XIII. THE REACTION AND TEUTOMANIA…

XIII. THE REACTION AND TEUTOMANIA

The Jews in the Wars for Freedom--The Congress of Vienna-- Hardenberg and Metternich--Rühs' Christian Germanism-- Jew-hatred in Germany and Rome--German Act of Federation-- Ewald's Defense of Judaism--Jew-hatred in Prussia--Lewis Way --Congress at Aix--Hep, hep Persecution--Hartwig Hundt-- Julius von Voss--Jewish Avengers.

1813-1818 C. E.

Like the Persian monarch Xerxes, Napoleon, hitherto invincible, and grown haughty and brutal through his successes, summoned the nations and princes to a universal war, and they followed him as submissively as slaves follow their master. Proudly he led forth Europe, subdued by him, against Asiatic Russia. Within the memory of man such an immense expedition had not been known. But, if ever, the words of the text were fulfilled in this gigantic contest: "An horse is a vain thing for safety, neither shall he deliver any by his great strength"; if ever, Divine justice manifested itself in him who had trampled upon right and liberty. Napoleon was defeated, not by the power of his enemy, but by a Higher Hand which struck him with blindness--a blindness which permitted the glow of the flames at Moscow and the ice of a Russian winter to work his ruin. When God and fortune had forsaken him, the princes who had promised him service and allegiance fell away from him, and turned the points of their swords against him, and the people, which, relying upon his own warlike talents, he had so greatly despised, rose up against him. But the nations likewise were stricken with blindness; whilst breaking asunder one sort of bonds, they forged new ones for themselves. The two years (May, 1812-April, 1814) form an instructive chapter in history, from the moment when Napoleon led an army of more than half a million men against Russia, until the day when, abandoned by all, he was compelled to flee, in order to escape the threats and insults of the embittered French people. It was a sanguinary, horrifying drama.

No one could have suspected that the greater would drag down the less in its ruin, that by the downfall of Napoleon, the Jews whom he had liberated, though reluctantly, would be hurled into their former slavery. Jewish youths belonging to wealthy families had emulated their Christian friends in courage, and rushed to battle to help in slaying the giant. Large numbers of Jews, especially in Prussia, animated by burning love of country, had joined the volunteers, had rejoiced to be accepted in the ranks, and wipe away with their blood on the battlefield the stain of cowardice, so often imputed to them by the opponents to their emancipation. Jewish young men paid for the freedom accorded them on paper with their lives. Jewish physicians and surgeons sacrificed themselves in the camps and hospitals in their devoted attendance on the wounded and the plague-stricken. Jewish women and girls spared no efforts to bring help and comfort to the wounded. Again, as in the days of national independence, sons of the same race and religion were opposed to each other--German Jews engaged in deadly combat with French, Italian, and Dutch Jews, and recognized each other only in the last hour, in time to embrace as brothers. Those unfit to bear arms had shown their attachment to Germany and their worthiness of emancipation by sacrifices in other ways. Nevertheless, the seemingly forgotten Jew-hatred was rekindled in the hearts of the Germans, extended ever further, and robbed the Jews of the reward which the hard-won victories had promised to bring even to them.

With the fall of the hero began the rule of petty, intriguing, reckless speculators, who bartered both men and lands. They misled the princes who earnestly desired to restore long banished freedom, and ensnared them with lying artifices. In France these intriguers, the Talleyrands, reinstated the throne of the Bourbons. In Germany Metternich and Gentz turned the struggles for freedom into mockery. Only the more far-sighted knew that Europe, owing to the closer connection between the rulers, would be reduced to a more degrading state of slavery, because sloth and pettiness were the order of the day.

The Jews felt the first effects of the reaction now commencing in Germany. It arose in Frankfort, the seat of unmitigated, mediæval anti-Semitism. As soon as the artillery of the retreating enemy had ceased within the precincts of this city, loud voices were heard encouraging each other to demand that boundaries be set at once to the unheard-of presumption of the Jews. In Lübeck and Bremen, the citizens did not content themselves with depriving the Jews of their recently-acquired rights, but energetically strove to banish them altogether. The proposal was seriously made to drive all adherents of the Mosaic religion from the town. In Hanover, Hildesheim, Brunswick, and Hesse, they were at one blow divested of their rights of equality. These events naturally gave great anxiety to the Jews throughout Germany. If the privileges granted them by law, as in Frankfort, could be abolished, what security had they for the continuance of their equality? What a contrast this reaction presented to that in France! Here, although the nobility, who hated freedom and were thirsting for revenge, and the Catholic clergy were in power at the court of Louis XVIII, and looked upon the terrible events since 1789 as if they had not happened, yet the rights of the Jews were not abridged.

The Jews, concerned about their freedom, honor, nay, their very existence, especially in the so-called free towns, looked hopefully forward to the Congress of Vienna, which was to readjust dismembered Europe. The monarchical and diplomatic members of the Congress, however, did not hasten to act the part of Providence assigned to them. They opened the meetings in November instead of in August, and from the bosom of this Congress, intended to establish eternal peace, a desolating war arose. The community of Frankfort had sent two deputies to Vienna, one of them Jacob Baruch, the father of Börne, chosen because he had patrons at the Viennese court. Baruch fulfilled his task in a disinterested manner worthy of his great son. Together with his less known colleague, he presented a memorial (October, 1814) to the Congress, wherein the arguments in favor of the claim of the Frankfort Jews were clearly set forth. They made the formal claim, that their equalization had been duly purchased for a large sum, and the patriotic claim, that they had taken part in the liberation of Germany. Their chief aim was to remove the suzerainty of the Senate over them.

The Jews of the three Hanse Towns sent a Christian lawyer as deputy, to guard their interests in Vienna, who of his own accord had drawn up an appeal for the equalization of the Jews. In combination with the deputies, certain influential personages worked quietly and unobtrusively. The banking-house of Rothschild by its circumspection and fortunate enterprises had made itself a power in the money world; and not even prying suspicion could find a trace of dishonesty in the accumulation of its riches, which might be used as a pretext by anti-Jewish opponents. The founder of the house, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, was held in the highest esteem in Frankfort, and in consequence of the equalization had a seat in the Electoral College. Happily he died before the beginning of the reaction (September, 1812), but his five sons increased the wealth left by their father. Although they appear to have adhered to the principle, not to throw the power of their riches into the scale on behalf of their co-religionists and their faith, yet they could not be indifferent to the attempt made in Frankfort, their home, to reduce the Jews again to a state of serfdom. One of the brothers probably addressed words of remonstrance to the most influential German members of the Congress against diminishing the rights of his co-religionists.

The statesmen who controlled German affairs in the Congress showed themselves favorable to the Jews. Hardenberg and Metternich in a letter on the subject expressed their disapproval of the oppressions to which the Jews in the Hanse Towns were subjected (January, 1815), and advised the Senate--advice which amounted to a command--to treat them in a humane, just spirit. Hardenberg pointed out to the Hanse Towns the example of Prussia and the edict of March 11, 1812, and remarked, with some sarcasm, that they would succeed in depriving the Jewish houses of the prosperity to which they had attained, and that constant oppression would compel them to withdraw their capital. In the sketch of the constitution for Germany drawn up by the Prussian plenipotentiary, William von Humboldt, which was submitted to Metternich, and accepted as a basis for discussion, the Jews were promised equality, even though they were mentioned separately. "The three Christian religious sects enjoy equal rights in all German states, and the adherents of the Jewish faith, so long as they undertake all the duties of citizenship, are to enjoy corresponding rights." But the goodwill of the two chancellors, even though their sentiments had been shared by the monarchs whom they represented, did not suffice at that time. A new enemy rose up against the Jews, tougher and more dangerous than envy and bourgeois pride. This terrible enemy who now turned his arms against the Jews was the German visionary. The yoke so long imposed on the Germans by the French, the compulsion under which they had been to obliterate their most characteristic peculiarities, had rendered hateful to them, not alone everything French, but all that was foreign, that did not bear the stamp of pure German origin. Allowances should certainly be made for a nation which, arriving at a consciousness of its strength and solidarity, breaks its fetters, if it conceives an exaggerated notion of its importance. But it was unpardonable and childish that grown men should dream in broad daylight, representing their dreams as truth and trying to foist them upon others. Extravagant Teutomania was a dream of this kind, and resulted in the ruin of the Germans. For the first time the German nation had acted as a unit; hitherto it had been the tool of princes in Italian expeditions, Turkish wars, or civil strife. The Germans sought analogous cases in their own history by which to regulate their conduct, and found them only in the Middle Ages, in the time of the Empire and the omnipotence of the papacy, or in early Teutonic times when uncouth barbarism and childish simplicity prevailed. The romantic school, the Schlegels, Arnims, and Brentanos, had shown them this grewsome specter of the Middle Ages in so wonderful a light, that the Germans in their delusion considered it an ideal, the realization of which was a holy task. To the Middle Ages belonged Christianity, credulity, unthinking clericalism, which became the dearest possessions of the Germans, because they were diametrically opposed to the unbelief of the French and the revolutionary epoch. From that time the hollow phrase, Christian-German (or Teutsch), arose, and speedily became a catchword.

But only the devoted followers of Catholicism, with the papacy as supreme authority, could be pious in the sense of the Middle Ages. Honest romanticists, such as Görres, Frederick Schlegel, Adam Müller, etc., logically went over to the Roman Church, and helped to re-establish the empire of the Jesuits and the Inquisition. As for the German Protestants, "God had poured out upon them the spirit of confusion and they tottered like drunken men." Instead of directing their attention to Vienna, where the Congress, amidst dancing and revelry, was running its quarry, the German people, to earth, the romanticists built castles in the air, and at once announced that certain people would be denied admission.

Christian Teutomania was the armed specter which for many decades robbed the German Jews of rest, honor, and joy in life. Because this race, strongly marked by descent and tradition, was distinguished from the Germans by external marks, by features, carriage, and vivacity, although akin in language, feeling, and temperament, they were repelled as foreigners, as a force breeding disturbance and discomfort, and had the spirit of the times permitted they would have been expelled from German territory. But to find a reason for this blind hate, the enemies of the Jews had recourse to old contemptible publications, and extracted rubbish from sources where others had found the rich intellectual treasures of the Jews, and drew such a portrait of them as to arouse terror both in themselves and others.

The first to clothe vague prejudice in words and heap abuse upon the Jews was not a knavish writer, but an academical professor named Friedrich Rühs, whom the newly-founded Berlin University had appointed to the chair of history. He wished to investigate the decline of Germany, and hit upon the Jews, as though they had been the authors of Germany's disgrace during its occupation by foreign powers. Rühs discussed the "Claims of the Jews to German Citizenship," developed the unwholesome theory of a Christian state, and thence derived his justification, if not actually to expel the Jews from Germany, yet to humble them and thwart their growth. He drew up a complete programme for their treatment, which was afterwards conscientiously carried out.

Above all things he wanted the Jews to live merely on sufferance, and on no account to claim equal rights of citizenship. They were once more to pay protection-money, a Jew-tax, and limits were to be set to their increase. The cities which had hitherto not tolerated them were to be supported in this course, and naturally Jews were not to be admitted to any office, nor even permitted to defend their country. Rühs, moreover, insisted that the Jews should again wear a badge, not a repulsive yellow patch, but a "national cockade"; at any rate some mark of distinction, "that the German who could not recognize his Hebrew enemy by face, gait, or speech, might do so by the doubtful badge of honor." Above all things, Rühs exhorted the German states and the German people to promote the conversion of the Jews to Christianity; that was most important. It was generally asserted, even in Christian quarters, that only bad and abandoned men exchanged Judaism for Christianity; but that was prejudice.

Rühs' pamphlet excited great interest. Worthy and learned men declared their agreement with him. The learned German world at the time of Lessing, Abt, Kant, and Herder, the apostolic messenger of universal humanity, now talked the language of the Church Fathers, and stirred up hate and persecution. Schleiermacher and Fichte brought the representatives of German intellect so low that they actually competed with the ultra-Catholics in hatred of the Jews. Pius VII, who in consequence of the Restoration once more reigned in the Papal States, and reintroduced the Inquisition, in order to drive out godlessness by means of the auto-da-fé, ordained that the Jews should forfeit the freedom enjoyed under French rule. The Jews of Rome had to forsake their beautiful houses in all parts of the city and return to the dirty, unhealthy Ghetto; the Middle Ages had returned to the Papal States. The Jews, as in the seventeenth century, had to attend sermons for their own conversion on pain of punishment. Meantime history had enacted one of those surprising interludes, which was to prove the instability of the reactionary Restoration. Napoleon had contrived to land on French ground despite English sea-guardianship. The props of the Bourbon throne--the nobility, the clergy, and intriguers, who had ostentatiously displayed their power,--collapsed before a single shot had been fired, and Napoleon entered Paris in triumph. The empire of the hundred days was established. The whole of Europe armed itself against one man, and the fortune of war decided in favor of the allies on the Dutch battlefields at Waterloo. In the Prussian army, which next to the English had been most instrumental in turning the tide of victory, there were many Jewish soldiers, among them several militia officers.

What reward did the German Jews receive for their sincere devotion to their country? When the Congress, alarmed by Napoleon's sudden reappearance, ceased to dally and began to hold regular sittings, the Act of Federation for the German states, which despite their union were to be autonomous, was brought up for consideration, and a paragraph in it devoted to the Jews. Citizenship was to be assured them, and in countries where obstacles to this reform existed, they were to be removed as far as possible. But this paragraph was accepted only by Prussia and Austria; all the other members of the league, especially those from the free towns, voted against it. To arrive at an agreement, a colorless compromise was proposed: "The Congress of the allies will consider how the civil improvement of those professing the Jewish faith in Germany is to be effected in the most harmonious manner, and how in particular the enjoyment of civil rights and participation in civil duties may be secured to them. The rights already conceded them in the several federated states will be continued."

The first portion was harmless, and could be accepted by all, since it remained open to every state to prevent its favorable interpretation. The latter portion, however, was apt to put the Free Towns into a delicate position. There the Jews through French influence were actually in possession of civil equality. Accordingly, the deputy for Frankfort (the syndic Danz) emphatically protested, and was supported by the Saxon deputies. To shame German narrow-mindedness, the Danish government, as if it had anticipated that the hatred of Jews in Germany would spread, ordered Bernstorff, its representative for Holstein, to declare that the adherents of the Jewish faith, if they fulfilled the duties of citizenship, might there expect a constitutional provision ensuring them against persecution, oppression, arbitrariness or uncertainty of legislation in respect of the rights conceded to them. The deputy for Bremen, Senator Schmidt, was cleverer; he did not protest, but defeated the suspicious resolution by a master-stroke. Remarking that the privileges of the Jews conferred by the French in North Germany (the 32d military division) could not be binding on the Germans, he stated that they need only change the word in into by, and everything would be right. Nobody at first took notice of this apparently insignificant change. Metternich and Hardenberg, who hitherto either from inclination or in pursuance of promises had appeared to favor the Jews, passed over this point in an incomprehensible manner. Thus the paragraph referring to the Jewish question in its final form read: "The rights already conceded the professors of the Jewish faith by the several federated states will be continued." Of the federated states, however, only Prussia and Mecklenburg, and perhaps also Baden, had conceded citizenship to the Jews. The enactment of the French authorities was thus made null and void, and Germany was saved. What did it matter to the delighted nation that this verbal change would cost so many tears?

The humiliation of the Jews soon showed itself in practical life. Lübeck, protected by the unfair interpretation of a paragraph, ordered more than forty Jewish families to leave the town (September, 1815). Bremen did the same with its Jews. Frankfort could not eject its Jewish inhabitants, but their lives were embittered; they were shut out from civil assemblies, Jewish functionaries were deposed, they were excluded from many trades and industries, marriage permits asked by Jewish couples were refused with the heartlessness of the Middle Ages, they were forbidden to live in certain parts of the town, and were treated as though they were still servi cameræ. But as the Senate knew that Prussia and Austria regarded it as a point of honor to preserve intact the civil rights of the Jews of Frankfort, and that the Federal Diet, at the instance of both great powers, might easily determine the controversy in favor of the Jews, it applied to three German juridical faculties, those of Berlin, Marburg, and Giessen, to have the question decided as one of law.

This struggle between the Frankfort Senate and the Jews, protracted during nine years (1815-24), and occasioning many vexations, will ever remain a stain on the time, a monument of German narrow-mindedness. The Jews, relying on the assurance of the two German powers, believed that their civil rights were guarded as by a triple wall.

But just this manifest truth, the Teutomaniacs and sophists, suddenly developed into bigots, sought to obscure and cry down. From all parts of Germany there resounded simultaneously outcries against the Jews, urging the nation, or the German federation, to enslave the Jews or destroy them. Journals and pamphlets raged against them, as if Germany or Christendom could be saved only by the destruction of the Jews.

The most violent attack was that of a physician and professor of natural science at Heidelberg, J. F. Fries, "Danger to the Welfare and Character of the Germans through the Jews" (summer, 1816), in which he asserted that the Jews ought to be expelled the country, that the tribe must be exterminated root and branch, as among all secret and political societies they were most dangerous to the state. "Ask man after man, and see, whether every peasant and every burgher do not hate and curse the Jews as national pests and bread robbers." The Jews, he said, had contrived to get more than half the entire capital of Frankfort into their hands. "Let them go on for forty years, and the sons of the first Christian houses will seek service among the Jews in the meanest capacities." It is remarkable that in the face of such passionate incitement, wild outbreaks against the Jews did not occur at that time, especially as Fries' pamphlet was read in all taverns and public-houses.

Was no Christian voice raised against this injustice? For the honor of the Germans it must be mentioned that some men had the courage to contend against crass prejudice and blind hatred. A highly respected and learned councilor in Ratisbon, August Krämer, wrote a defense, "The Jews and their Just Claims on the Christian States; a Contribution to the Mitigation of the Cruel Prejudices against the Jewish Nation." Councilor Schmidt, in Hildburghausen, on the one hand, pictured the abominable scenes which Christian fanaticism had in the past enacted against Jews, and, on the other hand, showed the superiority of culture possessed by the latter over the Christians in Spain. But their most thorough-going advocate was Johann Ludwig Ewald, a reformed clergyman of Carlsruhe, of high position, and seventy years old. Rühs' and Fries' malignant statements about the Jews incensed him so deeply, that he denied himself a season's recreation in Baden, and employed the time in giving the lie to their impudent assertions in a pamphlet (1816). Ewald vindicated the downtrodden sons of Israel in the name of Christianity, whose representative he was. Every groundless complaint against them he dissolved into nothing. From England and France, too, admonitions reached the Germans not to expose their own pettiness by their insane hatred of the Jews. An English paper thought that the town of Lübeck, as well as all the free towns, ought to be deprived of their independence (of which they had made so infamous a use) by the German federation, on account of the ignorant intolerance displayed against the Jews. A French writer, M. Bail, vindicated the unhappy people in glowing language, and covered their German enemies with shame.

"The Jewish nation to a higher degree than any other possesses the ancient, sanctified character which excites astonishment. I never meet a rabbi adorned with a white beard without thinking of the venerable patriarchs. Nothing is more elevating about the Israelites than their solemn life, which makes them the most devoted and honorable people on earth. In their midst is to be found the illustration of all domestic virtues, of loving care for the needy, and profound reverence for parents. Happy, a thousand times happy, are the nations among whom the basis of morality has been preserved."

But if truth and justice had spoken with angels' tongues, the Germans of those days would have remained deaf to their voices. They were so deeply imbued with hatred of the Jews that they were irrational.

An organ of the Austrian government directed a sort of threat against the encroachments of the people of Lübeck upon the rights of the Jews.

"How can the future Federal Diet discuss the improvement of the condition of the Jews, if individual states anticipate it by the most cruel and arbitrary resolutions? This conduct exhibits want of respect as much towards the ensuing Federal Diet as towards the foremost courts of Germany, whose principles in regard to this matter have been often and loudly enough expressed."

What was done by Austria itself, which displayed such righteous indignation against Lübeck on behalf of the Jews? Francis I and his ruler Metternich completely forgot the benevolent intentions of Joseph II, and kept in mind only the hateful laws of Maria Theresa against the Jews. They did not indeed expel the Jews, as in Lübeck and Bremen, but they were relegated to Ghettos within Austria, beyond which they were not allowed to pass. Tyrol, the secluded mountain province, was closed to them as to Protestants. In Bohemia the mountain cities and villages were forbidden them, and in Moravia, in the great cities of Brünn and Olmütz, they were allowed to stay only over-night or for a short time. Everywhere there were Jew-streets; the restrictions imposed on the Jews of Austria had become proverbial, whilst in Galicia they met with greater oppression than in the Middle Ages. Even the benevolent regulations of Joseph II, in regard to compulsory school attendance and practical religious instruction, were carried out not so much to spread culture among the Jews as to torment and injure them. Emperor Francis ennobled a few Jews, but the others were humiliated; they were obliged to render military service, but the bravest were rarely admitted even to the lowest rungs of the military ladder.

Austria, to be sure, had made the Jews no promises, and had awakened no hope of freedom. But Prussia, where they had already enjoyed full citizenship, conjured up a hobgoblin worthy of the Middle Ages, and wounded their honor the more deeply. Frederick William III, who had confirmed the equality of the Prussian Jews by law, annulled it, or rather left it unexecuted, a dead letter. Unconsciously he succumbed to the theory of the Christian state set up by the Teutomaniacs and sophists, who insisted that no place of honor be conceded the Jews. The promised equalization of the Jews in the newly-acquired or reconquered provinces was continually delayed. In the latter they remained subject to the restrictions of a former time, and Prussia's legislation regarding the Jews was a curious petrifaction. There were twenty-one fundamental laws for their treatment, and they were divided into French, old Prussian, Saxon, and Polish Jews, naturally to their disadvantage.

The specific aim of Prussia was to make Jews despicable in society. Whereas formerly the government had been at pains to avoid in official correspondence the words Jew, Jewish, as having an offensive connotation, they were now insisted upon.

The Judæophobist spirit in Prussia showed itself in a case which challenges comparison with France. The unjust Napoleonic law which had suspended the equality of the Jews of the German departments for ten years in respect of free migration and commerce was to fall into abeyance after the end of the respite (March 17, 1818), unless it was prolonged. The government of Louis XVIII, although besieged by clerical and political reactionaries, did not for a moment make an attempt to preserve the limitation. In the Chamber, which occupied itself with this point (February and March, 1818), only one hostile voice (Lathier) was raised against the Jews in Alsace. This opponent of the Jews alleged that the whole country would soon be in the hands of the Jews, if a check was not put to their greed. Not even the Right, which was clerically disposed, uttered a word against the Jews in general and for the restriction of their liberties. The phantom of a Christian state was quite unknown to the French. The Chamber rejected Lathier's proposal, and thus the Jews of Alsace were restored to their former equality. A similar law had been passed against the Jews of the district on the left bank of the Rhine, which was added to Prussia, or the Rhine province and Westphalia. The Prussian government, on taking this former French territory, had permitted the continuance of restrictive legislation, and a cabinet order of March 3d, 1818, renewed it for an indefinite period.

