By-paths in Hebraic bookland

Authors are not invariably the best critics of their own work. Was Solomon Ibn Gebirol, who was born in Andalusia, perhaps in Malaga, in the earlier part of the eleventh century, just when he regarded as the crown of all his writings the long poem which he called the “Royal Crown” (Keter Malkut)? Some will always doubt his judgment. Plausibly enough, preference may be felt for several of his shorter poems, particularly “At Dawn I Seek Thee” (which Mrs. R. N. Salaman translated for the Routledge Mahzor) or “Happy the Eye that Saw these Things” (paraphrased by Mrs. Lucas in her Jewish Year).

Ibn Gebirol was, however, sound in his opinion. One line in the “Royal Crown” is the finest that he, or any other neo-Hebraic poet, ever wrote. Should God make visitation as to iniquity, cries Ibn Gebirol, then “from Thee I will flee to Thee.” Nieto interpreted: “I will fly from Thy justice to Thy clemency.” But the line needs no interpretation. In his Confessions (4. 9) Augustine says: “Thee no man loses, but he that lets Thee go. And he that lets Thee go, whither goes he, or whither runs he, but from Thee well pleased back to Thee offended?” A great passage, but Ibn Gebirol’s is greater. It is a sublime thought, and its author was inspired. He must have felt this when he named his poem. For the title comes from the Book of Esther, and the Midrash has it that, when the queen is described as donning the robes of royalty, the Scripture means to tell us that the holy spirit rested on her.

It has been said (among others, by Sachs and Steinschneider) that the “Royal Crown” is substantially a versification of Aristotle’s short treatise “On the World.” This is in a sense true enough. The “Royal Crown” is largely physical, and to modern readers is marred by its long paragraphs of obsolete astronomical conceptions, which go back, through the Ptolemaic system, to Aristotle. Moreover, Aristotle, in his treatise cited above, anticipated Ibn Gebirol in the motive with which he directed his ancient readers’ attention to the elements and the planets. “What the pilot is in a ship, the driver in a chariot, the coryphæus in a choir, the general in an army, the lawgiver in a city—that is God in the world” (De Mundo, 6). This saying of Aristotle is indeed Ibn Gebirol’s text. But the Hebrew poet owes nothing else than the skeleton to his Greek exemplar. The style—with its superb application of biblical phrases, a method which in al-Harizi is used to raise a laugh, but in Ibn Gebirol at every turn rouses reverence—is as un-Greek as are the spiritual intensity of thought and the moral optimism of outlook.

Our Sephardic brethren were wiser than the Ashkenazim in their selections for the liturgy. Why the Ashkenazim have neglected Ibn Gebirol and ha-Levi in favor of Kalir will always remain a mystery. The Sephardim did not include all that they might have done from the Spanish poets, but the Ashkenazic Mahzor has suffered by the loss of such masterpieces as Judah ha-Levi’s “Lord! unto Thee are ever manifest my inmost heart’s desires, though unexpressed in spoken words.” But most of all is our loss apparent in the omission of the “Royal Crown” from the Kol Nidre service. In Germany, the Ashkenazim have been better advised. The Rödelheim Mahzor and the Michael Sachs edition both include the poem in their volumes for the Atonement Eve. Sachs (unlike de Sola) omits the astronomical sections in his fine German rendering, and wisely, for the “Royal Crown” notably illustrates the Greek epigram: “part may be greater than the whole.” On the other hand, in his famous Religiöse Poesie der Juden in Spanien, Sachs includes the omitted cosmology. There is a difference between our attitudes to a poem as a work of literature and to the same poem as an invocation or prayer. Sachs the scholar refused to mutilate the “Royal Crown,” but as a liturgist (though he printed all the Hebrew) he took liberties with it.

Sachs and de Sola were not the only translators of the “Royal Crown.” In fact, to name all who have turned Ibn Gebirol’s work into modern languages would need more space than is here available. In her Jewish Year, Mrs. Lucas—to name the most recent of Ibn Gebirol’s translators—has exquisitely rendered a large part of the poem. I do not propose to quote from it, as Mrs. Lucas’ book is available at a small cost. And we shall, it is to be hoped, not have too long to wait for Mr. Israel Zangwill’s promised rendering.

What is it that appeals to us in Ibn Gebirol’s poetry? Dr. Cowley attributes his charm to “the youthful freshness” of his verses, “in which he may be compared to the romantic school in France and England in the early nineteenth century.” This same feature was also detected by al-Harizi—a better critic than poet. In fact, it was his appreciation of Ibn Gebirol’s “youthful freshness” that led him to assert that the poet died before his thirties had been completed. Al-Harizi treats Ibn Gebirol’s successors as his imitators. There is a large element of truth in this. One fact only need be quoted in evidence. Ibn Gebirol entitled his longest poem the “Royal Crown” (partly, no doubt, because of the frequent comparison of God to the King in the Scriptures). Now, the title “Royal Crown” passed over to designate a type of poem. We find several versifiers who later on wrote “Royal Crowns,” just as we speak of an orator uttering a “Jeremiad” or a “Philippic.” Heine, supreme among the modern Romantics in Germany, recognized this same freshness of inspiration in this freshest of the Spanish Hebrew poets: a pious nightingale singing in the Gothic medieval night, a nightingale whose Rose was God—these are Heine’s phrases.

Gustav Karpeles again and again claims that Ibn Gebirol was the first poet thrilled by “that peculiar ferment characteristic of a modern school”—a ferment which the Germans name Weltschmerz. Clearly, Karpeles made a good point by showing that Schopenhauer—of whom it may be doubted whether he despised women or Jews more heartily—the apostle of Weltschmerz, had as a predecessor, eight centuries before his time, the despised Jew, the “Faust of Saragossa.” This is another of Karpeles’ epithets for Ibn Gebirol, who spent, indeed, some years in Saragossa, but had little of the Faust in him. If, however, we attribute to Ibn Gebirol the feeling of Weltschmerz, we must be cautious before we identify his sense of the “world’s misery” with modern pessimism. Ibn Gebirol’s was, no doubt, a lonely and even melancholy life. But though he often writes sadly, though he would have sympathized with William Allingham’s sentiment:

Sin we have explained away,
Unluckily the sinners stay;

yet the final outcome of his realization of human failings and human pain was hope and not despair. And this I say not because Ibn Gebirol appreciated the humor of life as well as its miseries. It is not his humorous verses on which I should base my belief in his optimism. For I regard as the epitome, or rather, essential motive of the “Royal Crown,” the lines:

Thou God, art the Light
That shall shine in the soul of the pure;
Now Thou art hidden by sin, by sin with its cloud of night.
Now Thou art hidden, but then, as over the height,
Then shall Thy glory break through the clouds that obscure,
And be seen in the mount of the Lord.

It is not pessimism but hope that speaks of the clearer vision to be won hereafter. One need not love this world less because one loves the future world more; belief in continuous growth of the soul is the most optimistic of thoughts. Critics who term Ibn Gebirol a pessimist make the common mistake of confounding despair with earnestness. Your truest optimist may be the most serious of men, just as sorrow may be at its purest, its strongest, in association with hope.

