closes wistfully: "He who has not seen that whole generation, Saul Wahl
amid his sons, sons-in-law, and grandsons, has failed to see the union
of the Law with mundane glory, of wealth with honor and princely
rectitude. May the Lord God bless us by permitting us to rejoice thus in
our children and children's children!"
Other rabbis of that time have left us versions of the Saul Wahl legend.
They report that he founded a _Beth ha-Midrash_ (college for Jewish
studies) and a little synagogue, leaving them, together with numerous
bequests, to the community in which he had lived, with the condition
that the presidency of the college be made hereditary in his family.
Some add that they had seen in Brzesc a gold chain belonging to him, his
coat of arms emblazoned with the lion of Judah, and a stone tablet on
which an account of his meritorious deeds was graven. Chain, escutcheon,
and stone have disappeared, and been forgotten, the legend alone
survives.
* * *
Now, what has history to say?
Unquestionably, an historical kernel lies hidden in the legend. Neither
the Polish chronicles of those days nor Jewish works mention a Jewish
king of Poland; but from certain occurrences, hints can be gleaned
sufficient to enable us to establish the underlying truth. When Stephen
Bathori died, Poland was hard pressed. On all sides arose pretenders to
the throne. The most powerful aspirant was Archduke Maximilian of
Austria, who depended on his gold and Poland's well-known sympathy for
Austria to gain him the throne. Next came the Duke of Ferrara backed by
a great army and the favor of the Czar, and then, headed by the
crown-prince of Sweden, a crowd of less powerful claimants, so motley
that a Polish nobleman justly exclaimed: "If you think any one will do
to wear Poland's crown upon his pate, I'll set up my coachman as king!"
Great Poland espoused the cause of Sweden, Little Poland supported
Austria, and the Lithuanians furthered the wishes of the Czar. In
reality, however, the election of the king was the occasion for bringing
to a crisis the conflict between the two dominant families of Zamoiski
and Zborowski.
The election was to take place on August 18, 1587. The electors, armed
to the teeth, appeared on the place designated for the election, a
fortified camp on the Vistula, on the other side of which stood the
deputies of the claimants. Night was approaching, and the possibility of
reconciling the parties seemed as remote as ever. Christopher Radziwill,
the "castellan" of the realm, endeavoring to make peace between the
factions, stealthily crept from camp to camp, but evening deepened into
night, and still the famous election cry, "_Zgoda!_" (Agreed!), was not
heard.
According to the legend, this is the night of Saul Wahl's brief royalty.
It is said that he was an agent employed by Prince Radziwill, and when
the electors could not be induced to come to an agreement, it occurred
to the prince to propose Saul as a compromise-king. With shouts of "Long
live King Saul!" the proposal was greeted by both factions, and this is
the nucleus of the legend, which with remarkable tenacity has
perpetuated itself down to our generation. For the historical truth of
the episode we have three witnesses. The chief is Prince Nicholas
Christopher of Radziwill, duke of Olyka and Nieswiesz, the son of the
founder of this still flourishing line of princes. His father had left
the Catholic church, and joined the Protestants, but he himself returned
to Catholicism, and won fame by his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, described
in both Polish and Latin in the work _Peregrinatio Hierosolymitana_.
Besides, he offered 5000 ducats for the purchase of extant copies of the
Protestant "Radziwill Bible," published by his father, intending to have
them destroyed. On his return journey from the Holy Land he was attacked
at Pescara by robbers, and at Ancona on a Palm Sunday, according to his
own account, he found himself destitute of means. He applied to the
papal governor, but his story met with incredulity. Then he appealed to
a Jewish merchant, offering him, as a pawn, a gold box made of a piece
of the holy cross obtained in Palestine, encircled with diamonds, and
bearing on its top the _Agnus dei_. The Jew advanced one hundred crowns,
which sufficed exactly to pay his lodging and attendants. Needy as
before, he again turned to the Jew, who gave him another hundred crowns,
this time without exacting a pledge, a glance at his papal passport
having convinced him of the prince's identity.[73]
This is Radziwill's account in his itinerary. As far as it goes, it
bears striking similarity to the narrative of Rabbi Pinchas of Anspach,
and leads to the certain conclusion that the legend rests upon an
historical substratum. A critic has justly remarked that the most vivid
fancy could not, one hundred and thirty-one years after their
occurrence, invent, in Anspach, the tale of a Polish magnate's
adventures in Italy. Again, it is highly improbable that Saul Wahl's
great-grandson read Prince Radziwill's Latin book, detailing his
experiences to his contemporaries.
