The beginning of this century found the Jews of the Russian Empire
living in a state bordering on Asiatic barbarism. Ages of persecution
had reduced the masses to the lowest condition of existence, had
eliminated nearly all signs of civilized life in them, and had succeeded
in making them the outcasts they really were. Incredibly dirty in their
houses and uncleanly about their persons, ignorant and superstitious
even beyond the most superstitious of their Gentile neighbors, dishonest
and treacherous not only to others, but even more to their own kind,
they presented a sad spectacle of a downtrodden race. The legislators
made the effects of the maltreatment of previous lawgivers the pretext
for greater oppression until the Jews bade fair to lose the last
semblance of human beings. One need only go at this late hour to some
small town, away from railroads and highways, where Jews live together
compactly, in order to get an idea of what the whole of Russia was a
century ago, for in those distant places people are still living as
their grandfathers did. Only here and there an individual succeeded in
tearing himself away from the realm of darkness to become acquainted
with a better existence by means of the Mendelssohnian Haskala. In spite
of the very unfavorable conditions of life, or rather on account of
them, the Jews, although averse to all instruction, passed the greater
part of their lives, that were not given to the earning of a livelihood,
in sharpening their wits over Talmudical subtleties. When they came in
contact with the learning in Germany, their minds had been trained in
the unprofitable but severe school of abstruse casuistry, and they threw
themselves with avidity on the new sciences, surpassing even their
teachers in the philosophic grasp of the same. Such a man had been
Salomon Maimon, the Kantian scholar; such men were later those followers
of the Haskala who were active in the regeneration of a Hebrew
literature, with whom we have also become acquainted in former chapters
through their efforts of enlightening the masses; foremost of them,
however, was J. B. Levinsohn, who wrote but little in Judeo-German. He
was to the Jews of Russia what Mendelssohn had been half a century
before to the Jews of Germany.
The light of the Haskala entered Russia in two ways: through Galicia and
through Poland. Galicia was the natural gateway for German
enlightenment, as its Jews were instructed by means of works written in
Hebrew, which alone, outside of the native dialect, could be understood
in the interior of Russia. But this influence was only an indirect one,
for soon the German language began to be substituted and understood by
the people of Galicia, whereas that has never become the case in the
southwest of Russia, that is, in the contiguous territory. The case was
different in Russian Poland and Lithuania, for there were many
commercial relations between these countries and Germany, and there
existed German colonies in that part of the Empire. Consequently the
ground was here better prepared for the foreign culture. The seats of
the Haskala of these more northern regions were such towns as Zamoszcz
in the Government of Lublin, and Warsaw. Roughly speaking, the
geographically favored portion of the Jewish Pale was inhabited by the
Misnagdim, or strict ritualists, while the southwest was the seat of
that fanatical and superstitious sect of the Khassidim against whom
nearly all of the satirical literature of the last seventy-five years
has been directed.
As early as 1824 there was published a periodical in Warsaw in which the
German language, or a corrupt form of it, written with Hebrew
characters, was employed to serve as an intermediary of German culture.
In the same year B. Lesselroth used this form of German in writing a
Polish Grammar[74] for the use of his co-religionists. As has been
pointed out before, this mixture of Judeo-German was to serve only as an
intermediary for the introduction of the literary German which at that
time appeared as the only possible alternative for the homely dialects
of the Russian Jews. This mixed language has unfortunately remained the
literary norm of the northwest up to the present time, if one may at all
speak of norm in arbitrary compounds. In the southwest the dialects
were, in the first place, much more distant from the German than the
varieties of Lithuania, and the greater distance from German influence
made the existence of that corrupt German less possible. At about the
same time two books were published in Judeo-German, one in the south by
Mendel Lefin, the other in the north by Chaikel Hurwitz, which became
the standards of all future publications in the two divisions of the
Jewish Pale. The first, by adhering to the spoken form of the dialect,
has led to a normal development of both the language and the
literature. The second, being unnatural from the start, has produced
the ugliest excrescences, culminating in the ugliest productions of
Schaikewitsch and his tribe and still in progress of manufacture.