BAR HISDAI’S “PRINCE AND DERVISH”

The “moral” is a tiresome feature about certain types of allegory; we prefer that a story should tell us its own tale. Why end off with a “moral”? As Dr. Joseph Jacobs wrote in his edition of Caxton’s Aesop (p. 148): “It seems absurd to give your allegory, and then, in addition, the truth which you wish to convey. Either your fable makes its point or it does not. If it does, you need not repeat your point; if it does not, you need not give your fable. To add your point is practically to confess the fear that your fable has not put it with sufficient force.”

And yet it seems probable that some of the world’s stories would never have been circulated so widely but for their morals. When, in the thirteenth century, Abraham Bar Hisdai, of Barcelona, produced his Prince and Dervish, his motive was not to tell a tale but to point a moral. He had a poor opinion of his age. Little wonder! Among the delectable episodes which he witnessed was the burning of some of the works of Maimonides by monks, instigated thereto by anti-Maimonist Jews. He made his protest. But it was not this experience that predisposed him to castigate his contemporaries. His language, in the preface to his Prince and Dervish, is vague. The most definite thing is its grim earnestness. His chance had come. An Arabic book had happened to fall under his notice, and it seemed to him the very thing! So he translated it into Hebrew. And beautiful Hebrew it is. Bar Hisdai was a master of the style known as rhymed prose. With him, however, it is hardly prose; it is poetry. It is not nearly so unmetrical in form as is usual in this genre. There is a lilt about his unrhythms, a regularity not so much of syllables as of stressed phrases; and these are marks of verse. Still it is prose, as one clearly perceives when Bar Hisdai, following the rules of the game, introduces snatches which are professedly poetical. Bar Hisdai, perhaps unfortunately, did more than translate. He considered his original badly arranged, he says; so he re-arranged the material. Possibly, then, he added to it stories taken from other sources. A rather piquant problem, for instance, is presented by the inclusion of a version of the parable of the sower, which in Bar Hisdai’s original must have been drawn from the New Testament. Assuredly Bar Hisdai did not derive it from the latter source directly; we are quite uncertain, however, as to the indirect route by which it reached him. This is, I repeat, a little unfortunate, because it complicates the problem as to the nature of the Arabic on which he drew. The gain of the book as a collection of tales carries with it loss from the point of view of literary history.

Now what was the book which he called by the title usually rendered Prince and Dervish? Bar Hisdai names it “King’s Son and Nazirite” (Ben ha-Melek we-ha-Nazir). By Nazirite he means ascetic, and Dervish is a fair reproduction which we owe to W. A. Meisel (1847). A Dervish is not the same as the biblical Nazirite, inasmuch as the former devoted himself to a much wider range of austerities than the latter. But Bar Hisdai undoubtedly intends his Nazirite to be identical with the Dervish type. How comes he to use the word in this extended sense? The answer is easily found. Bar Hisdai was a hero-worshipper, and the object of his cult was David Kimhi, the famous grammarian of Provence. Almost pathetic is Bar Hisdai’s admiration for Kimhi. Now the latter, in his Hebrew dictionary (included in the Miklol) defines the verb nazar as meaning “to abstain from eating and drinking and pleasures” (compare Zechariah 7. 3). This was not a new idea, for the same interpretation is given by Rashi (loc. cit.), and is adumbrated in the talmudic use of the verb. But I doubt whether Bar Hisdai would have employed the noun but for Kimhi’s emphatic definition.

The Hebrew title, which is Bar Hisdai’s own invention, well fits the contents. Briefly, these consist of a framework into which are built a number of fables. An Indian king, fearing that his son will become a devotee of the ascetic life, places him (like Johnson’s Rasselas) in a beautiful palace, where he is kept ignorant of human miseries. But he comes under the influence of a hermit (the Nazirite), who impresses on the prince the vanity of life, and converts him (despite the king’s active hostility) to the new way of thinking. It is in the course of this narrative that the fables and parables are introduced. Obviously, however, Ibn Hisdai was much impressed by the narrative as such. “No king nor king’s son, but a slave of slaves was I until thou didst set me free to understand and obey God’s Law”—thus does Ibn Hisdai’s romance sum up the moral at its close, the speaker being the prince, and the one addressed the Nazirite.

A most significant point to be noted is that India is the scene of the story. In 1850 Steinschneider discovered the truth. And a surprising truth it is. The same story was known to medieval Christians as the Romance of Barlaam and Josaphat. But the whole is nothing more or less than an account of the life of Buddha, the great Indian saint, the founder of a religion. Jews, Mohammedans, and Christians revelled in the story without having a notion as to its original significance. Nothing so brings races and creeds together as a good tale. The folk are united by their common interest in the same lore. Mr. Zangwill, in his beautiful poem prefixed to Dr. Jacobs’ edition of Barlaam and Josaphat, looks deeper, and finds in the general admiration for this legend a symbol of the universal identity of men’s aspirations for the ideal.

Was Barlaam truly Josaphat,
And Buddha truly each?
What better parable than that
The unity to preach—

The simple brotherhood of souls
That seek the highest good;
He who in kingly chariot rolls,
Or wears the hermit’s hood!

Bar Hisdai felt nothing of this religious cosmopolitanism. But he realized that devotion to a spiritual ideal was a lesson he might profitably present to his age in the guise of allegory.

If, however, Bar Hisdai chose the story for its moral, his readers we may be certain swallowed the moral because of the story—rather, one should say, the stories. It is remarkable that the Hebrew version is much fuller in its parables, containing, as Dr. Jacobs estimates, no less than ten not found in the other versions. Even Bar Hisdai must, after all, have been drawn to the parables as such, else why add to their number? At all events, so far as his readers went, the Prince and Dervish made its appeal by its stories rather than by its doctrines. And what stories they are! Several of the world’s classics are in Barlaam, the sources of more than one of the best known dramas of later ages, some of the favorite parables of the world, immortal as human life itself. Bar Hisdai omits the caskets, which Shakespeare used in the Merchant of Venice, and the “Three Friends” (wealth, family, good deeds), the last of which alone accompanies a man to the grave, the plot of that famous morality play, Everyman. The omission is curious, for both of these tales are found in the Midrash. But Bar Hisdai gives us the original of King Cophetua—the beggar-maid who weds the king. Bar Hisdai alone gives us the story of “The Robbers’ Nemesis”—the two who plot to rob the traveller, but, envying each the other his share in the spoil, each poisons the other rascal’s food, and the traveller escapes. He also alone tells of the “Greedy Dog,” who, in his anxiety to attend two wedding breakfasts on the same day, misses both. But we cannot go through all. One other, found only in Bar Hisdai, is thus summarized by Dr. Jacobs:

Such stories are sure to see many a to-morrow. And among the best records of them, among the most notable repertoires of the world’s wit and wisdom, Bar Hisdai’s Prince and Dervish has a sure place.

THE SARAJEVO HAGGADAH

Sarajevo, scene of the crime which led to the outbreak of the European War, has its more pleasant associations. The place is forever connected with the history of Jewish art, and in particular with the illumination of the Passover Home-Service or Haggadah.