About this time a distinguished Englishman, with the Old and New Testaments in his hand, advocated the equality and freedom of the Jews throughout Europe with extraordinary zeal. Lewis Way, a disciple of the Fifth Monarchy enthusiasts of the English War of Independence, accepted the prophecies of the Old Testament and the Apocalypse, and was convinced that the Jewish nation would be resurrected, and be restored in glory to the land of their fathers. Only when they had recovered their independence would they be converted to the doctrines of Jesus. It was therefore a matter of conscience with him to promote the welfare of the Jews. He made a journey to Poland to ascertain the number and condition of the Jews in that country. Way now elaborated a remarkable memorial in which he dwelt on the high significance of the Jews in the past, and also in the future. With this memorial he betook himself to Aix, where the king of Prussia and the emperors of Russia and Austria with their ministers and diplomatists were met in Congress (end of September, 1818). He sought to make a favorable impression on Emperor Alexander, whose mystical temperament was known to him. As soon as the Czar showed himself in favor of the equalization of the Jews, it could not be doubted that Frederick William III and Emperor Francis would also be well disposed towards it.

Way started with the supposition that the Jews were a royal nation, and had not ceased to be so even in exile, in the misfortunes of their tragical career. This people possessed the key to the history of the whole globe. The same divine grace which had guided them in former times rested on them in banishment and exile. The promises which the prophets had foretold for the Israelite race would not fail to be accomplished; they would once more be gathered together in the land of their fathers. All the nations of the earth which have received salvation through them, were bound by gratitude to show the Jews the greatest honors and boundless beneficence, so as to wipe out the guilt incurred against this divinely-gifted race by the cruel persecutions inflicted on them. The present moment was highly favorable to their complete liberation. In some countries fanatical, narrow-minded clamorers had raised their voices against the emancipation of the Jews, but they no more represented public opinion than the furious outcries of a few American planters against the suppression of slavery. If Way was an enthusiast, when he tried to prove the necessity of emancipation in a mystical manner from prophetic and apocalyptic verses, he was still true enough to the practical instincts of the English race to be able to prove to their majesties what profit the emancipated Jews would bring the state. He conceded that much about the Jews must be altered, but their national peculiarity was holy property, which must not be touched. It was the invisible tie which bound the past of the Jews with their future, the past of mankind with its future; the fulfillment of prophecy depended on Israel.

This mystical, yet sensible memorial was handed by Way to the Emperor of Russia, on whom it must have made an impression, for he delivered it to his plenipotentiaries, Nesselrode and Capo D'Istrias, charging them to bring it and the emancipation of the Jews under the notice of the Congress. Out of respect for Alexander, who at that time pulled the strings of European politics, the plenipotentiaries were obliged to give attention to the matter, if only in appearance. The protocol said (November 21, 1818) that, though they could not in every respect accept the point of view of the writer of the memorial, they must render justice to the tendency and laudable aim of his conclusions. The plenipotentiaries of Austria and Prussia (Metternich, Hardenberg, and Bernstorff) declared themselves ready to give any information with regard to the question in both monarchies, which might aid in solving a problem important to the statesman and the philanthropist; but this was no more than a courtly phrase. Another voice addressed enthusiastic words in favor of the German and Polish Jews to the Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle. Michael Berr, like his father, untiringly active in the elevation of his co-religionists, poured forth the stream of his oratory in their cause.

"In Charlemagne's favorite city the monarchs will finally decide concerning the political existence of my co-religionists in Germany. The honor of Germany, the honor of the age and that of monarchs, loudly demand the reinstatement of the Jews in their civil and political rights. With justice are they exercised about laws, which still exist here and there to the disadvantage of the Jews."

The Italian Jews also combined to send a petition to the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle concerning the abolition of their grievances and the cessation of persecution. They lost nothing by failure to carry out their design. The time had passed when princes and statesmen, sages and citizens, interested themselves in "the improvement of the condition of the Israelites," as the phrase ran.

The ill-feeling against the Jews in Germany continued to grow without ground or provocation. Jewish preachers celebrated the battle of Leipsic (October 18, 1818) in the synagogue with great enthusiasm, but to the Teutomaniacs this was no proof of their patriotic love. The hatred against Jews assumed so violent a character that a writer, one not badly disposed, saw reason to foretell the outbreak of popular attacks on life and property.

Germany was at that time intensely excited by the murder of Kotzebue, in Mannheim, by a half-mad Christian student, Karl Sand (March, 1819), and by the harsh regulations of the government against demagogic and Germanizing movements, which it had formerly fostered. The Germanizers panted for a sacrifice, and, as they could not attack the statesmen, such as the Metternichs, Gentzes, and Kamptzes, the helpless Jews were marked as victims. A series of brutal outbreaks occurred during several months. With the cry of "Hep, hep!" against the Jews, the Middle Ages revived again like a jeering ghost, and persecution was galvanized into life by the student and commercial classes.

The city of Würzburg commenced the attack. A new professor was inducted into office (August 2) amidst the rejoicings of the students, who were joined by a large number of people. Suddenly an old professor, Brendel, was noticed, who had shortly before written in favor of the Jews, for which it was alleged that he had received a box of ducats. On seeing him, there resounded from the mouths of the students the insane cry, "Hep, hep!" together with the outcry "Jude, verreck," i. e., "Jew, die like a beast." The former expression, then used for the first time, meant in student's slang, "Jerusalem is destroyed" (Hierosolyma est perdita). Brendel was pursued, and had to flee for safety. Perfect fury took possession of the people of Würzburg, who broke into the shops of the Jews, throwing the goods into the streets, and when they defended themselves with stones, the bitterness increased to frenzy. A regular battle ensued, many wounds were received, and several persons killed. About forty citizens took part in the affray. The military had to be called out, or the Jews would have been massacred. The next day the burghers appealed to the civic authorities to order the dismissal of the Jews from Würzburg, and to this they had to submit. Overcome with grief, about four hundred Jews of all ages left the town, and encamped for several days in the villages or under tents, looking forward to a terrible future. The persecution of the Jews in Würzburg was repeated in Bamberg, and in almost every town of Franconia. Wherever a Jew showed himself, he was assailed with the insulting cry of "Hep, hep!" and ill-treated.

This persecution of the Jews in Franconia was a hint to the Frankforters how to humble their hated fellow-citizens, who had dared bring an action against the Senate, and were protected by the Federal Diet. Thus a riot was re-enacted here (9th and 10th August), which began with the cry, "Hep, hep!" and with the breaking of windows in Jewish houses; then the mob advanced to brutality, and drove away all Jews from the promenades with insults and outrage. Artisans, workmen, shop assistants, secretly encouraged by their employers, as in the time of Vincent Fettmilch, two centuries before, made violent attacks on Jewish houses. The house of the Rothschilds in particular was selected for attack, their wealth and political importance being a thorn in the side of Christian patricians. In Paris at this time, all the ambassadors and diplomatic representatives appeared at a ball given by James Rothschild, and in Germany the Rothschilds were still treated as peddlers. Several wealthy Jews left Frankfort after this outrage. The storm, which became frenzy in Frankfort, the seat of the Diet, was not an indifferent matter to the ambassadors. The moneys of the Diet were placed in Rothschild's coffers for security. The president, Count von Buol Schauenstein, summoned a conference of members, and it was resolved to call out the federal troops, as the city militia could not be trusted. The persecution of the Jews in Frankfort aroused great attention throughout Europe, but the excitement against them continued, in spite of the arrival of the troops. Several Jews consequently sold their houses, and even the Rothschilds put no trust in the lull, and had serious thoughts of leaving Frankfort; they would have had to emigrate to France or England, as they were not safe anywhere in Germany.

This massacre of the Jews spread like wildfire in Germany, as if the people had everywhere waited for a sign to break out. In Darmstadt and Bayreuth the riots were repeated (August 12). The few Jews in Meiningen were expelled. In Carlsruhe, one morning, a placard was found posted on the synagogue and the houses of prominent Jews--"Death and destruction to the Jews!"

In Düsseldorf black marks and threatening placards were found on the doors of several Jewish houses. In the territory of Baden, where Sand had sealed the Teutomaniac folly with a murder, and the excitement still lasted, the bitterness against the Jews was so great that not one could appear in the streets without being maltreated. In Heidelberg a tumult arose (beginning of September) in consequence of a vulgar scene, which curiously illustrates German chivalry. A citizen had outraged a Jewish maiden, and had been arrested by the police. Nearly the whole populace immediately rushed to rescue the hero and destroy the Jewish houses. Cries of "Hep, hep!" resounded in the streets; axes, crowbars, tools of all sorts were collected as if to carry a place by storm. The city guard, which ought to have dispersed the assaulting party, refused their services. The city governor, Pfizer, instead of standing by the persecuted, assisted their assailants. Blood would have been spilled, had not the Heidelberg students, humanized, perhaps, by contact with France, defended the unprotected people at their own risk, under the leadership of two professors, Daub and Thibaut. When at length the armed force appeared, and patrols swept through the whole province of Baden, and every small town and village was made responsible for the attacks of certain of their number upon the Jews, the outbreaks against the Jews gradually subsided, but the hatred against them was only intensified.

"From Germany the spark of Jew-hatred flew even into the capital of the Danish state," which a few years before had extended citizenship to the Jews, and had refused to revoke it. In Copenhagen the mob rose up (September), and commenced by throwing stones at the Jews, and ended with acts of violence. The government proclaimed martial law. The citizens, in the few cities where Jews lived, stood by them, and the preachers preached tolerance and love to them from the pulpit. In Germany the ministers of religion did not utter a single protest during these outrageous scenes. That no feature of the persecution of the Jews of the Middle Ages might be wanting, a synagogue was stormed in a small Bavarian place, and the scrolls of the Law rudely torn to pieces. Even where actual violence could not be resorted to, the insulting cry of "Hep, hep!" was hurled at the Jews in small and large towns, to the amusement of the spectators. The police or military force which appeared against the rioters and disturbers secretly took part against the Jews, and the governments which protected them did so more from fear, because they suspected a demagogical movement behind the outbreaks against the Jews. Reference was afterwards made to these outrages, as illustrating the feeling, or rather ill-feeling towards the Jews, to withhold equal rights from them.

The zenith of Teutomaniac Jew hatred was reached by the inflammatory pamphlet which appeared at this time of excitement, "The Mirror of the Jews" (November, 1819). Hartwig Hundt, a man of adventurous life, boldly advocated the slaughter of the Jews. He made most laudable propositions, which, he flattered himself, would satisfy the "Hep, hep" people.

"Although I for my part hold the killing of Jews neither a sin nor a crime, but only a police offence, I would nevertheless never counsel that they be condemned and punished unheard, as seems to be the fashion now."

What then? His proposals were:--

"Let the children of Israel be sold to the English, who could employ them in their Indian plantations instead of the blacks. That they may not increase, the men should be emasculated, and their wives and daughters be lodged in houses of shame. The best plan would be to purge the land entirely of this vermin, either by exterminating them, or as Pharaoh and the people of Meiningen, Würzburg, and Frankfort did, by driving them from the country."

The "Hep, hep" storm and Hundt's murderous lessons were the poisonous fruit of the seeds which Fichte and Schleiermacher had sown, and which had shot up quickly and abundantly.

Hundt's inflammatory book, in which every word is an abomination, was as ravenously swallowed by the German reading public, as his bad novels. Only at the request of Jews it was forbidden and confiscated by the censorship, which had become omnipotent through the Carlsbad regulations. In Portugal, at about the same time, a motion was brought forward in the Cortes to re-admit the banished Jews and atone for the crime perpetrated against them, whilst in Germany authors and statesmen justified this crime, and wished it to be repeated in the nineteenth century. Hundt did not stand alone in his advocacy of the extirpation of the Jews. Who cares to enumerate all the virulent, hostile writings against the Jews of the years of the "Hep, hep" storm? Conversation on questions of the day, however remote from the subject of the Jews, always ended in abuse of them. If an author glorified Sand and his murder of Kotzebue, and praised his Christian religious spirit, he did not fail to add that "Christian hate would call down a day of judgment upon the Jews, the accomplices of financiers who worked the ruin of the state, even though no writer had ever printed a syllable to the disadvantage of the Jews."

Thus every man's hand was against them; no defender of any weight or influence appeared for them, whose word, if it could not silence, might at least curb the opposition. The aged Jean Paul (Friedrich Richter) did not raise his voice for them, although he had a predilection for the Jews; nor Varnhagen von Ense, although Rachel was his wife, and was included in the general obloquy. Only one writer overcame his prejudice, and defied public opinion in order to take up cudgels on behalf of the universally despised and downtrodden Jews. This was the comedy writer Julius von Voss, whose voice certainly had no great weight, and whose disordered affairs roused the suspicion that Jewish liberality encouraged his venturesomeness. Voss himself in his comedies and novels had exposed the Jews to ridicule, but from regret and remorse, he confessed, he desired to protect the Jews against the "Hep, hep" insults. His words were little regarded, and even were derided. Still less impression was created by the anonymous writings of various freemasons in favor of the Jews, but their goodwill should be recognized. The converted Jews conducted themselves at this juncture in a shameful manner. Not one of them, except Börne, came forward, in behalf of their former brethren, with that just indignation which violence against the defenseless ought to inspire. Rachel von Varnhagen, it is true, wrote to her brother, Ludwig Robert, who had been a witness of the "Hep, hep" storm, in the following manner:--

"I am intensely moved, as I have never yet been, on account of the Jews. They are to be preserved, but only for torture, for contumely, for insult, for brutal outrage. The hypocritical newborn love for the Christian religion (God forgive me for my sin!), for the Middle Ages with their art, poetry, and hideousness, incites the people to the only abomination to which, mindful of all past experiences, it can still be incited. It is not the action of the people, who are taught to cry "Hep, hep." The professors Fries and Rühs, and others, such as Arnim, Brentano, 'our connections,' and yet greater persons are filled with prejudices."

She thought that the Christian priests ought to step forward to check the outrages of the people. "Aye, the priests." But neither Rachel, nor her brother Robert, nor her husband Varnhagen, who elaborated their periods for every childish folly, and had a voice in public opinion, raised it against violence, and against the rule of oppression.

The Jews had, it is true, their own literary exponents to protect them. In Germany alone there were nearly forty Jewish writers who could address the German public. They possessed two Jewish organs, and the daily journals occasionally opened their pages to them. They advanced boldly to the battle-field to ward off the universal accusations against their race. Even the aged David Friedländer raised his voice, wrung his hands over the enemies of the Jews and their persecutions in Germany in the nineteenth century, and could not conceive--he who considered official Christianity and the State as ideal--how these gods could wallow in so much filth. He addressed himself to the Countess Von der Recke, and reminded her of the time when eminent Christians conversed pleasantly with Jews, and both received instruction from each other. This sounded like a forgotten fairy tale from ancient days. But the Jewish combatants only threw light missiles, and could scarcely prick the thick hide of prejudice. For this purpose sharp and heavy harpoons were necessary. At this point the Guide of all history, who had not abandoned the Jews, awakened for them two avenging angels, who with fiery scourges lashed the perverseness of the Germans. These avenging spirits, who brought the Germans more blessings even than their guardian angels, were Ludwig Börne and Heinrich Heine.

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XIV. BÖRNE AND HEINE

Börne and Heine--Börne's Youth--His Attitude to Judaism--His Love of Liberty--His Defense of the Jews--Heine: his Position with Regard to Judaism--The Rabbi of Bacharach--Heine's Thoughts upon Judaism--Influence of Börne and Heine.

1819-1830 C. E.

Why should not Börne and Heine have a page in Jewish history? Not only did Jewish blood flow in their veins, but they were imbued with true Jewish spirit.

The lightning darts which they flashed across Germany, now in the colors of the rainbow, again in glaring sheets, were charged with the electricity of Jewish Talmudism. Both Börne and Heine renounced Judaism, but only like combatants who, appropriating the enemy's uniform and colors, can all the more easily strike and annihilate him. Both expressed, with a clearness which left nothing to be desired, how much they cared for the religion of the cross, which they professed. There is, therefore, not the slightest reason why Christianity should count Börne and Heine as members of its flock on account of the idle ceremony through which they passed in church. One of them, in spite of his changing moods, at heart remained truer to Judaism than the Friedländers who constituted themselves its representatives. These two gifted individuals, the pride of Germany, are still greater ornaments to Judaism. To these two Jews, the Germans owe their pure taste, their feeling for truth, and their impulse for liberty--to these two Jews persecuted through life by the abominable "Hep, hep." The mists of the Middle Ages, with which the Germans artificially surrounded themselves in order to obscure the truth, were dispersed by the flashes of wit of Börne and Heine, and light in its purity was restored. They grafted wit and life on German literature, and banished that clumsiness and awkwardness which had aroused the ridicule of the neighboring nations.

In their childish spite against the Jews, the Teutomaniacs, the Rühses and Hundts, asserted that Judaism could not produce a man of forcible character, or gifted with a true sense of art. History at once gave them the lie, and put them to shame. Judaism furnished forth a vigorous apostle of liberty, with language recalling that of the prophets and the Roman Catos, who confounded all the ideas of the Germans concerning law; and it supplied a poet, with artistic sense characterized by a mixture of pathos and cutting irony, who abolished all their hard and fast rules of art. The rich, varied blossoms of the Börne-Heine mind sprang from Jewish soil, and were only watered by European culture. Hence the close connection between them in spite of their dissimilarity and mutual antipathy. Not only was their wit Jewish, but also their love of truth, their aversion to vain display, their hatred of veiling and palliating wrongs, their contempt for official pomp, for obscuring clouds of incense, for ringing of bells, ambrosial organ tones covering slavery, perversion of justice, and oppression. The democratic, freedom-loving spirit, noticeable in Börne more than in Heine, and the analytical, Spinoza-like mode of reasoning, more characteristic of Heine than of Börne, are Jewish to the core. Had they been born Christians, and brought up in the atmosphere of red-tapeism, neither of them would have developed as rescuing powers, which with laughing mien helped to banish deeply-rooted perversions and absurdities. The slaves became deliverers, and saved their enemies from the double yoke of political and social inferiority. The Teutomaniacs almost deserve thanks for having tormented the Jews with their reactionary measures. They roused, if not Heine, certainly Börne, who was inclined to idle speculation, and furnished him with the dart that wounded the enemy.

Ludwig Börne, or Löb Baruch (born in Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1786; died in Paris, 1837), saw the light in the same year when it was extinguished for Mendelssohn, as though history wished to compensate the bereaved Jews for the loss of the sage of Berlin. Börne resembled Mendelssohn in some respects: in his timid, bashful, somewhat awkward bearing, in his self-control, his strength of character, and his strict adherence to an adopted system of morality. Both became the objects of admiration by accident, in spite of themselves. Both drew up for themselves æsthetic rules of conduct without having been trained to do so.

Börne despised the Jews of his time, and spoke of them as if he were their arch-enemy. Jewish antiquity, misrepresented to him in his youth, and still more dimmed by his Berlin and Halle friends, he looked upon as a caricature. The ancient Jews from the day of Abraham until the time of "wealthy Solomon" appeared to him "as if they had wished to parody history." He did not suspect how much his inward self, the truthfulness of his nature, owed to Judaism. The filth of Lucinde, consecrated by Schleiermacher, so disgusted Börne at the age of sixteen, that even a stealthy perusal of the book possessed no charm. The sobriety with which Judaism had endowed him showed Börne the right way of balancing his ideal nature, and avoiding too harsh a discord with the real world. At an early age he became acquainted with a goddess to whom he was devoted in extravagant love, and to whom he remained faithful until his dying breath. "The true nature of virtue may be expressed in a few words. What is virtue? Virtue is bliss. And bliss? It is liberty. We cannot further inquire, what is liberty, for liberty is in accord with reason, in accord with God, and in accord with the unconditional--it explains itself." So thought Börne, and so he wrote in his diary at the age of eighteen; and this idea governed his inner being as long as he lived, and was the motive power of all his actions. Virtue is liberty, and liberty is virtue; they necessitate and produce bliss. Yet Börne limited his love of liberty; he guarded himself from overstepping that narrow boundary at which the pursuit of an ideal turns to madness.

May not his Jewish blood, or at any rate, the sad pages of Jewish history, explain his worship of liberty, which influenced his body and mind? How hard and degrading the absence of liberty was could be felt only by a Jew, in comparison with whom an Indian or a Russian bondsman was a free man. Frankfort, the birth-place of Börne, with its disgraceful laws concerning the residence of Jews, effectually taught him love of liberty. When, only a boy, he was prohibited from walking on the footpath, and had to keep to the dusty road for vehicles, when every ragged Christian beggar, or drunkard, was allowed to call to him, "Mach Mores, Jud!" the thought may have struck him that the absence of liberty was damnation and the presence of liberty salvation. "I, a slave from my birth, love liberty more than you; yea, because I was trained in servitude, I understand liberty better than you!" he often said. His much admired style, his perfect, captivating manner, his profound epigrams, recall the gnomic wisdom of Bible and Talmud. In short, Börne owes his favorable points to Judaism. But he neither was grateful for his gifts, nor did he acknowledge their origin, which he estimated no more than did his Berlin friends. On one occasion, indeed, he said:

"I should not deserve to enjoy the light of the sun, were I, on account of mockery upon which I have always looked with contempt, ungrateful for God's great favor, in having made me at once a German and a Jew: for I know how to value the undeserved fortune of being at the same time a German and a Jew, to be able to strive after all the virtues of the Germans without participating in their faults."

He added, addressing the Germans:--

"I pray you, do not despise my Jews. If only you were as they are, you were better. You have deprived the Jews of air, they have thus been preserved from rottenness; you have strewn the salt of hatred into their hearts, their hearts have thus been kept fresh. You have imprisoned them for the whole long winter in a cellar, and stopped up the cellar door with dung; but you, exposed to the frost, were half frozen to death. When spring arrives, we shall see who will blossom first, Jew or Christian."

Börne did not, however, himself believe in the endurance of the Jews, and he gave utterance to those words only because he was vexed, or in order to vex the Germans. He said at the same time, ironically: "You know how my heart beats for the Jews."

Since the time when his mind began to mature, he beheld in the Jews only money-makers, as on the Exchange at Frankfort, or deriders of religion ashamed of their race, as in the salon of Henrietta Herz; moreover, his education had made Judaism seem so despicable that he did not judge it worthy of consideration. Thus Börne never understood what was most sacred to the Jews, and he was unable to fathom the depths of his own mind, and discriminate between what he owed to the general state of culture and what to Judaism.

His healthy spirit, however, and love for the oppressed guarded him from the unprincipled conduct of Rachel, of those who frequented the salons at Berlin, and of many others who turned their backs contemptuously upon the Jews. Even as a youth Börne hated the idea that the word "Jew" might be insultingly cast at him.

"And when they come and tell you that you are a Jew," he wrote in his diary, "how they bandy about the Jewish jargon, so that one must almost die of laughter.

"Oh! when I think of that, my mind is tossed as by a storm, my soul would fain burst from its dwelling-place, and seek the body of a lion, that it might meet the villain with jaw and claw."

His anticipations proved correct, he was not spared the insult, and his lion's claw was shown. While a student, he procured from the police of Frankfort a passport, in which the spiteful police-clerk had inserted the words: "Jew of Frankfort."

