy present, and took their flight heavenwards. An insatiable desire for knowledge took possession of them; no territory, however dark, remained inaccessible to them. The acumen, quick comprehension, and profound penetrativeness, which these youths had acquired in their close study of the Talmud, rendered it easy for them to take their position in the newly-discovered world. Thousands of Talmud students from the great schools of Hamburg, Prague, Nikolsburg, Frankfort-on-the-Main, Fürth, and even from Poland, became little Mendelssohns; many of them eloquent, profound thinkers. With them Judaism renewed its youth. All who, towards the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, were in various ways public workers, had up to a certain period in their lives been one-sided Talmudists, and needed the inspiration of Mendelssohn's example to become exponents and promoters of culture among Jews. In a very short time a numerous band of Jewish authors arose, who wrote in a clear Hebrew or German style upon matters of which shortly before they had had no knowledge. The Mendelssohn translation speedily resulted in a veritable renaissance of the Jews. They found their level in European civilization more quickly than the Germans, and--what should not be overlooked--Talmudic schooling had sharpened their intelligence. Mendelssohn's translation of the Pentateuch, together with his paraphrase of the Psalms, has produced more good than that of Luther, because instead of fossilizing, it animated the mind. The inner freedom of the Jews, as has been said, dates from this translation.

The beginning of the outward liberation of the Jews from the cruel bondage of thousands of years was also connected with Mendelssohn's name, and like his activity for their internal freedom was unconscious, without violence or calculation. It seems a miracle, though no marvelous occurrence accompanied it. It secured to the Jews two advocates, than whom none more zealous, none warmer could be desired: these were Lessing and Dohm.

Since the middle of the eighteenth century the attention of the cultured world had been directed towards the Jews without any action on their part. Montesquieu, the first to penetrate to the profound depths of human laws and reveal their spirit, was also the first to raise his weighty voice against the barbarous treatment of the Jews. In his widely-read, suggestive work, "Spirit of the Laws," he had demonstrated, with convincing arguments, the harm that the ill-treatment of the Jews had caused to states, and branded the cruelty of the Inquisition with an ineradicable stigma. The piercing cry of agony of a tortured Marrano at sight of a stake prepared for a "Judaizing" maiden of eighteen years of age in Lisbon had aroused Montesquieu, and the echo of his voice resounded throughout Europe.

"You Christians complain that the Emperor of China roasts all Christians in his dominions over a slow fire. You behave much worse towards Jews, because they do not believe as you do. If any of our descendants should ever venture to say that the nations of Europe were cultured, your example will be adduced to prove that they were barbarians. The picture that they will draw of you will certainly stain your age, and spread abroad hatred of all your contemporaries."

Montesquieu had rediscovered the true idea of justice, which mankind had lost. But how difficult was it to cause this idea to be fully recognized with reference to Jews!

Two events had brought the Jews, their concerns, their present, and their past before public notice: their demand for a legal standing in England, and Voltaire's attacks upon them. In England, where a century before they had, as it were, crept in, they formed a separate community, especially in the capital, without being tolerated or recognized by law. They were regarded as foreigners--as Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutchmen, or Germans, and had to pay the alien duty. However, the authorities, especially the judges, showed regard for the Jewish belief; for instance, they did not summon Jewish witnesses on the Sabbath. After the Jews settled in the American colonies of England had been naturalized, a bill was presented in Parliament by merchants and manufacturers, Jews and their friends, to be sure, begging that they be treated as natives of England, without being compelled to obtain civil rights by taking the sacrament, as the law prescribed. Pelham, the minister, supported the petition, and pointed out the advantages that would accrue to the country by the large capital of the Portuguese Jews and their warm attachment to England. By their opponents, however, partly self-interest, partly religious prejudices were brought to bear against them. It was urged that, placed on an equal footing with English citizens, the Jews would acquire the whole wealth of the kingdom, would obtain possession of all the landed property, and disinherit Christians: the latter would be their slaves, and the Jews would choose their own rulers and kings. Orthodox literalists argued that according to Christian prophecies they were to remain without a home until gathered to the land of their fathers. Surprisingly enough, a bill was passed by the Upper House permitting Jews who had resided in England or Ireland for three consecutive years to be naturalized; but they were not to occupy any secular or clerical office, nor to receive the Parliamentary franchise. The lords and the bishops, then, were not opposed to the Jews. The majority of the Lower House also agreed to the bill, and George II ratified it (March, 1753). Was the decision of the Three Estates really the expression of the majority of the nation? This at once became doubtful: imprecations were immediately thundered from pulpits, guilds, and the taverns against the ministry which had urged the Naturalization Act for Jews. In our days it seems hardly credible that the London merchants should have feared the ruin of their trade by the influx of Jewish capitalists. Deacon Josiah Tucker, who took the part of the Jews, and defended the Naturalization Act, was attacked by the opposition in parliament, in the newspapers, and in pamphlets, and his effigy, together with his defense of the Jews, was burnt at Bristol. To the vexation of the liberal-minded, the ministry were weak enough to yield to the clamor of the populace arising from mercantile jealousy and fanatical intolerance, and to annul their own work (1754) "because it had provoked displeasure, and the minds of many loyal subjects had been disquieted thereby." For, even the most violent enemies of the act could not impute evil to the Jews of England; they created a good impression upon Englishmen by their riches, accumulated without usury, and by their noble bearing. Public opinion warmly sided with them and their claims for civil equality, and if, for the moment, these were disregarded, yet no unfavorable result ensued.

The second occurrence, although originating in a single person, roused even more attention than the action of the English Parliament towards the Jews. This person was Arouet de Voltaire, king in the domain of literature in the eighteenth century, who with his demoniacal laughter blew down like a house of cards the stronghold of the Middle Ages. He, who believed neither in Providence nor in the moral progress of mankind, was a mighty instrument of history in the advancement of progress. Voltaire--in his writings an entrancing wizard, a sage, in his life a fool, the slave of base passions--picked a quarrel with the Jews, and sneered at them and their past. His hostility arose from personal ill-humor and irritability. He maintained that during his stay in London he lost eighty per cent of a loan of 25,000 francs, through the bankruptcy of a Jewish capitalist named Medina. He cannot, however, always be believed.

"Medina told me that he was not to blame for his bankruptcy: that he was unfortunate, that he had never been a son of Belial. He moved me, I embraced him, we praised God together, and I lost my money. I have never hated the Jewish nation; I hate nobody."

Yet, a low-minded Harpagon, who clung to his money, Voltaire, on account of this large or small loss, hated not only this Jew, but all Jews on earth. A second incident excited him still more against them. When Voltaire was in Berlin and Potsdam as court poet, literary mentor, and attendant of King Frederick, who both admired and detested this diabolical genius, he gave a filthy commission to a Jewish jeweler, named Hirsch, or Hirschel (1750), which he afterwards, at the instigation of a rival in the trade, named Ephraim Veitel, wished to withdraw. Friction arose between Voltaire and Hirschel, until some arrangement was made, which the former afterwards desired to evade. In a word, Voltaire practiced a series of mean tricks upon his Jewish tradesman: cheated him about some diamonds, abused him, lied, forged documents, and acted as if he were the injured party. At length a complicated lawsuit sprang from these proceedings. King Frederick, who had obtained information of all this from the legal documents, and from a pamphlet, written ostensibly by Hirsch, in reality by Voltaire's enemies, was highly enraged with the poet and philosopher scamp. He resolved to banish him from Prussia, and wrote against him a comedy in French verse, called "Tantalus in the Lawsuit." Voltaire's quarrel with the Prussian Jew created a sensation, and provided ample material for the mischievous delight of his opponents.

Next to avarice, revenge was a prominent feature in his character. It was too trifling for Voltaire to avenge himself upon the individual Jew who had contributed to his humiliation; he determined to make the whole Jewish nation feel his hatred. Whenever he had an opportunity of speaking of Judaism or Jews, he bespattered the Jews of the past and the present with his obscene satire. This accorded with his method of warfare. Christianity, which he thoroughly hated and despised, could not be attacked openly without rendering the aggressor liable to severe punishment. Judaism, the parent of Christianity, therefore served as the target, against which he hurled his elegant, lightly brandished, but venomous darts. In one of his essays particularly he poured forth his gall against Jews and Judaism.

This partial and superficial estimate of the Jews, this summary judgment of a whole people, and a history of a thousand years, irritated many truth-loving men; but no one dared provoke a quarrel with so dreaded an antagonist as Voltaire. It required a bold spirit, but it was hazarded by a cultured Jew, named Isaac Pinto, more from skillfully-calculated motives than from indignation at Voltaire's baseless defamation. Pinto (born in Bordeaux, 1715; died in Amsterdam, 1787) belonged to a Portuguese Marrano family, was rich, cultivated, noble, and disinterested in his own affairs; but suffered from pardonable egoism, namely, on behalf of the community. After leaving Bordeaux he settled in Amsterdam, where he not only served the Portuguese community, but also advanced large sums of money to the government of Holland, and therefore held an honorable position. He always took warm interest in the congregation in which he had been born, and assisted it by word and deed. But his heart was most devoted to the Portuguese Jews, his brethren by race and speech; on the other hand, he was indifferent and cold towards the Jews of the German and Polish tongues; he looked down upon them with disdainful pride, as Christians of rank upon lowly Jews. Nobility of mind and pride of race were intimately combined in Pinto. In certain unpleasant matters in which the Portuguese community of Bordeaux had become entangled, he displayed, on the one hand, ardent zeal, on the other, hardness of heart. In this prosperous commercial town, since the middle of the sixteenth century, there had flourished a congregation of fugitive Marranos, who had fled from the prisons and the autos-da-fé of the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition. These refugees had brought considerable capital and an enterprising spirit, and thus secured right of residence and certain privileges, but only under the name of new-Christians or Portuguese merchants. For a time they were forced to undergo the hypocrisy of having their marriages solemnized in the churches. Their numbers gradually increased; in two centuries (1550-1750) the congregation of Bordeaux had grown to 200 families, or 500 souls. The majority of the Portuguese Jews, or new-Christians, of Bordeaux, kept large banking-houses, engaged in the manufacture of arms, equipped ships, or undertook trans-marine business with French colonies. To their importance as merchants and ship-owners they united staunch uprightness, blameless honesty in business, liberality towards Jews and non-Jews, and the dignity which they had brought from the Pyrenean peninsula, their unnatural mother-country. Thus they gained respect and distinction among the Christian inhabitants of Bordeaux, and the French court as well as the high officials connived at their presence, and gradually came to recognize them as Jews. The important mercantile town also attracted German Jews from Alsace, and French Jews from Avignon, under papal government, who obtained the right to settle by paying large sums of money. The Portuguese Jews were jealous; they feared that they would be placed on a level with these co-religionists, who were little educated, and engaged in petty trading or monetary transactions, and that they would lose their honorable reputation. Induced by these selfish motives they exerted themselves to have the immigrant German and Avignon Jews expelled from the town, by appealing to the old edict that Jews might not dwell in France. But the exiles contrived to gain the protection of influential persons at court, and thus obtained the privilege of sojourn. Through the connivance of the authorities, 152 foreign Jews had already flocked to Bordeaux, several of whom had powerful friends. This was a thorn in the side of the Portuguese, and to hinder the influx of strangers, they passed (1760) an illiberal communal law against their foreign co-religionists. They branded every foreign Jew not of Portuguese origin as a vagrant and a beggar, and as a burden to the wealthy. They calumniated the strangers, asserting that they followed dishonorable, fraudulent occupations, and thereby predisposed the citizens and authorities against them. According to their proposal, Portuguese Jews, or their council, should be vested with the right to expel the foreign Jews, or "vagrants," from the town within three days. This cruel and heartless statute had to be confirmed by King Louis XV. It was not difficult to obtain from this monarch, who was ruled by his wives and his courtiers, the most inhuman petitions. A friend and kinsman of Isaac Pinto undertook to get the sanction of the court for this statute.