Wonderful in the old sense of the word—that is to say, astonishing—is the fact that, though the Sarajevo Haggadah was printed a good many years ago (in 1898), there have been no imitations. The splendid Russian publication of Stassof and Günzburg certainly came more recently (1905), but it cannot be compared with the Hungarian work of Müller and Von Schlossar. “L’Ornement Hebreu” is scrappy; the “Haggada von Sarajevo,” though it includes many selections from other manuscripts, is a unity. In one point, however, the Russians were right. For a Jewish illuminative art we must look rather to masoretic margins than to full-page pictures. The former must be characteristically Jewish, the latter, though found in Hebrew liturgies and scrolls, are often non-Jewish types. This is clearly shown by the famous picture in the Sarajevo Haggadah wherein is probably depicted the Deity resting after the work of creation. But for all that, the Sarajevo book must remain supreme as an introduction to Jewish art, so long as it continues to be the only completely reproduced Hebrew illuminated manuscript of the Middle Ages.

One would like to hope that it will not always retain this unique position. The Crawford Haggadah (now in the Rylands Library, Manchester) is certainly older, and, in my judgment, finer. It is true that the editors of the Sarajevo manuscript claim that theirs is the most ancient illuminated Haggadah extant. They admit that the text of the Crawford Haggadah is older by at least half-a-century, but assert that the full-page pictures belong to the fifteenth century, thus falling two centuries after the text. I altogether contest this statement. But even if it were conceded, nevertheless the beauty of the Crawford Haggadah consists just in the text, in the beautiful margins, full of spirited grotesques and arabesques, no doubt (like the Sarajevo manuscript itself) produced in Spain under strong North French influence. Mr. Frank Haes executed a complete photograph of the Crawford manuscript, and it ought undoubtedly to be published. As I write, I have before me two pages of Mr. Haes’ reproduction—the dayyenu passage; nothing in Jewish illuminated work can approach this, unless it be the rather inferior, but very beautiful, British Museum manuscript of the same type. The editors of the Sarajevo Haggadah were ill-advised in omitting to reproduce the whole of the text of their precious original. It is in the text that the genuine excellence of the Jewish manuscripts is to be found.

But the Sarajevo Haggadah gives us too much that is delightful for us to cavil over what it does not give. Here we have, in the full-page drawings, depicted the history of Israel from the days of the Creation, the patriarchal story, Joseph in Egypt, the coming of Moses, the Egyptian plagues, the exodus, the revelation, the temple that is yet to be. Very interesting is the picture of a synagogue. This late thirteenth (or early fourteenth) century sketch evidently knows nothing of the now most usual ornament of a synagogue—the tablets of the decalogue over the ark. On this subject, however, I have written elsewhere, and as my remarks have been published, I can pass over this point on the present occasion. I have mentioned above the striking attempt to depict the Deity, but it is equally noteworthy that in the revelation picture no such attempt is made. Into Moses’ ear a horn conveys the inspired message; but the artist does not introduce God. At least, one hopes not. We prefer to regard the figure at the top of the mountain as Moses, and it is not difficult to account in that case for the figure standing rather lower up the hill, also holding the tablets. We must assume that this under figure is Aaron, though it is not recorded that he received the tablets from his brother. There is another possibility. In the medieval illuminations it was a frequent device to express various parts of a continuous scene in the same drawing. Thus the Sarajevo artist may have intended to show us Moses in two positions, and though the method lacks perspective, the effect is not devoid of realistic power. That this is probably the true explanation of the Sinai scene is suggested by another—Jacob’s dream. Here we see Jacob asleep (with one angel descending, another higher up ascending the ladder—the artist has not troubled himself with the problem as to how the angels contrived to cross one another). But we also see Jacob awake, on the same picture, for he is anointing the Beth-el stone and converting it into an altar.

Certainly the drawings, sadly though they lack proportion, are realistic. Especially is this true of the portrayal of Lot’s wife transformed into a pillar of salt. Disproportionate in size, for she is taller than Sodom’s loftiest pinnacles, yet the artist has succeeded in suggesting the gradual stiffening of her figure: we see her becoming rigid before our eyes. There is clearly much that modern artists might learn from these medieval gropings towards realism. Some artists have already learned much. It is quite obvious, for instance, that Burne-Jones must have steeped himself in the suggestive mysticism of the Middle Ages before he painted his marvellous Creation series. The parallel between his series and the series in the Sarajevo Haggadah is undeniable. Though he never saw this Haggadah, he was well acquainted with similar work in the Missals. Just as Keats evolved his theory as to the identity of truth and beauty from a Greek vase, so the pre-Raphaelites retold on vases what they read in their moments of communion with the medieval spirit.

And this leads to what must be my last word now on this Hebrew masterpiece. If a Burne-Jones can thus imitate, why not a Solomon or a Lilien? The latter has now produced a series of illustrations to the Bible, but we want something less coldly classic, something more warmly symbolic. It was indicated above, with regret, that Mr. Haes’ photographs of the Crawford Haggadah are still unpublished. But over and above reproductions of extant works, we need new works. Now the Jewish artist who illustrates a Bible ought not to be content to illustrate anything but a Hebrew text. And if a Bible be for several reasons out of the question, why should we not have a new Haggadah, written by a living Jewish artist, who shall, from a close study of olden models, do for us what Burne-Jones did?—that is, extract from the mysticism of a by-gone age those abiding truths which our contemporary age demands of its art.

A PIYYUT BY BAR ABUN

Not every one named Solomon was Ibn Gebirol. The medieval poets often signed their verses by an acrostic. Now, when a poem has the signature of a particular name, the natural tendency has been to ascribe it to the most famous bearer of the name. Of all the poetical Solomons, Ibn Gebirol was, beyond question, the greatest. Zunz was the first who clearly discriminated between the various authors called by the same personal name. The hymn “Judge of all the Earth” (Shofet Kol ha-Arez) was certainly by a Solomon; Zunz identifies him with the Frenchman Solomon, son of Abun. This Solomon is described as “the youth” (ha-Na’ar), perhaps in the sense that there was a “senior” poet of the same name. According to Zunz, again, Solomon bar Abun’s period of active authorship lay presumably between the years 1170 and 1190. (Literaturgeschichte der synagogalen Poesie, p. 311.)

Of all his works the piyyut we are considering is by far the most popular. A spirited rendering of the poem, by Mrs. R. N. Salaman, may be found in the Routledge Mahzor so ably edited in part by her father. (See the Day of Atonement, morning service, page 86.) Three stanzas had, however, long before been published by Mrs. Henry Lucas in her Jewish Year (p. 44). Some years ago the same gifted translator completed the whole of the hymn, and her version is now printed here in full. I say “in full,” though there is a longer form of the poem containing six verses. Zunz, however, only assigns five verses to the original, and the sixth verse is probably an unauthorized addition. It repeats the idea of the second verse, and also disturbs the acrostic signature. This piyyut or hymn must have been designed for the New Year. True, in the only “German” Mahzor known to many, the poem is included among the Selihot for the Day of Atonement. Though, however, Solomon bar Abun’s masterpiece is fairly suitable for the Fast, it is not altogether appropriate for that occasion. The “German” rite, accordingly, is well advised when it also employs the piyyut for the day before New Year. Even more to be commended are those liturgies—the Yemenite and some of the “Spanish”—which appoint the poem for the New Year itself. That is obviously its true place. With its opening phrase, “Judge of all the earth,” the hymn declares its character. It was written for the Day of Judgment—that is, for the New Year’s Day. Moreover, these initial words are taken from Abraham’s intercession for the sinners of Sodom (Genesis 18. 25), and this is preceded by the announcement of Isaac’s birth, an incident which one form of the Jewish tradition connects with the New Year. It must be remembered in general that prayers intended originally for one occasion were often transferred to others. Thus the ‘Alenu prayer, now used every day, was at first composed for the New Year Musaf.