Hurwitz[75] was only following the natural tendencies of the Haskala
when he chose what he called a pure Judeo-German for his literary style.
In the introduction to his translation of Campe's 'Discovery of America'
from his own Hebrew version of the same he says: "This translation of
the 'Discovery of America' I have made from my Hebrew version. It is
written in a pure Judeo-German without the mixture of Hebrew, Polish,
and Turkish words which one generally finds in the spoken language." It
must however, be noted that he uses German forms very sparingly, and
that but for his avoiding Slavic and Hebrew words, his language is
really pure. It is only later, beginning with the writings of Dick, that
the real deterioration takes place.
This book was published in 1824 at Wilna. Its effect on the people was
very great. Previous to that year there were no other books to be had
except such as treated on ethical questions, or story-books, which had
been borrowed from older sources two or three centuries before. Books of
instruction there were none. This was the first ray that penetrated the
Ghettos from without. The people had no knowledge of America and
Columbus, and now they were furnished not only with a good story of
adventure, but in the introduction to the book they found a short
treatise on geography,--the first worldly science with which they now
became acquainted. It is interesting to note here by way of parallel
that a few years later the regeneration of Bulgaria from its centuries
of darkness began with a small work on geography, a translation from an
American school-book, published at Smyrna. It is true that to the
disciples of the Haskala works on the sciences were accessible in Hebrew
translations, but these were confined to a very small circle of readers,
and their influence on the masses was insignificant. If the followers of
the Haskala had not accepted blindly Mendelssohn's verdict against the
Judeo-German language, which was true only of the language spoken by the
Jews of Germany, but had furnished a literature of enlightenment in the
vernacular of the people instead of the language of the select few,
their efforts would have been crowned with far greater success. By
subscribing unconditionally to the teachings of their leader, they
retarded the course of events by at least half a century and widened the
chasm between the learned and the people, which it had been their desire
to bridge. English missionaries proceed much more wisely in their
efforts to evangelize a people. They always choose the everyday language
in which to speak to them, not the tongue of literature, which is less
accessible to them. Mainly by their efforts the Modern Armenian and
Bulgarian have been raised to a literary dignity, and with it there has
always followed a regeneration of letters and a national consciousness
that has in some cases led to political independence. The missionaries
have not always reaped a religious harvest, but their work has borne
fruit in many other ways. In the beginning of this century they also
directed their attention to the Christianization of the Jews of Poland.
The few works that they published in the pursuit of their aim,
especially the New Testament, are written in an excellent vernacular,
far superior to the one employed by Hurwitz and Lesselroth. It is a pity
the Jewish writers of the succeeding generations, particularly in the
northwest of Russia, did not learn wisdom from the English missionaries.
'The Discovery of America' has had edition after edition, and has been
read, at first surreptitiously, then more openly, by all who could read,
young and old, men and women. But Hurwitz was not forgiven by the
fanatics for descending to write on worldly matters, and after his death
it became the universal belief that the earth would not hold him for his
misdeed and that he was walking around as a ghost, in vain seeking a
resting-place.
In the south the first impulse for writing in Judeo-German was given by
the translations of the Proverbs, the Psalms, and Ecclesiastes by
Minchas Mendel Lefin. Of these only the Psalms were published in 1817;
Ecclesiastes was printed in 1873, while the Proverbs and a novel said to
be written by him have never been issued. To write in Jargon was to the
men of the Haskala a crime against reason, and Lefin was violently
attacked by Tobias Feder and others. He found, however, a sympathizer in
Jacob Samuel Bick, who warmly defended him against Feder, and by degrees
some of the best followers of the Haskala followed his good example.