"My blood stood still, but I could neither say nor do anything, for my father was present. I then swore in my heart: only wait, the time will come when I shall write a passport for you, a passport for all of you."

For a moment it seemed as if Börne would forget his oath. The Jews of Frankfort had bought equality for half a million of money, and Börne, who had studied law and shown himself a young man of promise, was one of the first to receive a position in the Frankfort police department. But if Börne was inclined to forget that he was a Jew, and remembered only that he was a German, the people of Frankfort did not forget it, and imprudently and brutally reminded him of his secret oath. He was the first victim of the reaction; he was expelled from office, as soon as the Jews of Frankfort were driven back into the Ghetto. The insolent manner in which they were cheated out of trebly pledged freedom revolted Börne's feeling for liberty, and he sharpened his first arrows in defense of the members of his own race. They were directed against the narrow-minded citizens of Frankfort, who in the nineteenth century had restored the laws of 1616 concerning the residence of the Jews, "that romance of malice," as Börne called them. The feelings which agitated him during the years of ever-increasing reaction against the Jews he put into the mouth of a Jewish officer in a novel:

"You stole from me the pleasures of childhood, you arrant knaves! You threw salt into the sweet cup of my youth, you placed malicious slander and hateful derision in my road in manhood; arrest me you could not, but fatigued, vexed, without joyfulness, I reached my goal.... That I cannot even revenge myself, that I should not have the power to forgive, nor the weakness to chastise! They are out of my reach in their fox-hole!... You ask me why I shun my fatherland. I have none; I have never left my home. My home is in dungeons; where there is persecution I breathe the atmosphere of my childhood. The moon is as near to me as is Germany."

Instead of revenging himself for the wounds inflicted upon him and the members of his race by German Jew-hatred, Börne undertook the difficult task of extinguishing this hatred. In the "Waage," his organ, he erected ideal standards, by which he measured the narrow, petty circumstances of the Germans, and their short-sightedness.

Before Louis Baruch undertook his campaign against German faults and prejudices, or rather before he undertook the education of the Germans, he renounced Judaism, was baptized in Offenbach, and assumed the name Karl Ludwig Börne (June 5, 1818). How little he cared for the Christian faith we may judge from his remark that he "repented the money spent on baptism." He did not wish the effect of his missiles to be lessened by the prejudice which might arise from the fact of their being discharged by a Jew. It is, however, difficult to excuse a man of Börne's character for deserting, without any such struggle as Heine's with himself, the colors of the weak and oppressed, who should have been ennobled in his eyes by the very pain of degradation; deserting for a cause, moreover, in which he did not believe. Germany soon discovered that she had gained an author of Lessing's caliber. Börne's wit was felt the more keenly, because at every turn one could perceive the correctness of the picture and observe the genuineness and integrity of the painter. A glance revealed that he wrote with "the blood of his heart and the sap of his nerves," hence his words made the impression of weighty deeds.

He could not behold in silence the folly and cruelty of the "Hep, hep" year, and he wrote "for the Jews." "I should have said for right and liberty; but if these terms were understood, nothing need be said." He pointed his finger at fools, and threw light on the faces of villains. "A sort of fatal necessity," he said, "was connected in past times with Jew-massacres. They seem to have arisen from an indistinct, inexplicable feeling inspired by Judaism, which, like a scoffing and threatening spirit, like the ghost of a murdered mother, accompanied Christianity from its cradle." Börne analyzed German Jew-hatred into its constituents, and showed the absurdity of each. On another occasion (1820) he told them the stern truth:

"I pardon the German nation for its Jew-hatred, for it is a nation of children, and for this reason, just like an infant, needs a go-cart to enable it some day to stand firm, so that by means of the barriers to liberty it may learn to do without barriers. The German nation would collapse a hundred times a day if it were without prejudices. But individual adults I cannot pardon for their Jew-hatred."

Dr. Ludwig Holst, a newly-fledged Jew-hater, who had developed his cult into a philosophical system, and who, as Börne says, sounded "a metaphysical Hep, hep," was attacked by him with scoffs and sneers.

"Hatred of Jews is one of the Pontine bogs which poison the beautiful land of our liberty. We see the hopeful friends of the fatherland with pale faces wandering about hopelessly. German minds dwell on Alpine heights, but German hearts pant in damp marshes. Holst wishes to kill the Jews, and if they resist, he turns round to his circle of onlookers, and says: 'Now you see that I am right in taxing the Jews with unparalleled insolence; they will not suffer their heads to be struck off ever so little, and they sulk.' ... You hate the Jews, not because they have earned hatred, but because they earn money.... What you call human rights, which, it must be conceded you grant Jews, are only animal rights. The right of seeking food, of devouring it, of sleeping, and of multiplying, are enjoyed also by the beasts of the field--until they are slain, and to the Jews you grant no more.... Men of Frankfort, Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bremen, answer me. You complain that Jews are all usurers, yet you prevent the mental development of those who abandon usury! I will not be turned away; I demand a reply. Men of Frankfort, tell me: Why should the practice of medicine be restricted to four Jews, and that of the law be allowed to none?... In the same way in which you in your free city now storm against the Jews, did you not twenty years ago storm against Catholics?... Do you doubt the arrival of the day which will command you to look upon Jews as your equals? But you wish to be forced! The German is deaf. You will not obey voluntarily; fate will have to take hold of you and drag you hither and thither. Shame upon you!" Börne remarks in conclusion: "I love neither Jew as Jew, nor Christian as Christian; I love them because they are human beings, and born to be free. Liberty shall be the soul of my pen, until it becomes blunted, or my hand is lamed."

But Börne wished the Jews to forget as a bad dream their history of a thousand years, and to become Germans. He did not possess the far-sightedness of Heine.

Heinrich Heine (born in Düsseldorf, 1799, died in Paris, 1854) in his innermost self was infinitely more of a Jew than Börne; indeed, he possessed to a great extent all the favorable and unfavorable characteristics of Jews. Who can paint this "wicked favorite of the Graces and Muses" (as he was called), this scoffing romancer and lyrical philosopher, with his chameleon-like nature? Börne's mind resembled transparent spring-water, which trickles over pebbles, and foams only when attacked by winds. Heine's mind, on the other hand, resembled a whirlpool, upon whose surface the sunbeams play in prismatic colors, but which drags approaching vessels into its roaring depths, and dashes them to pieces unless they are of the strongest build. For Heine was as deep a thinker as he was an artistic poet, as unrelenting a critic as he was an amiable scoffer, as full of original thoughts as he was of verses. Heine had not to search for Truth; Truth flew to Heine. She, like the Muse, revealed herself to him, jesting and playing with him as her favorite. Behind his banter there often was more earnest conviction than in the litany of a morose moralist. Heine longed for ideals which his mind could revere, and because he did not find them he scoffed at the false gods who allowed themselves to be worshiped. He has certainly given profound solutions to problems of history. He never sacrificed substance to form, when the former was of greater value than the latter. It is true that he often changed his opinions, but he did not play with his convictions. His religious views changed also; but he did not change his mind. He never wrote or acted against such convictions as he entertained at the time. If for a time he was slave to the false philosophical theory which makes a god of man, he afterwards acknowledged his error, and derided it thoroughly. Heine was certainly no pattern of virtue, neither was he so great a sinner as his sharp pen and tongue might lead one to suppose. He never lost his profound, noble nature, nor his sense of the sublime; neither did he roll in the mud of sensuality, as he would have his readers believe. He painted himself blacker than he was. He had his share of that acute sensitiveness which is the lot of poets, actors, and preachers, and this morbid state was in Heine's case connected with severe nervous suffering. In his sensitive condition he wrote things of which his sober judgment disapproved, but which he was ashamed to recall.

Heine had an advantage over Börne by reason of his sincere affection for his mother. Betty von Geldern came of a respected, it is said, an ennobled Jewish family. This educated mother, to whom he owed his bent of mind, was a religious woman, and brought up her children in the knowledge of the Jewish faith. The religious discord which had early alienated Börne from Judaism was unknown to Heine, and in his youth he strictly avoided the transgression of Jewish customs. He did not indeed learn so much Hebrew as Börne, but because he imbibed with love the little that he did learn, that little never left him, nor did he forget it later in life, whilst Börne wiped Hebrew entirely from his memory. Heine's love of Judaism, which, in spite of his mockery, was never quite dead, and especially his deep understanding of it, sprang from the fond memories of his youth, which remained with him like sweet, pleasing dreams. His soul was also filled with the charm of true Jewish family life, which gave him the proper standard by which to measure what men call virtue and happiness.

He had a warm though vague attachment to Judaism or the Jewish race, to its pathetic history and sacred books, and he was forcibly impressed by the antiquity of Judaism and its continuity of existence, defying time and myriads of obstacles. Now and again Heine felt proud of belonging to this ancient aristocracy. He felt what he wrote late in life:

"Now I perceive that the Greeks were only handsome youths, but the Jews have always been men, powerful, stubborn men, not only in days of yore, but even at present, in spite of eighteen centuries of persecution and misery. I have since learned to know them better, and to value them more highly, and if pride of descent were not always a foolish contradiction, I might feel proud of the fact that my progenitors were members of the noble house of Israel, that I am a descendant of those martyrs who have given a God and morality to the world, and who have fought and suffered on all the battle-fields of thought."

This consciousness slumbered gently in him from his youth onwards. But he did not clearly define to himself his attitude towards Judaism. The Jews, in whom solidity, high virtue, and morality were still to be found, repelled him by their unæsthetic exterior and religious ceremonies, which he did not understand. He felt his sense of beauty wounded by the repulsive exterior of Judaism and its representatives. His eye could not penetrate through ugly veils. The circle of more refined Jews, which in early manhood he joined in Berlin--the older men, Friedländer, Ben-David, Jacobson, and their young imitators--did not cherish Judaism so deeply as to infuse into him the spirit of sacrifice for the faith. And in the semi-Jewish circle which also he frequented during his stay in Berlin, as in that of Rachel von Varnhagen, at this time already baptized, he beheld only thorough contempt for Jews and Judaism, and an enthusiastic, romantic predilection for Christianity.

But Heine, unlike Börne, had too independent a judgment to be lured into idolatrous worship of the intellectual idols of the day. Sophistry could not undermine his devotion to Judaism. On the contrary, Heine joined the society of a number of young men whose object was to promote culture among Jews, and as one of its members, he subscribed to their tacit vow, not to suffer themselves to be baptized for the sake of a government appointment. The impulse by which he and the other members were actuated was no doubt vague; but at any rate it manifests the desire to do his share towards the improvement of his brethren. He undertook to aid in strengthening the society and in widening its scope. Heine's opinion even of the much-despised Polish Jews was not utterly unfavorable, and they found a champion in him.

Heine would have espoused the cause of Judaism with heart and soul, if Judaism itself, i. e., its sons, had developed powers of mind and character, if the freshness of youth and attractive charms had been coupled with the dignity of its old age, its purport, and calling, and if it could have inspired respect in the educated world. In his impatience he wished to see Judaism, like the legendary Messiah chained at Rome, suddenly divest itself of its ragged cloak, its leprous skin, throw off its aspect of servitude, and be transformed into a richly adorned, blooming, commanding youth. The process of rejuvenescence seemed to him too slow, the means employed too petty, the bearing of those who wished to further it, especially their coquetry with the dominant Church, seemed to him to be weak, apish, and undignified.

Israel lacks energy. Chiropodists (David Friedländer and Co.) have sought to heal the body of Judaism of its fatal excrescences, and on account of their unskillfulness and their cobweb bandage of reason, Israel must bleed to death. Would that the delusion that impotency, privation of strength, one-sided negation are glorious, might soon cease.... We no longer have the courage to wear a beard, to fast, to hate, and by reason of hatred to suffer. This is the motive of our reformation. Those who have received their enlightenment and education from comedians wish to give Judaism new decorations and new scenes, and the prompter is to wear white bands instead of a beard. They wish to pour the ocean into a neat little hand-basin.... Others desire evangelical Christianity under Jewish names."... "Even I do not possess the strength of mind (he frankly confessed) to wear a beard, and to allow myself to be called, 'dirty Jew'."

We see clearly his attachment to Judaism in the case of his pardonable hatred of the oppressor and despiser of his race, of the enemy who had received salvation from Judaism, which he imprisoned and spat upon. In the renewed pain of old wounds, inflicted upon the Jews by heathen and Christian Rome, he compressed a world of boiling anger into the word Edom. Thus he jeered in a poem to Edom:--

"For a thousand years or longer We bear with each other in a brotherly way; Thou dost endure that I should breathe, I endure that thou shouldst rave.

"Only sometimes, on dark days, Was thy mood a curious one, And thy pietistic claws Didst thou color with my blood.

"Now our friendship waxeth stronger, And daily increaseth in strength; For I myself began to rave, And I become almost like to thee."

Still greater was Heine's hatred towards deserters, traitors, Jews who for the sake of personal gain turned their back upon their suffering brethren, and went over to the enemy. Heine could not believe that a Jew ever was baptized from earnest conviction; baptism was in his opinion self-delusion, if not a lie. The Gospel, preached in vain to the poor of Judæa, was now, as he averred, prospering among the rich. Heine gave vent to this hatred in his dramatic poem "Almansor" (completed in 1823). But he found it unsuitable to introduce the characters as Jews, to tell in glowing verses of their affliction and the contempt in which they were held. He therefore put these verses into the mouths of the Mussulmans of Granada, who through devilish malice were experiencing the same cruel fate as the Jews, and who felt a yawning chasm in their hearts at having been forced to embrace Christianity. It is unmistakable that these verses breathe forth Jewish suffering. The Jewish poet, however, incurred bitter enmity by this drama.

It is proof of Heine's warm attachment to his race that when he was deeply vexed by private and public disappointments, he proceeded to glorify it. The enthralling psalm, once sung by a Hebrew bard at Babel's waters, was constantly in his mind:

"May my tongue cleave parched To the roof of my mouth, and my right hand Wither, if ever I forget thee, O Jerusalem."

For affronts put upon him in connection with the performance of "Almansor," it was his intention to take thorough revenge on his German-Christian enemies, and to hold up a mirror to them in a Jewish novel. In the "Rabbi of Bacharach" he described vividly, as only he could, the sad and the glorious scenes of Jewish history, and to this end he carefully studied the Jewish chronicles, as he wished to keep strictly to history. His imagination only illuminated facts, but did not invent them, there being material enough at his disposal. Heine did not shrink from ransacking the rubbish contained in old books, such as Schudt's "Jewish Curiosities," "that memorial of Frankfort Jew-hatred"; and he succeeded in extracting something even from chaff and straw. "The spirit of Jewish history reveals itself more and more to me, and the pursuit of it will no doubt prove useful to me in the future." In the course of Jewish history, outlined by acts of heroism and by sacrifices, he beheld a connection between the plans of Providence: "In the same year in which the Jews were expelled from Spain, the new land of religious liberty was discovered." The golden period of mediæval Jewish history--the history of the Spanish Jews--had greatest charm for him. In the foreground of this stage he wished to introduce proud Jews, who would not bow their necks beneath the yoke of German restrictions and canonical arrogance, and who professed their religion with pride; but this epoch was not well known at that time, and Heine longed in vain for sources whence to draw pregnant information. Instead of facts, those to whom he applied gave him only threshed straw. But Heine allowed no difficulty to prevent his collecting interesting historical material for his novel; this production was to be the child, not of his hate, but of his love. He fairly basked in it: "Since it proceeds from love, it will be an immortal book, an ever-burning lamp in the palace of God--no fitful theatrical light."

Heine's romance was indeed grandly conceived. The scene of action was laid in Germany, but the history of the Jews of Spain, their expulsion, and enforced baptism, were to be the main incidents.

However, at the time when Heine was earnestly engaged in the study of Judaism, and became enthusiastic for its history, and hated Christianity most fiercely, he quietly passed over to the Christian fold (June 28, 1825), and assumed the baptismal name of Christian Johann Heinrich. He had fought for a long time against this temptation. He expressed his opinion upon the question plainly:--

"Not one of my family is opposed to it except myself. This act may be of importance to me, as through it I may the better devote myself to the cause of my unhappy co-religionists. But I should consider it a blot upon my dignity and honor, if I were to be baptized in order to obtain a post in Prussia--in dear Prussia!... Vexation may drive me to become a Catholic, and hang myself."

In spite of this declaration he became a convert, in order to obtain a position in Prussia, and also to escape from humiliating dependence upon his uncle. In his diary he wrote the following verses upon the subject:--

"And unto the cross now bendest thou low, To the cross that erstwhile thou didst despise; Which but a few short weeks ago Seemed so vile in thy scornful eyes."

Shortly afterwards (July 20, 1825) he passed his law examination. But he pursued phantoms, and had made a vain sacrifice of his honor. He was unable to procure employment, and could not dispense with his uncle's support. Shamefaced as a girl guilty of some fault, Heine communicated the fact of his conversion in allegorical language to his bosom friend Moser:

"A young Spanish Jew, at heart a Jew, who, owing to the demands of pleasure, had abjured his faith, corresponded with the youthful Judah Abrabanel, and sent him a poem translated from the Moorish. Perhaps he was loth to tell his friend in plain terms of his not very creditable performance; still he sends the poem.--Do not meditate about it."

Through his apostasy, Heine became only the more embittered against Christianity, as though it were directly responsible for his faithlessness, his loss of dignity, and his disloyalty to his better self. "I assure you," he wrote to his intimate friend, "if the law had permitted the stealing of silver spoons, I should not have been baptized." When at about the same time, Edward Gans, the leader of young Israel, founder of the Society of Culture, and one of its active promoters, also embraced Christianity, Heine could not forgive him, for he had not been compelled by poverty to take the step. Heine was yet more indignant when informed that Gans had induced weak-minded Jews to forsake their belief.

"If he does it out of conviction, he is a fool; if out of hypocrisy, he is a rascal."

It also vexed him that his opponents would not forget his Jewish origin, but, as in the case of Börne, reminded him of it at every opportunity. To appease his conscientious scruples in a measure, he continued to work at the romance, "The Rabbi of Bacharach." Through its medium he desired to make known his secret attachment to the Jews, and he wished to publish it in spite of the advice of his friend Moser, who was not blind to the glaring contradiction between thought and act, and the enmity it would necessarily draw down upon him.

Heine was not, however, so constituted as to allow remorse to trouble him for any length of time. Once having turned his back upon Judaism, he sought to lull his conscience. His pleasure-seeking after his conversion was only a means to this end. Heine ingeniously labored to discover faults in the Jews and Judaism, and thus to justify himself. In this impulse originated his hostile sallies against Judaism--that it is, for instance, "not a religion, but a misfortune." Afterwards, he sought to make the dividing line between Judaism and Christianity very faint; he characterized both faiths as self-torturing, monkish, and Nazarite; he vilified them equally, disregarded both, and acknowledged a Hellenistic religion of the "revival of the flesh." Nevertheless, it may be said that, in bright moments, his old love of Judaism revived, and he again showed his thoughtful conception of it. It annoyed Heine that Shakespeare should be reckoned among the Jew-baiters because he had created "Shylock," and he employed his brilliant eloquence to remove this blemish from the Jews and Shakespeare.

"Did Shakespeare aim at depicting a Jewess in Jessica? Certainly not. He portrayed only a daughter of Eve, one of those pretty birds who, as soon as they are fledged, flutter forth from the home-nest to their lovers.... In Jessica there is especially noticeable a certain timid shame which she cannot overcome in donning male garments. In this trait one may, perhaps, recognize the modesty characteristic of her race, which endows its daughters with so marvelous a charm. The chastity of the Jews is probably the consequence of the aversion which they felt to Oriental sensuality and the immoral worship which flourished among their neighbors, the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians, and has continued, changing only its outward form, to the present day. The Jews are a chaste, abstemious, so to speak, an abstract people, and in purity of morals, approach the German nations.... The Greeks and Romans were devoted to the soil ... the later Northern immigrants to the person of their chieftains ... whilst the Jews from ancient times were attached to the law, to abstract thought, like our modern cosmopolitan Republicans ... liberty and equality were their religion."

Advanced in years, when a severe nervous affliction had still more cleared the mirror of his thoughts, Heine became conscious of the superiority of morality based upon piety over beauty, and returned with his whole heart to the love of his youth, his reverence for Judaism. His "Confessions" (1853-54) are inspired hymns to Jewish history and the Jewish people, and it is apparent that they are sincere. He was always enthusiastic on behalf of the Bible.

"The Jews may console themselves for the loss of Jerusalem and the Ark of the Covenant; this loss is but trifling when compared with the Bible, the indestructible treasure which they have saved.... I owe the re-awakening of my religious feelings to that Holy Book (the Bible), and it has become for me equally the source of salvation and the object of most ardent admiration.... I think I may flatter myself that I comprehend the character of Moses as revealed in the first portion of the sacred book (of the Old Testament). I consider his a most imposing figure. What a giant form! How small Sinai appears when Moses stands upon it! This mountain is only the pedestal for the feet of the man, whose head reaches up to the heavens, where he speaks with God.... Formerly, I felt no especial affection for Moses, probably because the Hellenic spirit was paramount in me, and I could not pardon the legislator of the Jews his hatred against the plastic arts. I did not see that, notwithstanding his hostility to art, Moses was a great artist, and possessed the true artistic spirit! But this spirit was directed by him, as by his Egyptian compatriots, to colossal and indestructible undertakings.... He built human pyramids, carved human obelisks; he took a poor shepherd family and created a nation from it, a great, eternal, holy people, a people of God, destined to outlive the centuries, and to serve as a pattern to all other nations, even as a prototype to the whole of mankind: he created Israel.... As of the artist, so also I have not always spoken with sufficient respect of his work, the Jews.... The history of the Middle Ages, and even of other times, seldom inscribed in its annals the names of these knights of the holy spirit, because they usually fought with closed visor. The deeds of the Jews, as well as their peculiar character, are little known to the world. One thinks one knows them, because their beards are visible, but nothing else has come in view; and now, as in the Middle Ages, they are a profound mystery, which may perhaps be revealed on the day of which the prophet speaks....