Let us now turn to the poem itself, which, as already stated, is reproduced in the version from the hand of Mrs. Lucas.

Judge of the earth, who wilt arraign
The nations at thy judgment seat,
With life and favor bless again
Thy people prostrate at thy feet.
And mayest Thou our morning prayer
Receive, O Lord, as though it were
The offering that was wont to be
Brought day by day continually.

Thou who art clothed with righteousness,
Supreme, exalted over all—
How oft soever we transgress,
Do Thou with pardoning love recall
Those who in Hebron sleep: and let
Their memory live before Thee yet,
Even as the offering unto Thee
Offered of old continually.

O Thou, whose mercy faileth not,
To us Thy heavenly grace accord;
Deal kindly with Thy people’s lot,
And grant them life, our King and Lord.
Let Thou the mark of life appear
Upon their brow from year to year,
As when were daily wont to be
The offerings brought continually.

Restore to Zion once again
Thy favor and the ancient might
And glory of her sacred fane,
And let the son of Jesse’s light
Be set on high, to shine always,
Far shedding its perpetual rays,
Even as of old were wont to be
The offerings brought continually.

Trust in God’s strength, and be ye strong,
My people, and His law obey,
Then will He pardon sin and wrong,
Then mercy will his wrath outweigh;
Seek ye His presence, and implore
His countenance for evermore.
Then shall your prayers accepted be
As offerings brought continually.

When this is sung or declaimed to the appropriate melody (on which the Rev. F. L. Cohen has much of interest to say in the Jewish Encyclopedia, xi, 306), the solemn effect of words and music is profound. The refrain (from Numbers 28. 23), recalls the close association which, even while the sanctuary stood, subsisted between temple sacrifices and synagogue prayers. Since the loss of the shrine, prayer has fulfilled the double function. There are only one or two phrases that need elucidation. In the second stanza the words “Those who in Hebron sleep” refer to those of the patriarchs who were buried in Hebron, in the cave of Machpelah. The appeal is made to the merits of the fathers, a subject on which the reader will do well to consult the Rev. S. Levy’s essay in his volume entitled “Original Virtue.” In the third stanza occurs the phrase “mark of life.” This is derived from the ninth chapter of Ezekiel—those bearing the “mark” are, in the prophet’s vision, to live amid the general destruction. Life—the merciful verdict of the Judge, quite as much as the judgment itself—is the note of the New Year liturgy. This poem strikes both notes with undeniable power.

ISAAC’S LAMP AND JACOB’S WELL

To have one’s Hebrew book turned into the current speech, to have it read part by part in the synagogue by one’s fellows as a substitute for sermons, is not a common experience. Isaac Aboab enjoyed this honor. His Menorat ha-Maor, or Candelabrum of the Light, written in Spain somewhere about the year 1300, according to Zunz, or in France a little before 1400, according to Dr. Efros, became one of the most popular books of the late Middle Ages.

Well it deserved the favor which it won. The Talmud, said Aboab, may be used by the learned in their investigations of law. But for the masses, he felt, it has also a message. Aboab was the first (unless Dr. Efros be right in claiming this honor for Israel Alnaqua) to pick out from the Talmud and Midrash, from the gaonic and even later rabbinic writings, passages of every-day morals, ethical principles, secular and religious wisdom. Aboab’s work was not, however, a mere hap-hazard collection of detached sentences and maxims. Zedner (Catalogue, p. 381), does not hesitate to term it a “System of Moral Laws as explained in the Talmud.” Indeed, the book is surprisingly systematic. The first, or among the first, of its kind, it is also a most conspicuous example of the due ordering of materials.

The very title, also used by Alnaqua, and derived from Numbers 4. 9, was an inspiration. It conveys the idea of “illumination,” than which no idea penetrates deeper into the spiritual life. Fancifully enough, Aboab continues the metaphor into the main divisions of his book. The Menorah (Candelabrum) of the Pentateuch branched out into seven lamps, and so Aboab’s book is divided also into “Seven Lamps.” It is strange that he did not carry the metaphor further. He divides each of his “Lamps” into Parts and Chapters, with a Prologue and an Epilogue to each Lamp. The fourth chapter of Zechariah might have given him “olive-trees” for his Prologues, “bowls” for his Epilogues, and “pipes” for his Parts, while “wicks” might have served instead of Chapters. In point of fact, the “Seven Wicks” was the title chosen by Aboab’s epitomator, Moses Frankfurt, when he constructed a reduced copy of Aboab’s Candelabrum (Amsterdam, 1721).

To return to Aboab’s original work, Lamp I deals with Retribution, Desire, and Passion, Honor, and High-place—the motives and ends of moral conduct. In Lamp II is unfolded the rabbinic teaching on Irreverence, Hypocrisy, Profanation of the Name, Frivolity as distinct from Joy—the causes which impede morality. Then, in Lamp III—the largest Lamp of all the seven—we have morality at work practically, and are instructed as to the worth of religious exercises, charitable life, social and domestic virtue, justice in man’s dealings with his fellows. Next, in Lamp IV, is unfolded the duty and the great reward of studying the Law, as a beautiful corollary to the love and fear of God. Far-reaching in its analysis of the human soul is Lamp V, on Repentance. Lamp VI may be described as presenting the good Rule for body and mind, the amenities of life as shown in character. Or perhaps one might better put it that this section shows us how to be gentlemen, clean, wholesome, considerate. Then Lamp VII completes the whole. It sets out the ideals of Humility and Modesty, virtues which are the end, nay, the beginning also, of the noblest human possibilities, for these virtues are first in those wherein man may imitate God.

Appropriately, Aboab follows up his glorious eulogy of Humility with a full confession of his own shortcomings. He knows that his compilation is imperfect. “Some things I have omitted,” he explains, “because I have never read them; others because I have forgotten them.” “Some passages I left out,” he goes on, “as too abstruse for general reading, others as alien to the purpose of my book, others again because liable to misunderstanding, and liable to do more harm than good.” Wise man! Unfortunately not every imitator of Aboab has displayed the same excellent judgment. The olden Jewish literature is so abundantly full of beauties that it is an ill-service to repeat the few things of lesser value. Aboab’s Candelabrum of the Light is in this respect superior to its great rival, Ibn Habib’s Well of Jacob. Up to half-a-century ago the two books must have run each other very close as regards the number of editions; more recently Ibn Habib’s book (the ‘En Ya’akob) has probably surged ahead. Readers may be reminded of the difference in method. Ibn Habib takes the talmudic tractates one by one, and extracts from each its haggadic elements. There is no attempt at any other order than that of the Talmud. The Well of Jacob, moreover, includes everything, the folk-lore as well as the ethics. To the student, Ibn Habib’s service was greater than Aboab’s; the relation is reversed from the point of view of the man or woman in search of vital religion.