There are other witnesses to plead for the essential truth of our
legend. The rabbis mentioned before have given accounts of Saul's
position, of his power, and the splendor of his life. Negative signs, it
is true, exist, arguing against the historical value of the legend.
Polish history has not a word to say about the ephemeral king. In fact,
there was no day fixed for the session of the electoral diet. Moreover,
critics might adduce against the probability of its correctness the
humble station of the Jews, and the low esteem in which the Radziwills
were then held by the Polish nobility. But it is questionable whether
these arguments are sufficiently convincing to strip the Saul Wahl
legend of all semblance of truth. Polish historians are hardly fair in
ignoring the story. Though it turn out to have been a wild prank, it has
some historical justification. Such practical jokes are not unusual in
Polish history. Readers of that history will recall the _Respublika
Babinska_, that society of practical jokers which drew up royal
charters, and issued patents of nobility. A Polish nobleman had founded
the society in the sixteenth century, its membership being open only to
those distinguished as wits. It perpetrated the oddest political jokes,
appointing spendthrifts as overseers of estates, and the most
quarrelsome as justices of the peace. With such proclivities, Polish
factions, at loggerheads with each other, can easily be imagined uniting
to crown a Jew, the most harmless available substitute for a real king.
Our last and strongest witness--one compelling the respectful attention
of the severest court and the most incisive attorney general--is the
Russian professor Berschadzky, the author of an invaluable work on the
history of the Jews in Lithuania. He vouches, not indeed for the
authenticity of the events related by Rabbi Pinchas, but for the reality
of Saul Wahl himself. From out of the Russian archives he has been
resurrected by Professor Berschadzky, the first to establish that Saul
was a man of flesh and blood.[74] He reproduces documents of
incontestable authority, which report that Stephen Bathori, in the year
1578, the third of his reign, awarded the salt monopoly for the whole of
Poland to Saul Juditsch, that is, Saul the Jew. Later, upon the payment
of a high security, the same Saul the Jew became farmer of the imposts.
In 1580, his name, together with the names of the heads of the Jewish
community of Brzesc, figures in a lawsuit instituted to establish the
claim of the Jews upon the fourth part of all municipal revenues. He
rests the claim on a statute of Grandduke Withold, and the verdict was
favorable to his side. This was the time of the election of Bathori's
successor, Sigismund III., and after his accession to the throne, Saul
Juditsch again appears on the scene. On February 11, 1588, the king
issued the following notice: "Some of our councillors have recommended
to our attention the punctilious business management of Saul Juditsch,
of the town of Brzesc, who, on many occasions during the reigns of our
predecessors, served the crown by his wide experience in matters
pertaining to duties, taxes, and divers revenues, and advanced the
financial prosperity of the realm by his conscientious efforts." Saul
was now entrusted, for a period of ten years, with the collection of
taxes on bridges, flour, and brandies, paying 150,000 gold florins for
the privilege. A year later he was honored with the title _sluga
krolewski_, "royal official," a high rank in the Poland of the day, as
can be learned from the royal decree conferring it: "We, King of Poland,
having convinced ourself of the rare zeal and distinguished ability of
Saul Juditsch, do herewith grant him a place among our royal officials,
and that he may be assured of our favor for him we exempt him and his
lands for the rest of his life from subordination to the jurisdiction of
any 'castellan,' or any municipal court, or of any court in our land, of
whatever kind or rank it may be; so that if he be summoned before the
court of any judge or district, in any matter whatsoever, be it great or
small, criminal or civil, he is not obliged to appear and defend
himself. His goods may not be distrained, his estates not used as
security, and he himself can neither be arrested, nor kept a prisoner.
His refusal to appear before a judge or to give bail shall in no wise be
punishable; he is amenable to no law covering such cases. If a charge be
brought against him, his accusers, be they our subjects or aliens, of
any rank or calling whatsoever, must appeal to ourself, the king, and
Saul Juditsch shall be in honor bound to appear before us and defend
himself."