This was Jacob Rodrigues Pereira (born in Spain, 1715; died in Paris, 1780), grandfather of the famous and enterprising Emile and Isaac Pereira, a man of talent and noble character, and an artist of a peculiar kind, who had obtained wide renown. He had invented a sign language for the deaf and dumb, and taught these unfortunate people a means of expressing their thoughts. As a Marrano, he had taught the deaf and dumb in Spain. Love for the religion of his ancestors, or hatred of the bloodthirsty Catholic Church impelled him to leave the land of the Inquisition (about 1734), and, together with his mother and sister, to emigrate to Bordeaux. Here, even before Abbé de l'Epée, he so thoroughly verified his theory for the instruction of those born dumb, in a specially appointed school, that the king conferred a reward, and the first men of science--D'Alembert, Buffon, Diderot, and Rousseau--lavished praises upon him. Pereira afterwards became royal interpreter and member of the Royal Society in London. The Portuguese community of Bordeaux appointed him their representative in Paris, to ventilate their complaints and accomplish their ends. Moved with sympathy for the unfortunate, he was yet so filled with communal egoism, that he did not hesitate to inflict injury upon his German and Avignon co-religionists. The commission to secure from Louis XV the ratification of the proposed statute, he carried out but too conscientiously. But in the disorderly government of this king and his court there was a vast difference between the passing and the administering of a law. The higher officials were able to circumvent any law or defer its execution. The expulsion of the Jews of German and Avignon origin from Bordeaux lay in the hands of the governor, the Duc de Richelieu. Isaac Pinto, who was on intimate terms with him, was able to win his support. Richelieu issued an urgent command (November, 1761) that within two weeks all foreign Jews should be banished from Bordeaux. Exception was made only in favor of two old men and women whom the hardships of the expulsion would have killed, and of a man who had been of service to the town (Jacob de Perpignan). All the rest were plunged into unavoidable distress, as it was forbidden to Jews to settle anywhere in France, and the districts and towns where Jews already dwelt admitted no new-comers. What a difference between the German Jew Moses Mendelssohn and the Portuguese Jews Isaac Pinto and Rodrigues Pereira, who in their time were ranked side by side! The former did not cease his efforts, until by his influence he brought help to his unhappy brethren, or at least offered them comfort. For the Jews in Switzerland, who were tolerated only in two small towns, and even there were so enslaved that they must have died out, Mendelssohn procured some alleviation through his opponent Lavater. Several hundred Jews were about to be expelled from Dresden, because they could not pay the poll-tax laid upon them. Through Mendelssohn's intercession with one of his numerous admirers, Cabinet Councilor Von Ferber, the unfortunate people obtained permission to remain in Dresden. To a Jewish Talmudical scholar unjustly suspected of theft and imprisoned in Leipsic, Mendelssohn cleverly contrived to send a letter of consolation, whereby he gained his freedom. Isaac Pinto and Jacob Pereira, on the other hand, were zealous in bringing about the expulsion of their brethren by race and religion, which Mendelssohn considered the hardest punishment of the Jews, "equal to annihilation from the face of God's earth, where armed prejudice repulses them at every frontier."

The cruel proceedings of the Portuguese Jews against their brethren in Bordeaux made a great stir. If Jews might not tarry in France, why should those of Portuguese tongue be tolerated? The latter, therefore, saw themselves compelled to put themselves in a favorable light, and requested Isaac Pinto, who had already appeared in public, and possessed literary culture, to write a sort of vindication for them, and make clear the wide difference between Jews of Portuguese descent and those of other lands. Pinto consented, or rather followed his own inclination, and prepared the "Reflections" upon Voltaire's defamation of Judaism (1762). He told this reckless calumniator that the crime of libeling single individuals was increased when the false accusations affected a whole nation, and reached its highest degree when directed against a people insulted by all men, and when the responsibility for the misdeeds of a few is laid upon the whole body, whose members, moreover, widely scattered, have assumed the character of the inhabitants of the country in which they live. An English Jew as little resembles his co-religionist of Constantinople, as the latter does a Chinese mandarin; the Jew of Bordeaux and he of Metz are two utterly different beings. Nevertheless, Voltaire had indiscriminately condemned them, and his sketch of them was as absurd as untrue. Voltaire, who felt called upon to extirpate prejudices, had in fact lent his pen to the greatest of them. He does not indeed wish them to be burnt, but a number of Jews would rather be burnt than so calumniated. "The Jews are not more ignorant, more barbarous, or superstitious than other nations, least of all do they merit the accusation of avarice." Voltaire owed a duty to the Jews, to truth, to his century, and to posterity, which would justly appeal to his authority when abusing and trying to crush an exceedingly unhappy people.

However, as already said, it was not so much Pinto's aim to vindicate the whole of the Jewish world against Voltaire's malicious charges as to place his kinsmen, the Portuguese or Sephardic Jews, in a more favorable light. To this end, he pretended that a wide gulf existed between them and those of other extraction, especially the German and Polish Jews. He averred, with great exaggeration, that if a Sephardic Jew in England or Holland wedded a German Jewess, he would be excluded from the community by his relatives, and would not even find a resting-place in their cemetery. This arose from the fact that the Portuguese Jews traced their lineage from the noblest families of the tribe of Judah, and that their noble descent had always in Spain and Portugal been an impulse to great virtues and a protection against vice and crime. Among them no traces of the wickedness or evil deeds of which Voltaire accused them were to be found. On the contrary, they had brought wealth to the states which received them, especially to Holland. The German and Polish Jews, on the other hand, Pinto abandoned to the attacks of their detractors, except that he excused their not over honorable trades and despicable actions by the overwhelming sufferings, the slavery, and humiliation which they had endured, and were still enduring. He succeeded in obtaining what he had desired. In reply, Voltaire paid him and the Portuguese Jews compliments, and admitted that he had done wrong in including them in his charges, but nevertheless continued to abuse Jewish antiquity.

Pinto's defense attracted great attention. The press, both French and English, pronounced a favorable judgment, and espoused the cause of the Jews against Voltaire. But they blamed Pinto for having been too partial to the Portuguese, and too strongly opposed to the German and Polish Jews, and, like Voltaire, passing sentence upon all indiscriminately, because of the behavior of a few individuals. A Catholic priest under a Jewish disguise took up the cause of Hebrew antiquity. He addressed "Jewish Letters" to Voltaire, pretending that they came from Portuguese and German Jews; these were well meant but badly composed. They were widely read, and helped to turn the current of public opinion in favor of the Jews against Voltaire's savage attacks. They did not fail to remind him that owing to loss of money sustained through one Jew he pursued the whole race with his anger. This friendly pamphlet on behalf of the Jews being written in French, then the fashionable language, it was extensively read and discussed, and found a favorable reception.

Sympathy for the Jews and the movement to elevate them from their servile position were most materially stimulated by a persecution which humane thinkers of the time considered surprising and unexpected, but which has often been repeated in the midst of Christian nations. This persecution kindled passions on both sides, and awakened men to activity. In no part of Europe, perhaps, were the oppression and abasement of Jews greater than in the originally German, but at that time French province of Alsace, to which Metz may be reckoned. All causes of inveterate Jew-hatred--clerical intolerance, racial antipathy, arbitrariness of the nobility, mercantile jealousy, and brute ignorance--were combined against the Jews of Alsace, to render their existence in the century of enlightenment a continual hell. Yet the oppression was so paltry in its nature that it could never stimulate the Jews to offer heroic resistance. The German populace of this province, like Germans in general, clung tenaciously to their hatred of the Jews. Both the nobles and citizens of Alsace turned a deaf ear to the voice of humanity, which spoke so eloquently in French literature, and would not abate one jot of their legal rights over the Jews, who were treated as serfs. In Alsace there lived from three to four thousand Jewish families (from fifteen to twenty thousand souls). It was in the power of the nobility to admit new, or expel old families. In Metz the merchants had had a law passed limiting Jews to four hundred and eighty families. This condition of affairs had the same consequences as in Austria and Prussia: younger sons were condemned to celibacy, or exile from their paternal home, and daughters to remain unmarried. In fact, it was worse than in Austria and elsewhere, because German pedantry carefully looked to the execution of these rigorous Pharaonic laws, and stealthily watched the French officials, lest any attempt be made to show indulgence towards the unfortunate people. Naturally the Jews of Alsace and Metz were enclosed in Ghettos, and could only occasionally pass through the other parts of the towns. For these privileges they were compelled to pay exorbitant taxes.

Louis XIV had presented a portion of his income derived from the Jews of Metz as a gift to the Duc de Brancas and the Countess de Fontaine. They had to pay these persons 20,000 livres annually; besides poll-taxes, trade-taxes, house-taxes, contributions to churches and hospitals, war-taxes, and exactions of every sort under other names.

In Alsace they were obliged to pay protection-money to the king, tribute to the bishop of Strasburg, and the duke of Hagenau, besides residence-taxes to the nobles in whose feudal territory they dwelt, and war-taxes. The privilege of residence did not descend to the eldest son, but had to be purchased from the nobleman, as if the son were a foreign applicant for protection. The Jews had to win the good opinion, not alone of their lord, but also of his officials, by rich gifts at New Year, and on other occasions. Whence could they procure all these moneys, and still support their synagogues and schools?

Almost every handicraft and trade were forbidden them in Alsace: legally they could engage only in cattle-dealing, and in trading in gold and silver. In Metz the Jews were allowed to kill only such animals as they required for private consumption, and the appointed slaughterers had to keep a list of the animals slain. If they wished to make a journey outside their narrow province, they had to pay a poll-tax, and were subjected to the vexations of passports. In Strasburg, the capital of the province, no Jew could stay over night. What remained but to obtain the money indispensable for their wretched existence in an illegal way--through usury? Those who possessed money made advances to the small tradesmen, farmers, and vinedressers, at the risk of losing the amounts lent, and demanded high interest, or employed other artifices. This only caused them to be more hated, and the growing impoverishment of the people was attributed to them, and was the source of their unspeakable sufferings. They were in the sad position of being compelled to make themselves and others unhappy.