Ettinger and Gottlober are known to have received their first lessons in
Judeo-German composition through the writings of Lefin, while by
inference one may regard him also as the prototype of Aksenfeld and
Zweifel. It was not so easy to brave the world with the despised Jargon,
and up to the sixties not one of the works of these writers appeared in
print. They passed in manuscript form from hand to hand, until the
favorable time had come for their publication; and then they were
generally not printed for those who wrote them, but for those who
possessed a manuscript, so that on the first editions of their works
their names do not appear at all.
Lefin's translations mark an era in Judeo-German literature. He broke
with the traditional language used in story-books and ethical works of
previous centuries, for that was merely a continuation of the language
of the first prints, in which local differences were obliterated in
order to make the works accessible to the German Jews of the East and
the West. It was not a spoken language, and it had no literary norm. In
the meanwhile the vernacular of the Slavic Jews had so far departed from
the book language as to make the latter almost unintelligible to the
masses. Lefin chose to remedy that by abandoning entirely the tradition,
and by writing exactly as the people spoke. He has solved his problem in
a remarkable way; for although he certainly knew well the German
language, there is not a trace of it in his writings. He is not at a
loss for a single word; if it does not exist in his dialect, he forms it
in the spirit of the dialect, and does not borrow it from German. As
linguistic material for the study of the Judeo-German in the beginning
of this century the writings of Lefin, Aksenfeld, Ettinger, Levinsohn,
and Gottlober are invaluable. But that is not the only value of Lefin's
writings. By acknowledging the people's right to be instructed by means
of an intelligible language, he at the same time opened up avenues for
the formation of a popular literature, based on an intimate acquaintance
with the mental life of the people. In fact, he himself gave the example
for that new departure by writing a novel 'The First Khassid.' In the
northwest the masses were not so much opposed to the new culture as in
the south, hence the writers could at once proceed to bring out books of
popular instruction clad in the form of stories. But the Khassidim of
the south would have rejected anything that in any way reminded them of
a civilization different from their own. In order to accomplish results
among them, they had to be more cautious and to approach their readers
in such a way that they were conscious only of the entertainment and not
of the instruction which was couched in the story. This demanded not
only the use of a pure vernacular, but also a detailed knowledge of the
mental habits of the people. As their conditions of life in no way
resembled those of any other people in Europe, their literature had to
be quite unique; and the works of the earlier writers are so peculiar in
regard to language, diction, and style as to baffle the translator, who
must remodel whole pages before he can render the original intelligibly.
Of such a character are the dramas of Aksenfeld, Ettinger, and J. B.
Levinsohn.
Ettinger, the first modern Judeo-German poet, has also written a drama
under the name of 'Serkele, or the False Anniversary.' His bias for
German culture shows itself in the general structure of his play, which
is like that of Lessing's dramas. The plot is laid in Lemberg, and
represents the struggle of German civilization with the mean and
dishonest ways of the older generation. Serkele has but one
virtue,--that of an egotistical love for her only daughter, the
half-educated, silly Freude Altele. In order to get possession of some
jewels deposited with her by her brother for his daughter Hinde, she
invents the story of his death. She is anxious to marry her daughter to
Gavriel Händler, who is represented to her as a rich speculator, but who
is in reality a common thief. He steals the casket containing the
jewels. When the theft is discovered she throws the guilt on Marcus
Redlich, a student of medicine, her daughter's private teacher, and
Hinde's lover. Hinde, too, is accused of complicity, and both are taken
in chains through the town. They pass a hostlery where a stranger has
just arrived, to whom Händler is trying to sell the jewels. The stranger
is Hinde's father. He recognizes his property, and seizes the thief just
as his daughter and her lover are taken by. A general recognition
follows, and all is righted. He finally forgives his sister, gives a
dowry to Freude Altele, who marries the innkeeper, while his daughter is
united to Marcus Redlich.