"Yes, to the Jews, to whom the world owes its God, it also owes His Word, the Bible; they saved it from the wreck of the Roman Empire, and in the frantic scramble of migrating tribes they preserved the precious book, until Protestantism sought it with them, translated the discovered work into the vernacular, and disseminated it through the whole world.... In the North of Europe and America, the influence of Palestine has grown to be so great, that one can fancy oneself transplanted into the midst of Jews.... I will not speak of most of the new communities of the United States where the life of the Old Testament is pedantically imitated ... but the caricature will not disappear, and the real, imperishable, and true portion, namely, the morality of ancient Judaism, will also flourish in those countries as luxuriantly as in former days on the banks of the Jordan and upon the heights of Lebanon. No palms are needed for man to be good; and to be good is better than to be beautiful.... Judæa has always appeared to me as a piece of the West lost in the East. In fact, with its spiritual belief, its severe, pure, almost ascetic morals, its abstract inner life, this land and its people have ever formed a remarkable contrast to the surrounding countries and their inhabitants, who paid homage to the most licentious and infamous nature cults, and dissipated their existence in bacchanalian orgies. Israel piously sat beneath its fig-tree, and sang the praise of the invisible God, and practised virtue and justice; whilst in the temples of Babylon, Nineveh, Sidon, and Tyre, sanguinary and immoral rites were celebrated, the description of which even now strikes us with horror. When one thinks of its surroundings, this early greatness of Israel cannot be sufficiently admired. Of Israel's love of liberty, whilst slavery was justified not alone in its immediate vicinity but by all the nations of antiquity, even by philosophers--of this I would rather not speak, in order to avoid compromising the Bible with our present rulers.... Instead of wrestling with the impossible, instead of foolishly decreeing the abolition of property, Moses strove to render it moral; he endeavored to bring the possession of property into harmony with morality, with the law of reason, and this he effected by the institution of the Jubilee, when all alienated hereditary property, which amongst an agricultural people was land, reverted to the original owners, no matter how they had lost possession thereof. This ordinance offers a most decided contrast to the law of prescription among the Romans.... Moses did not wish to abolish the holding of property; his plan was that every one should possess some land, that no one should become a slave, with slavish propensities, through poverty, for freedom was the ultimate aim of the great emancipator, and this desire breathes through all his laws dealing with pauperism. He detested slavery immoderately, almost fiercely.... If a slave, however, freed by law, refused to leave the house of his master, Moses commanded that the incorrigible rascal be nailed by his ear to the door-post of his master's house.... O Moses, our teacher, Moshe Rabbenu, exalted enemy of serfdom, I pray thee furnish me with hammer and nails, that I may nail our willing slaves, in their liveries of black and red and gold, by their long ears to the Brandenburg Gate."

The spirit of the Jewish law and of Jewish history had indeed come upon this erratic son of Israel, and revealed to him what few of his predecessors had thoroughly grasped, and none had so luminously delineated. Heine appreciated equally the profound wisdom displayed in the laws and the intellectual contests in the centuries of Jewish history, as also the precious ore of poetry, which streamed forth from the greatest Jewish poet of the Middle Ages. Scarcely had Michael Sachs, the preacher with the Psalmist soul and prophetic speech, unveiled the hidden beauties of the "Religious Poetry of the Jews in Spain," and more especially the almost forgotten glory of the poet Jehudah Halevi Alhassan, before Heine, deeply moved, set up a memorial to this singer and brother in race and art. With his magic wand he invoked the shade of Jehudah Halevi from the grave, and depicted him in his complete ideality and the full glow of his inspiration.

Until his last breath the struggle continued within Heine's breast between the two great principles in the construction of the world's history, the pure morality of Judaism and the symmetrical beauty of Hellenism, both of which he reverenced, but was unable to reconcile:--

"The contrasts are boldly paired, Love of pleasure in the Greek, and the thought of God in the Judæan,

* * * * *

Oh! this conflict will never end, The true must always contend with the beautiful."

He suspected that the harmonious intermingling of the two elements was the task of European civilization; but he was unable to effect it in himself. From this conflict his aberrations arose, and also his impulse to dominate them by ridicule, and thus prevent their mastering him.

The Jewish world is greatly indebted to its two apostate sons, Börne and Heine. They did not indeed destroy all German anti-Jewish feeling, but they at least subdued it. Referring to the absurd cry of "Hep, hep," Heine once said, "This can never occur again, for the press is a weapon, and there are two Jews who possess German style, the one being myself, the other Börne." His prediction was nearly fulfilled, for since the appearance of these two, such fierce outbreaks against Jews have not recurred. Germany has not produced more talented, more artistic, more refined writers than these two Jews.

Young Germany, which originated the present state of culture, and created the Year of Liberation, 1848, is the offspring of these two Jewish fathers. Invective, calumny, and the secret police were perfectly correct in designating the leaders of young Germany as Jews, because without the influence of the Jewish spirit they would not have become the champions of freedom. Jew-haters thought that they were inflicting disgrace on the fair-haired combatants in calling them Jews, whilst actually they only bestowed honor upon them. But the list of Börne's and Heine's services to Germany is not yet exhausted. They induced the French to respect the staunchness of the German spirit. Börne and Heine were the first to draw France and Germany together, to unite German depth of thought with French elegance. They first dispelled the clouds which separated these two nations, causing the French people to ascend and the Germans to descend the mountain, meet each other half-way, and, regardless of mutual antagonism and of their oppressors, stretch forth their hands in brotherly union. This Messianic time, when it arrives, will have been prepared by two Jews, who were fulfilling their national mission.

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XV. REFORM AND YOUNG ISRAEL

Segregation of the Jews--Its Results--Secession and Obstinate Conservatism--Israel Jacobson--His Reforms--The Hamburg Reform Temple Union--Gotthold Salomon--Decay of Rabbinical Authority--Eleazar Libermann--Aaron Chorin--Lazarus Riesser --Party Strife--Isaac Bernays--His Writings--Bernays in Hamburg--Mannheimer--His Congregation in Vienna--Berlin Society for Culture--Edward Gans--His Baptism--Collapse of the Society for Culture.

1818-1830 C. E.

The advance of the Jews in Germany had been completed in an amazingly short time, as appears when we contrast Mendelssohn's reticence in touching upon religious and political conditions in Christendom with the boldness of Börne and Heine, who displayed them in their naked form. And mark the progress made in France! Here the Jews had become men, dauntlessly encountering every opponent, and ready to avenge with the sword insulting remarks on their origin. Judaism, however, was less rapid in casting off servile forms than its followers. For nearly two thousand years it had struggled for existence against every new people and every new tendency which appeared on the stage of history. With Greeks and Romans, Parthians and Neo-Persians, Goths and Slavonic tribes, with Arabs and mediæval knights in armor, with monks of every order and fanatic Lutherans, it had maintained ever-recurring contests, and had of necessity become covered with disfiguring scars and foul dust. To defend itself against the assaults of so many hostile powers and during so long a period, Judaism had been compelled to surround itself with an impenetrable coat of mail, to isolate itself completely, or withdraw into a shrine of its own, every access to which was carefully barricaded. So accustomed had the Jews become to their heavy armor, that it seemed to have grown into their very being; nor could it be discarded so long as new battles were imminent. Left to its own resources, and excluded from the external world, especially since the expulsion of its members from Spain and Portugal, and their simultaneous banishment from many German districts, Judaism had created a dreamland for itself. It had admitted magical formulas into its world of thought and fancy to distract the minds of its adherents from pangs of torture, so that they might endure them with greater ease, or forget them entirely. Suddenly its sons were awakened from their dreams by the dazzling sunlight, and beheld the real world, to which they were utter strangers. At first they closed their eyes the tighter, in order to retain the pleasant dream-pictures. In this new age, and in the new conditions, they could not at once find their proper level, and they feared that the altered state of affairs was a mere stratagem, a novel method of warfare in disguise, which their ancient enemies expected to use against Judaism.

During its long journey through the world, and its acquaintance with many nations, Judaism, in spite of its exclusiveness, had admitted various perverse ideas, which became as thoroughly a part of itself, as if derived from the original stock. Memory had been weakened through persecution and martyrdom; the power of thought had also suffered somewhat through daily increasing afflictions. At first it was too distracted to apply tests, to distinguish foreign and unfit elements from native and essential parts and remove them. Among the Jews in Germany, England, and France, the adoption of the uncultivated Polish manner had conferred a barbarous aspect upon Judaism, and among the Portuguese and Italian Jews, owing to Isaac Lurya and Chayim Vital, it had assumed a Kabbalistic form. This disfigurement of Judaism existing among the Portuguese along with external decorum, and its neglected condition in Polish and German communities, affected every element of religious life--divine service, sermons, marriages, interments, in short, every ceremonial, especially those of a public nature. The official representatives and expounders of Judaism, the rabbis and leaders of divine service, were repulsive, either semi-barbarians or visionaries. The foreign additions and excrescences, the fungous growth attached to the original trunk, were regarded by these leaders of Judaism as integral elements. The times had not yet matured men, who, by a delicate perception of the inner kernel of Judaism (as contained in the Bible and the Talmud), by wide vision, and clear insight, could recognize the abuses that had accumulated in the course of time, and separate them from the essential parts. To remove these objectionable excrescences gradually, and with a gentle hand, without giving offense, required profound understanding. A necessary reform, not prompted by external considerations, had been suggested several centuries earlier by far-sighted men; but the modern generation had no knowledge thereof. Neither was there any adequate representative body in the Jewish world. There was, to be sure, an organization, possessing, or in a position easily to obtain, a sort of official character and authority, namely, the French Synhedrion and Consistory. But the chiefs, David Sinzheim and Abraham di Cologna, had not the needful discernment to accomplish the ennoblement and rejuvenescence of Judaism. Sinzheim was only an orthodox Talmudist, and Di Cologna an interesting preacher. The right men were wanting to undertake and promote this much-needed reform, not of the religion itself--for neither the leaders nor the rank and file had lost any degree of morality through the deterioration of Judaism--but of its exterior, to beautify it and remove excrescences. No men being forthcoming, time effected the changes, and so quarrels and contentions were produced. It was destined to be no easy work for Judaism to cast its slough.

The changes in Judaism, like those in the Jews, began in Germany. To the German Jews (because Mendelssohn had come from their midst) a task was allotted similar to that achieved in earlier times by the Alexandrian and Spanish, and in part by the Provençal Jews, that of reconciling Judaism with culture. But when these efforts commenced, the situation was already one of great confusion, and the method by which they were conducted only intensified the difficulties. During the struggles of the German Jews to secure emancipation, when every step towards freedom was accomplished only after the most strenuous exertions, when each advance was met with scorn and neglect, when they were continually being hurled back into their humiliated condition and reminded of their despised state, two equally unpleasant phenomena manifested themselves. Those who, improved by culture and education, swam with the stream, estranged themselves from Judaism, disowned all connection with its official acts, and despised it as the obstacle to their civil or social advancement. To them Judaism appeared as a mummy, a petrifaction, or a specter, which restlessly and aimlessly flitted through the centuries, a picture of grief beyond help. Only a few of this educated class, like Heine in his bright moments, when not led astray by wantonness, were clear-sighted enough to recognize life in this mummy, capable some day of bursting its cerements and engaging in combat with its enemies. On the other hand, the majority of the Jews, who still bore in their hearts deep love for the wrinkled mother of all religions, clung to those unessential forms to which from youth they had been accustomed, because they perceived the treachery of the opposite party, and did not wish to be classed amongst the betrayers of Judaism. "They loved stones, and treasured dust." Theirs was no longer the innocent piety of bygone days which had no opposition to contend with, but an active, passionate feeling. The representatives of the old school became anxious and suspicious about the growing weakness of religious feeling, the loosening of all bonds of union, the manifest symptoms of apostasy, and the contempt for their origin. Judaism seemed a gigantic structure composed of tiny cubes, supporting each other and the whole. They feared the downfall of the whole edifice, if a single support became loose. They had no confidence in the permanence of the structure, for whose maintenance they were ready to sacrifice their lives. They would give up not even the use of their miserable jargon, defiant of every grammatical law, in the ritual, nor their indecorous habits, nor any particular of their disorderly system. Every sign of yielding, any departure from the old order, appeared to them an act of treachery to Judaism.

It seemed impossible to find a means of uniting these opposites. Nevertheless, an attempt was made, but in a rough, unskillful manner, the result being that the advance of Judaism was retarded for a considerable time. The first to undertake some sort of reform was Israel Jacobson. He was especially fitted for the leadership of a new party by his attachment to his faith, his admiration for beauty and external qualities, his activity, wealth, and high position. Immediately after the Westphalian Consistory had been appointed, and he had been placed at its head, he came forward with innovations of a two-fold nature. From the public service in the synagogue connected with the newly-erected school in Cassel, he removed all objectionable and noisy features, especially the sing-song reading so much in use. He naturally insisted upon the delivery of sermons in German. He also introduced new forms and methods borrowed from the Church, such as German as well as Hebrew prayers, insipid German songs by the side of the psalms pregnant with thought, and the ceremony of confessing the faith (Confirmation) for half-grown boys and girls--an idea without meaning in Judaism.

Jacobson exercised such power over his associates in the Westphalian Consistory, that they unresistingly accepted these innovations. He then proceeded to introduce his reforms into all the communities of Westphalia, with the threat that he would have such synagogues as refused to adopt his regulations closed. This compulsion, however, aroused the feelings of the orthodox party; the introduction of the German language into divine service being particularly objectionable to the majority. A rabbi of mild temperament, Samuel Eger of Brunswick (died 1842), had the courage to protest against the arbitrary conduct of the president of the consistory. He prophetically expressed the conviction, that by employing German prayers and hymns the Hebrew language would fall into disuse, and finally die out, and the bond uniting the Jews dispersed throughout the world would thereby be relaxed. Jacobson appears to have paid no heed to these warnings and signs of opposition. The dissatisfied Jews must have lodged complaints about him and his new schemes with King Jerome, for the king reprimanded him for his autocratic interference in matters of conscience and his ardor for reform.

Jacobson's glory ended with the speedy downfall of the Westphalian kingdom. Having moved to Berlin, he furnished a room in his house as a synagogue (1815), although he had formerly been opposed to private synagogues, and introduced his reformed service with German prayers, songs, and a choir. At first there was no room for an organ. Afterwards Jacob Beer, the banker, the father of Meyer Beer, provided a large chamber (1817), where an organ could be put up. After the victory of the Germans over Napoleon, it became the fashion to be religious, and it infected Jews who had previously not experienced the slightest necessity for devotional exercises, and had been quite indifferent to religious ceremonial. Such sentimentalists, who had no regard for Judaism, attended the services of Jacobson, in order to "edify themselves" and "be devout," as the new phrases ran. The "Society of Friends" furnished members. This was the origin of a Reform party, a tiny community within the community, which however, as could be easily foreseen, had a future, owing to the energy displayed at the commencement and the repulsive form of the ordinary divine service. The great attraction in the new form of service was the German sermon, which Jacobson usually delivered. His addresses exercised great power, because the so-called "homiletic discourses" of the rabbis and the Polish or Moravian itinerant preachers, were dull and unattractive.

But the private synagogue in Berlin, owing to complaints made by some of the orthodox party, was closed by the Prussian government. The king of Prussia, Frederick William III, was averse to all innovations, even in Jewish circles, and hated them as being revolutionary plots. A young preacher from the school of Jacobson thereupon betook himself to Hamburg, having been invited to conduct a free school established by certain rich Jews. Here he set on foot the plan of erecting a reform temple on the model of Jacobson's.

This young minister, Kley, had brought from Jacobson's synagogue a complete scheme, which included German hymns and prayers, sermons, and the organ. He composed a so-called "religious song-book," in imitation of the Protestant liturgy, an empty and feeble work, suited only to a race of children, ignorant of the psalms, the pattern sources of religious devotion. But there were men in Hamburg who, although they approved of modern ideas, were yet unwilling to break entirely with Judaism and its past, and who decidedly objected to the omission of Hebrew in their prayers. The chiefs of this movement were M. J. Bresselau, himself a good Hebrew stylist, and Sæckel Fränkel (died in Hamburg, 1833), likewise a Hebrew scholar, who had retranslated several of the Apocryphal books into the sacred language. These two men compiled a selection from the Hebrew prayers in use, in order to amalgamate them with the newly-adopted German songs and prayers, a discordant medley in contents and form, which somewhat called to mind a friendly compromise among contending parties. About fifty families joined, and thus arose the Reform Temple Union in Hamburg. This mongrel birth was ushered into the world without love and enthusiasm. Its promoters were so prosaic that the anniversary of the battle of Leipsic was chosen for the day of the consecration of the Temple (October 18, 1818). The preacher Kley, in order to have ample material for a discourse, had to use as a starting point the German wars of freedom, which had caused the Jews in Germany to retrograde rather than to advance. Young maidens sang hymns with the young men, in order to create the sensation which the cause itself could not awaken, and this gave great offense. Kley could not have kept the Temple community together for long, had not the Templars, as they were called, found an efficient preacher in Gotthold Salomon, of Dessau (died 1862), who was well acquainted with biblical and Jewish literature, and knew how to conceal the bareness of the new movement. On the one hand, he invested the Temple with Protestant attributes, and on the other, by reason of his conceit and ostentation, he gave it an aggressive character. With Salomon the influence of the preacher among the German Jews commenced; the pulpit took the place of the school, and from it there often resounded the hollow phrases which conceal thought, or the lack of thought. The Temple Union had officially given up the belief in the Messiah, without exactly defining what position Judaism was to assume with reference to Christianity. Some of the zealous reformers meditated a complete rupture, and the refusal to contribute to the communal funds.

The originators and leaders were filled with the delusive idea, which at first appeared justifiable, that the Temple, through its modern and attractive form of service, would bring back to the fold those alienated from Judaism. They hoped that the less stringent religious forms would overcome the dislike felt by worldly men against everything Jewish. In a few instances those who had fallen away from Judaism were restrained from overstepping the threshold into the Church, but it was not a remedy with permanent effect. Nevertheless, the achievements of the Hamburg Temple, commonplace though its origin was, are not to be underrated. At one stroke, without much hesitation, it banished the rubbish of centuries from the synagogue, swept away with youthful impetuosity the holy cobwebs which no one had ventured to touch, and awakened a taste for a well-regulated service, for decorous behavior at divine worship, and for order and simplicity. The injury inflicted on Judaism by the aping of foreign customs, and the dilution of its own strength, cannot be altogether attributed to it.

Naturally the establishment of the Hamburg Temple produced a split in the Jewish world. Hitherto there had existed only the "old-fashioned" and the "new-fashioned" people, as they termed each other, but no distinct sects possessing a banner, a password, and a confession of faith. Not even the old-fashioned orthodox section constituted a definite party. For, although the adherents of the past, who would not swerve a hair's breadth from former practices, were so numerous, that even in Hamburg they might have suppressed the innovators if they had chosen, they did not act as a body. Only the faint remonstrance of single individuals was heard lamenting the ruin of Judaism through its betrayers, and these oft-repeated wailings were pitiful. The old party had no chiefs, no leaders; respect for the rabbis had vanished in a single generation. The wretched dispute for and against Jonathan Eibeschütz, and the satires of Hebrew writers of the period of the Measfim, had completely undermined their authority. In the larger German congregations the empty rabbinical chairs were permitted to remain untenanted. They no longer wished to have rabbis from Poland, because these could not speak the language of the land, and in Germany there were no great rabbis of recognized authority. Berlin set the example, which was followed by the community of Prague, after the death of the wise Ezekiel Landau, by Hamburg after the retirement of the zealot Raphael Cohen, and by Frankfort-on-the-Main after the death of the ultra-orthodox (Chassidic) Pinchas Hurwitz. The assistants (Dayanim) of the rabbis administered the rabbinical office--hybrid creatures, too dependent to have an opinion of their own, and too weak to oppose the demands of reckless leaders of communities.

As a result of the disregard in which the rabbis were held, the Talmudical schools fell into decay. Gifted Jewish youths, whose education formerly had begun with the Talmud, preferred to attend the gymnasiums and universities, and learned to despise the Talmud and Judaism. The most famous Talmudical academies in Prague, Frankfort, Altona and Hamburg, Fürth, Metz, and Halberstadt, which had boasted at least several hundred pupils (Bachurim), were gradually closed. This desolation spread to Poland, as the Talmud students no longer had hope of finding employment in Germany and France. They still made their way to Germany, but with the intention of studying science (Chochmoth), or if they remained at home, they devoted themselves to the ensnaring mysticism of Neo-Chassidism. There were but four rabbis of the younger generation who, on account of their profound knowledge of the Talmud and their pure, patriarchal character, enjoyed widespread authority: Mordecai Benet, in Nikolsburg, Jacob Lissa, Akiba Eger, and his son-in-law, Moses Sofer, of Frankfort-on-the-Main. These four rabbis, by their ingenious methods, kept alive the zeal for Talmudical study. Akiba Eger, owing to his astoundingly ingenious mind and high virtues--among which modesty was preëminent--enjoyed almost divine reverence from the thousands of disciples who came from his academies in Friedland and Posen. He was a quiet man, who never took the initiative, and was averse to aggressive opposition. Moses Sofer, on the other hand, was a fanatical zealot and an active heretic-hunter. He possessed courage and determination which disregarded consequences. He might have been a useful leader, but, like his companions, he was at too great a distance from the scene of action, to take part in the contest, or even to set up a standard. These rabbis had not the slightest conception of the new tendency which the times and the Jews had developed, and were therefore ignorant of the importance of the cause which they represented. They did not know the enemy whom they attacked, or despised him too much to be dangerous opponents. When a serious question or a critical situation arose, they were at a loss what to do, brought out their old rusty weapons, and damaged their cause by revealing its weakness. This awkwardness created an impression of feebleness and decrepitude. Thus the old orthodox party (as their opponents, borrowing the name from Church phraseology, termed them), or conservatives, were without a head, without a banner or a plan, utterly without unanimity or discipline, without consciousness of their own strength. They especially lacked eloquence, the indispensable means by which public opinion is influenced and ruled, and its follies and hollow emptiness are made apparent. Their utter want of education avenged itself bitterly upon the rigidly pious party.

On the other hand, the opposing section, the ardent innovators, the party of Jacobson, possessed what was wanting in the others: a daring leader, unity, and especially a wealth of passwords and phrases, such as, "spirit of the times, enlightenment," by which the thoughtless are captivated. Their victory and ultimate success could be foreseen. They had confidence and the courage of youth, were bold, and not over-particular as to the means employed. Jacobson, their chief, knew how to pursue and achieve an end, and how to utilize the means at his disposal. He saw that the Hamburg Temple would encounter difficulties, and would be condemned as heretical by the old rabbis. Jacobson was in correspondence with the founders, and knew that the Senate, instigated by the orthodox party, would, like the king of Prussia, forbid innovations. He also saw that many of the Hamburg Templars were too lukewarm to struggle against great difficulties. For this reason he strove to obtain in advance the ratification of the Temple ritual. Among the rabbis of Germany he could find no voice of approval for the new order of service. He, therefore, connected himself--a fact which throws no favorable light upon the cause--with a base adventurer, who, it appears, was bribed to help him. Eleazar Libermann from Austria, a gambler, became his apostle of reform. To characterize the man, it suffices to note that he afterwards was baptized. At the bidding of the reformers, Libermann traveled in Austria. From him they learned that in Hungary and Italy there were rabbis or would-be rabbis, willing to pronounce a favorable opinion upon the new ritual. Jacobson addressed his inquiries to them, and his wishes were fulfilled. The first who allowed himself to be used by Libermann was Aaron Chorin (from Chorin), rabbi in Arad, Hungary, a tedious talker of superficial culture and mediocre Talmudical scholarship, who was capable of repeating absurdities in three languages--in Hebrew, German, and the Jewish-German jargon. He was devoted to the new movement without clearly understanding its bearings. Two Italian rabbis of low attainments also spoke in favor of the innovations. The opinions of all these men--not one of whom was of wholly sound mind--showed that the introduction of the organ was not against Rabbinical law. Chorin alone produced authorities in favor of the other reforms, and for German prayers. Libermann collated these opinions, strengthened them by his own pretended learning, adding the falsehood that not only all the rabbis of Leghorn, but even those of Jerusalem, had declared it permissible to use the organ in Jewish divine service. These opinions, which were printed and scattered broadcast, were intended to exonerate the Hamburg Reform Temple from blame at its very birth, and to remove the blot of illegitimacy which, as might have been foreseen, the rabbis of the old school would affix to it.