This miserable condition of the Alsatian Jews a villainous man sought to turn to his own advantage, and he almost brought on a sanguinary persecution. A lawyer, not without brains and literary culture, named Hell, belonging to a poor family, and ardently wishing for a high position, being acquainted with the devices of the Jewish usurers, actually learned the Hebrew language, to be able to levy blackmail on them without fear of discovery. He sent threatening letters in Hebrew, saying that they would inevitably be accused of usury and deception, if they did not supply him with a stated sum of money. This worthless lawyer afterwards became district judge to several Alsatian noblemen, and thus the Jews were given wholly into his power. Those who did not satisfy his continually increasing demands, were accused, ill-treated, and condemned. Meantime his unjust conduct was partially exposed: he was suspected, and this excited him against the Jews of Alsace. He devised a plan to arouse fanaticism against them. He pointed out to debtors a way to escape the oppressive debts which they owed Jewish money-lenders, by producing false receipts as for payments already rendered. Some of his creatures traveled through Alsace, and wrote out such acquittances. Conscientious debtors had their scruples silenced by the clergy, who assured them that robbing the Jews was a righteous act. The timid were pacified by a rogue especially despatched for that purpose, who distributed orders and crosses, presumably in the name of the king, to those who accepted and presented the false receipts, and were ready to accuse the Jews of oppression and duplicity. Thus a menacing feeling, bordering on actual violence, developed against the Jews of Alsace. The debtors united with common ruffians and clergymen to implore the weak-minded king Louis XVI, to put an end to all disturbances by expelling the Jews from the province. To crown his work, the villainous district magistrate strove to exasperate the populace against them. He composed a venomous work against them (1779), "Observations of an Alsatian upon the Present Quarrels of the Jews of Alsace," in which he collected all the slanderous accusations against Jews from ancient times, in order to present a repulsive picture of them, and expose them to hatred and extermination. He admitted that receipts had been forged, but this was in consequence of the decrees of Providence, to whom alone vengeance was becoming. They hoped by these means to avenge the crucifixion of Jesus, the murder of God. This district judge aimed at the annihilation, or, at least, the expulsion of the Jews. But the spirit of toleration had acquired sufficient strength to prevent the success of such cunning designs. His base tricks were revealed, and, at the command of the king, Hell was imprisoned, and afterwards banished from Alsace. A decree of the sovereign ordered (May, 1780) that lawsuits against usurers should no longer be decided by the district courts of the nobility, but by the chief councilor, or state councilor (Conseil Souverain) of Alsace.

One result of these occurrences was that the Alsatian Jews finally roused themselves, and ventured to state that their position was intolerable, and to entreat relief from the throne of the gentle king Louis XVI. Their representatives (Cerf Berr?) drew up a memorial to the state council upon the inhuman laws under which they groaned, and made proposals for the amelioration of their lot. They felt, however, that this memorial should be written so as to influence public opinion, at this time almost as powerful as the king himself. But in their midst there was no man of spirit and ability who could compose a fitting description of their condition.

To whom could they turn except to Mendelssohn, looked upon by European Jews as their advocate and powerful supporter in distress? To him, therefore, the Alsatian Jews--or, more correctly, their distinguished representative Cerf Berr, who knew Mendelssohn--sent the material with the request, to give the necessary polish and an impressive form to their petition. Mendelssohn had neither the leisure, nor perhaps the skill to carry out their request. Fortunately, he had found a new friend and admirer, who, by knowledge and position, was better able to formulate such a memorial. Christian William Dohm (b. 1751, d. 1820), owing to his thorough knowledge of history, had shortly before been appointed by Frederick the Great--with the title of military councilor--to superintend the archives. Like all ambitious youths and men who frequented Berlin, Dohm had sought out the Jewish philosopher, at this time at the summit of his fame; and like all who entered his circle Dohm felt himself attracted by his intellectuality, gentleness, and great wisdom. During his stay in Berlin he was a regular visitor at the house of Mendelssohn, who, on Saturday, his day of leisure, always assembled his friends around him. Every cultivated Christian who came in contact with Mendelssohn was pleasantly attracted by him, overcame his bias against Jews, and experienced mingled admiration and sympathy for a race that had endured so much suffering, and produced such a personality. Dohm had already thrown aside his innate or acquired antipathy against Jews. His interest in mankind rested not upon the shifting ground of Christian love, but upon the firm soil of human culture, characteristic of the eighteenth century, and included also this unhappy people. He had already planned to make the "history of the Jewish nation since the destruction of their own state" the subject of his studies.

Dohm evinced his readiness to draw up the memorial for the Alsatian Jews in a pleasing form, in conjunction with Mendelssohn. Whilst engaged on this task, the thought struck him to publish a plea, not alone for protection for the few, but on behalf of all the German Jews, who suffered under similar oppression. Thus originated his never-to-be-forgotten work, "Upon the Civil Amelioration of the Condition of the Jews" (finished August, 1781), the first step towards removing the heavy yoke from the neck of the Jews. With this pamphlet, like Lessing with his "Nathan," Dohm partly atoned for the guilt of the German nation in enslaving and degrading the Jews. Dohm's apology has no clerical tinge about it, but was addressed to sober, enlightened statesmen, and laid particular stress upon the political advantages. The noble philanthropist who first pleaded for the emancipation of the negroes had fewer difficulties to overcome than Dohm in his efforts for the freedom of the Jews. The very circumstances that ought to have spoken in their favor, their intelligence and activity, their mission to teach Christian nations pure doctrines on God and morality, their ancient nobility--all tended to their detriment. Their intellectual and energetic habits were described as cunning and love of gain; their insistence upon the origin of their dogmas as presumption and infidelity, and their ancient nobility as pride. It is difficult to over-estimate the heroism required to speak a word on their behalf, in face of the numerous prejudices and sentiments against the Jews prevailing among all classes of Christian society.

In his apology Dohm, as already noted, omitted all reference to the religious point of view, and dwelt solely upon the political and economical aspect. He started by asserting that it was a universal conviction that the welfare of states depended upon increase of population. To this end many governments spent large sums of money to attract new citizens from foreign countries. An exception was made only in the case of Jews. "Almost in all parts of Europe the tendency of the laws and the whole constitution of the state is to prevent, as far as possible, the increase of these unfortunate Asiatic refugees. Residence is either denied them, or granted, at a fixed sum, for a short time. A large proportion of Jews thus find the gates of every town closed against them; they are inhumanly driven away from every border, and nothing is left to them except to starve, or to save themselves from starvation by crime. Every guild would think itself dishonored by admitting a Jew as a member; therefore, in almost every country, the Hebrews are debarred from handicrafts and mechanical arts. Only men of rare genius, amidst such oppressive circumstances, retain courage and serenity to devote themselves to the fine arts and the sciences. Even the rare men who attain to a high degree of excellence, as well as those who are an honor to mankind through their irreproachable righteousness, meet with respect only from a few; with the majority the most distinguished merits of soul and heart can never atone for the error of 'being a Jew.' What reasons can have induced the governments of European states to be so unanimous in this attitude towards the Jewish nation?" asked Dohm. Is it possible that industrious and good citizens are less useful to the state, because they originally came from Asia, and are distinguished by a beard, by circumcision, and their form of worship? If the Jewish religion contained harmful principles, then the exclusion of its adherents and the contempt felt for them would be justified; but that is not the case. "The mob, which considers itself at liberty to deceive a Jew, falsely asserts that, by his law, he is permitted to cheat the adherents of another creed, and persecuting priests have spread stories of the prejudices felt by the Jews, and thus revealed their own. The chief book of the Jews, the Law of Moses, is regarded with reverence also by Christians."

Dohm reviewed the history of the Jews in Europe--how, in the first centuries, they had enjoyed full civil rights in the Roman Empire, and must have been considered worthy of such privileges--how they were degraded and deprived of their rights, first by the Byzantines, then by the German barbarians, especially by the Visigoths in Spain. From the Roman Empire the Jews had brought more culture than the dominant nations possessed; they were not brutalized by savage feuds, nor was their progress retarded by monkish philosophy and superstition. In Spain amongst Jews and Arabs there had existed a more remarkable culture than in Christian Europe. Dohm then reviewed the false accusations and persecutions against Jews in the Middle Ages, painting the Christians as cruel barbarians and the Jews as illustrious martyrs. After touching upon the condition of the Jews in the various states, he concluded his delineation with the words:

"These principles of exclusion, equally opposed to humanity and politics, which bear the impress of the dark centuries, are unworthy of the enlightenment of our times, and deserve no longer to be followed. It is possible that some errors have become so deeply rooted that they will disappear only in the third or fourth generation. But this is no argument against beginning to reform now; because, without such beginning, a better generation can never appear."

Dohm suggested a plan whereby the amelioration of the condition of the Jews might be facilitated, and his proposals formed a programme for the future. In the first place, they were to receive equal rights with all other subjects. In particular, liberty of occupation and in procuring a livelihood should be conceded them, so that, by wise precautions, they would be drawn away from petty trading and usury, and be attracted to handicrafts, agriculture, arts, and sciences, all without compulsion. The moral elevation of the Jews was to be promoted by the foundation of good schools of their own, or by the admission of their youth into Christian schools, and by the elevation of adults in the Jewish Houses of Prayer. But it should also be impressed upon Christians, through sermons and other effectual means, that they were to regard and treat the Jews as brothers and fellow-men. As a matter of course, Dohm desired to see freedom in their private religious affairs granted them: free exercise of religion, the establishment of synagogues, the appointment of teachers, maintenance of their poor, if considered wise, under the supervision of the government. Even the power of excluding refractory members from the community should be given them. Dohm, moreover, pleaded for the continuance, under certain restrictions, of independent jurisdiction in cases between Jews, the power to be vested in a tribunal of rabbis. He wished to debar them from only one privilege, from filling public offices, or entering the arena of politics. The ability to undertake these duties, he thought, was completely lacking in that generation, and would not manifest itself very conspicuously in the next. Besides there was a super-abundance rather than a lack of competent state officers. For this reason, it would, for the present, be better both for the state and the Jews, if they worked in warehouses and behind the plough rather than in state offices. The immediate future disproved his doubts.

Dohm foresaw that his programme for the emancipation of the Jews would meet with violent and stubborn opposition from the clergy and the theological school. He therefore submitted it to the "wisdom of the governments," who at this time were more inclined to progress and enlightenment than the people. Dohm was filled with the seriousness and importance of his task; he was positive that his proposals would lay the basis not only for the welfare of the Jews, but also for that of the states. It is not to be overlooked that Mendelssohn stood behind him. Even if he did not dictate the words, yet he breathed into them his spirit of gentleness and love of mankind, and illumined the points which were strange and dark to Dohm, the Christian and political writer. Mendelssohn is, therefore, to be looked upon, if not as the father, certainly as the godfather, of Dohm's work.

It was inevitable for such a treatise to create great excitement in Germany. Must not this demand to treat Jews as equals have appeared to respectable Christians as a monstrous thing; as if the nobility had been asked to place themselves at the same table with their slaves? Soon after its appearance, Dohm's work advocating Jewish emancipation became extraordinarily popular; it was read, discussed, criticised, and refuted by many, and approved by only a few. The first rumor was that Dohm had sold his pen to the Jews for a very high price, although he had specially entreated protection for the poor homeless peddlers. Fortune began to smile upon the Jews after having turned its back upon them for so many centuries. Scarcely had the pamphlet appeared, when Emperor Joseph, the first Austrian ruler to allow himself in some degree to be guided by moral and humane principles, having snapt asunder the yoke of the Catholic Church, and having accorded a Toleration Edict to the Protestants, issued a series of laws relating to the Jews, which displayed sincere if rather fierce philanthropy.