This royal patent was communicated to all the princes, lords,
_voivodes_, marshals, "castellans," starosts, and lower officials, in
town and country, and to the governors and courts of Poland. Saul
Juditsch's name continues to appear in the state documents. In 1593, he
pleads for the Jews of Brzesc, who desire to have their own
jurisdiction. In consequence of his intercession, Sigismund III. forbids
the _voivodes_ (mayors) and their proxies to interfere in the quarrels
of the Jews, of whatever kind they may be. The last mention of Saul
Juditsch's name occurs in the records of 1596, when, in conjunction with
his Christian townsmen, he pleads for the renewal of an old franchise,
granted by Grandduke Withold, exempting imported goods from duty.
Saul Wahl probably lived to the age of eighty, dying in the year 1622.
The research of the historian has established his existence beyond a
peradventure. He has proved that there was an individual by the name of
Saul Wahl, and that is a noteworthy fact in the history of Poland and in
that of the Jews in the middle ages.
* * *
After history, criticism has a word to say. A legend, as a rule, rests
on analogy, on remarkable deeds, on notable events, on extraordinary
historical phenomena. In the case of the legend under consideration, all
these originating causes are combined. Since the time of Sigismund I.,
the position of the Jews in Lithuania and Poland had been favorable. It
is regarded as their golden period in Poland. In general, Polish Jews
had always been more favorably situated than their brethren in faith in
other countries. At the very beginning of Polish history, a legend,
similar to that attached to Saul Wahl's name, sprang up. After the death
of Popiel, an assembly met at Kruszwica to fill the vacant throne. No
agreement could be reached, and the resolution was adopted to hail as
king the first person to enter the town the next morning. The guard
stationed at the gate accordingly brought before the assembly the poor
Jew Abraham, with the surname Powdermaker (_Prochownik_), which he had
received from his business, the importing of powder. He was welcomed
with loud rejoicing, and appointed king. But he refused the crown, and
pressed to accept it, finally asked for a night's delay to consider the
proposal. Two days and two nights passed, still the Jew did not come
forth from his room. The Poles were very much excited, and a peasant,
Piast by name, raising his voice, cried out: "No, no, this will not do!
The land cannot be without a head, and as Abraham does not come out, I
will bring him out." Swinging his axe, he rushed into the house, and
led the trembling Jew before the crowd. With ready wit, Abraham said,
"Poles, here you see the peasant Piast, he is the one to be your king.
He is sensible, for he recognized that a land may not be without a king.
Besides, he is courageous; he disregarded my command not to enter my
house. Crown him, and you will have reason to be grateful to God and His
servant Abraham!" So Piast was proclaimed king, and he became the
ancestor of a great dynasty.
It is difficult to discover how much of truth is contained in this
legend of the tenth century. That it in some remote way rests upon
historical facts is attested by the existence of Polish coins bearing
the inscriptions: "Abraham _Dux_" and "_Zevach_ Abraham" ("Abraham the
Prince" and "Abraham's Sacrifice"). Casimir the Great, whose _liaison_
with the Jewess Esterka has been shown by modern historians to be a pure
fabrication, confirmed the charter of liberties (_privilegium
libertatis_) held by the Jews of Poland from early times, and under
Sigismund I. they prospered, materially and intellectually, as never
before. Learning flourished among them, especially the study of the
Talmud being promoted by three great men, Solomon Shachna, Solomon
Luria, and Moses Isserles.