Whilst the reformers energetically tried to forestall every obstacle, the conservatives remained idle, and allowed the dangers which threatened their convictions to gather unnoticed. As already observed, Hamburg had at this time no rabbi at its head, but a college of three assistants (Dayanim) of little repute. Although these official representatives of Judaism had almost the entire Hamburg community to support them, they opposed the innovations with little vigor. Shortly after the opening of the Temple, the college ordered a feebly-written proclamation to be put up in the synagogues (October 26, 1818), that the new prayer-book should not be used by Israelites of pious sentiments, because contrary to usage essential passages had been omitted or altered. But this declaration lost its effect, when the lay heads of the community--whose assistance the Dayanim had not been able to win--took it down, and rebuked the authors, because "they had been guilty of intolerable presumption." The lay heads, at the recommendation of the college, afterwards invited the leaders of the Temple (November 8th) to a meeting, and requested them to discontinue the use of the prayer-book, as it did not agree with the ritual accepted by all Jewish communities. The Templars, however, laughed this demand to scorn.

The Temple Union unexpectedly received moral support from a person having great influence in Hamburg. Lazarus Riesser, the father of the indefatigable champion for the emancipation of the Jews in Germany, had always been reckoned one of the old orthodox party. As the son-in-law of Rabbi Raphael Cohen and his right hand, he was absorbed in the Talmud. He had published a Hebrew life of Raphael Cohen, in which he eulogized not only the author, but also his rabbinical views, and declared himself his faithful follower. How astonished, therefore, were the Hamburg Jews of both parties when a letter from Riesser suddenly appeared, entitled "To my Co-religionists in Hamburg" (the beginning of 1819), applauding the Temple innovations, and sharply rebuking the rabbinical college which had opposed them! He frankly called the opponents "sanctimonious hypocrites" who "nourish contentions in Israel, and bar the way of the sons desirous of returning to the favor of their father." It appears that he wished to wreak a petty revenge upon the members of the rabbinical college of Hamburg, by whom he perhaps thought himself kept in the background.

The orthodox party in Hamburg, who imagined that no rabbi in the whole of Europe would approve of the reforms, were bitterly disappointed; owing to the activity of Jacobson and Libermann, the Jewish public discovered that several rabbis in various districts upheld them. The old rabbis were so listless and indolent in the matter, that they had to be addressed twice, before they pronounced judgment against the Temple. In the first excitement the Hamburg rabbis had unwisely condemned the innocent and commendable customs which were introduced into the Temple, such as the Portuguese pronunciation of Hebrew, the omission of intoning in reading from the Bible. To rectify these mistakes, they afterwards limited their complaints to three points--the abridgment of the prayers, especially with reference to the omission of Messianic passages, prayers in German, and the use of the organ. To this programme the agreement of numerous distinguished rabbis and rabbinates was at length secured; four in Germany (Fürth, Mayence, Breslau, and Hanau), five in Italy (Trieste, Modena, Padua, Mantua, and Leghorn), three in Prussian Poland (Posen, Lissa, and Rawitz), and two in Moravia (Nikolsburg and Trietsch). Moses Sofer in Presburg, the German rabbi in Amsterdam, and the French chief rabbis of the consistory of Wintzenheim, also signed the document. They all declared the reforms in the Temple to be distinctly heterodox. Libermann's falsehoods now became apparent, as the Leghorn rabbinate had not given its assent to the use of the organ. Samun, a would-be rabbi of Leghorn, and Chorin of Arad, probably under moral compulsion, revoked their former testimonials. The most zealous in their denunciations of the Temple were Sofer of Presburg and Benet of Nikolsburg, who declared the slightest deviation from ancient usages as heresy. But the impression which the authors of this document had hoped for did not follow. It had been delayed too long, more than seven months having elapsed before sentence of heresy was promulgated; and meantime the Temple Union had established itself. Eighteen antagonistic rabbinates (in all forty rabbis) did not seem many; and the most eminent of all, the Central Consistory of France, had remained silent. The signers of the protest asserted that more opinions had been received; but this belated statement was of no avail. The arguments adduced by the rabbis against the Temple service were for the most part void, some were thoroughly childish. The letter of the law spoke against them. The diversity of opinions among rabbinical authorities of various ages and countries, always made it possible to find reasons for and against any question.

This weakness was mercilessly exposed by M. J. Bresselau, one of the originators of the Hamburg reform. In a Hebrew letter (1819) written in beautiful Hebrew style and with such skillful manipulation of biblical verses, that it seemed as though the prophets and psalmists themselves were scourging the delusions of the obtuse rabbis, Bresselau treated them now as ignorant boys, now as false prophets, and especially as disturbers of the peace. Every sentence in this seemingly earnest but bitingly satirical epistle was a dagger-thrust against the old perversions and their defenders. The reformers also obtained reinforcement from Poland. The old-fashioned party, on the other hand, were unable to present a single Hebrew writer to defend their cause. Even the Hebrew style used in the document of the opposing rabbis was rugged and coarse. The Dayanim of Hamburg, indeed, caused the testimonial to be in part translated into German--a concession that betrayed the weakness of their cause--but the German version was not calculated to create a good impression. For this they had to employ Shalom Cohen, a turn-coat, who had formerly belonged to the ranks of the reformers. In short, the conservatives were unfortunate, because they were unskillful and imprudent.

It also happened that the Temple quarrel took place in the year when the "Hep, hep!" cry was being raised, and Hamburg also participated in it. The wealthy and worldly Jews were thereby restricted to the society of their own people, and actively supported the banner that had been unfurled. The Jewish merchants of Hamburg, members of the Temple Union, who were accustomed to attend the fair at Leipsic during the chief festivals in the spring and autumn, joined some Berlin merchants of similar opinions, and established a branch synagogue (September 20, 1820). Meyerbeer composed the songs for the opening ceremony. They appointed a so-called fair-preacher (Messprediger), Jacob Auerbach, and from this gathering-place of Jews from various countries, the innovations spread to a wider circle. The Hamburg reforms thus were adopted in some parts; and in other communities, such as those of Carlsruhe, Königsberg, and Breslau, where the entire programme was not carried out, at least the rite of confirmation, imitated from the Church, was introduced.

The first attempt to set up an opposing party, so as to dam the overflowing stream of reform, and make it subside into a quiet bed, commenced on account of the Temple innovations. This opposing party was established by a man who had himself partially forsaken rabbinical Judaism, but who strove to strengthen and vindicate it, under the correct impression that development must take place upon its own soil, with due regard to historical conditions, and along its peculiar lines, and especially without aping foreign Church forms. Isaac Bernays (born at Mayence, 1792; died at Hamburg, 1849) was the man who intelligently opposed the prevailing flaccidity of semi-enlightened reform and thought. In South Germany, in contradistinction to North Germany with its love for formal statements of doctrines, which never rose beyond the commonplaces of rationalism, a mystic philosophical school had been established, which promoted visionary notions. In all things, the smallest and the greatest, in nature and history, in the grouping of things, in numbers, colors, and names, this philosophy beheld a system, germs of ideas, the shattered ruins of a gigantic mirror reflecting fundamental thoughts in huge size. Isaac Bernays belonged to this school. To his vision Judaism in its literature and historical progress revealed itself half unveiled. Bernays' mind, with its overflowing wealth of ideas, found in all phenomena the harmonious systemization and development of a fundamental thought, which to manifest all its latent possibilities permeated passing events and historical achievements, and which had developed from the beginning of creation to the most recent fact. Bernays, much profounder than Mendelssohn, was the first to recognize the important rôle of Judaism in the history of the world, and at a glance to measure the range of its literature. His fault was, perhaps, that he was too rich in ideas, that therefore he sought out and discovered too much, and was not equal to the task of clothing his ideas in fitting form and language. From his superior altitude he looked with contemptuous pity upon the poverty of thought of Jewish reformers, who desired to contract and confine the giant spirit of Judaism (of which they had no conception) within the narrow bounds of a catechism for big and little children. In his eyes the followers of Friedländer were the embodiment of insipidity and narrowness. They impressed Bernays with the idea of a rabble who dwell in a Pyramid, and fit it up for petty household purposes.

"They, the disciples of Mendelssohn, ashamed of their antiquity, prefer, as foundlings of the present day, wildly to overleap the unfashionable limits of the Law, instead of listening in the school of their race, to hear what God has brought about at the present day."

The train of thought by which Bernays reconstructed Judaism in his mind from its original sources and history, is little known to us. He preferred oral to written instruction, and was averse to put his thoughts on paper. The "Biblical Orient," which is ascribed to him, is, so to speak, only the foundation of the vestibule of a reverence-inspiring temple. This work, odd as it was in form, is distinguished for its depth and originality; it starts with the idea, that to Judaism is allotted the task of bringing back to God men created in His image, and that the Jewish people was to serve as a type to mankind, showing how the lost likeness to God may be regained. The "Biblical Orient" endeavored to establish a more thorough comprehension of the Bible than had been effected by the Mendelssohnian school. They had regarded it merely from its poetical side, and had failed to see that it portrays the collision between two views of life. Bernays believed that his criticism dethroned the Mendelssohn school, together with its founder; for Mendelssohn himself, by his superficial treatment of Hebrew literature, had been the first to contribute to the enervation of Judaism.

According to the opinion of Bernays, the Hebrew cult differed from that of the heathen, and was intended to be a contrast. Idolatry expressed itself in plastic, Judaism in ritual, symbolism. Therefore the very aspect of Judaism which the reformers desired to abolish as unfitting and unworthy, should be preserved. Everything which in the course of Jewish history had been assimilated and developed, according to Bernays, ought to have a place assigned to it, being a necessary part of the whole,--even Talmudism and the Kabbala.

This book contains many immature and unpolished ideas, much that borders on the ridiculous. But if the author only succeeded in awakening the idea that Judaism has an historical mission as an apostle to the nations, it should suffice to procure for him a place of honor in the records of Jewish history. Not that he could claim this as a new discovery, for the text-book of Judaism plainly points to it. It is the essence of the messages proclaimed by the prophets. It has been verified by history, that European and Asiatic nations have been delivered from their darkness by the light that came from Judaism. But the accumulated sufferings of the Jews, and the servile form assumed by Judaism, had caused this fact to be so entirely forgotten, that its own sons had no idea thereof. The merit of the man who again called it to mind is therefore of no mean degree.

The extraordinary talents and original ideas of Bernays directed the attention of Jewish society to him. Afterwards, it is true, he denied the authorship of the "Biblical Orient"; but if he did not actually compose it, he might have done so, for it is flesh of his flesh, or spirit of his spirit.

The Hamburg community, which sorely needed a power to withstand the Temple Union, in consequence of his renown chose Bernays for their spiritual guide. It was a good move on their part, and bore important results. The rabbis of the old school were ill prepared for the contest between two justifiable principles, the preservation of Judaism in its peculiar manifestations, and the assimilation of European culture by the Jews. Their weapons had grown rusty, and injured the owners more than their opponents. Fresh forces were therefore required in their cause--men cognizant of the wants of the age, who could utilize them for the honor and purification of Judaism. The appointment of Bernays to the Hamburg rabbinate (November, 1821) created a stir: he was the first rabbi with a well-ordered secular education. It was a sign of the times that he dispensed with the title of rabbi and preferred to be called Chacham, as was customary among the Portuguese Jews: he did not wish the despised title of rabbi to be a hindrance to his activity. True to his aversion for slavish imitation, he eschewed all clerical mummery in costume and gestures, to which the reform preachers attached great importance in the pulpit. Bernays did not claim to be the guardian of souls, only the teacher of his congregation. He also delivered sermons, but the contents, form, and other details differed entirely from those introduced by the Jacobson school. Owing to his peculiar mode of thought, his addresses were not understood by the multitude; but thoughtful hearers at least conceded to him the merit of originality, which contrasted favorably with the insipidity of the Temple preachers. When Heine, who at this time was still interested practically in Judaism, was staying in Hamburg, he was induced to hear Bernays' sermons, and to compare them with those of other preachers. Heine understood the method and form of his thoughts, and the opinion of the lyrical satirist ran as follows:

"I have heard Bernays preach ..., none of the Jews understand him, he desires nothing for himself, and will never play any other part; but he is a man of mind, and has more life in him than Kley, Salomon, and Auerbach I and II."

By unobtrusive work, Bernays succeeded in gaining the respect, not only of the community, but also of the rigidly pious party elsewhere. Their suspicious natures found nothing to blame in the religious conduct of the Chacham. The changes that he introduced, in reality reforms, met with approval and imitation in orthodox congregations. By his penetration and his great erudition he exercised deep influence over the rising generation, to whom he opened up the rich treasures of Jewish literature, then but little known. He thereby imbued his disciples with joyous attachment to Judaism. As already stated, he did not care for writing. If his courage had kept pace with his knowledge and wealth of ideas, his activity would have had greater influence on modern Jewish history.

In another quarter, an equally beneficent and elevating, though differently constituted, personality, was at work. Isaac Noah Mannheimer (born at Copenhagen, 1793; died at Vienna, 1864), originally a disciple of the school of Jacobson, softened its crudities, and so caused the offensive alterations in the divine service to be received favorably; he struck the right note when making improvements. He may justly be considered the incarnation of Jewish refinement--every inch a man. In him the essential elements of peculiarly Jewish culture were harmoniously combined with the attractive forms of European civilization; indeed, in every respect his was a perfectly moulded nature. Gifted with genial humor and wit, enthusiasm and discretion, leading an ideal life, and possessing a sure practical instinct, endowed with poetic talents and sober thought, with childlike tenderness and cutting satire, great eloquence and earnest vigor, deep love of Judaism and delight in modern ideas--he combined these varied characteristics in the happiest manner. These brilliant qualities, together with his nobility of soul and disinterestedness, devotion to his convictions, and conscientiousness in all official duties, his delicacy of feeling, tact, aversion to vulgarity and forbearance with the vulgar--swiftly captivated all hearts, attracted the noble-minded, and even filled the unworthy with respect, and thus lightened his labors. Born and bred under the mild Danish government, which at an early date had granted equal rights to Jews, nor, like other states, withdrew or abridged them when circumstances changed, Mannheimer from childhood learned to hold his head high, and to represent his co-religionists and utter his convictions without fear even in a country where a servile conception of the position of burgesses, peasants, and especially of the Jews, long prevailed. Mannheimer did not possess original ideas or deep knowledge of Jewish literature; but he was powerfully swayed by his own convictions, which he cherished and disseminated, not hiding them away as buried treasures. This man of words and action was placed by destiny in a situation, where his peculiar nature and special gifts could find scope, and ennoble wide circles. Everyone cognizant of the state of affairs then prevailing in Austria, and the extent to which the Austrian Jews have since progressed, must confess that Mannheimer was providentially fitted for his position in the Austrian capital, on the boundary-line of semi-barbarous countries, to raise the Jews of those lands from the moral degeneracy into which they had been plunged as much by Joseph II's benevolent despotism as by his mother's hostility, and to repair the harm caused by the Herz Hombergs, the Peter Beers, and the whole troop of so-called "Normal teachers" and official religious instructors.

A chief who, in face of constant strife and danger, founds a colony with a band of half savage men, elevates it, and trains it to be a pattern to others, can claim no greater praise than Mannheimer deserved in founding the congregation of Vienna. The camp of Metternich and Francis I tolerated no Jews within its domains; only by way of exception a few rich families with their dependents were tolerated under various extraordinary titles. These favored families had immigrated from various countries, were in no way connected, had no rights as a community, could not possess a synagogue, nor appoint a rabbi; in short, by law almost everything was forbidden to them as a religious body. Nevertheless, certain adventurous persons amongst them desired to introduce a German order of service, founded on the model of the Hamburg Temple, and their efforts were alternately encouraged and frustrated by the government. When these enlightened men in Vienna undertook to build a Temple, they secured the aid of Mannheimer as preacher (June, 1825), but were compelled to evade the restrictive laws by inventing some insignificant title for him, so that he might be allowed to reside in Vienna.

Although Mannheimer was intimate with David Friedländer, Jacobson, and the young iconoclasts with whom destruction of the old Judaism was a principle, and had occasionally preached in the Reform synagogues of Berlin, Hamburg, and Leipsic, yet he was not so strongly attached to the new system that he did not recognize its fundamental errors. His first and his last word in his new sphere of action was that no rupture should be caused between Jews, no sectarianism should be encouraged, and that the old orthodox party should not be offended and repelled by daring movements, but should gradually be won over to the new forms. Actuated by these ideas, he carried a moderate change in the synagogue service, in opposition to the wishes of the man who had promoted him to his office. Mannheimer in the new synagogue removed only offensive excrescences, making the service dignified, and animating it by his impressive words, but he retained the Hebrew language, that strong bond of union, and, to the regret of his former brother reformers, dispensed with the organ and German hymns. Even more successfully than Isaac Bernays did Isaac Mannheimer pave the way to the reconciliation of old and new ideas.

In his pulpit eloquence, acknowledged by competent judges, Jews and Christians, to be of high quality, his power of harmoniously combining two apparently hostile elements was displayed. Mannheimer had discovered a noble treasure in Jewish literature and profited richly by it. In the Talmud and Agada--a mine of thoughtful sayings, parables, riddles, interesting observations and witty play upon words--he made himself thoroughly at home, discovered the golden grain, or, to speak more accurately, knew how to extract a pleasing meaning from the most insignificant saying, and employed the remarks of the old Agadists as interpreters of new views and thoughts. By utilizing the Agadic elements, his method of preaching acquired a peculiar character, and exercised strong attraction over the pious Jews and the rising generation. Portuguese Jews (Franks), who had migrated from Turkey to Vienna, also listened with pleasure to this lively and spirited preacher. The East and West were united in Mannheimer and in the new Viennese Temple, consecrated April, 1826. As if the congregation of this Temple were intended from the outset to complete the work of propitiation between old and new forms, they succeeded in securing the services of Sulzer, a skilled musician, who with his wealth of musical resources endowed the Hebrew prayers with almost magical expressiveness, and transformed the old objectionable intoning into soul-stirring melodies. These melodies rendered an organ superfluous. The soft, swelling chorals and solos of the Viennese Temple, as also Mannheimer's sermons, proved that the old possessions were not utterly useless, as violent reformers had represented them to be, but only required modifying to be impressive. Pulpit and choir, working in accord, produced great effect upon the minds of the growing congregation of Vienna, whose affection for inherited Judaism, and reverence for Jewish antiquity were combined with a desire to satisfy the demands of progress. Mannheimer's personality served to strengthen the feeling so awakened. In the pulpit, as in household and social affairs, he appeared, not as a guardian of souls, as a clergyman, or priest--he abominated a sanctimonious, unctuous manner--but as a tender father, as a friend, adviser, and help. As he did not shrink from censuring the objectionable side of old and new customs, he educated, by word and example, a pattern community in which each individual strove to maintain peace and suppress dissension.

It was in Vienna that the subservient humility of the Jew was first turned into self-respect, and this in spite of the political oppression which lasted until the year of the Revolution. The aversion felt by the barbarous Polish Jews to civilization gradually disappeared, giving way to a desire for self-improvement. The Viennese community thereby obtained historical importance. The tones that resounded from the pulpit and the choir, stirring the members of the congregation, awoke a mighty echo in the near and remote communities of Austria. Pesth, Prague, and smaller communities in Hungary and Bohemia followed the impulse given by Vienna, influenced by the conciliatory manner with which the "purified divine service" was there conducted, and the movement commenced in Vienna extended to Galicia.

The election of Chacham Bernays as head of the Hamburg congregation, and Mannheimer's activity in establishing the order of service in the Vienna synagogue, gradually aroused the emulation of other German communities. Educated rabbis were preferred, and they restored dignity to the synagogue. The German Jews in turn made their influence felt in France and Italy. The Franco-Jewish consistories having neglected the favorable opportunity to be leaders, offered by French supremacy, had to content themselves with being followers. In Italy those of the communities that belonged to Austria also felt the impulse originating in Germany, although sermons in the vernacular or in Spanish had been delivered there since olden times, and the divine service, at least outwardly, showed no signs of neglect.

How great the harm that can be done through unsoundness of mind or nebulous theories even by distinguished men, or how, at least, they can nullify their own efforts, was proved by a striking example in Berlin, in most remarkable contrast to that in Vienna. At the time when the learned mob of Germany were flinging stones at the Jews with the cry of "Hep, hep!" three Jewish young men met together to plan a sort of conspiracy against the incorrigible Christian state, all three filled with earnest ideals. They pondered carefully the means to be employed in destroying the deeply-rooted hatred against Jews in Germany. The first of the three was Zunz who lived to grow grey in research; the second, Edward Gans, the champion and apostle of Hegel's philosophy and the assailant of the old ways of jurisprudence; and lastly, an accountant who lived in a literary world, Moses Moser, Heine's most trusted friend, whom he called, "The édition de luxe of a real man, the epilogue of Nathan the Wise." They combined (November 27, 1819) for the purpose of founding a "Society for the Culture and Science of the Jews." Gans, who was of a mercurial nature, and might have been the leader of a revolution, was the chief of this movement. These three young men secured the aid of two others similarly disposed, who were enthusiastic for science, freedom, and idealism. The two fossilized Mendelssohnians, Ben-David and David Friedländer, also became members of the society, and Jacobson was ready with advice and assistance. In all it numbered about fifty members in Berlin; in Hamburg it owned about twenty of the supporters of the Temple Union, and a few others scattered in one place and another. As already mentioned, Heine afterwards attached himself to it, and worked for its success.

The first condition made by the founders was that the members were to adhere faithfully to Judaism, to withstand bravely the allurements of the Church, and thus give to the young generation a brilliant example of constancy and independence. Had it remained true to this programme, the society would have been a beneficent factor in the advancement of Judaism, seeing that most of its members were talented, and occupied the heights of culture. But it started from false premises, aimed at results too far removed, and employed the wrong means to attain the end. Practical minds were wanting in the society. The false premise was, that if the Jews acquired solid culture, devoted themselves to arts and science, and carried on agriculture and handicrafts instead of trade, German anti-Semitism would vanish, the sons of Teut would fraternally embrace the sons of Jacob, and the state would not deny them equal privileges. Therefore the society desired--their multitudinous wishes seem almost ludicrous--to establish schools, seminaries, and academies for the Jews, to promote trades, arts, agriculture, and scientific studies, and even educate them in the forms of polite society. From the idea of founding academies, however, only a sort of private school resulted, where the cultured members of the society taught or caused to be instructed poor youths who had come to Berlin principally from Poland, students of the Talmud who escaped from its folios to learn "wisdom." The founders soon perceived that they had built castles in the air, and that the Society for Culture, on account of its pretentious character, met with no support. They therefore took up a less exalted position, limiting themselves to mere agitation, and to the promotion of the science of Judaism,--certainly a praiseworthy enterprise and a pressing necessity. They determined to deliver discourses in turn, and to establish a journal for the "Science of Judaism." But the leaders themselves did not exactly know what was meant by this term, nor how to commence their work.

