greatest danger after the downfall of the state, there arose and
developed, without any external influence whatsoever, an extraordinary
dictatorship, unofficial and spiritual. The legislative activity of
all the dictators--such as, Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai, Rabbi Akiba,
the Hillelites, and the Shammaites--was formulated in the Mishna, the
"oral law," which was the substructure of the Talmud. Their activity
had a characteristic feature, which deserves somewhat particularized
description. The laws were not laid down arbitrarily and without
ceremony. In order to possess binding force, they required the
authoritative confirmation to be found in the Mosaic Books. From
these, whether by logical or by forced interpretation of the holy
text, its words, or, perchance, its letters, they had to be derived.
Each law, barring only the original "traditions," the _Halacha
le-Moshe mi-Sinai_, was promulgated over the supreme signature, as
it were, that is, with the authentication of a word from the Holy
Scriptures. Or it was inferred from another law so authenticated. The
elaboration of every law was thus connected with a very complicated
process of thought, requiring both inductive and deductive reasoning,
and uniting juridical interpretation with the refinements of
casuistry. This legislation was the beginning of Talmudic science,
which from that time on, for many centuries, growing with the ages,
claimed in chief part the intellectual activity of Jewry. The schools
and the academies worked out a system of laws at once religious and
practical in character, which constituted, in turn, the object of
further theoretic study in the same schools and academies. In the
course of time, however, the means became the end. Theoretic
investigation of the law, extending and developing to the furthest
limits, in itself, without reference to its practical value, afforded
satisfaction to the spiritual need. The results of theorizing often
attained the binding force of law in practical life, not because
circumstances ordered it, but simply because one or another academy,
by dint of logic or casuistry, had established it as law. The number
of such deductions from original and secondary laws increased in
geometric progression, and practical life all but failed to keep up
with the theory. The "close of the Mishna," that is, its reduction to
writing, had no daunting effect upon the zeal for research. If
anything, a new and strong impetus was imparted to it. As up to that
time the text of the Holy Scriptures had been made the basis of
interpretation, giving rise to the most diverse inferences, so the
rabbis now began to use the law book recently canonized as a new basis
of interpretation, and to carry its principles to their utmost
consequences. In this way originated first the "Palestinian Gemara."
Later, when the Patriarchate in Palestine was stripped of its glory by
persecutions, and, in consequence, the centre of activity had to be
transferred from the Talmud academies of Palestine to those of
Babylonia, supreme place and exclusive dominion were obtained by the
"Babylonian Gemara," put into permanent form about the year 500 C. E.,
a gigantic work, the result of two hundred years of mental labor.
This busy intellectual activity was as comprehensive as it was
thoroughgoing. Talmudic legislation, the Halacha, by no means confines
itself to religious practices, extensive as this field is. It embraces
the whole range of civil and social life. Apart from the dietary laws,
the regulations for the festivals and the divine service, and a mass
of enactments for the shaping of daily life, the Talmud elaborated a
comprehensive and fairly well-ordered system of civil and criminal
law, which not infrequently bears favorable comparison with the famous
_rationi scriptae_ of the Romans. While proceeding with extreme
rigor and scrupulousness in ritual matters, the Talmud is governed in
its social legislation by the noblest humanitarian principles.
Doubtless this difference of attitude can be explained by the fact
that religious norms are of very much greater importance for a nation
than judicial regulations, which concern themselves only with the
interests of the individual, and exercise but little influence upon
the development of the national spirit.
The most sympathetic aspects of the Jewish spirit in that epoch are
revealed in the moral and poetic elements of the Talmud, in the Agada.
They are the receptacles into which the people poured all its
sentiments, its whole soul. They are a clear reflex of its inner
world, its feelings, hopes, ideals. The collective work of the nation
and the trend of history have left much plainer traces in the Agada
than in the dry, methodical Halacha. In the Agada the learned jurist
and formalist appears transformed into a sage or poet, conversing with
the people in a warm, cordial tone, about the phenomena of nature,
history, and life. The reader is often thrown into amazement by the
depth of thought and the loftiness of feeling manifested in the Agada.
Involuntarily one pays the tribute of reverence to its practical
wisdom, to its touching legends pervaded by the magic breath of poesy,
to the patriarchal purity of its views. But these pearls are not
strung upon one string, they are not arranged in a complete system.
They are imbedded here and there, in gay variety, in a vast mass of
heterogeneous opinions and sentiments naive at times and at times
eccentric. The reader becomes aware of the thoughts before they are
consolidated. They are still in a fluid, mobile state, still in
process of making. The same vivacious, versatile spirit is revealed in
the Midrashim literature, directly continuing the Agada up to the end
of the middle ages. These two species of Jewish literature, the Agada
and the Midrashim, have a far greater absolute value than the Halacha.