By this new departure (October 19, 1781), the Jews were permitted to learn handicrafts, arts, and sciences, and with certain restrictions to devote themselves to agriculture. The doors of the universities and academies, hitherto closed to them, were thrown open. The education of the Jewish youth was a matter of great interest to this emperor, who promoted "philosophical morality." He accordingly decreed the establishment of Jewish primary and high schools (normal schools), and forced adults to learn the language of the country, by decreeing that in future only documents written in that language would possess legal force. He considerately removed the risk of all possible attempts at religious compulsion. In the schools everything that might be offensive to any creed was to be omitted from the curriculum. An ordinance enjoined (November 2) that the Jews were to be everywhere considered "fellow-men," and all excesses against them were to be avoided. The Leibzoll (body-tax), more humiliating to Christians than to Jews, was also abolished by Joseph II of glorious memory, in addition to the special law-taxes, the passport-duty, the night-duty, and all similar oppressive imposts which had stamped the Jews as outcasts, for they were now to have equal rights with the Christian inhabitants (December 19). Joseph II did not intend to concede complete citizenship to the Jews; they were still forbidden to reside in those cities whence Christian intolerance had hitherto banished them. Even in Vienna Jews were allowed to dwell only in a few exceptional cases, on payment of protection-money (toleration-tax), which protection did not extend to their grown-up sons. They were not suffered to have a single public synagogue in Vienna. But Joseph II annulled a number of vexatious, restrictive regulations, such as the compulsory wearing of beards, the prohibition against going out in the forenoon on Sundays and holidays, or frequenting public pleasure resorts. The emperor even permitted Jewish wholesale merchants, notables, and their sons, to wear swords (January 2, 1782), and especially insisted that Christians should behave in a friendly manner towards Jews.

A notable beginning was thus made. The ignominy of a thousand years, which the uncharitableness of the Church, the avarice of princes, and the brutality of nations, had cast upon the race of Judah, was now partly removed, at least in one country. Dohm's proposals in consequence met with earnest consideration; they were not regarded as ideal dreams, but as political principles worthy of attention. Scholars, clergymen, statesmen, and princes began to interest themselves seriously in the Jewish question. Every thoughtful person in Germany and elsewhere took one side or the other. Various opinions and ideas were aired; the most curious propositions were made. A preacher, named Schwager, wrote:

"I have always been averse to hating an unfortunate nation, because it worships God in another way. I have always lamented that we have driven the Jews to deceive us by an oppressive political yoke. For, what else can they do, in order to live? in what other way can they defray their heavy taxes?"

Diez, Dohm's excellent friend, one of the noblest men of that epoch, afterwards Prussian ambassador to the Turkish court, thought that Dohm had asked far too little for the Jews.

"You aver most truly," he remarked, "that the present moral depravity of the Jews is a consequence of their bondage. But to color the picture, and weaken the reproaches leveled at the Jews, a representation of the moral depravity of the Christians would have been useful; certainly it is not less than that of the Jews, and rather the cause of the latter."

John von Müller, the talented historian of the Swiss, with his wide attainments in general history, also admired the glorious antiquity of the Jews, praised Dohm's efforts on behalf of the Jews, and supplied him from the treasures of his knowledge with new proofs of the unjust and pitiless persecution of the mediæval Jews, and their demoralization by intolerable tyranny. He wished the writings of Maimuni, "the Luther of the Jews," to be translated into one of the European languages.

Naturally, hostile pamphlets were not wanting. Especially noteworthy was an abusive tract, published in Prague, entitled "Upon the Inutility of the Jews in the Kingdoms of Bohemia and Moravia," in which the author indulged in common insults against the Jews, and revived all the charges of poisoning wells, sedition, and other pretexts for their expulsion. This scurrilous work was so violent, that Emperor Joseph forbade its circulation (March 2, 1782). A bitter opponent of the Jews at this time was Frederick Traugott Hartmann. And why? Because he had been cheated out of a few pennies by Jewish hawkers. On account of their venomous tone, however, these writings harmed the Jews less than those of the German pedants.

To these belonged a famous scholar of authority, John David Michaelis, the aged professor at Göttingen. His range of vision had been widened by travels and observation, and he had cut himself adrift from the narrowness of Lutheran theology. Michaelis was the founder of the rationalist school of theologians, who resolved the miracles and the sublimity of the Holy Scriptures into simple natural facts. Through his "Mosaic Law," and cultivation of Hebrew grammar and exegesis, he gained high repute. But Michaelis had exactly that proportion of unbelief and belief which made him hate the Jews as the bearers of revealed religion and a miraculous history, and despise them as antagonists of Christianity. A Jewish officer in the French army, when it was stationed in Göttingen, had given but a grudging salute in return for the slavish obeisances of the professors, which they held as due to every Frenchman. This was ground enough for Michaelis to abominate the Jews one and all, and to affirm that they were of despicable character. Michaelis had several years before remarked, on the appearance of Lessing's drama "The Jew," "that a noble Jew was a poetic impossibility." Experience had disproved this assertion through Mendelssohn and other persons; but a German professor cannot be mistaken. Michaelis adhered to his opinion that the Jews were an incorrigible race. Now he condemned the Jews from a theological point of view, now from political considerations. It is hard to say whether it is to be called insensibility, intellectual dullness, or malice, when Michaelis blurts out with:

"It seems to me, that here in Germany they (the Jews) already have everything that they could possibly desire, and I do not know what he (Dohm) wishes to add thereto. Medicine, philosophy, physics, mathematics, they are not excluded from, --and he himself does not wish them to have offices."

He even defended the taking of protection-money from the Jews.

It cannot be said that the anti-Jewish treatise of Michaelis injured them at the time, for in no case would the German princes and people have emancipated them, had not the imperious progress of history compelled it. But in after years Michaelis was employed as an authority against the Jews. The agitation excited by Dohm, and the views pro and con had only resulted in forming public opinion upon Judaism, and this affected not Germany, but France. Miraculous concatenation of historical events! The venomous Alsatian district judge wished to have the Jews of Alsace annihilated, and through his malice he actually facilitated the liberation of the Jews in France.

Mendelssohn prudently kept himself in the background in this movement: he did not desire to have attention drawn to him as a prejudiced defender of his brethren in religion and race. He blessed the outbreak of interest in his unhappy kinsmen.

"Blessed be Almighty Providence that has allowed me, at the end of my days, to see the happy time, when the rights of humanity begin to be realized in their true extent."

However, two things induced him to break silence. He found that the arrows hurled by Dohm had been insufficient to pierce the thick-skinned monster of Jew-hatred.

"Reason and humanity have raised their voices in vain, for grey-headed prejudice is deaf."

Dohm himself did not appear to him to be free from the general prejudice, because he admitted that the Jews of the present day were depraved, useless, even harmful; therefore he suggested means to improve them. But Mendelssohn, who knew his co-religionists better, did not find them so greatly infected with moral leprosy--or differing so widely from Christians of the same class and trade--as arrogant Christians in their self-glorification were wont to assert. In a very clever way Mendelssohn made not alone the Göttingen scholars Michaelis and Hartmann, but also Dohm, understand that they had misconceived the Jewish question.

"It is wonderful to note how prejudice assumes the forms of every century in order to act despotically towards us, and place difficulties in the way of our obtaining civil rights. In superstitious ages we were said to insult sacred objects out of mere wantonness; to pierce crucifixes and cause them to bleed; secretly to circumcise children and stab them in order to feast our eyes upon the sight; to draw Christian blood for our Passover; to poison wells.

"Now times have changed, calumny no longer makes the desired impression. Now we, in turn, are upbraided with superstition and ignorance, lack of moral sentiments, taste, and refined manners, incapacity for the arts, sciences, and useful pursuits, especially for the service of war and the state, invincible inclination to cheating, usury, and lawlessness; all these have taken the place of coarse indictments against us, to exclude us from the number of useful citizens, and reject us from the motherly bosom of the state. They tie our hands, and reproach us that we do not use them.... Reason and the spirit of research of our century have not yet wiped away all traces of barbarism in history. Many a legend of the past has obtained credit, because it has not occurred to any one to cast doubts upon it. Some are supported by such important authorities that few have the boldness to look upon them as legends and libels. Even at the present moment there is many a city of Germany where no circumcised person, even though he pays duty for his creed, is allowed to issue forth in open daylight unwatched, lest he kidnap a Christian child or poison the wells; while during the night he is not trusted under the strictest surveillance, owing to his well-known intercourse with evil spirits."

The second point in Dohm's memoir which did not please Mendelssohn was, that it demanded the recognition of the state for the Jewish religion, inasmuch as the government was to grant it the right of excluding unruly members by a sort of excommunication. This did not harmonize with his conception of a pure religion. In order to counteract the errors of Dohm's well-meant apology, and the obstinate misapprehension of the Jews as much as possible, Mendelssohn caused one of his young friends, the physician Marcus Herz, to translate from the English original the "Vindiciæ Judæorum" of Manasseh ben Israel against the numerous slanderous charges brought against them. He himself wrote a preface full of luminous, glowing thoughts (March, 1782), called "The Salvation of the Jews," as an appendix to Dohm's work. Manasseh's Apology was buried in a book little read; Mendelssohn made its excellent truths known among the cultured classes, and by a correct elucidation gave them proper emphasis. In this preface he insisted, that while the church arrogates the right of inflicting punishment upon its followers, religion, the true faith, based upon reason and love of humanity, "requires neither an arm nor a finger for its purpose; it concerns only the spirit and the heart. Moreover it does not drive sinners and renegades from its doors." Without knowing the whole extent of the harm caused by it in the course of Jewish history, Mendelssohn detested the interdicting power. He therefore adjured the rabbis and elders to give up their right of excommunicating.

"Alas! my brethren, you have felt the oppressive yoke of intolerance only too severely; all the nations of the earth seem hitherto to have been deluded by the idea that religion can be maintained only by an iron hand. You, perhaps, have suffered yourselves to be misled into thinking the same. Oh, my brethren, follow the example of love, as you have till now followed that of hatred!"

Mendelssohn now held so high a position in public opinion, that every new publication bearing his name was eagerly read. The fundamental thought of the preface to Manasseh ben Israel's "Vindication," that religion has no rights over its followers and must not resort to compulsory measures, struck its readers with astonishment. This had never occurred to any Christian believer. Enlightened Christian clergymen, such as Teller, Spalding, Zollikofer, and others, gradually fell in with the new idea, and tendered its originator public applause. Bigoted clerics and obdurate minds, on the other hand, beheld therein the destruction of religion. "All this is new and difficult; first principles are denied," said they. In Jewish circles also many objections were made to Mendelssohn's view. It seemed as if he had suddenly discarded Judaism, which certainly owns an elaborate system of penalties for religious crimes and transgressions. From the Christian camp a pamphlet called "Inquiry into Light and Truth" was launched against him, which asserted that he had finally dropped his mask; that he had embraced the religion of love, and turned his back upon his native faith, which execrates and punishes.

A second time Mendelssohn was compelled to emerge from his retirement, and give his views upon religion. This he did in a work entitled "Jerusalem," or "Upon Ecclesiastical Power and Judaism" (spring, 1783), whose purity of contents and form is a memorial of his lofty genius. The gentleness that breathes through this book, the warmth of conviction, the frankness of utterance, its childlike ingenuousness, yet profoundly thoughtful train of ideas, the graceful style which renders even dry discussion enjoyable--all these qualities earned contemporary approval for this work, and will always assure it a place in literature. At the time it excited great surprise. It had been believed, that, owing to his ideas upon religion and Judaism, Mendelssohn, if he had not entirely broken away from Judaism, had yet declared many things therein to be worthless. He now showed that he was an ardent Jew, and would not yield a tittle of existing Judaism, either rabbinical or biblical; that he, in fact, claimed the highest privileges for it. All this was in accord with his peculiar method of thought.