Hegel, the profound thinker and great sophist, the court and church philosopher, introduced these young Jews, ardent in the pursuit of truth, into the labyrinths of his method, and confused their minds. Young Israel, the founders of the Society for Culture, at first listened to the utterances of this philosophical acrobat as to oracles. In a parrot-like manner they repeated after him, that Judaism is the religion of the spirit, which has given up the ghost, and that Christianity has united in itself the whole of ancient history, and radiates its ideas in a rejuvenated, ennobled form. They also accustomed themselves, like their master, to walk upon stilts. The simplest thoughts were presented in distorted forms, as though they did not wish to be understood. How, indeed, could feeling for Judaism have awakened in them? Edward Gans, it is true, was continually speaking of the "unrelieved pain of Judaism," but was all the time thinking of himself, who could not obtain a position in Prussia. What was the aim of the science of Judaism which this Society for Culture desired to promote? Gans expressed it in the hollow phrases of the Hegelian jargon, and it is apparent that the leader did not know what cause his followers were to defend.

"The Jews cannot perish, nor can Judaism be utterly destroyed. But in the great movement of the whole, it is to seem to have perished, still it is to continue to live, as the stream lives on in the ocean."

The Society desired to assist in demolishing the wall of separation dividing Jews from Christians, and the Jewish world from the European. It wished to abolish every dissimilarity existing between the Jewish and the universal system.

The journal of the Society for Culture testified to the uncertainty and obscurity of its aim. Its articles consisted chiefly of indigestible Hegelian phraseology, or of learned matter of use to an exceedingly limited circle as material for further work. Heine, who called a spade by its name, bluntly declared to the editor of the journal, "That the greater part of it is useless owing to its obscure form."

"Did I not know by chance what Marcus [one of the contributors] and Gans are aiming at, I should not understand anything of what they write.... Insist upon culture of style with your contributors. Without this, the other culture cannot thrive."

Yet with this farrago of nonsense the Society hoped to elevate not only the Jews, but even Judaism, and were indignant that the former paid no regard to their efforts. Gans, in an article giving an account of their plans, complained that the founders were not understood. The reproach which he cast upon the Jews in general was especially true of the Society for Culture--

"Enthusiasm for religion, together with the solidity of ancient institutions, has vanished, but no new enthusiasm has come to light, and no new state of affairs has established itself. We have not gone beyond that negative enlightenment, which consists in despising and contemning things as they are, without troubling to infuse a new spirit."

This marvel could least of all be brought about by the Society for Culture, because it was deaf to the voice of God, which speaks in Jewish history, in Jewish law from its very commencement, and in the Jewish people. The Society inveighed against the whole world, and relieved its feelings in elegiac effusions. Gans, the chief mover, poured out his wrath over the rich men in Israel, who showed no sympathy with his world-awakening dreams.

Great was the disappointment of the founders of the Society for Culture. Its supporters diminished rather than increased in number. The journal with its curiously confused language found no readers, supplies ran short, and the members themselves forsook the standard, and in spite of the tacit oath embraced Christianity. Edward Gans himself secretly cherished the idea of obtaining a professorship by means of baptism. The dissensions among the German Jews, the contemptuous tone in which the sons of Judaism spoke of their religion, and the numerous examples of baptism in their midst--up to the year 1823 there were no less than 1,236 conversions in Berlin, comprising half of the members of the community, and in other parts of Prussia there were 1,382--and the pietism of the Prussian court, brought about the formation in Berlin of a Society, "For the Promotion of Christianity among the Jews," which hoped to see the whole body of the Jews enter the Church. The election of talented Jews to academic posts was strenuously opposed. In vain did Hardenberg, the minister, intercede for Gans, to obtain for him the chair of historical jurisprudence, which was his specialty. Gans considered the possibility of becoming baptized whilst delivering long addresses before the Society for Culture. The Society dissolved, and at length died out quietly, uncared for, and unregretted. Gans, the chief mover, who possessed sufficient wealth to enable him to remain true to his vow, increased the number of sceptics and infidels professing Christianity. This so exasperated Heine, although he himself was a convert to Christianity, that two decades later, even after the grave had closed over him, he could not forgive Gans.

"The apostasy of Gans was the more revolting, because he played the part of agitator, and accepted the positive duties of a president. It is a traditional duty for the captain to be the last to leave the sinking ship; Gans, however, was the first to save himself."

Moser, the second of the triumvirate of the Society for Culture, remained more steadfast to his views, although he doubted the possibility of saving Judaism, and proclaimed the wholesale baptism of the Jews. The third member of the triumvirate was the most steadfast, and alone remained thoroughly true to his word. He was also filled with doubts, but he did not despair of improvement. He pointed out how the cure or the completion of the new revival must commence. "What alone survives and is imperishable in the midst of this 'Mabul' (deluge) is the science of Judaism; it continues to live, even though for centuries no finger has been raised on its behalf. I confess that next to my submission to the justice of God, my hope and support consist in the cultivation of this science. These storms and experiences shall not so influence me as to bring me into collision with myself. I have done what I thought my duty. Because I saw that I was preaching in a wilderness I ceased to preach, but not in order to be faithless to the purport of my own words. There remains naught for the members of the Society to do, save to remain true, each man to the work of his own limited sphere, and leave the rest to God."

If the Society for Culture, which started on its career with high aspirations, and ended so lamentably, succeeded in producing only this one result, stirring up love for the science of Judaism, then its dreams and attempts have not been entirely vain. In history not even the slightest seed is wasted; but no plant could blossom in soil covered with the dust cast on it by Friedländer and Jacobson in Berlin. As if smitten with a curse, the spot where Mendelssohn began the work so full of promise, nothing could be made to thrive or be of service in the revival of Judaism. The rabbinical academy, which the rabbinical assistant in Berlin, in conjunction with excellent men, desired to call into existence, never saw the light. From another quite unexpected quarter, however, there arose the prospect, if not of salvation, yet of its beginning.

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XVI. AWAKENING OF INDEPENDENCE AND THE SCIENCE OF JUDAISM

Dawn of Self-respect--Research into Jewish History--Hannah Adams--Solomon Löwisohn--Jost--His History--The Revolution of July (1830)--Gabriel Riesser--His Lectures-- Steinheim--His Works--His "Revelation"--Nachman Krochmal-- Rapoport--Erter--His Poems--Rapoport's Writings--Zunz-- Luzzatto--His Exegesis--Geiger--The "Nineteen Letters" of Ben Usiel--New School of Reform--Joel Jacoby.

1830-1840 C. E.

If for a moment fancy is allowed full play, one can imagine, not only that the houses, utensils, and pictures excavated from the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii were renewed, but also that the entombed men were suddenly aroused from their sleep of centuries, and enabled to collect their thoughts. If these resurrected Romans could recall their condition when the catastrophe befell them, could conjure up before their mind's eye the splendor of their greatness, remember the mighty institutions which they and their ancestors called into existence, realize the heroic power which the Roman people developed, and if they felt the same power still stirring within them, a not altogether unjustifiable self-esteem would seize them. This supposition is no fantastic idea: a nation actually did arise from the darkness of the tomb, the only example chronicled in the annals of man. This resuscitated people, the Jewish race, endeavored at its resurrection to collect its thoughts and memories, and recall a vision of its glorious past; feeling itself to be at once old and young, rich in memories and lacking in experience, chained to hoary antiquity by a perfect sequence of events, yet seeming as if of yesterday. The Jews first examined the monuments of their intellect, which had influenced the history of nations, and had brought forth a wealth of peculiar products. They served as signposts in the labyrinth of Jewish history. That is the science of Judaism--a vivid realization of its great history, and its peculiar doctrines. This effort of memory is not merely an amusing game, a pleasant pastime, the satisfaction of a desire for knowledge akin to curiosity, but an irresistible impulse of self-examination. It aroused the dormant strength in the breast of the inquirer, and inspired him with self-confidence to act in the future as in the past. Self-consciousness--the consciousness of being the people of God--was awakened in this old, resuscitated nation, and it at once entered into competition with the young nations, to assert its peculiar powers.

But history has not yet gone so far: it only shows that self-respect was awakened; that the Jews no longer blush for their origin and confession; no longer hesitate when questioned about them; no longer, from false shame and their own evil plight, take a false step, pretending belief in a faith certainly more distasteful to them than to those born therein. As if this feeling of self-esteem were to be particularly favored by the generative force of history, there arose from the midst of the Jewish nation artists of great ability--artists in tone and color, and poets of the first rank, who by their steadfastness secured public recognition for their race. This self-respect of the Jews was the outcome of political maturity, the latter in turn being due to the wonderful inventions and the increase of general intelligence during the last decades, but it has chiefly been awakened, strengthened, and fostered by the science of Judaism and the achievements of talented Jews in connection therewith.

Although the history of this period is still in progression--at many points touches the fleeting present--and its results cannot be summed up like those of bygone days, yet the fact cannot be denied that the aim of Jewish life has been the attainment of those two precious acquirements--self-reliance and self-knowledge. These qualities are intimately connected, the one completing and promoting the other. Knowledge of their own experiences and of history enabled the Jews to make a careful, unprejudiced study of the origin and growth of their nationality, and of the peculiarity of their teaching, and to hide and ignore nothing. Insight into their own doctrines increased their self-reliance, and induced them to remove the burdens assumed by the generations that had lived under oppression. The struggles in which the Jews had just been engaged to secure civil, political, and social equality and to bring about the reformation and refinement of Judaism, stand in closest connection with these two qualities--on the one hand, with the better appreciation of their own nature, on the other, with their growing self-reliance--influencing them, or being influenced by them.

Step by step the mountain heaps of obstructive rubbish had to be cleared away, an open space cut out, new building materials procured or collected, before it was possible, to think, not of putting the crowning stone to the edifice, but of erecting the frame of the structure. Unconsciously the entire generation, many members of which are still active, set to work upon this gigantic task, which had not been dreamed of fifty years before, still less considered in any way practicable. Deep but almost unconscious attachment to Judaism on the part of enthusiastic spirits enabled them to attain a goal which must be regarded as a marvel by posterity, even though it has itself advanced beyond it. Jewish science by laborious research and investigations has developed three important points: the course of Jewish history in its long chain of events and its significance, the precious basis of Jewish teaching in all its bearings, and, finally, the enduring faculty of the Jewish race, which defied so many persecutions, rendered certain qualities hereditary, accomplished such wondrous miracles of history, and was the means of bringing salvation to the world. These three aspects, the comprehension of history, of the tenets of Judaism, and of peculiar nationality, were developed one after the other. Each of these branches of knowledge had to be pursued from its commencement, and followed through a long course, and if not brought to a conclusion, it at least reached a state in which it could be clearly grasped and understood.

All nations desirous of asserting their independence and vitality seek to prove their age: they interest themselves in remembrances of the past, and bring to light their ancestral portraits and their armorial bearings, to demonstrate that they have passed through the vicissitudes of fortune and misfortune, the alternations of strength and weakness, victory and defeat, that they have given evidence of intellectual capacity, and therefore may lay claim to continued existence and development. The Jewish people had no need to make search for their famous exploits or the monuments of their intellectual powers; even in their apparently servile condition these were not wanting. Each century proclaimed this fact to the next, and it was only needful to give ear to, or not wholly to disregard this voice amid a crowd of selfish interests. The history of the Jews naturally bore most eloquent testimony to the people's greatness; but it was not easy to present it in its brilliancy. The history of the Jewish nation had been distorted by the thousand unjust prejudices of the ages. Under the cruel persecutions of their tormentors, the Jews could not retain the accumulated reminiscences of their great past; they knew them only in distorted fragments. Christian scholars, attracted by the grandeur of the theme, had indeed formed these disjointed fragments into a picture; but it could not be a true one, seeing that many component parts were wanting. The bright colors had faded, and there was a preponderance of shadow, perhaps intentionally placed there. Even to well-disposed defenders of the Jews, like Dohm and Grégoire, who had zealously studied the annals of Jewish history, they did not give a clear idea of its course. More than a century had elapsed since the worthy French Protestant clergyman, Basnage, after diligently studying Jewish history, had given to the world his somewhat fragmentary researches, when the wife of an American clergyman, Hannah Adams, of Boston, struck by the marvelous fate of the Jewish nation, delineated their history from the time of the return from Babylon to recent days. For many reasons she was not qualified to give an intelligible outline of Jewish history, but could only string together a number of rough sketches without connection or sequence. This crude work, nevertheless, was good enough for the purposes of the London Society for the Promotion of Christianity among the Jews, which besides made several alterations in the book in order to serve its ends. Fidelity to history and truth were entirely disregarded in the changes.

It was high time for Jews to take away the historian's pen from the hands of Christians who only trifled with it. However feeble might be their first attempts, and inadequate though their conception of the peculiarity of Jewish history was, yet it was meritorious to remove the Christian seal, impressed upon it by unconscious forgers, in order to claim it as the property of the Church. The first Jew who bore in his heart the great characteristics of the history of his race, and in part published it, deserves a place of honor. He was a talented youth whose early death was due to insanity, so often the mark of a true poet. Solomon Löwisohn (born in Moor, Hungary, 1789, died 1822) had succeeded under most unfavorable circumstances in acquiring secular culture, and thereby had qualified himself to appreciate the value of his nation's treasures. Löwisohn had a much truer comprehension of the beauty and sweetness of Hebrew poetry, of its sublimity and simplicity, than Herder, because he was better acquainted with it. He regarded the history of his people from the standpoint of poetry, as from that of faith. In his "Lectures upon the Modern History of the Jews," from their dispersion till the present day, he succeeded in unrolling a charming picture. He also distinguished certain important points, and correctly showed the lines to be followed, to avoid losing oneself in this apparent chaos.

Jewish history assumed a better form in the hands of Isaac Marcus Jost (born at Bernburg, 1793; died at Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1860). He had greater courage than a more gifted contemporary, and although not possessed of sufficient resources he undertook the gigantic task, and he deserves credit for having pointed out a way through the vast labyrinth. When the bigoted Teutomaniacs desired to banish the Jews from Teutonic soil, and the Jew-haters searched the pages of history for an excuse to slander them, Jost determined to show them in a better light. He desired to prove that they had always been peaceful citizens and faithful subjects. They had certainly opposed the Roman Emperors, and had maintained a vigorous war against them, but this was the act of a few boisterous brawlers, whose folly should not be visited upon the entire people. On the whole, the Jews had proved themselves honest men, who had not slaughtered Christian children, nor in any way deserved the reproaches leveled against them. Only the Pharisees and their descendants, the rabbis, detestable men, filled with superstition, darkness, and arrogance, had made hell hot for the people, the property of the rabbis. This is the basis of Jost's delineation of Jewish history. He wished to confute at the same time the admirers and the antagonists of Jewish history. No one at the present day can deny the one-sidedness of his representation. Nevertheless Jost performed a real service to his people by his historical labors. He offered something new to his age, and as accurately as possible laid down the indispensable foundations of history--time and space. He cannot be reproached for utilizing the sources of history without having investigated them; his generation was not endowed with the faculty of carefully testing historical evidences. Jost's "History" proved a good guide and instructor to statesmen engaged in the amelioration of the condition of the Jews.

But the main objection to Jost's narrative cannot be disregarded, seeing that even in his old age, and in spite of instructive criticism, he stubbornly pursued his method. He gave to Jewish history, undeniably heroic, a dry, Philistine character, despoiling it of the brightness with which it was endowed even in the eyes of unprejudiced Christian observers. He tore to shreds the heroic drama of thousands of years. Between the old Israelites, the ancestors and contemporaries of the Prophets and Psalmists, and the Jews, the disciples of the rabbis, Jost hollowed out a deep chasm, making a sharp distinction between them, as if the latter were not the descendants of the former, but of entirely different stock. And why? Because Jost, the pupil of Friedländer and Jacobson, denied all miracles, not only those involving changes in the laws of nature, but also such as are brought about through inspiration and steady endurance, the miracles of history, arising out of the peculiar combination of circumstances, blow following on blow, reaction on action. He saw in history only an accumulation of contingencies subject to no law. Therefore the Jews were not to be considered the sons of the Israelites, nor the rabbis the successors of the Prophets, nor the Talmud the outcome of the Bible, otherwise the intervention of miracles had to be conceded.

In Europe, which had fallen into a state of almost glaring stupidity, there now occurred a historical marvel which caused a sensation from one end of the continent to the other. From the serene sky in the West there came a lightning flash; a thunderclap and terrifying crash followed, as if the end of the world had come--the Revolution of July (1830) was indeed a miracle. No one had expected it, or was prepared for it. Even the men who brought it about, and fought in it, were impelled by some dark feeling, were not aware of the force of their actions, were only the blind agents of the Ruler of history.

This revolution affected the Jews and consequently Judaism, like every important change in history. The equalization of the Jews in France, although sealed by the constitution, had suffered somewhat under the two Bourbons, Louis XVIII and Charles X, as the nobility and the Catholic clergy were possessed of great influence, and the officials understood their hint not to be too friendly to the Jews. The reactionary Catholic clergy began to renew their intolerance towards the Jews, and the police displayed hostility to the Jewish ritual. Had the Bourbons been able to gratify their own wishes by discrediting the constitution as well as liberty and equality, the French Jews would have been the first victims, and like their German co-religionists would once more have been placed under exceptional laws. The July Revolution was thus of momentous importance to them. The first assembly of deputies under King Louis Philippe, who desired to execute the Charter, at once considered the abolition of all existing inequalities, however slight, between Jews and Christians. One of the deputies, Viennet, proposed (August 7, 1830) to remove from the constitution the recognition of a state religion. His proposition was supported on all sides. A few months later (November 13) the minister of public education, Mérilhou, brought forward a motion to place Judaism upon an equal footing with the other two creeds, to pay salaries from the public treasury to the Synagogue and the rabbis, as well as to the Church and its ministers. He praised the French Jews, saying that since the removal of their disabilities by the Revolution they had shown themselves worthy of the privileges granted them. He exhorted the deputies to agree to the law of equality for the three creeds. His motion was adopted by a large majority.

In the chamber of peers it was more difficult to pass the law decreeing the equality of Judaism and Christianity. The advocates of the motion were eloquent in their recognition of Jewish virtues. The names of those Jews who had left behind them a glorious reputation in history were mentioned, such as Philo, the representative of Jewish philosophy in ancient times; Maimonides, of that of "the Middle Ages and modern days"; Mendelssohn, "the sage, whom philosophic Germany was in the habit of comparing with Plato."

When the division was taken in the chamber of peers (January 1, 1831), the law for the complete equalization of the Jews was carried by 89 votes to 57. Thus the last barriers between the adherents of Judaism and their Christian neighbors were removed in France. King Louis Philippe, on the 8th of February, ratified the law, which enacted that the French rabbis, like the Catholic and Protestant clergymen, should receive part of their salary from the public exchequer. The High School (Collège Rabbinique) for the training of rabbis, which a short time before had been founded in Metz, was also recognized as a state institution, and partly supported from the public budget. At the same time, the Senate at Frankfort-on-the-Main brought forward a motion to grant civil rights to the Jews, particularly abrogating the limitations to marriage. But of the 90 members of the legislative body, two-thirds voted against it.

The shock caused by the events of July, which was felt also in Germany, awakened a feeling of self-dependence; it dispelled all timidity and false shame in speaking about Jews and Judaism, which had hitherto been avoided, as if a loud word would have precipitated the avalanche of Judæophobia with destructive force. Even Jews belonging to so-called good society, who, for the sake of some material advantage, had been anxious to have people forget that they were members of an oppressed race, and had preferred to conceal or ignore the injustice done them, began to appreciate their own worth and ceased to be ashamed of being recognized as Jews. This change of sentiment manifested in different ways, like every change, was brought about by influential personalities.

Gabriel Riesser (born 1806, died 1860), a man of noble mind and great energy, took a prominent part in awakening this self-respect. However bitter the complaints of the German Jews of the disgrace brought upon them by immigrant Polish Jews, they were amply compensated by Riesser. His spirit of firm determination he derived more from his maternal grandfather, Rabbi Raphael Cohen, who had emigrated from Poland, than from his weak, good-natured German father. Gabriel Riesser in every respect belonged to modern times. Unlike most of the promoters of the new spirit, he was not rooted in the old order of things. His thoughts, feelings, and dreams were German, and only slight traces of his Jewish origin are perceptible. To Judaism in its national form, as the leaven of history, Riesser was indifferent; only the recollections of his youth and his parental home bound him to the faith. Beyond that, he looked upon it as an attenuated system of diluted doctrines, which he tacitly professed without desiring to defend them. He suspected, however, that Judaism might continue to flourish in a rejuvenated healthy form, though he did not define clearly wherein this revival should consist. To promote it was altogether outside his sphere. Had he not been hampered in his chosen vocation, he would have been a quiet German citizen, a conscientious judge or lawyer, without troubling himself to improve the world or rectify a corrupt state of affairs. German Jew-hatred roused him to defend the derided cause of his fellow-sufferers. His first work as a jurist attracted attention, and he tried to become an attorney in his native town, but was rejected. He next sought to deliver lectures upon jurisprudence in Heidelberg, but the professor's chair was refused him likewise. His gentle, peaceable nature revolted against such foolish exclusions. Thus Riesser, who felt no particular call to work for the general good, was driven to become an agitator, not alone for the freedom of his co-religionists, but also for that of the whole German nation. He made it his duty in life to secure equal privileges for the Jews, and to defend them whenever attacked. "The unspeakable sufferings throughout two centuries of many millions of persons who patiently waited for deliverance" weighed heavily upon him. His ideal was Lessing. In his first pamphlet (1831) he spoke with conscious pride, not alone against German rulers, but against the people, who refused permission to the Jews to ascend even the lowest rung on the ladder of distinction. Nor did he spare his co-religionists who, on account of superior education and social position, contemptuously looked down upon the mass of Jews, and were ashamed of the name of Jew. "If unjust hatred," he exclaimed, "clings to our name, should we not, instead of denying it, rather use all our strength to secure honor for it?" He contributed freely towards the removal of the contempt cast upon this name. Riesser aimed chiefly at defending the honor and dignity of the Jews. No selfish attainment of advantages withheld stimulated his action; but a desire to take part in the unceasing contest between freedom and oppression, justice and injustice, truth and falsehood. Filled with indignation he openly represented to the German rulers that the reason for depriving the Jews of their rights as men was the hope that they might thereby be induced to accept baptism. He also reproached the faint-hearted Jews who, having a comfortable position, separated themselves from the main body of their brethren, or by a false confession purchased equality, or handed over their children to the Church to smooth their path through life. Riesser desired to see societies established which should energetically work for the emancipation of the Jews. Sympathizers were to be united in a kind of covenant that, from a sense of honor, they might remain true to their fellow-sufferers, until the contest was decided. Ten years previously the Berlin Society for Culture had not dared to publish such a programme. But between Edward Gans and Gabriel Riesser came the July Revolution. Riesser also invited Christians to join, inasmuch as it behoved well-disposed men of every belief to participate in the release of an enslaved people.