The latter is an official work, the former a national product. Like
every other special legislation, the Halacha is bound to definite
conditions and times, while the Agada concerns itself with the eternal
verities. The creations of the philosophers, poets, and moralists are
more permanent than the work of legislators.
Beautiful as the Agada is, and with all its profundity, it lacks
breadth. It rests wholly on the national, not on a universal basis. It
would be vain to seek in it for the comprehensive universalism of the
Prophets. Every lofty ideal is claimed as exclusively Jewish. So far
from bridging over the chasm between Israel and the other nations,
knowledge and morality served to widen it. It could not be otherwise,
there was no influx of air from without. The national horizon grew
more and more contracted. The activities of the people gathered
intensity, but in the same measure they lost in breadth. It was the
only result to be expected from the course of history in those ages.
Let us try to conceive what the first five centuries of the Christian
era, the centuries during which the Talmud was built up, meant in the
life of mankind. Barbarism, darkness, and elemental outbreaks of man's
migratory instincts, illustrated by the "great migration of races,"
are characteristic features of those centuries. It was a wretched
transition period between the fall of the world of antique culture and
the first germinating of a new Christian civilization. The Orient, the
centre and hearth of Judaism, was shrouded in impenetrable darkness.
In Palestine and in Babylonia, their two chief seats, the Jews were
surrounded by nations that still occupied the lowest rung of the
ladder of civilization, that had not yet risen above naive mysticism
in religion, or continued to be immersed in superstitions of the
grossest sort.
In this abysmal night of the middle ages, the lamp of thought was fed
and guarded solely and alone by the Jews. It is not astonishing, then,
that oblivious of the other nations they should have dispensed light
only for themselves. Furthermore, the circumstance must be considered
that, in the period under discussion, the impulse to separate from
Judaism gained ground in the Christian world. After the Council of
Nicaea, after Constantine the Great had established Christianity as
the state-church, the official breach between the Old Testament and
the New Testament partisans became unavoidable.
Thus the Jews, robbed of their political home, created a spiritual
home for themselves. Through the instrumentality of the numberless
religious rules which the Talmud had laid down, and which shaped the
life of the individual as well as that of the community, they were
welded into a firmly united whole. The Jewish spirit--national feeling
and individual mental effort alike--was absorbed in this pursuit of
unification. Head, heart, hands, all human functions of the Jew, were
brought under complete control and cast into fixed forms, by these
five centuries of labor. With painful exactitude, the Talmud
prescribed ordinances for all the vicissitudes of life, yet, at the
same time, offered sufficient food for brain and heart. It was at once
a religion and a science. The Jew was equipped with all the
necessaries. He could satisfy his wants from his own store. There was
no need for him to knock at strange doors, even though he had thereby
profited. The consequences of this attitude, positive as well as
negative consequences, asserted themselves in the further course of
Jewish history.
VIII
THE GAONIC PERIOD, OR THE HEGEMONY OF THE ORIENTAL JEWS (500-980)
With the close of the Talmud, at the beginning of the sixth century,
the feverish intellectual activity abated. The Jewish centre of
gravity continued in Babylonia. In this country, in which the Jewish
race had heard its cradle song at the dawn of existence, and later on
_Judaea capta_ had sat and wept remembering Zion, Judaism, after
the destruction of the second Temple and hundreds of years of trials,
was favored with a secure asylum. In the rest of the diaspora,
persecution gave the Jews no respite, but in Babylonia, under Persian
rule, they lived for some centuries comparatively free from
molestation. Indeed, they enjoyed a measure of autonomy in internal
affairs, under a chief who was entitled Exilarch (_Resh-Galutha_).
The Law and the word of God went forth from Babylonia for the Jews of
all lands. The Babylonian Talmud became the anthoritative code for the
Jewish people, a holy book second only to the Bible. The intellectual
calm that supervened at the beginning of the sixth century and lasted
until the end of the eighth century, betrayed itself in the slackening of
independent creation, though not in the flagging of intellectual activity
in general. In the schools and academies of Pumbeditha, Nahardea,
and Sura, scientific work was carried on with the same zest as before,
only this work had for its primary object the sifting and exposition of
the material heaped up by the preceding generations. This was the
province of the Sabureans and the Geonim, whose relation to the Talmud
was the same as that of the Scribes (the _Soferim_) of the Second
Temple to the Bible (see above, ch. vi). In the later period, as in the
earlier, the aim was the capitalization of the accumulated spiritual
treasures, an undertaking that gives little occasion for movement and
life, but all the more for endurance and industry.