Judaism recognizes the freedom of religious convictions. Original, pure Judaism, therefore, contains no binding articles of belief, no symbolical books, by which the faithful were compelled to swear and affirm their incumbent duty. Judaism prescribes not faith, but knowledge, and it urges that its doctrines be taken to heart. In this despised religion everyone may think, opine, and err as he pleases, without incurring the guilt of heresy. Its right of inflicting punishment begins only when evil thoughts become acts. Why? Because Judaism is not revealed religion, but revealed legislation. Its first precept is not, "thou shalt believe or not believe," but, "thou shalt do or abstain from doing."

"In the divinely-ordained constitution, state and religion are one. Not unbelief, false teaching, and error, but wicked offenses against the principles of the state and the national constitution are chastised. With the destruction of the Temple, i. e., with the downfall of the state, all corporal and capital punishment, as well as money fines, ceased. The national bonds were dissolved; religious trespasses were no longer crimes against the state, and religion, as such, knows no punishments."

For those who seriously or jestingly had reported that Mendelssohn had separated from Judaism, he laid stress upon two points not wholly germane to his subject, viz., that the so-called ceremonial law of Judaism is likewise, indeed particularly, of divine origin, and that its obligatory character must continue "until it pleases the Supreme to abrogate it as plainly and publicly as it was revealed."

The effect of this detailed apology was greater than Mendelssohn could have expected. Instead of defending himself he had come forward as an accuser, and in a manner at once gentle and forcible he had laid bare the hateful ulcers of the church and state constitution. Two authoritative representatives of the age pronounced flattering opinions upon him and the subject which he was discussing. Kant, who had already testified to his greatness of thought, wrote that he had read "Jerusalem" with admiration for its keenness of argument, its refinement, and cleverness of composition.

"I consider this book the herald of a great reform, which will affect not alone your nation, but also others. You have succeeded in combining your religion with such a degree of freedom of conscience as was never imagined possible, and of which no other faith can boast. You have, at the same time, so thoroughly and clearly demonstrated the necessity of unlimited liberty of conscience in every religion, that ultimately our Church will also be led to reflect how to remove from its midst everything that disturbs and oppresses conscience, which will finally unite all men in their view of the essential points of religion."

Michaelis, the rationalistic anti-Semite, stood baffled, embarrassed, and ashamed before the bold ideas of the "Jerusalem." Judaism, which he had scornfully disdained, now fearlessly and victoriously raised its head. The Jew Mendelssohn, whom he would not have trusted with a penny, appeared the incarnation of conscientiousness and wisdom. Michaelis was sorely perplexed in passing judgment upon this remarkable work. He was obliged to admit many things. Thus, without selfish motives, impelled only by circumstances, Mendelssohn glorified Judaism, and shook off disgrace from his people. In the meantime Dohm was aiding him. He continued to expound Judaism in the most favorable light, and refute all objections, the honest as well as the malicious ones; he had come to regard the quarrel as his own. But Dohm effected most by enlisting through his writings in favor of Jews the sympathies of Mirabeau, a man with shoulders strong enough to bear a new system of the world, and he continued the work of Dohm.

At the same time, and in the same way, that is, indirectly, Mendelssohn again urged the internal rejuvenescence of the Jews, which was to accompany their emancipation. From modesty or discretion, he would not come to the front; he had stimulated Dohm to do battle for their emancipation, and for their regeneration he brought forward another friend, who appeared born for the task. Owing to Mendelssohn, Wessely became a historical personage, who worked with all his energy for the improvement of the Jews, completing the deficiency of Mendelssohn's retiring character. Hartwig (Hartog, Naphtali-Herz) Wessely (born in Hamburg, 1725; died in the same town, 1805) was of a peculiar disposition, combining elements not often associated. His grandfather had established a manufactory for arms in Holstein, and had been a commercial councilor and royal resident. His father also conducted an important business, and had frequent intercourse with so-called great people. In this way Hartwig Wessely came with his father to Copenhagen, where a Portuguese congregation, and also a few German Jews had settled. His early education was the same as that of most boys of that time; he learnt to read Hebrew mechanically, and to mis-translate the Bible, to be launched, a boy of nine, into the labyrinth of the Talmud. But a traveling grammarian, Solomon Hanau, promoted the development of the germs within him, and inspired him with love for the Hebrew language. His labor was not in vain. The seed sown by Hanau was to bear thousand-fold fruit. Wessely's chief interest was the study of the Holy Writings in the original tongue; it was the aim of his life to understand them from all points of view. Owing to his father's frequent contact with non-Jewish circles, in the course of business, Wessely obtained an insight into actual life, and absorbed other branches of knowledge, the modern languages, geography, history, descriptions of travels. These only served as auxiliary sciences to be employed in his special study of the Scriptures, and by their means to penetrate deeper into their thought and spirit. Like Mendelssohn, Wessely was self-taught. Very early he developed taste, a sense for beauty, feeling for purity of speech and form, and repugnance to the mixed dialects and the jargon commonly used among German Jews.

Wessely again resembled Mendelssohn in character, distinguished as he was by strict conscientiousness and elevated feelings of honor. In him, too, thoughts, sentiments, words, and deeds, showed no discrepancy. He was of deep, pure piety, an unswerving adherent to Judaism. His nature, however, did not display the gentle pliancy of Mendelssohn's. He was stiff and pedantic, more inclined to juggle with words and split hairs than to think deeply, and he had no correct idea of the action of world-moving forces. All his life Wessely remained a visionary, and saw the events of the real world through colored glasses. In one way Wessely was apparently superior to Mendelssohn; he was a poet. In reality, however, he only possessed uncommon facility and skill in making beautiful, well-sounding verses of blameless refinement, of graceful symmetrical smoothness, and accurate construction.

Wessely was greatly charmed by the laws of Emperor Joseph in favor of the Jews, especially by the command to erect schools; he beheld therein the dawn of a golden age for the Jews, whilst Mendelssohn, with his keen perception, from the first did not expect great results. He remarks, "It is perhaps only a passing idea, without any substance, or, as some fear, it has a financial purpose." Wessely, however, composed a glowing hymn of praise to the noble rule and the magnanimity of Emperor Joseph. As soon as he was informed that the rigidly orthodox party in Vienna regretted the order to establish schools as an interference with their liberty of conscience, he addressed a Hebrew letter (March, 1782), called "Words of Peace and Truth," to the Austrian congregations, exhorting them to welcome it as a benefit, to rejoice in it, and at once execute it. He explained that it was a religious duty of the Jews, recommended even by the Talmud, to acquire general culture, that the latter must even precede a knowledge of religion, and that only by such means could they remove the disgrace which, owing to their ignorance, had weighed upon them for so long a time. Wessely emphasized the necessity of banishing the barbarous jargon from the midst of the Jews, and of cultivating a pure, euphonious language. He sketched a plan of instruction in his letter, showing how the Jewish youth should be led, step by step, from elementary subjects to the study of the Talmud. This letter, written with fervor, impressive eloquence, and in a beautiful Hebrew style, could not have failed to produce great effect, had not Wessely, in his fantastic manner, recommended that all Jewish youths, without distinction of talents and future profession should be taught, not only history and geography but also natural sciences, astronomy, and religious philosophy, because only by this preliminary knowledge could a thorough understanding of Holy Writ and of Judaism be acquired!

This epistle bore him both sweet and bitter fruit. The community of Trieste, chiefly comprising Italian and Portuguese Jews, who, unlike the Germans, did not consider culture as heresy, had applied to the governor, Count Zinzendorf, declaring their readiness to establish a normal school, and begging him to advise them how they might procure text books on religion and ethics. Zinzendorf directed them to Mendelssohn, whose celebrated name had penetrated to that distant place. Accordingly, Joseph Chayim Galaïgo, in the name of the congregation of Trieste, addressed a petition to the Jewish sage of Berlin for his writings. On this occasion, Mendelssohn called the attention of the people of Trieste to his friend Wessely and to his circular letter, recommending the founding of Jewish schools, and the community forthwith entered into negotiations with him. Thus his fervent words met with early encouragement.

From the strictly pious people, however, a storm now broke out against him. They were particularly indignant at his hearty approval of Emperor Joseph's reforms. The unamiable manner in which princes were wont to concede freedom, the force brought to bear upon the Jews, a natural aversion to forsake the past, the legitimate fear that through school education and partial emancipation young men would be seduced from Judaism, and that the instruction given at the normal schools would supersede the study of the Talmud--all these things had induced the rabbis and the representatives of tradition to oppose the reforming Jewish ordinances of Emperor Joseph. Besides, men of doubtful piety, such as Herz Homberg, eagerly pressed forward to obtain appointments at the newly-founded training schools, and to tempt the youthful students to innovations. There were, to be sure, intelligent men, especially in Prague, who greeted the new laws as salutary measures, and hoped that by these means the Jews would rise out of their wretched, demoralized condition. But this minority was denounced by the orthodox as innovators and triflers. Religious simplicity, which at every puff of wind feared the downfall of the edifice of faith, and the desire of gain, which fattened upon ignorance, and the perverse method of instruction in a corrupt dialect, worked hand in hand to predispose the communities against school reforms. Wessely destroyed the whole opposition with one blow. He who had hitherto been respected as an orthodox believer, now supported the new order of things. Further, in his incautious way, he had quoted the Talmudical sentence, "A Talmudist who does not possess knowledge (general culture), is uglier than a carcass." This expression greatly angered the orthodox. The Austrian rabbis dared not attack him openly, because he had only followed the emperor in his ideas. They appear therefore to have incited certain Polish rabbis to condemn his circular letter and excommunicate him.

Although the zealots were without support from Berlin, they continued in their heretic-hunting, causing the pulpits to re-echo with imprecations against Wessely; and in Lissa his letter was publicly burnt. He had the bitter experience of standing alone in this conflict. None of his adherents publicly sided with him, although he was contending for a just cause by noble methods and in a most becoming manner. Mendelssohn did not like such disputes, and at this time was suffering too much, bodily and mentally, to take part. Thus Wessely had to conduct his own defense. He published a second letter (April 24), supposed to be addressed to the Trieste congregation, in which he again dwelt upon the importance of regular instruction, and of the abolition of old practices, and disproved the charges against him. Gentle and forbearing as he was, he avoided retorting severely upon his opponents; but he permitted words of censure against orthodoxy and the one-sided, perverse Talmudic tendency to slip from him. It was, indeed, the irony of history, that the most orthodox among the followers of Mendelssohn, without wishing it, opened fire on Rabbinism, as the Kabbalist Jacob Emden had given the first violent blow to the Kabbala. By and by, several Italian rabbis of Trieste, Ferrara, and Venice, spoke in favor of Wessely, and recommended culture, although they were unable to bridge over the chasm between it and Rabbinism. Wessely was victorious; and the opposing rabbis laid down their arms. Schools for regular instruction arose here and there, even in Prague. But the strict Talmudists were right. Their suspicions foreboded the future more truly than Mendelssohn's and Wessely's confidence. The old rigid form of Judaism could no more assert itself. Both these men, who had felt so much at ease in the old structure, and wished only to see it cleansed here and there from cobwebs and fungus growths, contributed to sap its foundations.