The Well of Jacob, it must be allowed, is in itself almost as good a title as that which Aboab chose. Ibn Habib himself seems to have used the Hebrew word ‘En rather in the sense of “Substance” or “Essence”—his work reproduced the “Essence” of the talmudic Haggadah. But Jacob’s Well, as the Midrash has it, was the source whence was drawn the Holy Spirit. Despite my personal preference for Aboab’s Menorah, it must be freely acknowledged that many generations have quaffed from Ibn Habib’s reservoir fine spiritual draughts. And still quaff. For just as Aboab’s Lamp still shines, so Jacob’s Well has not yet run dry.

Over and above the similarity of contents, with all the dissimilarity of method, there is another reason why one thinks of the works of Aboab and Ibn Habib together. Though Aboab wrote considerably before Ibn Habib, their books appeared for the first time in print almost simultaneously. Ibn Habib’s book came out as the author compiled it; in point of fact it was the son who completed the publication, because Jacob Ibn Habib died while the earlier sections of his work were passing through the press. If, as seems probable, the Lamp was first kindled in 1511, or 1514, and the Well began to pour its fertilizing streams in 1516, Aboab had the start; but these dates are uncertain. All that we can state with confidence is that both books appeared in print quite early in the sixteenth century, not later than 1516. The earliest editions of both books are scarce, and from a simple cause. Few copies have survived because the owners of the copies wore them out. Read and re-read, thumbed by many hands, by “the Jewish woman, the workman, the rank and file of Israel,” the copies were used up by those who treated books as something to hold in the hand and not to keep on a shelf out of reach. My own edition of the Candelabrum, that of Amsterdam (1739), boasts justly of the excellent paper on which it is printed. None the less does this copy, too, show signs of frequent perusal. The best books were the worst preserved, because they were the best treated. What better treatment of a book can there be than to read it so often that its pages no longer hold together, its margins fray, and its title-page suffers mutilation?

“LETTERS OF OBSCURE MEN”

Does ridicule kill? If it did, then, as fools are always with us, folly would ever possess the flavor of novelty. And yet to-day’s fool looks and does very much the same as yesterday’s, even though wise men laughed their fill at the latter. Folly, one rather must admit, is immortal. Wise men come and wise men go, but fools go on forever. Wisdom can at most make the fool look foolish for a while.

At rare intervals, however, history offers an example of the slaying power of satire. Idolatry was killed by ridicule. Some people—among them Renan, who ought to have known better—deny to ancient Israel a sense of humor. But who can doubt that the most effective of the attacks on idolatry were Elijah’s sarcastic invective against the Baal of the populace (I Kings 18. 27) and Isaiah’s grim yet droll picture of the carpenter taking some timber and using part of it to bake his bread and the rest to make his god (Isaiah 44. 15)? It is far from our purpose to recite the success, in after ages, of less inspired efforts by satirists. Satire has been termed the “chief refuge of the weak”; it has certainly been a weapon by which one, standing alone, has often equalized the odds against him. It would be delightful to give illustrations of the methods by which the various warriors of the pen have used their sword: to contrast a pagan Juvenal and a Hebrew Kalonymos—both writing in Rome, but with more than a millennium between them—or to revel in the feats of Rabelais’ Gargantua (1534), Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605), Pascal’s Provincial Letters (1656), and Voltaire’s eighteenth century Candide. We are now concerned with a work and a group of authors who first made Europe laugh in 1515. Ulrich von Hutten and his associates, in their “Letters of Obscure Men” (Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum), did just the right thing at the right moment. What they attempted, what they accomplished, will now be told. Cervantes, tilting against the wearisome nonsense of the later romances of chivalry, Pascal exposing—even though he did it unfairly—the dangers of casuistry, Voltaire plumbing the shallow optimism of Leibnitz, served good ends. But far higher than these was the cause triumphantly upheld by the Letters of Obscure Men. The cause was humanism, another name for intellectual freedom and width of view.

Briefly put, at the crisis in the fortune of the new learning in Europe, when the struggle was at its sharpest between ignorance and enlightenment, the vindication of the Talmud became identified with the overthrow of intellectual bigotry. Pfefferkorn wished to burn the Talmud. He was a shady character, and from his first condition as a bad Jew became, in Erasmus’ phrase, a worse Christian (“ex scelerato Judaeo sceleratissimus Christianus”). Pfefferkorn hurled against his former coreligionists the usual missiles of abuse. Why is it that the converted Jew is so often a bitter assailant of Judaism? Some answer that it is because the renegade must prove that he forsook something execrable. Others would have it that intrinsic vileness of character is responsible. But is it not more probable that apostate virulence is due simply to ignorance? And this is the more obnoxious when the animosity takes the form of an attack on literature. “Ignorance, which in matters of morals extenuates the crime, is itself, in matters of literature, a crime of the first order.” So said Joubert, and the remark can be freely illustrated from the Pfefferkorns. When a real scholar leaves the synagogue, he is rarely among the anti-Semites. Daniel Chwolson and Paul Cassel in their career as Judæo-Christians were champions of the Jewish cause against such very libels as a Pfefferkorn would circulate. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the defence of Judaism was in equally scholarly hands.

But it was not on Jews, whether by race or religion, that reliance was then placed. Reuchlin—as all the world knows—saw no reason why the Talmud should be condemned, and he expressed his opinion in clear terms. Reuchlin, be it remembered, was the most learned German of his age. “By a singular combination of taste and talents this remarkable man excelled at once as a humanist and a man of affairs, as a jurist and a mystic, and, above all, as a pioneer among Orientalists, so that it has been said of him, enthusiastically but not unjustly, that he was the ‘first who opened the gates of the East, unsealed the Word of God, and unveiled the sanctuary of Hebrew wisdom.’” (This sentence is quoted from the Introduction to Mr. Francis Griffin Stokes’ admirable Latin and English edition of the Letters, to which I cordially commend my readers.) Pfefferkorn rallied to his side the whole force of the Dominican organization. The issue was long uncertain.

Truth is usually unable to meet falsehood on equal terms; the genuine, for the most part, cannot soil its hands with the foul ammunition of imposture. Sometimes, however, truth is less squeamish. And so, when Pfefferkorn was engaged in slinging slime at Reuchlin, there was suddenly hurled at his own person an avalanche of mud, under which he and his party sank buried from heel to head. The Letters are remorseless in their personalities. But if it be impossible to deny their cruelty and even their occasional coarseness, yet their fame depends less on these scurrilous incidentals than on the essential truth on which they are based.