This intellectual balance was destroyed by two events: the appearance
of Islam and the rise of Karaism. Islam, the second legitimate
offspring of Judaism, was appointed to give to religious thought in
the slumbering Orient the slight impulse it needed to start it on its
rapid career of sovereign power. Barely emancipated from swaddling
clothes, young Hotspur at once began to rage. He sought an outlet for
his unconquerable thirst for action, his lust for world-dominion. The
victorious religious wars of the followers of Allah ensued. This
foreign movement was not without significance for the fate of the
Jews. They were surrounded no longer by heathens but by Mohammedans,
who believed in the God of the Bible, and through the mouth of their
prophet conferred upon the Jews the honorable appellation of "the
People of the Book." In the eighth century the wars ceased, and the
impetuous energy of the rejuvenated Orient was diverted into quieter
channels. The Bagdad Khalifate arose, the peaceful era of the growth
of industry, the sciences, and the arts was inaugurated. Endowed with
quick discernment for every enlightening movement, the Jews yielded to
the vivifying magic of young Arabic culture.
Partly under the influence of the Arabic tendency to split into
religio-philosophic sects, partly from inner causes, Karaism sprang up
in the second half of the eighth century. Its active career began with
a vehement protest against the Talmud as the regulator of life and
thought. It proclaimed the creators of this vast encyclopedia to be
usurpers of spiritual power, and urged a return to the Biblical laws
in their unadulterated simplicity. The weakness of its positive
principles hindered the spread of Karaism, keeping it forever within
the narrow limits of a sect and consigning it to stagnation. What gave
it vogue during the first century of its existence was its negative
strength, its violent opposition to the Talmud, which aroused
strenuous intellectual activity. For a long time it turned Judaism
away from its one-sided Talmudic tendency, and opened up new avenues
of work for it. True to their motto: "Search diligently in the Holy
Scriptures," the adherents of Karaism applied themselves to the
rational study of the Bible, which had come to be, among the
Talmudists, the object of casuistic interpretation and legendary
adornment. By the cultivation of grammar and lexicography as applied
to the Biblical thesaurus of words, they resuscitated the Hebrew
language, which, ousted by the Aramaic dialect, had already sunk into
oblivion. By the same means they laid the foundation of a school of
rejuvenated poetry. In general, thought on religious and philosophic
subjects was promoted to a higher degree by the lively discussions
between them and the Talmudists.
By imperceptible steps Talmudic Judaism, influenced at once by the
enlightened Arabs and the protesting Karaites, departed from the "four
ells of the Halacha," and widened its horizon. Among the spiritual
leaders of the people arose men who occupied themselves not only with
the study of the Talmud but also with a rational exegesis of the
Bible, with philology, poetry, philosophy. The great Gaon Saadiah
(892-942) united within himself all strands of thought. Over and above
a large number of philological and other writings of scientific
purport, he created a momentous religio-philosophic system, with the
aim to clarify Judaism and refine religious conceptions. He was an
encyclopedic thinker, a representative of the highest Jewish culture
and of Arabic culture as well--he wrote his works in Arabic by
preference. In this way Jewish thought gained ground more and more in
the Orient. It was in the West, however, that it attained soon after
to the climax of its development.
Gradually the centre of gravity of Jewry shifted from Asia Minor to
Western Europe. Beginning with the sixth century, the sparsely sown
Jewish population of Occidental Europe increased rapidly in numbers.
In Italy, Byzantium, France, and Visigothic Spain, important Jewish
communities were formed. The medieval intolerance of the Church,
though neither so widespread nor so violent as it later became,
suffered its first outbreak in that early century. The persecutions of
the Jews by the Visigothic kings of Spain and the Bishops Avitus of
Clermont and Agobard in France (sixth to the ninth century) were the
prelude to the more systematic and the more bloody cruelties of
subsequent days. The insignificant numbers of the European Jews and
the insecurity of their condition stood in the way of forming an
intellectual centre of their own. They were compelled to acknowledge
the spiritual supremacy of their Oriental brethren in faith. With the
beginning of the tenth century the situation underwent a change.
Arabic civilization, which had penetrated to Spain in previous
centuries, brought about a radical transformation in the character of
the country. The realm of the fanatic Visigoths, half barbarous and
wholly averse to the light of progress, changed into the prosperous
and civilized Khalifate of the Ommeyyades. Thither the best forces of
Oriental Jewry transferred themselves. With the growth of the Jewish
population in Arabic Spain and the strengthening of its communal
organization, the spiritual centre of the Jewish people gradually
established itself in Spain. The academies of Sura and Pumbeditha
yielded first place to the high schools of Cordova and Toledo.
The Jewry of the East resigned the national hegemony to the Jewry of
the West. The Geonim withdrew in favor of the Rabbis. After centuries
of seclusion, the Jewish spirit once more asserted itself, and enjoyed
a period of efflorescence. The process of national growth became more
complex, more varied.