Riesser's words produced their due effect; they came at an opportune moment, when men's minds had become susceptible. His mild though determined utterances made a deeper impression than Börne's with their incisive keenness. The tone of positive certainty with which Riesser foretold the ultimate victory of liberty infused hope into every heart. Various favorable events which now took place appeared to put a seal on his prophecy. For the first time the question of the emancipation of the Jews began to be discussed in the English Parliament, and the chief leaders in the House of Commons were in favor of the removal of the disabilities. A resolution was passed in the Electorate of Hesse, the first German province to legalize the emancipation of the Jews. This gave Riesser courage to pursue his ideal further. He was indefatigable in his efforts for the cause to which he had devoted his life, but he kept in view the honor and credit to be obtained, more than any desire for material gain. Not even the most unimportant ceremony might be sacrificed to obtain rights of citizenship, if they could be procured only at such a cost; a rule which he most emphatically laid down on two occasions.

The Jews of Baden, as a token of their gratitude, presented him with a beautifully designed picture by the Jewish painter Oppenheim, which artistically depicted the transition period in Jewish life, the separation of the old and the new. It was called "The Return of the Jewish Warrior," who is represented as surprising his parents and family in the repose of the Sabbath. In his letter acknowledging this gift, Riesser remarked, "The father is foolish who wishes to wrap his son in the garments of antiquity ... but wanting in dignity is the son ashamed of his father, the generation ashamed of the past." This deeply-rooted feeling was communicated to the younger generation with the more intensity, because it proceeded, not from an official representative of Judaism, but from a lawyer whose being was pervaded by the German spirit. Riesser made the emancipation question popular by his contest with the Judæophobists Paulus, Edward Meyer, Pfizer, Streckfuss, and other driveling enemies of freedom in the German Assemblies of the estates, who utilized the contempt attached to the Jews to bring the whole struggle for liberty into disrepute. Riesser further managed to have the Jewish question placed on the programme of the liberalists. Young Germany, and all who took part against oppression, were thenceforth compelled to inscribe religious liberty and the equality of all classes upon their banner, however great might be their antipathy against the Jews. But Riesser performed a far greater service, by rousing a feeling of dignity in the Jews, and destroying that false shame which so-called cultured people felt at the name of Jew. The sincerity of his convictions and the genuineness of his sentiments, as evinced in every stroke of his pen, opened all hearts to him.

At this time men of commanding intellect were not to be found in great numbers among the Jews; but the younger generation was rich in men of character who, as it were, compensated for the losses occasioned by the Berlin Society for Culture. One of these sterling characters was the bosom friend of Riesser, a physician, Solomon Ludwig Steinheim (born, Altona, 1790; died, Zürich, 1866). His was a highly gifted nature, which dwelt upon the sunny height of thought; and from this eminence the foolish pursuits of the multitude appeared like mist formations, blown hither and thither by the wind.

In Steinheim was revealed, in all its splendor and all its powers of redemption, the Jewish thought--without which Judaism were merely a thousand years' dream--that the Jewish people has a gigantic mission, with which its teachings and fortunes are in consonance. This idea may have been unconsciously aroused in Steinheim by Isaac Bernays. Together with his wealth of thought, Steinheim was skillful in clothing his ideas in an interesting form, and adorning them with his rich gifts of eloquence. He might be compared to Jehuda Halevi, the Castilian poet-philosopher, had he been gifted with higher poetical talents. His first production, "The Songs of Obadiah ben Amos in Exile," displayed germs of the fruitful seed of thought which he disseminated. A Jewish sage, Obadiah, in Egypt, describes to his son Eliakim, supposed to be living at the time of the Ptolemies, the different stages of greatness and abjection through which the Jewish people were to pass.

"It is the design of Providence that a weak people, appointed to proclaim salvation, shall be persecuted, hunted down, and sacrificed among millions of enemies throughout thousands of years, and nevertheless continue alive and active. Our ancestors received for themselves and their descendants the consecrated office of the priesthood. The family of Jacob, since its beginning, has been alternately dispersed and gathered together, and thus trained for its vocation."

The Jewish people have entered upon their pilgrimage over the surface of the globe, to scatter the luminous seeds of pure worship of God and the ideal of exalted morality. From this moral pinnacle Steinheim beheld the past and the future of Judaism in the clearest light. All riddles were solved, all questions answered; the doctrines and history of Israel afforded satisfactory and comforting replies. The priestly mission of Israel was to be fulfilled through great sufferings; this saviour of the world was compelled to wear a crown of thorns, and to be humbled to the condition of a slave. Steinheim saw the past and the future of Israel as in a magic mirror, bright, clear, and rich in color. Only the present was puzzling to him. The estrangement of the sons of his people from their origin, their despair of themselves, their contempt for their teachings and descent, the daily recurring apostasies and desertion from the flag, appeared to him as omens of approaching downfall, as though the high priests of mankind were secularizing themselves, profaning their sanctity, exchanging their birthright for a mess of pottage. Such self-estrangement and self-debasement Steinheim desired to counteract. He therefore composed his "Songs of Obadiah in Exile," in which he worked out his system.

"Such times are dangerous, when oppression is lessened, but not altogether removed, or when freedom is near, but not completely attained. At these periods, to desert the customs of bygone ages is deemed meritorious and advantageous, while a desire for transitory benefits gives rise to indifference to the eternal. This is the time for real lamentation, when every folly is taken seriously, and every serious thing is considered folly; when mockery is in every mouth, and insolence and license in every heart, and when, by reason of satirical laughter, there is no time for serious matters."

Steinheim's muse severely rebuked the unthinking who seceded from the Jewish religion.

He wished, however, not only to reprove, but also to instruct and convince. He did not address himself to the prosperous, the contented, and the rich, but to "youth with its pains and its ardent longings, its ready sensibility to light and justice." To these he dedicated his book so fertile in thought, "Revelation according to the System of the Synagogue" (February, 1835). Gifted with a philosophical mind, Steinheim submitted the whole system of the law to a searching examination, regarding it as the highest consideration, as the "miracle of miracles," by which alone the restless inquiring human mind can arrive at contentment. Boldly he attempted to give an answer to the question: What is this highly-praised and deeply-scorned Judaism? All Jewish thinkers had been happy in proving that its fundamental principles agreed with the axioms of mental philosophy, or, at least, were not in contradiction to them. If man were left solely to the guidance of reason or of natural philosophy, he would find no clue for his moral actions in the labyrinth of contradictions and uncertainties. It is, therefore, concluded Steinheim, a poor compliment to a religion to say that it is in accord with reason; for the latter is Chronos consuming his own offspring; building up with one hand and destroying with the other. The only religion in accordance with reason is heathenism, or natural religion, in its various modifications--the heathenism which was the origin of so much mischief to morality, in which "robbers, thieves, adulterers, and sodomites found their finest examples in the highest beings." If Christianity renounces its joint origin with Judaism, the fashion since Schleiermacher and Hegel, it thereby sinks to the lowest depths of heathenism. Love and hatred, Ahriman and Ormuz, Christ and Satan, with all variations of the opposing principles, the eternal substance about which the two powers are ever contending, and inexorable necessity--these are the fundamental ideas of natural religion: man himself succumbs under the suffering inflicted by necessity:

"Through eternal, immovable, mighty laws Must we all complete the circle of our existence."

"Like the gods, so are their priests and sages: like king, like herd."

In opposition to this sensual or perhaps refined heathenism comes Judaism with its totally different mode of thought. It sets up a personal God who is not identical with Nature, and is not divided into two principles: it recognizes a "Creatio ex nihilo," without an eternal substance. It lays stress upon free will, consequently upon man's responsibility for his moral actions. These truths and others have not been evolved by human reason, nor could they be so evolved; they had been revealed upon Sinai. Although they were alien to reason, yet they are so clear and convincing that it soon accepts them, displacing the contradictory phases of thought regarding the perplexing natural phenomena, whose laws reason cannot explain. Sinai, with its lightning-flashes, shed both light and warmth over the world, clearness of thought and moral purity. The synagogue forms a sharply defined antithesis both to mythological religion and the church. "Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem": with inspired enthusiasm Steinheim subscribed to these prophetic, half-fulfilled words. When he had discovered, or thought he had discovered, the soul of Judaism, Steinheim became filled with ardent zeal, a striking phenomenon in a time of sober speculation. This love for Judaism so illumined his mind and facilitated his understanding of the past, that he even learned to value the activity and energy of the greatly despised rabbis.

In his "Revelation" Steinheim revealed many truths, or rather, he brought to light ancient truths which had been ignored or forgotten. No one either in his own or in the preceding age understood the fundamental principles of Judaism so thoroughly as he did, although several of his hypotheses and inferences cannot be completely established. He, however, made but a slight impression upon his contemporaries, although he set forth the grandeur of Judaism with almost prophetic inspiration, and in an attractive manner. Whence came his isolation? It arose from the fact that the life and actions of Steinheim did not accord with his thoughts and sentiments. In agreement with his words, he ought to have become intimately associated with the Synagogue which from ignorance "became daily more deserted," to have participated in its woes and ignominy, to have joined in the celebration of its days of festivity and sadness, and to have clothed himself with the pride of those who were externally slaves, but in their hearts freemen. But Steinheim did nothing of the kind: he kept himself aloof from the Jewish community and Jewish life. What he correctly recognized as the reason of the resistance to the doctrines of Judaism, "the simplicity and servile condition of its adherents," repelled even him.

"The name of the people, which has become its guardian, has degenerated into a by-word, and now it is demanded that a doctrine shall be accepted whose supporters are given up to hatred, contempt, and persecution."

To renounce Judaism altogether, like Heine, Edward Gans, and many others, appeared to Steinheim dishonorable and wanton; and he therefore remained externally faithful. But, although he had recognized the truth that the mission of Israel consisted in being not only priests, but also sacrifices, he did not permit this knowledge to influence his course of life. This was not due to weakness of character in Steinheim, but to insufficient knowledge of Judaism in its many-sidedness. In spite of his predilection for its intellectual treasury, he was more at home in every other subject than in Jewish literature.

A deeper knowledge of Judaism was unexpectedly aroused in a country which cultured Jews like Riesser and Steinheim were accustomed to despise. As it was formerly asked, What good can come out of Galilee? so now it was said, What good can come out of Poland? Yet, from this very place there came fruitful seeds which developed into healthy blossoms. Two men especially, Nachman Krochmal and Solomon Jehuda Rapoport, profitably employed the knowledge gained in Germany. Both seemed destined to fill a gap, to which the scholars of Jewish science in Germany and France were unequal. They dug solid ore from the mines inaccessible in these countries, and showed how to procure and work it. They stirred up a spirit of rivalry, which within the short space of three decades, was instrumental in removing the ruins covering the great past of Judaism, and in bringing to light the Divine image hidden beneath. They were the founders of a new school, which may be called the Galician.

Nachman Cohen Krochmal (born at Brody, 1785; died at Tarnopol, 1840), the son of a well-to-do merchant interested in science, who was accustomed to make journeys to Germany, caught up the pale, dying light of the Mendelssohn school. Mendelssohn was the ideal upon which Krochmal modeled himself. Married at the age of fourteen, and transplanted to the little village of Zolkiew, where the method of instruction so destructive to science was still in vogue, Krochmal secretly became absorbed in the study of Hebrew literature. He also tried to obtain the writings of the German philosophers, especially of Kant, in order to expand and clear his mind with earnest thoughts. The more the strict Talmudists and heretic-hunting Chassidim of Poland endeavored to discover those who occupied themselves with works other than the Talmud or Kabbala, or who read a non-Hebraic book, in order to denounce them--the more did Krochmal and his fellows enjoy their stolen pleasure. Along with a mass of knowledge from the Talmud, Krochmal stored up many thoughts of a character hostile to Talmudism. But open war was never declared. Krochmal, probably on account of his health, enfeebled by continued mental activity, was too timid to venture out of the beaten track: he avoided disputes, and followed all the superstitiously pious Polish customs, exaggerating them indeed, in order not to jeopardize his peace of mind. He was too earnest and too prudent to overstep the bounds of habit; nevertheless, he could not altogether escape suspicion. He had carried on a harmless correspondence with a Karaite Chacham in the neighboring village of Kukizow. Certain pious persons knew this, and represented that he was hatching a conspiracy against the Talmud with the Karaites. They obtained one of his letters from the unsuspecting Karaite, endeavored to extract heresies from the innocent compliments paid his correspondent in verse, and spread it throughout the large community of Lemberg in order to excite the mob against him. This intrigue greatly affected Krochmal, and becoming yet more timid and cautious, he locked up his thoughts within his own breast, and for a long time could not be induced to publish anything.

But he revealed the treasures of his mind to his trusty friends and disciples, not within treacherous walls, but in the open field. His hearers, schooled in the Talmud, and accustomed to unravel dark and difficult problems, quickly understood his hints without diffuse explanations. By his laconic method Krochmal could turn everything topsy-turvy, and unfold a series of investigations, every link of which, if made public, would have stamped him in the eyes of his countrymen as a wicked heretic. What made his method of instruction and his investigations especially fruitful, was the clearness and finish of his thoughts, which were arranged in admirable sequence. Thus his teaching was a wholesome antidote to the chaotic contradiction and confusion from which the best Polish minds greatly suffered. His acquaintance with German philosophy had schooled his mind, and taught him logical discipline. Krochmal did not develop original philosophic thoughts, which he nevertheless seems to have thought his strong point. He was the first to take a philosophical view of history, especially Jewish history, and make a clear survey of its intricacies. He also pointed out how the mine of the Talmud could be utilized, and rendered valuable in historical research. Krochmal himself devoted his attention to this neglected and little valued literature, and applied his results to the elucidation of Jewish history. He succeeded in throwing so much light on the period from the Babylonian Captivity until the conclusion of the Mishnah, which Jost and Christian scholars had completely failed to understand, that it was an easy task for succeeding inquirers to follow in his path. He was the first to teach scholars to examine Talmudical sources of history through a microscope, or to reproduce half-obliterated features. This was, indeed, a great gain, and an immense advance compared with Jost's clumsy view of history. Krochmal's results do not always bear investigation, because having no access to non-Hebraic writings, he was obliged to content himself with secondary or tertiary sources. But his acuteness and sincere devotion to this study, did not allow him to stray from the right track often. He inspired his disciples to engage in research, and gave them the key to these hieroglyphic sources. Although he had not yet published many of his discoveries, his fame extended beyond the boundaries of his own country. The community of Berlin, which since the time of Friedländer had felt deep aversion to Poles and rabbis, entertained the idea of calling him as their rabbi. He was considered one of the leaders of the young science of Judaism, and had many admirers in Germany.

The most receptive and gifted among his disciples, Solomon Jehuda Rapoport (born Lemberg, 1790? died Prague, 1867), contested with him for preëminence, and even overshadowed him, partly by reason of his more fertile productions. Rapoport was descended from a respected Jewish family, a race of learned rabbis, one of whose branches had been transplanted from Italy to Poland. Traces of his hereditary nobility were apparent in his bearing and appearance. Of a gentle nature, which won for him all hearts, having a fund of genial humor, and of a sociable disposition, Rapoport was a well-beloved and attractive person in every circle. These qualities softened the severity of his astonishing learning. Nothing of especial importance occurred during his youth. At an early age he was admitted to the study of the Talmud, and soon was at home in its labyrinths, owing to his extraordinary memory and penetrating acuteness. He also married young.

During his youth, Rapoport became partly false to Talmudical study, inasmuch as he favored its rivals--science and poetry. He has graphically described the painful path trodden by him and his peers in order to arrive at the tree of knowledge. It was difficult to obtain any scientific book, most difficult to secure one written in a European language. The index of books prohibited by public opinion was much more comprehensive than that of the popes. If one thirsting for knowledge secretly procured such a book, and it was scented out by the prying eyes of his relatives or friends, he was implored to throw it aside, or his friends, on their own responsibility, confiscated the heretical work, so as to preserve the student from fanatical persecution by the Chassidim. Even clear-minded men were doubtful whether, according to the Talmud, the study of profane sciences was not forbidden.

Rapoport was not alone in his longing for knowledge. Here and there, in Galicia, the germs of a fresh spirit awoke, which struggled hard to remove the yoke of an unthinking, fanatical public opinion. Intercourse with Vienna, the Napoleonic wars, in general, communication with the world, caused many old forms to fall into abeyance. The spread of the Chassidistic cult and its presumptuous, outrageous, and increasingly frantic actions, stimulated thoughtful, reasonable men to meet it with firm opposition, for it filled them with passionate hatred, and drove them to invent expedients whereby to crush it. The most appropriate method seemed to be to remove the boorish ignorance in religious and secular matters and the childlike credulity, by means of education. Although the Austrian government had declared it a duty of the Galician congregations to establish schools, the lower officials had not shown much zeal in causing this order to be carried into effect. This neglect was to some extent advantageous, as the self-deliverance of the Jews was the more effectual by reason of the struggle undergone. Since the wars with Napoleon, there had arisen small circles in the three largest Galician communities of Brody, Lemberg, and Tarnopol, banded together for self-culture, the promotion of education, and a war of annihilation against Chassidism. The beginning of this movement was made in Tarnopol by Joseph Perl (born at Tarnopol, 1773; died, 1839). With great sacrifice of time and money, and with unswerving perseverance, he founded a pattern High School for the middle classes. He made incisive attacks upon the Chassidim in a work, intentionally written in a corrupt, barbarous jargon, which was in no way inferior to "The Letters of Obscure Men" in the monkish Latin of Rubianus and Hutten, perhaps slightly more artistic. This bitter enemy of the Chassidim entered into communication with the Jewish representatives of education in Germany, and was elected an honorary member of the Berlin Society for Culture. In Brody, where Jews engaged in extensive foreign trade, the rich merchants, who traveled in Germany and Austria, introduced the desire to imitate the German Jews. In Lemberg, where Rapoport lived, a kind of literary circle was founded, at whose head was a wealthy, highly-cultured man, Jehuda Löb Mises (died 1831). He provided ambitious young men in Lemberg with money, counsel, and, what was of especial value to them, with an excellent library of Hebrew and European books.

From this circle arose an admired scholar, who deserves a golden page in the records of Jewish literature. This was Isaac Erter, born in a village near Przemysl, 1792, and died at Brody, 1851. He who by means of his magic poetry succeeds in showing the powers of renaissance dormant in a so-called dead language, unconsciously also demonstrates the vitality of the race in whose midst such artistic creations can arise, and can by many be understood, and admired. Erter's object was to scourge the perversity of Polish Judaism, the chaos of superstition and learning, and the coarseness of the Chassidim; but by the noble form in which he clothed his scorn and his righteous indignation he attested the immortality of the Hebrew language and people. Born in a wretched Galician village, he created beautiful Hebrew pictures, such as would have delighted Isaiah and the most refined Psalmists. Erter's father, though a poor man, little more than a peasant, had nevertheless not neglected the sacred duty of a Jew to have his talented son instructed in Jewish writings. The Talmud, to be sure, was the only work with which young Erter was thoroughly acquainted. Of the beauties of biblical poetry, like all Jews of Poland at that time, he had no idea in his youth. When he was thirteen years old his father imposed the bonds of marriage upon him, and shortly afterwards, having become a widower, the boy married a second wife. His second father-in-law, who had promised to support him, did not keep his word, and thus Erter tasted the bread of misery in his youth. To dispel his bitter cares he joined the merry Chassidim, taking part in all their follies; but his innate love of the beautiful made him feel disgust at the sight of their moral and physical degradation, nor could he believe in their miracles. A fortunate accident acquainted him with a cultured man, who introduced him to two ideals, Maimuni and Mendelssohn, and so he learned to understand, love, and imitate the highest models, viz., the prophet Moses and Hebrew literature. A new spirit was breathed into Erter by this old, still ever new revelation, working a change in his views and his relation to Judaism. To increase his culture Erter betook himself to Lemberg, where he hoped to find better means for satisfying his thirst for science. Here he found struggling sympathizers of his own age, who, like himself, had married early, had been tortured by material cares, but had nevertheless directed all their energies to the cultivation of the mind. Here he met Rapoport, to whom as the more learned he looked up with reverence. There was a peculiar charm in the intercourse of these young knowledge-seekers, each at once master and pupil. Whatever was beautiful and true in European literature they elaborated, for their own use and that of others, in the Hebrew language, which they employed as if it were a living language. The difficulties which members of this circle could not overcome were submitted to the wise master, Krochmal, and to him they made pilgrimages to Zolkiew as to a wizard. This intellectually idyllic life, which they remembered even in their old age as a golden dream, lasted for three years. But their occupation with profane literature and their actions and aims gave great offense.

One day a ban of excommunication (in the name of Rabbi Jacob Orenstein) was found affixed to the gates of the synagogue. It was directed against four men, who were said to teach the young their heretical views, viz., Rapoport, Erter, Natkes, and Pastor. The formal excommunication, customary in olden days, had been forbidden in Galicia since the time of Emperor Joseph: therefore the zealots chose this method. At the time when they had brought Krochmal under the accusation of heresy, they had determined to make a vigorous onslaught upon all apostles of culture. But, seeing that the ban was directed only against these four poor men, and that they dared not attack the wealthy, respected Mises, who openly poured ridicule upon Talmudical Judaism, their cowardice rendered their zeal ineffectual. The sentence of excommunication did not have the expected result, and Orenstein was compelled by the Austrian authorities to withdraw it. It hardly affected Rapoport, who had a fairly independent, if somewhat inferior position, and who had instructed the young gratuitously. In the eyes of the common people, however, he was a heretic; but this did not hinder him from becoming district rabbi of Tarnopol and afterwards chief rabbi of Prague.

Poor Erter, however, was severely affected, because he had to support himself and his family by teaching. Although the rabbi was obliged to recall the ban, Erter found that many parents did not care to entrust their sons to him, and he had to take up his staff and journey to Brody. But he had his revenge upon Orenstein and the zealots: he immortalized their bigotry and pettiness by his poetry. Indignation and anger at being persecuted by such tormentors forced the pen into his hand, and gave rise to his masterpieces of delineation. Erter harmed Orenstein with his poetical thunders of excommunication more severely than he himself had been made to suffer, and completely crushed him. In a poem he represented a court of justice which determined the value of objects from a standpoint dissimilar to that of the actual world. Books of immense size shrink to nothing, because their contents prove to have been stolen from various quarters, and the plagiarism is discovered; only the title-page remaining the property of the author. This satire was aimed at Orenstein, who had published a Rabbinical work in many volumes, which he was said to have adorned with borrowed plumes.

Börne and Heine would certainly never have credited it, had they heard that, hidden away in Poland, among the bearded Jews, there lived a brother artist "as capable of making filigree-work of finest words, of weaving a wire-net for the souls of gnats, or pointing a satire so sharp that it could penetrate through the pores of glass." As they had improved, refined, and polished the German language, so Erter improved the Hebrew tongue. He breathed youthful vigor and freshness into "the old woman with silvery hair and wrinkled brow, who showed only traces of her former beauty" (as he says), made her susceptible to the prevailing influences of the day, and docile to express new thoughts. Was Erter a poet? In his prose he was a perfect poet. In his faithful and touching descriptions, there is a store of magic poetry and humor, which, like the offspring of Heine's wit, attracts and enchains our minds.