Henry of Anjou, the first king elected by the Diet (1573), owed his
election to Solomon Ashkenazi, a Jewish physician and diplomat, who
ventured to remind the king of his services: "To me more than to any one
else does your Majesty owe your election. Whatever was done here at the
Porte, I did, although, I believe, M. d'Acqs takes all credit unto
himself." This same diplomat, together with the Jewish prince Joseph
Nasi of Naxos, was chiefly instrumental in bringing about the election
of Stephen Bathori. Simon Guensburg, the head of the Jewish community of
Posen, had a voice in the king's council, and Bona Sforza, the Italian
princess on the Polish throne, was in the habit of consulting with
clever Jews. The papal legate Commendoni speaks in a vexed tone, yet
admiringly, of the brilliant position of Polish Jews, of their extensive
cattle-breeding and agricultural interests, of their superiority to
Christians as artisans, of their commercial enterprise, leading them as
far as Dantzic in the north and Constantinople in the south, and of
their possession of that sovereign means which overcomes ruler, starost,
and legate alike.[75]
These are the circumstances to be borne in mind in examining the
authenticity of the legend about the king of a night. As early as the
beginning of his century, recent historians inform us, three Jews,
Abraham, Michael, and Isaac Josefowicz, rose to high positions in
Lithuania. Abraham was made chief rabbi of Lithuania, his residence
being fixed at Ostrog; Isaac became starost of the cities of Smolensk
and Minsk (1506), and four years later, he was invested with the
governorship of Lithuania. He always kept up his connection with his
brothers, protected his co-religionists, and appointed Michael chief
elder of the Lithuanian Jews. On taking the oath of allegiance to Albert
of Prussia, he was raised to the rank of a nobleman. A Jew of the
sixteenth century a nobleman! Surely, this fact is sufficiently
startling to serve as the background of a legend. We have every
circumstance necessary: An analogous legend in the early history of
Poland, the favored condition of the Jews, the well-attested reality of
Saul Juditsch, and an extraordinary event, the ennobling of a Jew. Saul
Wahl probably did not reign--not even for a single night--but he
certainly was attached to the person of the king, and later, ignorant of
grades of officials, the Jews were prone to magnify his position.
Indeed, the abject misery of their condition in the seventeenth century
seems better calculated to explain the legend than their prosperity in
the fifteenth and the sixteenth century. Bogdan Chmielnicki's campaign
against the rebellious Cossacks wrought havoc among the Jews. From the
southern part of the Ukraine to Lemberg, the road was strewn with the
corpses of a hundred thousand Jews. The sad memory of a happy past is
the fertile soil in which legends thrive. It is altogether likely that
at this time of degradation the memory of Saul Wahl, redeemer and hero,
was first celebrated, and the report of his coat of arms emblazoned with
a lion clutching a scroll of the Law, and crowning an eagle, of his
golden chain, of his privileges, and all his memorials, spread from
house to house.
Parallel cases of legend-construction readily suggest themselves. In
our own time, in the glare of nineteenth century civilization, legends
originate in the same way. Here is a case in point: In 1875, the
Anthropological Society of Western Prussia instituted a series of
investigations, in the course of which the complexion and the color of
the hair and eyes of the children at the public schools were to be
noted, in order to determine the prevalence of certain racial traits.
The most extravagant rumors circulated in the districts of Dantzic,
Thorn, Kulm, all the way to Posen. Parents, seized by unreasoning
terror, sent their children, in great numbers, to Russia. One rumor said
that the king of Prussia had lost one thousand blonde children to the
sultan over a game of cards; another, that the Russian government had
sold sixty thousand pretty girls to an Arab prince, and to save them
from the sad fate conjectured to be in store for them, all the pretty
girls at Dubna were straightway married off.--Similarly, primitive man,
to satisfy his intellectual cravings, explained the phenomena of the
heavens, the earth, and the waters by legends and myths, the germs of
polytheistic nature religions. In our case, the tissue of facts is
different, the process the same.
But legends express the idealism of the masses; they are the highest
manifestations of spiritual life. The thinker's flights beyond the
confines of reality, the inventor's gift to join old materials in new
combinations, the artist's creative impulse, the poet's inspiration, the
seer's prophetic vision--every emanation from man's ideal nature clothes
itself with sinews, flesh, and skin, and lives in a people's legends,
the repositories of its art, poetry, science, and ethics.