Wessely, ever deserted by fortune, lived to see this decay with weeping eyes. Mendelssohn, more fortunate, was spared this pain. Death called him away in time, before he perceived that his circle, even his own daughters, treated with contemptuous scorn and rejected what his heart held to be most sacred, and what he so earnestly strove to glorify. Had he lived ten years longer, even his wisdom would perhaps not have availed him to tide over this anguish. He who without a trace of romance had led an ideal life, died ideally transfigured, at the right moment. The friendship and the philosophy which had elevated his life and brought him fame broke his heart. When Mendelssohn was about to raise a memorial to his unforgotten friend, to show him in his true greatness to future generations, he learned from Jacobi that shortly before his death Lessing had manifested a decided liking for the philosophy of Spinoza. "Lessing a Spinozist!" This pierced Mendelssohn's heart as with a spear. Nothing was so distasteful to him as the pantheistic system of Spinoza, which denied a personal God, Providence, and Immortality, ideas with which Mendelssohn's soul was bound up. That Lessing should have entertained such convictions, and that he, his bosom friend, should know nothing whatsoever about them! Jealousy that Lessing had communicated to others the secret so carefully concealed from himself, and deep disappointment that his friend had not shared his own convictions took possession of Mendelssohn. He suspected, that his philosophy, if it was true that Lessing had not been pleased with it, would become obsolete, and be thrust aside. His whole being rose in resistance against such doubts. These thoughts robbed the last years of his life of rest, made him passionate, excited, feverish. While composing his work in refutation of Jacobi's, "To the Friends of Lessing," excitement so overpowered him that it brought on his death (January 4, 1786). This ideal death for friendship and wisdom worthily concluded his life, and showed him to posterity as he appeared to his numerous friends and admirers, an upright, honest man, in whom was neither falsehood nor guile. Almost the entire population of the Prussian capital, and many earnest men in Germany and beyond its borders mourned the man who, forty years before, with heavy heart had knocked at one of the gates of Berlin, in fear that the Christian or the Jewish beadle would drive him away. The attempt of his Christian friends, Nicolai, Biester, and Engel, the tutor of the Crown Prince Frederick William III, in conjunction with Jewish admirers, to erect a statue to Mendelssohn in the Opera Square next to those of Leibnitz, Lambert, and Sulzer, although it did not meet with approval, characterizes the progress of the time. The deformed son of the so-called "Ten Commandments writer" of Dessau had become an ornament to the city of Berlin.

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IX. THE NEW CHASSIDISM

The Alliance of Reason with Mysticism--Israel Baalshem, his Career and Reputation--Movement against Rabbinism--The "Zaddik"--Beer Mizricz, his Arrogance and Deceptions-- The Devotional Methods of the Chassidim--Their Liturgy-- Dissolution of the Synods "of the Four Countries"--Cossack Massacres in Poland--Elijah Wilna, his Character and Method of Research--The Mizricz and Karlin Chassidim--Circumstances prove Favorable to the Spread of the New Sect--Vigorous Proceedings against them in Wilna--Death of Beer Mizricz-- Progress of Chassidism despite the Persecution of its Opponents.

1750-1786 C. E.

As soon as an historical work has performed its service, and is to undergo a change, new phenomena arise from various sides, and assume a hostile attitude, either to alter or destroy it. It might have been foreseen that the rejuvenescence of the Jewish race, for which Mendelssohn had leveled the way, would produce a transformation and decomposition of religious habits among Jews. The innovators desired this, and hoped, and strove for it; the old orthodox party suspected and dreaded it. The process of dissolution was brought about also in another way, upon another scene, under entirely different conditions, and by other means, and this could not have been foreseen. There arose in Poland a new Essenism, with forms similar to those of the ancient cult, with ablutions and baths, white garments, miraculous cures, and prophetic visions. Like the old movement, it originated in ultra-piety, but soon turned against its own parent, and perhaps hides within itself germs of a peculiar kind, which, being in course of development, cannot be defined. It seems remarkable that, at the time when Mendelssohn declared rational thought to be the essence of Judaism, and founded, as it were, a widely-extended order of enlightened men, another banner was unfurled, the adherents of which announced the grossest superstition to be the fundamental principle of Judaism, and formed an order of wonder-seeking confederates. Both these new bodies took up a hostile position to traditional Judaism, and created a rupture. History in its generative power is as manifold and puzzling as nature. It produces in close proximity healing herbs and poisonous plants, lovely flowers and hideous parasites. Reason and unreason seemed to have entered into a covenant to shatter the gigantic structure of Talmudic Judaism. The attempt once before made by history, to subvert Judaism by the contemporaneous existence of Spinoza and Sabbataï Zevi, was now repeated by the simultaneous attacks of representatives of reason and unreason. Enlightenment and Kabbalistic mysticism joined hands to commence the work of destruction. Mendelssohn and Israel Baalshem, what contrasts! Yet both unconsciously undermined the basis of Talmudic Judaism. The origin of the new Chassidim, who had already become numerous, and who sprang up very rapidly, is not so clear as the movement started by Mendelssohn. The new sect, a daughter of darkness, was born in gloom, and even to-day proceeds stealthily on its mysterious way. Only a few circumstances which contributed to its rise and propagation are known.

The founders of the new Chassidism were Israel of Miedziboz (born about 1698; died 1759) and Beer of Mizricz (born about 1700; died 1772). The former received, alike from his admirers and his antagonists, the surname of "The Wonderworker by means of Invocations in the Name of God," Baalshem, or Baal-Shemtob, in the customary abbreviated form, Besht. As ugly as the name, Besht, was the form of the founder and the order that he called into existence. The Graces did not sit by his cradle, but the spirit of belief in wonderworking, and his brain was so filled with fantastic images that he could not distinguish them from real, tangible beings. The experiences of Israel's youth are unknown. So much, however, is certain; he was left an orphan, poor and neglected, early in life, and passed a great portion of his youth in the forests and caves of the Carpathian mountains. The spurs of the Carpathian hills were his teachers. Here he learnt what he would not have acquired in the dark, narrow, dirty hovels called schools in Poland--namely, to understand the tongue which nature speaks. The spirits of the mountains and the fountains whispered secrets to him. Here he also learned, probably from the peasant women who gathered herbs on the mountain-tops and on the edges of rivers, the use of plants as remedies. As they did not trust to the healing power of nature, but added conjurations and invocations to good and evil spirits, Israel also accustomed himself to this method of cure. He became a miracle-doctor. Necessity, too, was his teacher; it taught him to pray. How often, in his forsaken and orphaned condition, may he have suffered from want even of dry bread, how often may he have been surrounded by real or imaginary dangers! In his distress he prayed in the usual forms of the synagogue; but he spoke his words with fervor and intense devotion, or cried them aloud in the solitude of the mountains. His audible prayer awakened the echoes of the mountains, which appeared as an answer to his supplications. He seems to have been often in a state of rapture, and to have induced this condition by frantic movements of the whole body while praying. This agitation drove the blood to his head, made his eyes glitter, and wrought both body and soul into such a condition of over-excitement that he felt a deadly weakness come over him. Was this magnetic tension of the soul caused by the motions and the shouting, singing, and praying?

Israel Baalshem asserted that, in consequence of these bodily agitations and this intense devotion, he often caught a glimpse of infinity. His soul soared upward to the world of light, heard and saw Divine secrets and revelations, entered into conversation with sublime spirits, and by their intervention could secure the grace of God and prosperity, and especially avert impending calamities. Israel Miedziboz also boasted that he could see into the future, as secrets were unveiled to him. Was this a deliberate boast, self-deception, or merely an over-estimation of morbid feelings? There are persons, times, and places, in which the line of demarcation between trickery and self-delusion cannot be distinguished. In Poland, in Baalshem's time, with the terrible mental strain created by the Kabbala in connection with the Sabbatian fraud, the feverish expectation of imminent Messianic redemption, everything was possible and everything credible. In that land the fancy of both Jews and Christians moved among extraordinary and supernatural phenomena as in its natural element. Israel steadfastly and firmly believed in the visions seen when he was under mental and physical excitement; he believed in the power of his prayers. In his delusion he blasphemously declared that prayer is a kind of marriage union (Zivug) of man with the Godhead (Shechina), upon which he must enter whilst in a state of excitement. Equipped with alleged higher knowledge of secret remedies and the spirit world, to which he thought he had attained through Divine grace, Israel entered the society of men to prove his higher gifts. It must be acknowledged to his credit that he never misused these talents. He did not make a trade of them, nor seek to earn his livelihood with them. At first he followed the humble occupation of a wagoner, afterwards he dealt in horses, and when his means permitted it he kept a tavern.

Occasionally, when specially requested, he employed his miraculous remedies, and thereby gained so great a reputation that he was consulted even by Polish nobles. He became conspicuous by his noisy, delirious praying, which must have so transfigured him that men did not recognize the wagoner or horse-dealer whom they knew. He was admired for his revelation of secrets. In Poland not only the unlearned and the Jews considered such gifts and miracles possible; the Jesuits and the Kabbalists had stultified the Christians and the Jews of their country, and plunged them into a state of primitive barbarism.

It would have been a remarkable thing if such a wonder-doctor, who appeared to have intercourse with the spirit world, had not found adherents, but he can hardly have designed the formation of a new sect. He was joined by persons of a similar disposition to his own, who felt a religious impulse, which could not be satisfied, they thought, by a rigorous, penitential life, or by mechanical repetition of prescribed prayers. They joined Israel, in Miedziboz, to pray with devotion, i. e., in a sing-song tune, clapping their hands, bowing, jumping, gesticulating, and uttering cries. At almost the same time there arose, in Wales, a Christian sect called "the Jumpers," who resorted to similar movements during prayer, and induced trances and mesmeric dreams. At the same time there was established, in North America, the sect of the Shakers, by an Irish girl, Johanna Lee, who likewise in the delirium of prayer pursued mystic Messianic phantoms. Israel need not have been a trickster to obtain followers. Mysticism and madness are contagious. He particularly attracted men who desired to lead a free and merry life, at the same time hoping to reach a lofty aim, and to live assured of the nearness of God in serenity and calmness, and to advance the Messianic future. They did not need to pore over Talmudical folios in order to attain to higher piety.

It became the fashion in neo-Chassidean circles to scoff at the Talmudists. Because the latter mocked at the unlearned chief of the new order, who had a following without belonging to the guild of Talmudists, without having been initiated into the Talmud and its appendages, the Chassidim depreciated the study of the Talmud, avowing that it was not able to promote a truly godly life. Covert war existed between the neo-Chassidim and the Rabbanites; the latter could not, however, harm their opponents so long as Israel's adherents did not depart from existing Judaism. After the death of the founder, when barbarism and degeneracy increased, the feud grew into a complete rupture under Beer of Mizricz.

Dob Beer (or Berish) was no visionary like Israel, but possessed the faculty of clear insight into the condition of men's minds. He was thus able to render the mind and will of others subservient to him. Although he joined the new movement only a short time before Israel's death, yet, whether at his suggestion or not, Israel's son and sons-in-law were passed over, and Beer was made Israel's successor in the leadership of the neo-Chassidean community. Beer, who transferred the center to Mizricz--a village in Volhynia--was superior to his master in many points. He was well read in Talmudical and Kabbalistic writings, was a fluent preacher (Maggid), who, to further his purpose, could make the most far-fetched biblical verses, as also Agadic and Zoharic expressions, harmonize, and thus surprise his audience. He removed from the Chassidim the stigma of ignorance, especially disgraceful in Poland, and secured an accession of supporters. He had a commanding appearance, did not mingle with the people, but lived the whole week secluded in a small room--only accessible to his confidants--and thus acquired the renown of mysterious intercourse with the heavenly world. Only on the Sabbath did he show himself to all who longed to be favored with his sight. On this day he appeared splendidly attired in satin, his outer garment, his shoes, and even his snuff-box being white, the color signifying grace in the Kabbalistic language. On this day, in accordance with the custom introduced by Israel Besht, he offered up prayers together with his friends, with the strangers who had made a pilgrimage to him, with the new members, and those curious to see the Kabbalistic saint and wonderworker. To produce the joyous state of mind necessary to devout prayer, Beer indulged in vulgar jokes, whereby the merriment of the bystanders was aroused; for instance, he would joke with one of the circle, and throw him down. In the midst of this child's play he would suddenly cry out, "Now serve the Lord with gladness."