As in all the early productions of Judeo-German literature, there are in
that drama two distinct classes of characters: the ideal persons, the
uncle, Marcus Redlich and Hinde, and the real men and women who are
taken out of actual life. On the side of the first is all virtue, while
among the others are to be found the ugliest forms of vice. A worse
shrew than Serkele has hardly ever been depicted. Her speeches are
composed of a series of curses, in which the Jargon is peculiarly
inventive, interrupted by a stereotyped complaint of her ever failing
health. She hates her niece with the hatred that the tyrant has for the
object of his oppression, and she is quick to accuse her of improper
conduct, although herself of very lax morals. Nobody in the house
escapes the fury of her tongue, and her honest but weak husband has to
yield to the inevitable. The other characters are all well drawn, and
the play is an excellent portrayal of domestic life of seventy-five
years ago. It was written early in the twenties, but was printed only in
1861, since when it has had several editions.
In 1828 J. B. Levinsohn wrote his Hebrew work, 'Teudo Beisroel,' by
which the Haskala took a firm footing in Russia. About the same time
there circulated manuscript copies of a Judeo-German essay by the same
author, in which a sad picture of Jewish communal affairs was painted in
vigorous and idiomatic words. This essay, called 'The World Turned
Topsy-Turvy,'[76] is given in the form of a conversation by three
persons, of whom one is a stranger from a better country where the
affairs of the Jews are administered honestly. The other two in turn lay
before him an array of facts which it is painful to regard as having
existed in reality. It is interesting to note that the stranger, who is
Levinsohn himself, advocates the formation of agricultural colonies for
the Jews, by which he hoped to better their wretched condition and to
gain for them respect among those who accused them of being averse to
work.
The most original and most prolific Judeo-German writer of this early
period was Israel Aksenfeld.[77] He was born in the last quarter of the
eighteenth century, and had passed the early days of his life in the
neighborhood of the Rabbi of Braslow, a noted Khassid, being himself a
follower of that sect. Later in life, in the fifties, he is remembered
as a notary public in Odessa. He was a man of great culture. Those who
knew him then speak in the highest terms of the kindly old man that he
was. They also like to dwell on the remarkable qualities of his cultured
wife, from whom he is supposed to have received much inspiration.[78]
That is all that is known of his life. Gottlober mentions also in his
'Recollections' that he had written twenty-six books, and that according
to Aksenfeld's own statements they had been written in the twenties or
thereabout. Of these only five were printed in the sixties; the rest are
said to be stored away in a loft in Odessa, where they are held as
security for a debt incurred by the trustee of his estate. Although this
fact is known to some of the Jews of that city, no one has taken any
steps to redeem the valuable manuscripts. This is to be greatly
regretted, as his books throw light on a period of history for which
there is no other documentary evidence except that given by the writings
of men who lived at that time.
Of the five books printed, one is a novel, the other four are dramas.
The first, under the name of 'The Fillet of Pearls,' shows up the
hypocrisy and rascality of the Khassidic miracle-workers, as only one
who has himself been initiated in their doings could relate them. The
hero of the novel is Mechel Mazeewe. He is discovered eating on a minor
fast day, and the Rabbi uses this as an excuse for extorting all the
money the poor fellow had earned by teaching little children and young
women. His engagement to one of his pupils, the daughter of the beadle,
is broken off for the same reason. Disgusted with his town, he goes away
from it in order to earn a living elsewhere. Good fortune takes him to
Breslau, where he, for the first time, discovers that there are also
clean, honest, peaceful Jews. He is regenerated, and returns to his
native town, where in the meantime the miracle-working Rabbi has
succeeded in rooting out the last vestige of heresy. At the house of the
Rabbi, Mechel has an occasion to prove the falseness of his pretensions
to the assembled people. Mechel is reunited with his bride.