Legends moreover are characteristic of a people's culture. As a child
delights in iridescent soap-bubbles, so a nation revels in
reminiscences. Though poetry lend words, painting her tints,
architecture a rule, sculpture a chisel, music her tones, the legend
itself is dead, and only a thorough understanding of national traits
enables one to recognize its ethical bearings. From this point of view,
the legend of the Polish king of a night is an important historical
argument, testifying to the satisfactory condition of the Jews of Poland
in the fifteenth and the sixteenth century. The simile that compares
nations, on the eve of a great revolution, to a seething crater, is true
despite its triteness, and if to any nation, is applicable to the Poland
of before and after that momentous session of the Diet. Egotism, greed,
ambition, vindictiveness, and envy added fuel to fire, and hastened
destruction. Jealousy had planted discord between two families, dividing
the state into hostile, embittered factions. Morality was undermined,
law trodden under foot, duty neglected, justice violated, the promptings
of good sense disregarded. So it came about that the land was flooded by
ruin as by a mighty stream, which, a tiny spring at first, gathers
strength and volume from its tributaries, and overflowing its bounds,
rushes over blooming meadows, fields, and pastures, drawing into its
destructive depths the peasant's every joy and hope. That is the soil
from which a legend like ours sprouts and grows.
This legend distinctly conveys an ethical lesson. The persecutions of
the Jews, their ceaseless wanderings from town to town, from country to
country, from continent to continent, have lasted two thousand years,
and how many dropped by the wayside! Yet they never parted with the
triple crown placed upon their heads by an ancient sage: the crown of
royalty, the crown of the Law, and the crown of a good name. Learning
and fair fame were indisputably theirs: therefore, the first, the royal
crown, never seemed more resplendent than when worn in exile. The glory
of a Jewish king of the exile seemed to herald the realization of the
Messianic ideal. So it happens that many a family in Poland, England,
and Germany, still cherishes the memory of Rabbi Saul the king, and that
"Malkohs" everywhere still boast of royal ancestry. Rabbis, learned in
the Law, were his descendants, and men of secular fame, Gabriel Riesser
among them, proudly mention their connection, however distant, with Saul
Wahl. The memory of his deeds perpetuates itself in respectable Jewish
homes, where grandams, on quiet Sabbath afternoons, tell of them, as
they show in confirmation the seal on coins to an awe-struck progeny.
Three crowns Israel bore upon his head. If the crown of royalty is
legendary, then the more emphatically have the other two an historical
and ethical value. The crown of royalty has slipped from us, but the
crown of a good name and especially the crown of the Law are ours to
keep and bequeath to our children and our children's children unto the
latest generation.
JEWISH SOCIETY IN THE TIME OF MENDELSSOHN
On an October day in 1743, in the third year of the reign of Frederick
the Great, a delicate lad of about fourteen begged admittance at the
Rosenthal gate of Berlin, the only gate by which non-resident Jews were
allowed to enter the capital. To the clerk's question about his business
in the city, he briefly replied: "Study" (_Lernen_). The boy was Moses
Mendelssohn, and he entered the city poor and friendless, knowing in all
Berlin but one person, his former teacher Rabbi David Fraenkel. About
twenty years later, the Royal Academy of Sciences awarded him the first
prize for his essay on the question: "Are metaphysical truths
susceptible of mathematical demonstration?" After another period of
twenty years, Mendelssohn was dead, and his memory was celebrated as
that of a "sage like Socrates, the greatest philosophers of the day
exclaiming, 'There is but one Mendelssohn!'"--
The Jewish Renaissance of a little more than a century ago presents the
whole historic course of Judaism. Never had the condition of the Jews
been more abject than at the time of Mendelssohn's appearance on the
scene. It must be remembered that for Jews the middle ages lasted three
hundred years after all other nations had begun to enjoy the blessings
of the modern era. Veritable slaves, degenerate in language and habits,
purchasing the right to live by a tax (_Leibzoll_), in many cities still
wearing a yellow badge, timid, embittered, pale, eloquently silent, the
Jews herded in their Ghetto with its single Jew-gate--they, the
descendants of the Maccabees, the brethren in faith of proud Spanish
grandees, of Andalusian poets and philosophers. The congregations were
poor; immigrant Poles filled the offices of rabbis and teachers, and
occupied themselves solely with the discussion of recondite problems.
The evil nonsense of the Kabbalists was actively propagated by the
Sabbatians, and on the other hand the mystical _Chassidim_ were
beginning to perform their witches' dance. The language commonly used
was the _Judendeutsch_ (the Jewish German jargon) which, stripped of its
former literary dignity, was not much better than thieves' slang. Of
such pitiful elements the life of the Jews was made up during the first
half of the eighteenth century.