It is the highest merit of satire that it shall not be too obvious. Many who read Gulliver’s Travels enjoy it as a tale, and may not even realize that Swift was lampooning the society and institutions of his day. So long as this element in satire is not too subtle, it adds enormously to the merit of the performance. One recalls such stories as the Descent of Man, by Edith Wharton. The hero of that tale is an eminent zoologist, who is moved by the popularity of pseudo-scientific defences of religion to publish an elaborate skit. But he is so successful in concealing his object, that his “Vital Thing” is mistaken for a supreme example of the very type of work he is lashing. The Letters of Obscure Men avoided this danger. They hit the happy mean. They purported to be written by one obscurantist to another, and while the educated at once saw through the dodge, the illiterate (including Pfefferkorn himself) took them seriously. Within a few months of the appearance of the first series of the Letters, Sir Thomas More (in 1616) wrote to Erasmus: “It does one’s heart good to see how delighted everybody is with the ‘Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum’; the learned are tickled by their humor, while the unlearned deem their teachings of serious worth.” The foes of humanism—the new learning—are left to expose themselves, in the confidential correspondence which members of the gang are made to carry on in the most excruciatingly funny dog-Latin. As Bishop Creighton put it, they are made to “tell their own story, to wander round the narrow circle of antiquated prejudices which they mistook for ideas, display their grossness, their vulgarity, their absence of aim, their laborious indolence, their lives unrelieved by any touch of nobility.” No wonder Europe laughed, as it did in the following century at the self-revelation of obscuranists in Pascal’s Provincial Letters, obviously inspired by the work before us. (Compare Stokes, Epistolae, etc., pp. xlvi, xlix). It is not the least amusing feature in the comedy that Richard Steele actually regarded the Letters of Obscure Men as the correspondence between “some profound blockheads” who wrote “in honor of each other, and for their mutual information in each other’s absurdities.” (Stokes, p. viii).

This fate—of being taken seriously—befell, in a particularly amusing way, what is perhaps the most amusing of all the Letters. I refer to the second epistle in the first series. “Magister Johannes Pelzer” sends his greeting to “Magister Ortwin Gratius,” and asks help on a matter which gives him “great searchings of heart.” He tells Ortwin how, being lately at a Frankfort fair, he took off his cap and saluted two men, who seemed reputable and looked like Doctors of Divinity. But his companion then nudged him and cried: “God-a-mercy, what doest thou? Those fellows are Jews.” Magister Pelzer goes on to argue with delicious seriousness as to the nature of his sin, and begs his correspondent’s help to decide whether it was “mortal or venial, episcopal or papal.” Now when Schudt came to compile his farrago of attacks on the Jews, he actually included this Frankfort incident as an authentic example of “Jewish insolence.” It was indeed painful for such as Schudt to be unable to discern any difference between a Jew and a gentleman.

How the authors of the Letters would have chuckled over Steele and Schudt! Reuchlin had struck a decisive blow in behalf of the Jewish contribution to European culture. The Letters drove the blow home. But, after all, the fools were not permanently suppressed. No, ridicule rarely slays folly outright. It scotches the snake, and then in a favorable environment the reptile revives. Just as folly is perennial, so should the lash be kept in constant repair. Anti-Semitism ought not to be allowed to go on its way in our age unscathed by ridicule. We badly need a new Ulrich von Hutten to give us a modern series of Letters of Obscure Men.

DE ROSSI’S “LIGHT OF THE EYES”

Towards dusk, on a mid-November Friday in the year 1570, Azariah de Rossi descended from his own apartments to those of his married daughter. It was in Ferrara, and for some hours past earth-tremblings had made people anxious. Within an hour of his lucky visit to his child De Rossi’s abode was wrecked.

To this earthquake, as Zunz suggested in 1841 (Kerem Hemed, vol. v, p. 135), we owe the first attempt by a Jew to investigate critically, and with the aid of secular research, the history of Jewish literature. De Rossi had a fine command of Latin, and though he was less at home with Greek, he had a good working knowledge of it. After the earthquake, he left his home, and took refuge in a village south of the Po. A Christian scholar, a neighbor in the new settlement, was diverting his mind from the recent disturbing calamities, by perusing the Letter of Aristeas. There is a rare charm in the scene that followed. Finding some difficulties in the Letter, the Christian turned to the Jew, suggesting that they should consult the Hebrew text. But De Rossi was, to his chagrin, compelled to admit that there was no Hebrew text! Such a lamentable deficiency need not, however, continue. In less than three weeks De Rossi had translated the Letter into Hebrew, and with that act the modern study of Jewish records by Jews opens.

Chroniclers were once upon a time fond of contrasting the physique and the intellect of the worthies of former ages. Those were the days, one might almost say, of “kakogenics,” if our own is the era of eugenics. So we read of De Rossi that though “well-born” by ancestry, he was “ill-born” in person. Graetz somewhat overcolors the record when he writes of De Rossi thus: “Feeble, yellow, withered, and afflicted with fever, he crept about like a dying man.” At all events, he was thin and short, and neglectful of his bodily health. Yet he was not quite the weakling Graetz presents, for he lived to the age of sixty-four (1514-1578). Moreover, he assures us, giving full details of the diet and treatment, that he was thoroughly cured of the malaria, of the ravages of which Italian Jews so frequently complain. As to his “family,” that was old enough. The legend ran that four of the families settled by Titus in Rome survived into the Middle Ages; the stock of the De Rossis (min ha-adummim) belonged to one of the famous quartette. The other three were the Mansi, de Pomis, and Adolescentoli groups.

This was the man who created modern Jewish “science”—to use the term so beloved of our Continental brethren. De Rossi’s great work appeared as a quarto in November, 1573 (some date it 1574). It was well printed in the pretty square Hebrew type for which Mantua is famous. The author called it Meor ‘Enayim, that is, “Light of the Eyes.” It was, indeed, an illuminant. Graetz summarily asserts that “the actual results of this historical investigation, for the most part, have proved unsound.” Assuredly many of De Rossi’s statements are no longer accepted. He was the father of criticism, yet he was often himself uncritical. In his chapter on the antiquity of the Hebrew language, for instance, he remarks: “I have seen among many ancient coins, belonging to David Finzi of Mantua, a silver coin on which, on the obverse, is a man’s head round which is inscribed ‘King Solomon’ in Hebrew square letters, while the reverse bears a figure of the temple with the Hebrew legend ‘Temple of Solomon.’” As Zunz observes, this coin must have been a modern fabrication. In many other points De Rossi erred. But some of the “mistakes” for which he is blamed are not his but his critics’. Zunz, like Graetz, had little patience with the Zohar. The literature of the Kabbalah was to both these great scholars “false and corrupt.” At this date we are much more inclined to treat the Kabbalah with respect. De Rossi has been justified by later research. Then, again, Zunz categorically includes among De Rossi’s blunders his acceptance of the Letter of Aristeas as genuine. But in the year 1904 Mr. H. St. J. Thackeray, in the preface to his new English translation of the Letter, asserts “recent criticism has set in the direction of rehabilitating the story, or at any rate part of it.” Here, one can have no hesitation in claiming, De Rossi was right, and his critics wrong.

It is pleasing to be able to make this last assertion. The Letter of Aristeas purports to tell the story how the Greek translation of the Pentateuch was made in Alexandria. We are not now concerned with the story itself. But, as we have already seen, it was this Letter which induced De Rossi to write his book. The book, after a short section on the Ferrara earthquake, in which the author collects much Jewish and non-Jewish seismological lore, goes straight to Aristeas. Now, it would be a somewhat unfortunate fact if Jewish criticism began with the acceptance of a forgery, if the father of all our modern scholars (including Zunz himself) had started off with a bad critical mistake. We are spared this anomaly, for though Aristeas may not be as old as it claims (the third century B. C. E.), it is demonstrably older than its assailants made it out to be. De Rossi is far nearer the truth than Graetz. Of course, we do not now turn to De Rossi for our critical nourishment. Though editions of the Meor ‘Enayim continued to appear as late as 1866 (in fact one of the author’s books appeared for the first time in London in 1854), his works are substantially obsolete. For this reason I am not attempting any close account of their contents.