This bare skeleton of the plot is developed with great care, and is
adorned with a variety of incidents, each forming a story within the
story. The biting satire, the sharp humor, the rapid development of
situations, are only excelled by his dramatic sense, which makes him
pass rapidly from descriptions, without elaborating them to the form of
dialogue. His mastery of the dialect is remarkable; for although one can
here and there detect his intimate acquaintance with German literature,
there is not a single case where he has been led under obligations to
the German language in thought or a word: German is as foreign to him as
French or Latin. Of his dramas it will be sufficient to discuss one to
show their general structure. The most dramatic of these is the one
entitled 'The First Recruit' and tells of the terrible time in 1827 when
the Ukase drafting Jewish young men into the army had for the first time
been promulgated. To the ignorant masses it seemed as though the world
would come to an end. To avoid the great misfortune of having their
sons taken away from them, they married them off before they had
reached their teens; finding that that did not prevent the 'catchers'
from seizing them, maimed, halt, sickly men were preferred as husbands
to their daughters; in short, all was done to avert the unspeakable
calamity of serving the Czar. As in the novel, there are plots within
the plot, and didactic passages are woven into the play without in the
least disturbing its unity.
The tragedy consists of eight scenes. The first opens with a noisy
meeting at the house of Solomon Rascal, a Parnes-Chōdesch
(representative of the Jewish community), on a Saturday afternoon. The
cause of the disturbance is the order to furnish one recruit from their
town, which had just been brought in from the capital of the district by
two soldiers. The assembled kahal are wondering whether it is incumbent
upon them to sign the receipt of the order, while the infuriated mob
without is clamoring that the Ukase will be ineffective as long as not
signed by the representatives of the Congregation. The kahal is divided
on the subject, and the women take a part in the discussion, making
matters lively. Upon the advice of one of the men, the meeting is
adjourned to the house of Aaron Wiseman, the honored merchant of their
town of Nowhere, where they expect to get a satisfactory solution in
their perplexity. The second scene is the ideal scene of the play. Here
is depicted the happy and orderly home life of the cultured
merchant,--the reverse of the picture just portrayed. Jisrolik the
Ukrainian arrives and announces the decision of the kahal to refer the
matter to him. Aaron Wiseman explains how the Emperor had not intended
to bring new misfortunes upon the Jews by the mandate, but how by
imposing on them the honorable duty of defending their country, he was
investing them with a new privilege upon which greater liberties would
follow. This he farther elucidates in the next scene before the
assembled representatives of the Congregation. The fourth scene is laid
in the inn, where we are introduced to Nachman the Big, the practical
joker and terror of the town. In the following scene, Aaron Wiseman
advises the kahal to use a ruse by which Nachman will voluntarily offer
himself as a soldier, thus freeing the town from the unpleasant duty of
making a more worthy family unhappy. Wiseman explains that Nachman has
been a source of trouble to all, and that military service would be the
only thing that would keep him from a possible life of crime. The ruse
is accomplished in the following manner: it is known that Nachman has
been casting his eyes on Früme, the good and beautiful daughter of
Risches the Red, the tax-gatherer. It is proposed to send a schadchen to
Nachman, pretending that Früme's parents seek an alliance with him, and
that Früme loves him, and that she wants to get a proof of his affection
in his offering himself up as a soldier. The apparent incongruity of the
request is amply accounted for in the play by the fact that he who has
lost his heart also loses his reason. In the next two scenes the plot is
carried out, and Nachman becomes a soldier. The last scene contains the
tragic denouement. Chanzi, the go-between, comes to the house of Früme
and tells her of the fraud perpetrated on Nachman. But, alas, Früme
actually loves Nachman, and she silently suffers at the recital of the
story. The climax is reached when her father arrives and tells of
Nachman's self-sacrifice, how he has given himself up for the love he
bears her, how they put him in chains and took him away. Früme bears
her secret to the last, but her heart breaks, and she dies. The sorrow
of her parents is great. During the lamentation Nachman's blind mother
arrives, led by a little girl. She has learned of Chanzi's treachery,
and breaks out in loud curses against those who took part in the plot.