IX
THE RABBINIC-PHILOSOPHICAL PERIOD, OR THE HEGEMONY OF THE SPANISH JEWS
(980-1492)
The five centuries marked at their beginning by the rise of
Arabic-Jewish civilization in Spain and at their end by the banishment
of the Jews from Spain (980-1492), offer the Jewish historian an
abundance of culture manifestations and intellectual movements so
luxuriant that it is well-nigh impossible to gather them up in one
formula. The monotony formerly prevailing in Jewish national life,
both in its external and in its internal relations, was succeeded by
almost gaily checkered variety. Swept along by the movement towards
enlightenment that dominated their surroundings, the Jews of Arabic
Spain threw themselves into energetic work in all the spheres of life
and thought. While they had political ground more or less firm under
their feet, and for the most part enjoyed peace and liberty, the Jews
in the Christian lands of Europe stood upon volcanic soil, every
moment threatening to swallow them up. Exposed constantly to
persecutions, they lived more or less isolated, and devoted themselves
to one-sided though intense intellectual activity. Sombre shadows and
streaks of bright light alternate with each other in this period. In
its second half, the clouds massed themselves heavily upon the
darkening horizon. Even the "privileged" Spanish Jews suffered an
untoward change in their affairs at the beginning of the thirteenth
century: gradually they were withdrawn from under the sovereignty of
the Arabs, and made subject to the power of the Catholic monarchs.
They became thenceforward the equal partners of their brethren in
faith in the rest of Europe. All without distinction had a share in
the spiritual martyrdom which is the greenest bayleaf in the crown of
Jewish history. To think and to suffer became the watchword of the
whole nation.
At first, as we have said, a considerable portion of the Jewish people
enjoyed the happy possibility of thinking. This was during the
classical epoch of the Arabic-Jewish Renaissance, which preceded the
Italian Renaissance by four centuries. There is a fundamental
difference between the two Renaissance periods: the earlier one was
signalized by a re-birth of the sciences and of philosophy, the later
one pre-eminently of the arts and of literature. The eleventh and
twelfth centuries marked the meridian of the intellectual development
of medieval Judaism. As once, in Alexandria, the union of Judaic with
Hellenic culture brought in its train a superabundance of new ideas of
a universal character, so again the amalgamation, on Spanish soil, of
Jewish culture with Arabic gave rise to rich intellectual results,
more lasting and fruitful than the Alexandrian, inasmuch as, in spite
of their universal character, they did not contravene the national
spirit. The Jewish people dropped its misanthropy and its leaning
toward isolation. The Jews entered all sorts of careers: by the side
of influential and cultivated statesmen, such as Chasdai ibn Shaprut
and Samuel Hanagid, at the courts of the Khalifs, stood a brilliant
group of grammarians, poets, and philosophers, like Jonah ibn Ganach,
Solomon Gabirol, and Moses ibn Ezra. The philosophic-critical
scepticism of Abraham ibn Ezra co-existed in peace and harmony with
the philosophic-poetic enthusiasm of Jehuda Halevi. The study of
medicine, mathematics, physics, and astronomy went hand in hand with
the study of the Talmud, which, though it may not have occupied the
first place with the Spanish Jews of this time, by no means
disappeared, as witness the compendium by Alphassi. Unusual breadth
and fulness of the spiritual life is the distinction of the epoch.
This variety of mental traits combined in a marvelous union to form
the great personality of Maimonides, the crown of a glorious period.
With one "Strong Hand," this intellectual giant brought order out of
the Talmudic chaos, which at his word was transformed into a
symmetrical, legal system; with the other, he "guided the Perplexed"
through the realm of faith and knowledge. For rationalistic clarity
and breadth of view no counterpart to the religio-philosophic doctrine
which he formulated can be found in the whole extent of medieval
literature. The main feature of the philosophy of Maimonides and of
the systems based upon it is rationalism, not a dry, scholastic,
abstract rationalism, but a living rationalism, embracing the whole
field of the most exalted psychic phenomena. It is not philosophy pure
and simple, but religious philosophy, an harmonization, more or less
felicitous, of the postulates of reason with the dogmas of faith. It
is reason mitigated by faith, and faith regulated by reason. In the
darkness of the middle ages, when the Romish Church impregnated
religion with the crudest superstitions, going so far as to forbid its
adherents to read the Bible, and when the greatest philosopher
representatives of the Church, like Albertus Magnus, would have
rejected offhand, as a childish fancy or, indeed, as an heretical
chimera, any attempt to rescue the lower classes of the people from
their wretched state of spiritual servitude--in a time like this, the
truly majestic spectacle is presented of a philosophy declaring war on
superstition, and setting out to purify the religious notions of the
people.