But while it is antiquated in this sense, it is a book of the class that can never become unimportant. For let us realize what De Rossi accomplished. In the first place he directed Jewish attention to the Jewish literature preserved or written in Greek. He re-introduced Philo to Jewish notice; not very accurately, it is true, yet he did re-introduce him. Secondly, he showed how much was to be derived from a study of non-Jewish sources. No one, after De Rossi, has for a moment thought it possible to deal with Jewish history entirely from Jewish records. Every available material must be drawn on if we are to construct a sound edifice. It is a just verdict of Graetz’s that De Rossi’s “power of reconstruction was small.” But he showed subsequent generations how to build. De Rossi, finally, was not one who regarded Jewish literature merely as the subject matter for research. He was intensely interested in it for its own sake. He was a poet as well as a historian. And this he shows both by his whole style and outlook as well as by the Hebrew and Italian verses that he wrote. He was, indeed, known both as Azariah and as Bonajuto, the latter being the Italian equivalent. Let us end with this fact: the same man, who inaugurated modern Jewish criticism, added some notable hymns to the synagogue prayer-book.

GUARINI AND LUZZATTO

An aristocrat all his life, Guarini was out of place in the court life of Ferrara. He spent his vigor in a vain attempt to accommodate himself to the sixteenth century Italian conditions. Then, broken in strength and fortune, he retired to produce his dramatic masterpiece. Not that the Pastor Fido can be truly termed dramatic. It is much more of a lyric. But just as Banquo, himself no king, was the father of kings, so Guarini, of little consequence as a dramatist, begot famous dramas. For the Faithful Shepherd deeply influenced European drama throughout the two centuries which followed its publication in 1590.

The Hebraic muse owed much to Guarini. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto (1707-1747) has been the only writer of Hebrew plays whose work counts in the literary sense. Luzzatto derived his whole dramatic inspiration from Guarini. Let no one question this assertion without first comparing La-Yesharim Tehillah and Migdal ‘Oz with the Pastor Fido. The characters and scenes, and even more, the style, are closely alike. Nor is this latter fact wonderful. John Addington Symonds describes Guarini’s work as “a masterpiece of diction, glittering and faultless, like a bas-relief of hard Corinthian bronze.” Luzzatto produces the same effect in his Hebrew imitation, using a similar metre as well as similar dramatic conventions. In imitating, however, he re-interprets. Guarini’s play is sometimes gross, it is never truly rustic. But a Hebrew poet, moved by such models as the Song of Songs, better knew how to be sensuous with purity; grossness must be antipathetic to him. On the other hand, Hebrew poetry is genuinely rustic. The biblical shepherd, whether in scriptural history or romance, is the most beloved of heroes. Some of the great characters of the Bible are shepherds: Abraham, Moses, David, Amos, Shulammith—but why pile up instances? It is obvious that a Hebrew poet, adopting a rural background for a lyrical drama, must inevitably write with sincerity. He could not, at the same time, fail to write with delicacy. Luzzatto took much from Guarini, but he both refined and adorned what he borrowed.

Yet, though it is because of Luzzatto that I am writing of Guarini, nevertheless, Guarini, and not Luzzatto, is my present subject. So I will re-tell for the reader the story of the Pastor Fido. Not that it is an easy task. Guarini, who influenced the late Elizabethans, shared, with the best of the latter, the inordinate fancy for complicated plots. Plot is entangled within plot, until we lose sight of the main theme. Luzzatto—I find it impossible to keep the Hebrew out!—here simplifies. He hardly gives us a story at all; he provides an allegory, eking out Guarini with Midrash. In the process of disentangling Guarini’s intricacies, he somewhat sacrifices the chief merit of his Italian model. Luzzatto’s dramatis personae are almost abstractions; they remind us of the figures in morality plays. A Luzzatto drama more resembles Everyman than it does As You Like it. Of Guarini, on the other hand, it may be said, that though he means his characters to represent types, he draws them as individuals. Silvio, to adopt Mr. Symond’s summaries, is “cold and eager”; Mirtillo “tender and romantic.” Corisca’s “meretricious arts” contrast with and enhance Amarillis’s “pure affection”; Dorinda is “shameless.” The dramatist, however, be he Luzzatto or Guarini, writes with a distinct tendency. His aim is to set up the country life and the country girl as essentially superior to the city varieties. This motive is as old as satire, and as young as the “verses of society.” Austin Dobson’s Phyllida is all that is sweet and natural, she is a foil to the artificiality of the “ladies of St. James’s.” Guarini enjoys the honor not of creating the mood, but of bringing it into new vogue.

But I am still keeping from the story. The scene is Arcadia. Yearly the inhabitants must sacrifice a young maiden to Diana. Diana had suffered through the perfidy of Lucrina; but the Oracle declares:

Your Woes, Arcadians! never shall have End,
Till Love shall two conjoin of heavenly Race,
And till a faithful Shepherd shall amend,
By matchless Zeal, Lucrina’s old Disgrace.

Montano, the priest of Diana, seeks, therefore, to join in marriage his only son, Silvio, to the noble nymph, Amarillis, descended from Pan. But Silvio thought more of hunting than of love. The young shepherd, Mirtillo, becomes enamored of Amarillis, and she of him. The artful Corisca, desiring the shepherd for herself, charges Amarillis with infidelity—she is betrothed, though not wedded, to Silvio. Amarillis is sentenced to death. Mirtillo offers himself, and is accepted, as her substitute. Led to the—fatal, not the bridal—altar, Mirtillo’s identity is discovered. The shepherd is Montano’s son. Let us read the rest in the terms of the “argument” (as given in the 1782 English version): “On which Occasion, the true Father, bewailing that it should fall to his lot to execute the law on his own blood—(for to Montano, as priest, the office of carrying out the sacrificial rite belonged)—is by Tirenio, a blind soothsayer, clearly satisfied by the interpretation of the Oracle itself, that it was not only opposite to the will of the gods that this victim should be sacrificed, but moreover that the happy period (i.e., end) was now come to the woes of Arcadia, which had been predicted by the sacred Voice, and from which, as every circumstance now strongly corresponded, they concluded that Amarillis could not be, nor ought to be, the spouse of any other than Mirtillo. And as a little previous to this, Silvio, thinking to wound a wild beast, had pierced Dorinda, who had been exceedingly distressed by the slight he had shown to her violent passion for him, but whose wonted savageness was changed by this accident and softened into compassion—after her wound was healed, which at first was thought mortal, and after Amarillis was become the spouse of Mirtillo, he too became now enamoured of Dorinda, and married her; by means of these events, so happy and so extraordinary, Corisca is at length convinced of and confesses her guilt, and, having implored pardon and obtained it from the loving couple, her perturbed spirit now pacified and satiated with the Follies of the World, she determines to change her Course of Life.” The play ends with the wedding chorus for the hero and heroine (Luzzatto, too, wrote his plays for marriage celebrations). In words very like those used by Luzzatto, Guarini’s shepherds sing to Mirtillo and Amarillis:

O happy pair!
Who have in Sorrow sown, and reap’d in Joy,
How hath your bitter share of grief’s alloy
Now sweetened and confirmed your present bliss!
And may ye learn from this,
Blind, feeble mortals! to distinguish right
What are true ills, and what is pure delight—
Not all that pleases is substantial good;
Not all which grieves, true ill, well understood—
That, of all joys, must be pronounced the best,
Which virtue’s arduous triumphs yield the breast.