Under Beer's guidance, the constitution of Chassidism remained apparently in the same form as under his predecessor: fervent, convulsive praying, inspiration (Hithlahabuth), miraculous cures, and revelations of the future. But as these actions did not, as with Israel, flow from a peculiar or abnormal state of mind, they could only be imitated--artifice or illusion had to supply what nature withheld. It was an accepted fact that the Chassidean leader, or Zaddik, the perfectly pious man, had to be enthusiastic in prayer, had to have ecstatic dreams and visions. How can a clever plotter appear inspired? Alcohol, so much liked in Poland, now had to take the place of the inspiring demon. Beer had not the knowledge of remedial herbs, which his teacher had obtained in the Carpathian mountains. He, therefore, devoted himself to medicine, and if his remedies did not avail, then the sick person died of his sinfulness. To predict the future was a more difficult task, yet it had to be accomplished; his reputation as a thaumaturgist depended upon it. Beer was equal to the emergency. Among his intimates were expert spies, worthy of serving in the secret police. They discovered many secrets, and told them to their leader; thus he was enabled to assume an appearance of omniscience. Or his emissaries committed robberies; if the victims came to the "Saint" in his hermitage to find them out, he was able to indicate the exact spot where the missing articles were lying. If strangers, attracted by his fame, came to see him, they were not admitted, as mentioned, until the following Saturday, to take part in the Chassidean witches' Sabbath. Meantime his spies, by artful questions and other means, gleaned a knowledge of the affairs and secret desires of these strangers, and communicated them to the Zaddik. In the first interview Beer, in a seemingly casual manner, was able, in a skillfully arranged discourse, to bring in allusions to these strangers, whereby they would be convinced that he had looked into their hearts, and knew their past. By these and similar contrivances, he succeeded in asserting himself as omniscient, and increasing the number of his followers. Every new convert testified to his Divine inspiration, and induced others to join.

In order to strengthen respect for him, Beer propounded a theory, which in its logical application is calculated to promote most harmful consequences. Supported by the Kabbalistic formula, that "the righteous or the pious man is the foundation of the world," he magnified the importance of the Zaddik, or the Chassidean chief, to such an extent that it became blasphemy. "A Zaddik is not alone the most perfect and sinless human being, he is not alone Moses, but the representative of God and His image." All and everything that the Zaddik does and thinks has a decided influence upon the upper and lower worlds. The Deity reveals Himself especially in the acts of the Zaddik; even his most trifling deeds are to be considered important. The way he wears his clothes, ties his shoes, smokes his pipe, whether he delivers profound addresses, or indulges in silly jokes--everything bears a close relation to the Deity, and is of as much moment as the fulfillment of a religious duty. Even when drawing inspiration from the bottle, he is swaying the upper and nether worlds. All these absurd fancies owed their origin to the superstitious doctrines of the Kabbala, which, in spite of the unspeakable confusion they had wrought through Sabbataï Zevi and Frank, in spite of the opposition which their chief exponent, the Zohar, had encountered at about this time at the hands of Jacob Emden, still clouded the brains of the Polish Jews. According to this theory, the Zaddik, i. e., Berish Mizricz, was the embodiment of power and splendor upon earth. In his "Stübel," or "Hermitage," i. e., in his dirty little retired chamber, he considered himself as great as the papal vicar of God upon earth in his magnificent palace. The Zaddik was also to bear himself proudly towards men; all this was "for the glory of God." It was a sort of Catholicism within Judaism.

Beer's idea, however, was not meant to remain idle and unfruitful, but to bring him honor and revenue. While the Zaddik cared for the conduct of the world, for the obtaining of heavenly grace, and especially for Israel's preservation and glorification, his adherents had to cultivate three kinds of virtues. It was their duty to draw nigh to him, to enjoy the sight of him, and from time to time to make pilgrimages to him. Further, they were to confess their sins to him. By these means alone could they hope for pardon of their iniquities. Finally, they had to bring him presents, rich gifts, which he knew how to employ to the best advantage. It was also incumbent upon them to attend to his personal wants. It seems like a return to the days of the priests of Baal, so vulgar and disgusting do these perversities appear. The saddest part of all is that this teaching, worthy of a fetish worshiping people, met with approbation in Poland, the country distinguished by cumbersome knowledge of Jewish literature. It was just this excess, this over-activity of the spiritual digestive apparatus, that produced such lamentable phenomena. The intellect of the Polish Jews had been so over-excited, that the coarsest things were more pleasing to them than what was refined.

Beer despatched abroad as his apostles bombastic preachers who seasoned his injurious teachings with distorted citations from the Scriptures. Simple-minded men, rogues, and idlers, of whom there were so many in Poland, attached themselves to the new Chassidim; the first from inclination to enthusiasm and belief in miracles; the cunning, in order to procure money in an easy way, and lead a pleasant existence; and the idlers, because in the court of the Zaddik they found occupation, and gratified their curiosity. If such idlers were asked what they were thinking of, as they strolled about pipe in mouth, they would reply with seriousness, "We are meditating upon God." The simple people, however, who hoped to win bliss through the Chassidean discipline, engaged continually in prayer, until through exhaustion they dropped unconscious.

Neo-Chassidism was favored by two circumstances, the fraternization of the members and the dryness and fossilized character of Talmudic study as carried on in Poland for more than a century. At the outset the Chassidim formed a kind of brotherhood, not indeed with a common purse, as among their prototypes, the Essenes and the Judæo-Christians, but having regard to the wants of needy members. Owing to the closeness of their union, their spying system, and their energy, it was easy for them to provide for those who lacked employment or food. On New Year and the Day of Atonement people, even those who dwelt at long distances, undertook pilgrimages to the Zaddik, as formerly to the Temple, and left their wives and children to pass the so-called holy days in the company of their chief, to be edified by his presence and actions. Here the Chassidean disciples learned to know one another, discussed local affairs, and rendered mutual help. Well-to-do merchants found opportunity at these assemblies, in conversation with fellow-believers, upon whose fidelity and brotherly attachment they could rely, to discover fresh sources of income. Fathers of marriageable daughters sought and easily found husbands for them, which at that time in Poland was considered a highly important matter. The common meals on the afternoons of Saturdays and the holidays strengthened the bonds of loyalty and affection among them. How could meals for so many guests be provided? The wealthy Chassidim regarded it as a duty to support the Zaddik liberally. A special source of income was the superstitious belief prevalent among the Chassidim that the Zaddik for certain sums (Pidion, Redemption) could ward off threatening perils and cure deadly diseases. Pressure was brought to bear upon wealthy but weak-minded persons, and they were terrified into believing that they could escape impending calamities only by rich gifts. Whoever desired to enter upon a hazardous transaction consulted the Zaddik as an oracle, and had to pay for his counsel. The cunning Chassidim knew everything, were ready with counsel in any emergency, and by their craftiness were able to afford real assistance. The Zaddik, however miserly he might be, had to assist the poor and distressed with his revenues. Thus every member received help here. Full of enthusiasm they returned home from their journey; the feeling that they belonged to a brotherhood elevated them, and they ardently looked forward to the return of the holy time. The poor and forsaken, the fanatical and the unprincipled, could not do better than join this union, this easy-going yet religious order.

Earnest men, also, desirous of satisfying their spiritual wants, felt themselves attracted to the Chassidim. Rabbinical Judaism, as known in Poland, offered no sort of religious comfort. Its representatives placed the highest value upon the dialectic, artificial exposition of the Talmud and its commentaries. Actual necessity had besides caused that portion of the Talmud which treated of civil law to be closely studied, as the rabbis exercised civil jurisdiction over their flocks. Fine-spun decisions of new, complicated legal points occupied the doctors of the Talmud day and night. Moreover, this hair-splitting was considered sublimest piety, and superseded everything else. If any one solved an intricate Talmudic question, or discovered something new, called Torah, he felt self-satisfied, and assured of his felicity hereafter. All other objects, the impulse to devotion, prayer, and emotion, or interest in the moral condition of the community, were secondary matters, to which scarcely any attention was paid. The mental exercise of making logical deductions from the Talmud, or more correctly from the laws of Mine and Thine, choked all other intellectual pursuits in Poland. Religious ceremonies had degenerated, both amongst Talmudists and the unlearned, into meaningless usages, and prayer into mere lip-service. To men of feeling this aridity of Talmudic study, together with the love of debate, and the dogmatism and pride of the rabbis arising from it, were repellent, and they flung themselves into the arms of the new order, which allowed so much play for the fancy and the emotions. Especially preachers, semi-Talmudists who were looked upon and treated by erudite rabbi-Talmudists as inferior and contemptible, who eked out a wretched living, or almost starved, leagued themselves with the neo-Chassidim, because among them their talents of preaching were appreciated, and they could obtain an honorable position, and be secured against need. By the accession of such elements the circle of neo-Chassidim became daily augmented. Almost in every town lived followers of the new school, who occasionally had intercourse with their brother-members and their chief.

With advancing strength the antipathy of the neo-Chassidim to the rabbis and Talmudists increased. Without being aware of it they formed a new sect, which scorned intercourse with the Talmud Jews. With Beer at their head, they felt themselves strong enough to introduce an innovation, which would naturally bring down the anger of the rabbis upon them. Since prayer and the rites of Divine service were the chief consideration for them, they did not trouble themselves about the prescriptions of the ritual law as to how many prayers should be said, nor at what time the different services should commence and terminate, but were entirely guided by the feeling of the moment. Through their daily ablutions, baths, and other preparations for public worship they were seldom ready for prayer at the prescribed time, but began later, prolonged it by the movements of their bodies and their intoning, and suddenly came to an end after omitting several portions. They were especially averse to the harsh interpolations in the Sabbath and festival prayers (the Piyutim). These insertions interrupt the most important and suggestive portions of the service. To abolish these at a blow, Beer Mizricz introduced the prayer-book of the arch-Kabbalist, Isaac Lurya, which for the greater part conforms to the Portuguese ritual, and does not contain poetical (poetanic) additions. In the eyes of the ultra-orthodox this innovation was an enormous, or rather a double crime, permitting, as it did, the omission of interpolations hallowed by custom, and the exchange of the German ritual for the Sephardic.

This innovation would probably have been severely visited upon the neo-Chassidim, but that at this time, when the political power of Poland lay crushed, the firm political connection of the Polish Jews had also been dissolved. Poland was distracted by civil war. "In this country," as the Primate of Gnesen complained at the opening of the Reichstag, March, 1764, "freedom is oppressed, the laws are not obeyed, justice cannot be obtained, trade is utterly ruined, districts and villages are devastated, the treasury is empty, and the coin of the realm has no value." It had been enfeebled by the Jesuits, and was already regarded by Russia as a sure prey. Its king--Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski--was a weakling, the plaything of internal factions and external foes (September, 1764). In the first year of his reign, Poniatowski among other laws issued a regulation which destroyed the communal union of the Polish Jews. The synod of the Four Countries, composed of delegates, rabbis and laymen (Parnassim), with authority to pronounce interdicts and levy fines, was not permitted to assemble, pass resolutions, or execute them.