Two thousand years after the prophets had ceased, there arose a voice which sounded at once familiar and new. And in this intermingling of the old and the new in Erter's style, which recalls Isaiah and Heine, there lies an extraordinary charm. Faithfully translated, Erter's poems would still be interesting; but the peculiar, indescribable fragrance of his work would have passed away. In their original form and color, in the contrast of solemnity and childlike simplicity, of sublimity and detailed description, these poetical productions make an inexpressibly pleasant impression upon minds susceptible to delicate shades of thought. In perusing these masterly delineations, one only regrets that they are not longer, and that this profound artist left no more than six of these delightful pictures, and only a few equally beautiful letters.

Like a true poet, Erter had come too late at the distribution of the world's goods, and had to contend with poverty. In his thirty-third year, when he already had marriageable daughters, he began to study medicine, in order to earn his daily bread therewith. The time spent in efforts to rejuvenate the Hebrew language had to be snatched from sleep, and death hurried him away in the full maturity of his poetical powers. Erter performed great services for Judaism. Through his proofs of the flexibility of the Hebrew language he awakened fresh love for it, and created a comparatively new medium for disseminating the young science of Judaism. His influence upon his contemporaries is unmistakable. Whilst the Hebrew style of Nachman Krochmal was rugged, awkward, almost as stiff as that of the Tibbonides, and reads like a translation from a foreign language, Rapoport, Natkes, Jacob Solomon Byk, the Goldbergs, father and son, and the younger men of the Galician school, displayed flow of language, fluency, and ease, which were afterwards misused in rendering French novels and conceits into Hebrew.

Rapoport accordingly did not stand alone in Lemberg; he found friends who participated in his ideas and efforts. It was especially favorable to the development of his mental powers that Krochmal served him as a living book, which contained all worth knowing. From the days of his youth until far into manhood, for nearly thirty years, Rapoport made it a practice, at least once a month, to take a journey from Lemberg to Zolkiew, to visit the bold, and at the same time timid, philosophical inquirer, Krochmal, and to enter into intellectual conversation with him. This intercourse with his gifted young friend became such a necessity to Krochmal, that whenever he was engaged in a subject of research, he sought out Rapoport in Lemberg to reach clearness by an interchange of ideas. Rapoport needed only suggestion; he had inborn taste and love for Jewish history, and as he possessed both scholarship and keen perceptions, he made prolific discoveries. In the interchange of thought between master and disciple, they in company arrived at important results, and in the end they did not know from whose mind they had emanated, or rather they worked together at the solution of problems. It is therefore perplexing to know exactly which of the many results of their common investigations are to be ascribed to the master and which to the disciple. These fruitful conversations between Krochmal and Rapoport marked the birth of the science of Judaism on the historical side.

However, despite their combined discoveries, as soon as both grew to full maturity of intellect, the respective territories of their research became distinct. Krochmal had more liking for general and encyclopædic studies; details served him only as a confirmation of his theory. Rapoport, on the other hand, was more interested in minute, especially in biographical, research; and general studies did not attract him. In his youth, Krochmal had planned a survey of the development of thought in Judaism, bearing upon the varying phases of enlightenment and obscuration. Rapoport also commenced a work in his youth, but it was to be a biography of the most noted representatives of Judaism and its ideas.

As this laborious task demanded a great amount of time and attention, and as Rapoport was not master of his own time, the fruits of his researches ripened but slowly. When, however, he published in succession five biographies (1829-31), with great fullness of luminous detail and suggestion, the pathway for a thorough knowledge of the internal history of Judaism and the Jewish race was opened up. Rapoport proved indisputably and upon strictly scientific grounds that the great representatives of Judaism, its leaders, in the Middle Ages, instead of shunning the light of knowledge, actually kindled and fed it. He showed that, at a time when European nations were still steeped in the darkness of the Middle Ages, the Jews cultivated general science. Chronology, historical geography, the history of literature, and other branches important for the critical investigation of history, which had hitherto been altogether neglected, or only superficially treated, were by him first proved necessary and applied. The acute intelligence with which he united disjointed facts, and separated others apparently connected; the critical touchstone which he applied to distinguish the true from the false, and facts from legends, produced such suggestive results that, after Krochmal, he must be considered the father of Jewish science. All that had been achieved by Jost and other predecessors vanished before these researches like superficial talk before a well digested, well constructed, clearly conceived oration. What gave these investigations an especial value, and distinguished them from the productions of pedantry was the fervor and love with which they were undertaken. They must, therefore, be regarded as national performances, not as the products of idle scholarship. So far as the Jews took an interest in these labors, they saw themselves reflected in them, and considered the history of their mental development as laid down in them as their own work, or the guiding-line to be followed in future. Rapoport achieved more in this direction than Krochmal, because he did not allow himself to be intimidated by heretic-hunters, and displayed more manly courage openly to defend the truth recognized by him as such. The scientific movement within Judaism, which since his time has continually grown in force, must be entirely attributed to him. The spring which pours forth water from its bosom, and allows it to trickle down among the bushes unseen is of no significance compared with the broad stream revealed to every eye, bearing upon its surface large ships, and with its overflow fertilizing the adjoining fields. His greatness was recognized, for he was elected district rabbi of Tarnopol, and shortly afterwards chief rabbi of Prague. Once again was a Pole called to Germany, but under what altered circumstances!

The effects of Rapoport's system of research soon manifested themselves. A scholar of the first rank, who slowly piled brick upon brick for the construction of the inner history of the Jews, one of the triumvirate of the Berlin Society for Culture, finding consolation in investigation for the disappointment met with on another field, utilized Rapoport's results and system of inquiry, to shed light upon another side of Jewish history. Zunz, in his "Homilies of the Jews in Divine Worship," reviewed them in their origin, their growth, their sublimity, and their degeneration (1832). They portrayed Judaism from another point of view, and brought conclusive proofs that the Jews in the Middle Ages had not been a rough, half-savage horde, as was asserted by their bitter enemies, in order to calumniate them and deprive them of their rights of equality; that they were not a barbarous fraternity without morals and decency, but an intelligent community with a culture peculiar to themselves, yet actively promoting general culture.

"From the earliest times we find in the constitution of the Jewish nation measures for upraising men steeped in the trials and errors of life, or chained down by sensuality and coarse lusts. Sabbath and festivals, sacrifices and holy convocations, public worship and instruction in the law, were to afford comfort to the sinner, support to the weak, and teaching to all, and to preserve a holy flame of faith and patriotism in the midst of the nation, as in the breast of the individual. Centuries have since then passed away, the Jews have lost their independence and their country; but on the downfall of every institution the synagogue remained as the sole representative of their nationality. Towards this center their faith was directed, and from it they obtained instruction for their daily conduct, strength to endure unheard-of sufferings, and hope for a future dawn of freedom. The public worship of the synagogue became the standard of Jewish nationality, the miraculous shield of the Jewish faith."

The form of prayers and sermons was traced in this peculiar work in their manifold shapes from the boundary line of the Bible period and that of the Soferim till the time of their perfection, their decline, and their regeneration. This book was the first solid, sober, and convincing work, by a Jewish author, conceived in the spirit of the German scholars' guild. It displayed an array of facts which either had been wholly unknown, or inaccurately known. It therefore made a lasting impression, and in turn was fruitful in suggestions. It occupies a place of high importance in the edifice of Jewish science. The "Homilies of the Jews" was devoted also to the furtherance of two side issues--the emancipation of the Jews and the promotion of reform. In supporting these aims it was carefully pointed out and emphasized that up to the last century, in Portuguese and Italian congregations, sermons were delivered in the vernacular. But these two movements, emancipation and reform, were not much advanced, and whatever was accomplished in these two directions, is in no way due to the "Homilies of the Jews." But they made scientific accuracy in the German sense the indispensable quality of future investigations, and removed the reproach of superficiality from Jewish authors.

Newly-fledged Jewish science soon created new organs wherein to express itself. The oldest and most noteworthy was carried on in Hebrew: it was called the "desirable vineyard" (Kerem Chemed), and was founded by Samuel Löb Goldberg of Tarnopol, and during ten years was of great use in offering the different views of Judaism the opportunity of expression. The chief topic was Jewish history; the greatest care was bestowed upon this subject. In accordance with their ability, knowledge, or ripeness of intelligence, the contributors to the "Vineyard" brought great or small offerings, without expecting any reward or tangible honor. What university or academy was there to repay their laborious researches by the bestowal of a professor's chair or post of distinction? There was not even a prospect of situations as rabbis for men engaged in subjects utterly dissimilar, often opposed, to rabbinical studies. On the contrary, their zeal for science rendered them unworthy of rabbinical honor in the eyes of the strictly orthodox. The chief contributors to the new journal were the leaders of the Galician school, among whom Rapoport held the first place, although he incurred opposition by his candid utterances. Encouraged by Rapoport's example, Krochmal also consented to publish over his own name single chapters from his encyclopædic work. The German Jews supplied only two representatives, both of whom were talented men, viz., the author of the "Homilies of the Jews" and the high-minded Michael Sachs, to whom, however much they differed in their conception of Judaism, Jewish science is deeply indebted for rich increase.

The little band of Jewish inquirers received reinforcement from Italy, a country which for a long time had been buried in slumber, and had taken but little part in Jewish history. Besides old Reggio, Rabbi Ghirondi of Padua, Almanzi, a wealthy layman, and Samuel Vita della Volta, a physician of Mantua, special prominence is due to Samuel David Luzzatto (born in Trieste, 1800; died in Padua, 1865).

The self-sacrifice of Jewish inquirers in the Middle Ages, who in the midst of unspeakable privations and sufferings had occupied themselves in the cultivation of their minds, Luzzatto also manifested as a model for the younger generation. During his whole life, and although he enjoyed European fame, Luzzatto and his family suffered through poverty. Privations, however, did not hinder him from increasing his knowledge with endurance all the more heroic because not publicly displayed. To be poor in Poland, as was the case with Rapoport and Erter, was not so distressing as to be poor in Italy, because in the former, requirements were slight, and contentment on the smallest means was almost universal; besides, generous, wealthy men saved the men of science from starvation. But in Italy, where even the middle class craved comfortable living, and where indifference to knowledge among the Jews had reached a high pitch, it is matter for great surprise that Luzzatto could find, amidst his struggles for daily bread, the peace and cheerfulness necessary to accomplish so much for the promotion of Jewish science. At every discovery, however trifling, Luzzatto felt childlike pleasure, which appears strange to an onlooker: it was the self-created recreation of the martyr, which for a moment causes gnawing pain to be forgotten.

Luzzatto was not naturally gifted with aptitude for historical studies. His most conspicuous trait was enthusiastic love of poetry, Judaism, and Hebrew literature, and this threefold love became one within him. But lofty enthusiasm, united with extraordinarily delicate taste for poetical beauty, could not compensate for lack of creative power; it could do no more than make of him a more talented Wessely. His Hebrew verses, by which he hoped to re-animate biblical poetry, are blameless in form, rhythmical, and of Hebraic coloring; but like Wessely's verses, they lack soul, true poetry. Luzzatto's Hebrew prose, polished and elegant though it be, cannot be compared with Erter's magical language. This he felt, and he was sufficiently just to award the palm to his Galician fellow-artist. His deep comprehension of the true art of poetry, especially of the delicacy of biblical literature, and his extremely refined taste, opened to Luzzatto another field of labor, viz., the exposition of Holy Writ. To purify this treasure from the rust of thousands of years had hitherto been the task of strangers, who did not bring to this work proper appreciation, still less the needful devotion. Christian Bible exegetes, such as Eichhorn, De Wette, Gesenius, and others, had pursued the work of purification in a clumsy manner, and for want of critical ability had flung away the true ore as dross. Luzzatto was one of the first Jews in modern days to devote himself to biblical exegesis. He possessed a sure instinct for recognizing the true spirit and beautiful form of biblical literature, and he called attention to the disturbing elements whilst restoring the original ones. No one better than he understood the construction of the Hebrew language, even to its most delicate points and grammatical minutiæ.

In the new Rabbinical College of Padua (the Collegio Rabbinico) Luzzatto found opportunities of engaging zealously in the study of the Bible, and of ascertaining the correct meaning of the words of the prophets and inspired writers. If Luzzatto with his happy feeling for language and his Jewish fervor had remained true to this branch of research, he would have produced splendid results, and he might have performed a substantial service to Jewish science, for he would have invited many disciples, inasmuch as his orthodoxy was unimpeachable. But he was suddenly frightened by his own boldness, or rather feared that he might misuse it. If the walls of the Massorah are torn down, he feared, the sacred text will become the prey of incompetence and unending revolution, causing direst confusion. He did not trust criticism to heal the wounds it inflicted, or rather he did not believe that it effected a cure by administering poison. He therefore took up an equivocal position, and re-erected the outworks of the Massorah, which he himself had undermined.

Roused by the achievements of Rapoport in history, he plunged into that study, and produced important results. Owing to the dispersion of the Jews and their tragic fate, the fairest pages of their history during the Franco-Spanish epoch had been lost. Luzzatto's zeal was kindled to discover these pages, and in Italy his efforts were crowned with success. The persecuted Jews from Spain and France had mostly passed through Italy in their flight. Here, therefore, the greater part of Jewish literary treasures had been deposited, but they were buried from fear of the Argus-eye of the bloody Inquisition. Luzzatto unearthed them, published them in scientific organs or as separate works, and so made them available. Through him the Jewish history of the Middle Ages received its authentication, its firm basis, its coloring, and exposition. If Krochmal and Rapoport are the fathers of Jewish history, then Luzzatto was its mother.

Through him it became possible to obtain a clear understanding of facts hitherto only vaguely depicted, to arrange them in proper groups, and discern their original splendor. The beginnings of neo-Hebraic poetry, its flourishing period in the time of Jehuda Halevi, and in general the prolific mental activity of the Jews of Spain, were first set forth by him. And to his last breath Luzzatto was untiring in his researches and investigations. He collected a number of valuable works, and stimulated other friends of Jewish science to do the same. Unstintingly he permitted the use of his discoveries, and was happy when he could benefit the public by his newly found treasures. He was a priest in the service of Jewish science, and his memory will never be forgotten in the House of Israel.

Next to the Hebrew organ of Jewish science (Kerem Chemed), various German journals were started, which, besides dealing with the topics of the day, treated of Jewish scientific studies, and popularized them. One of these organs, "The Scientific Journal," from its very commencement assumed an over-confident tone, as if desirous of setting itself up as the highest tribunal, before which all efforts should await final judgment. And yet, most of its contributors, unless proved in other ways, learned by teaching. Those still among us must confess, if they are sincere, that on beginning their undertaking, instead of being at the head of Jewish science, they were mere tyros, possessing only a superficial smattering, and that the Galician school was their guide.

The soul of the periodical was its founder, Abraham Geiger (born 1810; died 1874), a man of considerable talents, of clear intellect, penetrating sagacity, comprehensive knowledge, and stern character, bordering almost upon obstinacy and defiance. He was also of a weak disposition, and was easily led, and this quality helped to change what had hitherto caused only differences of opinion concerning Judaism, into the harsh extreme of a split amongst various sects. Although born and bred in a family schooled in the Talmud, Geiger became filled with burning hatred towards it, and seeing that the religious life of the Jews had been hitherto regulated by the Talmudical standard, he regarded it as the aim of his existence to bring about its deposition and to introduce reforms of a radical nature, outstripping those of his predecessors. The reform of Judaism was Geiger's chief desire; and to further it, he used his influence as a preacher and his scientific researches. He felt no respect for antiquity or for religious practices, and never spared those co-religionists who adhered to traditional customs. He did not shrink from effecting the most thorough-going schism and disunion. Geiger's scientific labors did not produce lasting results, as he cared less for inquiries after truth than for plans of reform. His journal, however, succeeded in inculcating self-reliance and self-knowledge. It courageously attacked the shameless presumption of sciolist Jew-haters like Hartmann, and inveighed against weak-minded Jews who attributed all ideals to Christianity. It may be reckoned to the credit of this periodical or this school, that it recalled neglected, because despised, personages, the Karaites, those talented sceptics and hypocrites.

Through the impetuosity of the new school, life and action were brought into Jewish circles, and the results of research were diluted and made popular. Who can say now whether the gain or the loss to Judaism was greater? For instance, it gave currency to grave errors, by making Judaism a theologic system, and its representatives, the rabbis and teachers of the law, mere clergymen and pastors. This tendency narrowed Judaism, and degraded the achievements bidding defiance to the centuries by coupling them with contemporary phenomena. In hot haste it desired to apply practically the results of scientific investigation but recently made, or, according to its shibboleth, to "establish harmony between law and life"--sacrificing the half understood law to life, i. e., to the promptings of convenience, to civil equality. Science was not in itself an end, only the means whereby to deprive Judaism of its characteristic peculiarities, and remodel it into something entirely new. It desired to invest the arbitrariness with which Friedländer, Jacobson, and their companions had introduced reforms with the appearance of necessity, and justify it on scientific grounds. By its violent, dogmatic attitude, fierce opposition was aroused, and thus the seeds of dissension were scattered in the vineyard of Jacob.

But even this phenomenon had its favorable side. It was a challenge to the orthodox party, which had hitherto met innovations with silence, or impotent rage, but always awkwardly, or, as in the person of Bernays, had made sphinx-like utterances. They altogether denied the justification of the reform which the advanced party so confidently urged. The "Nineteen Letters on Judaism," by Ben Usiel, a disciple of Bernays (1836), were the first tones of a powerful opposition against the leveling of Judaism to a commonplace religion, to consist of sermons, German hymns, and confirmation, so forcing its generous proportions to adapt themselves to the narrow limits of the synagogue. This was the commencement of a contest between two different sets of views, a strife which has not yet ceased. The struggle was confined to Germany. The Jews of the other European countries were not cognizant thereof. In Germany it was so difficult to destroy the old state of ignominy, so toilsome to obtain the new freedom, that educated Jews, imagining the peculiarities of their belief to be one of the obstacles in the way of securing equal privileges, were ready to sacrifice these, trying to persuade themselves that it was not surrender, merely a shedding of the outer skin. Christian society refused to recognize them as Germans, and, therefore, they desired to show, by stripping off their original garb, that they were Germans, naught but Germans, and kept up only a distant connection with Judaism. The spirit of subtle inquiry which had been awakened to a high degree, chiefly in Germany, furthered the habit of fault-finding, not alone with details, but with the whole structure of Judaism; of considering it as a work rotten with age, which, with the exception of a few foundation-stones, ought to be destroyed.

It was strange that thoughtful Christians admired the tents of Jacob in their simplicity, whilst the adherents of Judaism felt confined in them, and desired to exchange the Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant for the pomp and parade of the Church, or wished to surround them with disfiguring adornments. Two poetically-gifted Christian scholars, astounded by the wonderful fact that the persecuted Jewish people even in modern days produced neo-Hebraic poetry--spring blossoms in the midst of the violence of winter--strove to spread understanding and love of it in Christian circles. The "History of Neo-Hebraic Poetry" (1836), by Franz Delitzsch, and the "Hebrew Chrestomathy" (1837), by Adam Martinet, are tokens of the homage brought by Christians to the Jewish mind. The authors were astounded at its creative faculty, and at the capacity for development existing in the Hebrew language, although they knew only fragments, and were unacquainted with the most modern and the fairest specimens of neo-Hebraic poetry. This side of Jewish ability convinced them of the immortality of the race. "No one can deny," remarked the former, "that the Jewish people is the most remarkable of all nations, and next to those of the Church, its history and literature deserve the deepest and most devoted attention. Poetry forms a large part of this colossal mass of literature, and is the truest image of the inner history of this people. The elegiac poetry of the synagogue reveals to us the constant recurrence of suffering which God imposed on the exiles, and the impressions which these sufferings have left upon the heart of the nation. The Orient is an exile in the midst of the West, and from the tears of its home-sickness springs forth Jewish poetry."

Martinet desired "to ascertain the height, depth, and breadth of the Jewish spirit of our times as shown in the treasures of its own literature," and was fortunate in having found a noble, deeply interesting, in every way fine fragment. His "Chrestomathy" was intended as a vindication of neo-Hebraic literature--beauteous Eastern flowers reared upon Western soil, which he arranged in an odorous bouquet, in order to gain admirers for them, and induce them to cull radiant garlands of still fairer flowers from the magic garden.

The new school of reform felt little of the enthusiasm of appreciative Christians. They regretted that doubts, conflict, and dissension had sprung up in the place of confidence, peace, and perfect unity and sincerity; that all minds were filled with uncertainty and discomfort, creating a state of irritability which enervated all will-power. But they themselves had contributed, if not actually to call this ill-humor into existence, at least to nurse it, and so infect healthy minds. They imagined that the decomposition of Judaism had already commenced until they became convinced of it, and like romantic dreamers indulged in artificial grief, until it became real. In Germany, on account of the contest for the removal of disabilities, the awakening of self-consciousness and the dawn of knowledge were purchased at a heavy price, at the cost of internal disruption and self-torment.

The somber views of those who, whilst admiring Judaism in its ancient and venerable form, yet entertained doubts as to its continuance, were truthfully represented in "The Plaints of a Jew" (1837). The Prussian Jews at this time were placed in a situation both comic and tragical by an ordinance worthy of the Byzantine court promulgated by King Frederick William III. Instead of a partial grant of the liberty guaranteed to them, they were no longer to be officially called "members of the Mosaic faith," but curtly "Jews," and were not allowed to bear Christian names. The police were directed to insist that this law be carried into effect. This method was expected to bring waverers over to baptism. The self-respect of the Jews was not yet sufficiently strengthened for them to endure the intended humiliation with dignity. Many Jews in the large cities, especially in Berlin, who were nearer to the church than to the synagogue, considered it a slight, and implored the king to protect them against such undeserved contempt. They mourned as if they were to be again thrust into exile. This comic sadness was depicted after the manner of the Psalms in "The Plaints of a Jew."

"The children of my people came to me complaining and weeping. The old men and the mothers drew near, and anxious suffering was depicted on their countenances. I asked the little ones, 'Why are you weeping so early in life?' and to the elders I said, 'Why are you complaining so late in life?' The children lisped, 'Alas! we may no longer bear the bright, beautiful names of the Christians, but have to use the dull, hateful ones of the Jews. We are meant to be branded at our very games.' And the old men said, 'The quiver of anger is again emptied, and threatens our children with misery and danger.' Then I replied, ... 'Comfort yourselves, be quiet, and bear proudly the proud names of your fathers. They are the names of heroes, of martyrs crowned with fame, of an ancient nobility, of an ancient knighthood.... When the West was still sunk in utter barbarism, your names flourished in immortal splendor, ruling the world, and enlightening and delivering it. For I say unto you, that before the hand of the clock of history turns round, many empty names of the West will be swept off the face of the earth like stubble by the sharp scythe. But as long as time endures there will always remain royally enthroned the names of Abraham, Moses, and Isaiah.'"

Joel Jacoby, the son of a strictly orthodox father, introduced into his "Plaints of a Jew" many untrue outpourings of fantastic sentimentality and a feigned sense of pain; but some of his elegies are ardent and beautifully constructed.

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