In this story may be perceived the germs both of Fletcher’s Faithful Shepherdess and of Luzzatto’s Unto the Upright Praise. But while the former seized upon and elaborated the sensuous element in Guarini’s plot, giving us a truly disgusting figure in Chloe, Luzzatto pounced on the finer aspects, and his heroines outshine even Amarillis in purity and beauty of mind, just as his heroes surpass Mirtillo in fidelity to the standards of manhood. That one and the same model should have produced two such varied copies says much for the genius of the original author. To him, it is true, we owe the tragi-comedy of intrigue. But to him also we are indebted for idylls, as full-blooded as those of Theocritus, but far more spiritual.

HAHN’S NOTE BOOK

The Hahn family came to Frankfort-on-the-Main from Nordlingen (Bavaria), whence the Jews were expelled in 1507. Between that date and 1860 Nordlingen could not boast of a synagogue; such Jews as visited the place were admitted for a day at a time to the fairs, or were allowed temporarily to reside in war times. In each case a poll-tax was exacted (see Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. ix, p. 335). In Frankfort, the family dwelt in a house bearing the sign of “The Red Cock” (Zum rothen Hahn). Graetz fully describes the regulations which compelled the Jews of Frankfort to fix shields with various devices and names on their houses. He cites “the garlic,” “the ass,” “green shield,” “red shield” (Rothschild), “dragon.” The Frankfort Jews were forced to name themselves after these shields. Hence, in the Jewish sources, the author with whom we are now concerned is sometimes called Joseph Nordlinger, from his original home, and sometimes Joseph Hahn, from the family house-sign in Frankfort.

He himself was not permitted to live peaceably in Frankfort. Born in the second half of the sixteenth century, he not only had to endure the pitiable restrictions to which the Jews were at normal times subjected, but he suffered in 1614 under the Fettmilch riot, as the result of which, after many of the whole Jewish community had been slain and more injured, the survivors left the town. In March, 1616, the Jews—Joseph Hahn among them—were welcomed back amid public demonstrations of good-will, and the community instituted the Frankfort Purim on Adar 20, the anniversary of the return. Though the trouble thus ended happily, we can understand how insecure the life of the German Jews was at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Hence we need not be surprised to find in Hahn’s book Yosif Omez (§ 483) a form of dying confession drawn up in Frankfort to be recited by those undergoing martyrdom. It is a moving composition, simple in its pathos, yet too poignant in its note of sorrow to be cited here in full.

Let it not be thought, however, that the book is a doleful one. Joseph Hahn’s is a warm-hearted Judaism, and there was room in it for a manifold human interest. The work, in a sense, is learned, but it is written so crisply and epigrammatically that its charm surpasses and even disguises its technicalities. It was printed in 1723, but was written a good deal earlier, as we know that the author died in 1637. I have alluded to the manifold interests which occupied Hahn’s mind. Questions of Jewish law and fundamental problems of morality are considered; but so are matters of costume and cookery. How to wear a special dress for synagogue and how to keep a special overcoat for the benediction of the moon, how to rub off ink-stains from the fingers before meals, how “it is a truer penance to eat moderately at ordinary meals than to endure an occasional fast,” how the children should be encouraged to read good books at table, and how, when such a book is finished, there should be a jolly siyyum—these and many another interesting view crowd Joseph Hahn’s delightful pages. He enjoyed a cheerful meal, but he proceeds to denounce in unmeasured terms those who (“and there are many such in our times,” he adds) sing love-songs or tell indecent stories over their wine. “Do not esteem lightly,” he cautions his readers (§ 183), “the advice of our sages,” as to first putting on the right shoe and first removing the left. Joseph Hahn, in truth, is a remarkable mixture of the old and the new; he loves old customs, yet constantly praises new ones, such as the introduction of Psalms and of Lekah Dodi into the Friday night service. We are so familiar with the hymn “Come, O friend, to meet the bride,” that it is startling to be reminded that it dates from the sixteenth century. Joseph Hahn thoroughly entered into the spirit of such lively processions from place to place as accompanied Lekah Dodi, though he held them more suitable for Palestine than Germany. He detested low songs, and objected to games of chance, but he was no kill-joy. Again and again he refers to the synagogue tunes, and revels in hazzanut. His was a thoroughly Jewish synthesis of austerity and joviality.

He has many remarks as to the proper treatment of servants. An employer shall not retain wages in trust for the servant, even at the latter’s desire. He must first pay the wages, and the servant may then ask the employer to save it (§ 361). He had a very loving heart as well as a just mind. Delightful is his custom of saying Sheheheyanu on seeing a friend or beloved relative after an interval of thirty days. On the other hand, he, with equal gravity, tells us (§ 455) how his father, when he left the city, took a little splinter of wood from the gate, and fixed it in his hat-band, as a specific for his safety, or sure return. This is a wide-spread custom. The whole book is a wonderful union of sound sense and quaintness. The author, in the midst of deep ritual problems and of careful philological discussions of liturgical points, will turn aside to warn us against buying the Sabbath fish on Thursday. Fish, he says, must be fresh. In the same breath he has this fine remark: “What you eat profits the body; what you spare for God (that is, give to the poor) profits the soul.” He protests (§ 547) against permitting the poor to go round to beg from house to house; officials must be appointed to carry relief to the needy in their homes. But do not forget to taste your shalet on Friday to test whether it be properly cooked! One of the most characteristically Jewish features of life under the traditional régime was the man’s participation in the kitchen preparations. But Joseph Hahn takes a high view of the woman’s part in the moralization of the domestic life. Just as the husband was not excluded from the kitchen, so the wife was not limited to it. Yet Hahn would not allow women to sing the Zemirot or table hymns.

I have said that our author loves the old, yet has no objection to the new. The latter feature is exemplified by a long song on the Sabbath Light, composed by Joseph Hahn for Friday nights. Each verse is printed in Hebrew (§ 601) with a Yiddish paraphrase. He disliked setting the Zemirot to non-Jewish tunes. There is no sense, he adds, in the argument of those who urge that these non-Jewish tunes were stolen from the temple melodies! The children, we learn, had a special Sabbath cake. A Jewish child, he relates (§ 612), was carried off by robbers, but cried so pitifully for his cake on Friday night, that he was eventually discovered by Jews and ransomed. He protests against the “modern innovation” of introducing a sermon in the morning service; this compels the old and ailing to wait too long for breakfast. The sermon must, as of old, be given after the meal (§ 625). Yet he did not mind himself introducing an innovation, for he instituted a simple haggadic discourse on the afternoons of festivals, so as to attract the people and keep them from frivolous amusements (§ 821). The greater Spinholz on the Saturday before a wedding was still customary in the author’s time. He complains of those people who drink better wine on Sundays than on Saturdays (§ 693). He objects to the practice of the rich to have their daughters taught instrumental music by male instructors (§ 890). But here I must break off, though it is difficult to tear oneself from the book, even the narrowness of which has a historical interest, and the prejudices of which entertain. As a whole, it represents a phase of Jewish life which belongs to the past, yet there runs through it a vein of homely sentiment which is found also in our present.