As she steps forward, she touches the dead body of her whom Nachman had
thought to be his bride. She addresses her as though she were alive and
consoles her that she need not be ashamed of Nachman, who had been an
inoffensive, though somewhat wild, boy. While speaking this, she faints
over her body.
The characters are all admirably delineated, and how true to nature the
whole play is one can see from a matter-of-fact story, by Dick,[79] of
the effects of the Ukase on the city of Wilna. Except for the tragic
plot, the drama may serve as a historical document of the event, and is
a valuable material for the study of the Jewish mind in the beginning of
Nicholas's reign. This must also be said of the other plays of
Aksenfeld, which all deal with conditions of contemporary Jewish
society.
Similar to Aksenfeld's subject in 'The Fillet of Pearls' is the comedy
'The Marriage Veil' by Gottlober, which he wrote in 1838. Jossele, a
young man with modern ideas, is to be married to a one-eyed monster,
while his sweetheart, Freudele, is to be mated on the same day with a
disfigured fool. By Jossele's machinations, in which he takes advantage
of the superstitions of the people, he is united under the marriage veil
to Freudele, while the two monstrosities are married to each other. This
is found out too late to be mended. This plot is only an excuse to show
up the hypocrisy and rascality of the miracle-working Rabbi in even a
more grotesque way than in 'The Fillet of Pearls.' A much finer work is
his story 'The Transmigration,' which, however, is said to be based on a
similar story in the Hebrew, by Erter. In this a dead soul, previous to
finding its final resting-place, relates of its many transmigrations ere
reaching its last stage. The succession of mundane existences is
strictly in keeping with the previous moral life of the soul. It starts
out with being a Khassidic singer, who, like all the followers of the
Rabbi, is represented as an ignorant dupe. After his death he naturally
is turned into a horse, the emblem of good-natured stupidity according
to the popular Jewish idea. Then he is in turn a Precentor, a fish, a
tax-gatherer, a dog, a critic, an ass, a doctor, a leech, a usurer, a
pig, a contractor. By far the most interesting and dramatic incident is
that of the doctor, who is trying to pass for a pious Jew, but who is
caught eating lobsters, which are forbidden by the Mosaic Law, and who
dies from strangulation in his attempt to swallow a lobster to hide his
crime. The story is told in a fluent manner, is very witty, and puts in
strong relief the various characters which are satirized.
Like the poetry of the same period, the prose literature of the writers
previous to the sixties is of a militant nature. It had for its aim the
dispersion of ignorance and superstition, and the introduction of the
Haskala and Western civilization among the Jews of Russia. The main
attack of all these early works was directed against the fanaticism of
the Khassidic sect, against the hypocrisy of its miracle-working Rabbis
in whose interest it lay to oppose the light at all cost. But the
authors not only attacked the evil, they also showed the way for a
reform: this they did by contrasting the low, sordid instincts of the
older generation with the quiet, honest lives of the new. Of course, the
new generation is all German. The ideal characters of Ettinger's drama,
Aksenfeld's hero in 'The Fillet of Pearls,' Gottlober's Jossele, have
all received their training in Germany. At the same time, in accordance
with the Mendelssohnian School, these ideal persons are not opposed to
the tenets of Judaism; on the contrary, they are represented as the
advocates of a pure religion in place of the base substitute of
Khassidism. Outside of the didactic purpose, which, however, does not
obtrude on the artistic development of the story, the Judeo-German
literature of that period owes its impulse to the three German authors,
Lessing, Schiller, Jean Paul Richter. As regards its language, the
example set by Lefin prevails, and all the productions are written in an
idiomatic, pure dialect of the author's nearest surroundings. There is
but one exception to that, and that is 'The Discovery of America,'
which, being mainly intended for a Lithuanian public, is written in a
language which makes approaches to the literary German, whereby it
opened wide the way to misuses of various kinds.