The dissolution of the synod was very fortunate for the neo-Chassidim. They could not be excommunicated by the representatives of the Polish Jewish world, but each individual congregation had to proceed against them and forbid their meetings. Even this step was not taken at once, as the terrible death-struggle in which Poland engaged before its first partition was severely felt by the wealthy Jews, who trembled for their lives. The Confederation War broke out, which made many districts a desert; Poland was punished by eternal Justice in the same way as it had sinned. In the name of the pope and the Jesuits it had always persecuted dissenters, and excluded them from public offices, and, in the name of the dissenters, Catherine plunged the land into fratricidal war. The Russians, for the second time, let loose against Poland the Zaporogian Cossacks--the savage Haidamaks--who inflicted death, by every known method, upon the Polish nobles, the clergy, and the Jews. The Haidamaks hung up together a nobleman, a Jew, a monk, and a dog, with the mocking inscription, "All are equal." Most inhuman cruelties were inflicted upon captives and the defenseless. In addition came the Turks, who, in the guise of saviours of Poland, murdered and plundered on every side. The Ukraine, Podolia, in general the southern provinces of Poland, were turned into deserts.

These misfortunes were more advantageous than injurious to the neo-Chassidim. They spread in the north, and whilst hitherto they had been able to carry on their cult only in small, comparatively young communities, from this time they gained ground in the large and old congregations. Their numbers had already grown to such an extent that they formed two branches--the Mizriczians and the Karlinians--the former called after their original home, the latter after the village of Karlin, near Pinsk. The Karlinians spread as far as Wilna and Brody. At first they proceeded cautiously. As soon as at least ten persons had assembled, they looked for a room (Stübel) in which to conduct their services; there they practiced the rites of their creed, and sought to gain new adherents; but all this was skillfully done, so that nothing came to light before they had secured a firm foothold. In Lithuania their system was not yet known, and thus at first they aroused no suspicion.

The first violent attack upon them was made by a man whose influence was blessed during his lifetime, and even after death, and who, in a more favorable environment, might, like Mendelssohn, have effected much for the moral advancement of his co-religionists. Elijah Wilna (born 1720; died 1797), whose name, with the title of "Gaon," is still mentioned by the Lithuanian Jews with reverence and love, was a rare exception among the mass of the Polish Jews. He was of the purest character, and possessed high talents, which he did not put to perverted uses. It suffices to say of his character that in spite of his comprehensive and profound Talmudical erudition, he refused a post as rabbi, in contrast to most scholars in Poland, who were office-seekers, and obtained rabbinates by artifice. In spite of the marvelous fertility of his pen in many domains of Jewish literature, he allowed nothing to be published during his lifetime, again in contradistinction to contemporary students, who, in order to make a name and to see their ideas in print, scarcely waited till the ink of their compositions was dry. In his disinterestedness, Elijah Wilna realized the ideal of the Talmud, that a teacher of Judaism "should use the Law neither as a crown to adorn himself therewith, nor as a spade to dig therewith." In spite of the superiority of his knowledge and the full and general recognition accorded him, he modestly and conscientiously avoided asserting himself. The gratification that results from research, from the seeking of knowledge, completely satisfied him. His intellectual method corresponded in its unaffected simplicity with his character and life. As a matter of course, the Talmud and all the branches connected with or dependent on it filled his mind. But he disliked the corrupt method of his countrymen, who indulged in hair-splitting, casuistry, and subtleties. His sole aim was to penetrate to the simple sense of the text; he even made an attempt at the critical examination and emendation of texts, and by his undistorted explanations he blew down the houses of cards which the subtle Talmudists had erected upon quicksand.

It required extraordinary mental force to swim against the high tide of custom and rise above the aberrations into which all the sons of the Talmud in Poland had fallen. In point of fact Elijah Wilna stood isolated in his time. It seemed as though from his youth he had been afraid of following the errors of his compatriots, for he attached himself to no special school, but, strange to say, was his own teacher in the Talmud. Talmudical studies did not exclusively occupy his mind. Elijah Wilna devoted great attention to the Bible--a rarity in his circle--and, what was still more unusual, he acquainted himself with the grammar of the Hebrew language. Unlike his compatriots, he by no means despised a knowledge of extra-Talmudic subjects, but studied mathematics, and wrote a book upon geometry, algebra, and mathematical astronomy. He exhorted his disciples and friends to interest themselves in profane sciences, and openly expressed his conviction that Judaism would be the gainer from such studies. Only his scrupulous piety, his immaculate conduct, his unselfishness, and his renunciation of every office and position of honor, saved him from the charge of heresy on account of his pursuing extra-Talmudical branches of knowledge.

Elijah Wilna, above all, implanted a good spirit in the Lithuanian Jews. He taught his sons and disciples to seek simplicity and avoid the casuistry of the Polish method. In Elijah Wilna the beautiful Talmudical saying was exemplified, "He who flees from honors is sought out by them." At an early age he was recognized, even outside of Poland, as an authority and a man of truth. Yet even Elijah was subject to the delusion that the hateful Kabbala was a true daughter of Judaism, and contained true elements. He deeply lamented the moral ruin wrought by the Kabbala among Podolian and Galician Jews, through the rascally Frank, who had driven them into the arms of the Church, and made them enemies to the Synagogue; yet he could not free himself from it. Even when the danger of these false doctrines was brought home to him by the rise of the Chassidim, and he was compelled openly to oppose them, he could not relinquish his blind fondness for the Kabbala.

The neo-Chassidim, or Karlinians, had crept into Wilna, and had established a secret "Stübel" for their noisy conventicles. A trusty friend of their leader, and an emissary sent by him, had stealthily introduced their cult into the town, and won over several members of the Wilna community. Their meetings, their proceedings, and their derision of the Talmudists, were betrayed. The whole congregation were greatly excited at this. They were indignant that the Karlinians impudently asserted of the respected Elijah Wilna, that, like his occupation and his belief, his life was a lie. The elders and rabbis forthwith took counsel. The Chassidic conventicles were straightway attacked, investigations set on foot, and trials instituted. Writings were found among the Chassidim, which contained the principle that all sadness was to be avoided, even in the repentance for sins. But greatest uneasiness was aroused by the alterations in the liturgy and the disrespectful utterances against the rabbis. Elijah Wilna, who, although he filled no official position, was always invited to the council meetings, and had an important voice in its decisions, took a very serious view of the matter. He beheld in the Chassidic aberration a continuation of Frank's excesses and corrupting influence. The otherwise gentle and meek man became a veritable fanatic. The rabbis and the chiefs of the community, together with Elijah Wilna, addressed a letter to all the large communities, directing them to keep a sharp eye upon the Chassidim, and to excommunicate them until they abandoned their erroneous views. Several congregations immediately obeyed this injunction. In Brody, during the fair, in the presence of many strangers, the ban was published against all those who prayed noisily, deviated from the German synagogue ritual, wore white robes on Sabbath and the festivals, and were guilty of other strange customs and innovations. Elijah Wilna's circle launched a vigorous denunciatory pamphlet against the offenders. This was the first blow that the Chassidim experienced. In addition, their leader, Beer Mizricz, died in the same year (1772)--the rabbis imagined in consequence of the excommunication--and thus they felt themselves utterly deserted. Owing to the weakness of the king, and the greed of the neighboring nations, the kingdom of Poland was dismembered. Through this disorganization the union of the Chassidim was broken, and the separated members became dependent upon the legislature, or the arbitrary treatment, of various governments.

However, this storm did not crush them; they remained firm, and did not display the slightest sign of submitting to their opponents (Mithnagdim). On the contrary, the struggle made them more active and energetic. They were not deeply moved by the ban under which they had been placed; this weapon, blunted since the contest for and against Jonathan Eibeschütz, could no longer inflict wounds. The Chassidim, grown to the number of fifty or sixty thousand, formed themselves into small groups, each with a leader, called Rebbe. Their itinerant preachers encouraged the individual communities to persevere in their tenets, and to accept persecution as a salutary trial. The connection of the groups with one another was maintained in this way; a chief from the family of Beer Mizricz was placed at the head as the supreme Zaddik, to whom the various Rebbe were subordinate, and for whose use they were to set aside a portion of their income. The possible apostasy of members through the onslaughts from Wilna was met by the order that the Chassidim might read no work that had not received the approval of the Chassidic authorities. Obedience towards their leaders had taken so deep a root in the minds of the Chassidim that they never transgressed this prohibition. Their chiefs distributed among them the sermons or collections of sayings supposed to have been written by Israel Baalshem, or Beer Mizricz, which emphasized the high importance of the Zaddik, of the Chassidic life, and of scorn for the Talmudists--vile writings, which were nevertheless read with admiration by the members, who were kept in a constant state of intoxication. What had hitherto been optional and individual was raised by these writings to the rank of statutes and stringent laws.

After Beer's death, two men chiefly contributed to the exaltation of Chassidism, one through his unbounded enthusiasm, the other by his scholarship. These men, neither of whom is open to suspicion, were Israel of Kozieniza (north of Radom) and Salman of Liadi, both Beer's disciples.

So strong did the Chassidim again become, that a second interdict had to be fulminated against them. This time also the persecution originated in Wilna, and was instigated by Elijah Wilna. The Chassidim were declared to be heretics, with whom no pious Jew might intermarry (summer of 1781). Two messengers were sent from Wilna to the Lithuanian congregations to induce them to support the ban. In consequence of this, the collections of Chassidic sermons and other writings, although they contained sentences from Holy Writ, were publicly burnt in Brody and Cracow. In Selvia, near Slonim, during the fair, in the presence of large numbers of Jews, the ban was publicly promulgated against the Chassidim and their writings (August 21, 1781); but these obsolete methods were of little use. In the Austrian Polish provinces (Galicia) other means were employed by the disciples of the Mendelssohn school against the stultifying system of the Chassidim. The decree of Joseph II, that schools for instruction in German and elementary subjects be established in all Jewish communities, encountered vigorous resistance from all Jews, but especially from Chassidim. In the belief that culture would improve the demoralized and barbarous state of the people, a small body of men, Mendelssohn's admirers, strove zealously to oppose them. Among the most ardent workers for the enlightenment of the Galician Jews was Alexander Kaller. Kaller and his associates probably obtained a decree from the court at Vienna, commanding that no Chassidic or Kabbalistic writings be admitted into Galicia (1785). After the second partition of Poland, denunciations were also leveled against the Chassidim in Russian Poland as dangerous to the state. Salman of Liadi was dragged in chains to St. Petersburg. Elijah Wilna is said to have been the instigator of this charge, too; indeed, he persecuted the sect as long as he lived. After his death the Chassidim took vengeance upon him by dancing upon his grave, and celebrating the day of his decease as a holiday, with shouting and drunkenness. All efforts made to suppress the Chassidim were in vain, because in a measure they represented a just principle, that of opposing the excesses of Talmudism. Before the end of the eighteenth century they had increased to 100,000 souls. At the present day they rule in congregations where they were formerly persecuted, and they are spreading on all sides.

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