his thirtieth year, but his aim in life was perfectly defined. He knew
the path leading to his goal, and--most important circumstance--never
deviated from it until he attained it. His activity throughout life
shows no inconsistency with his plans. It is his strength of character,
rarest of attributes in a time of universal defection from the Jewish
standard, that calls for admiration, accorded by none so readily as by
his companions in arms. Casting up his own spiritual accounts, Heinrich
Heine in the latter part of his life wrote of his friend Zunz:[89] "In
the instability of a transition period he was characterized by
incorruptible constancy, remaining true, despite his acumen, his
scepticism, and his scholarship, to self-imposed promises, to the
exalted hobby of his soul. A man of thought and action, he created and
worked when others hesitated, and sank discouraged," or, what Heine
prudently omitted to say, deserted the flag, and stealthily slunk out of
the life of the oppressed.
In Zunz, strength of character was associated with a mature, richly
stored mind. He was a man of talent, of character, and of science, and
this rare union of traits is his distinction. At a time when the
majority of his co-religionists could not grasp the plain, elementary
meaning of the phrase, "the science of Judaism," he made it the loadstar
of his life.
Sad though it be, I fear that it is true that there are those of this
generation who, after the lapse of years, are prompted to repeat the
question put by Zunz's contemporaries, "What is the science of Judaism?"
Zunz gave a comprehensive answer in a short essay, "On Rabbinical
Literature," published by Mauer in 1818:[90] "When the shadows of
barbarism were gradually lifting from the mist-shrouded earth, and light
universally diffused could not fail to strike the Jews scattered
everywhere, a remnant of old Hebrew learning attached itself to new,
foreign elements of culture, and in the course of centuries enlightened
minds elaborated the heterogeneous ingredients into the literature
called rabbinical." To this rabbinical, or, to use the more fitting name
proposed by himself, this neo-Hebraic, Jewish literature and science,
Zunz devoted his love, his work, his life. Since centuries this field
of knowledge had been a trackless, uncultivated waste. He who would
pass across, had need to be a pathfinder, robust and energetic, able to
concentrate his mind upon a single aim, undisturbed by distracting
influences. Such was Leopold Zunz, who sketched in bold, but admirably
precise outlines the extent of Jewish science, marking the boundaries of
its several departments, estimating its resources, and laying out the
work and aims of the future. The words of the prophet must have appealed
to him with peculiar force: "I remember unto thee the kindness of thy
youth, the love of thy espousals, thy going after me in the wilderness,
through a land that is not sown."
Again, when there was question of cultivating the desert soil, and
seeking for life under the rubbish, Zunz was the first to present
himself as a laborer. The only fruit of the Society for Jewish Culture
and Science, during the three years of its existence, was the "Journal
for the Science of Judaism," and its publication was due exclusively to
Zunz's perseverance. Though only three numbers appeared, a positive
addition to our literature was made through them in Zunz's biographical
essay on Rashi, the old master expounder of the Bible and the Talmud. By
its arrangement of material, by its criticism and grouping of facts, and
not a little by its brilliant style, this essay became the model for all
future work on kindred subjects. When the society dissolved, and Zunz
was left to enjoy undesired leisure, he continued to work on the lines
laid down therein. Besides, Zunz was a political journalist, for many
years political editor of "Spener's Journal," and a contributor to the
_Gesellschafter_, the _Iris_, _Die Freimuetigen_, and other publications
of a literary character. From 1825 to 1829, he was a director of the
newly founded Jewish congregational school; for one year he occupied the
position of preacher at Prague; and from 1839 to 1849, the year of its
final closing, he acted as trustee of the Jewish teachers' seminary in
Berlin. Thereafter he had no official position.
As a politician he was a pronounced democrat. Reading his political
addresses to-day, after a lapse of half a century, we find in them the
clearness and sagacity that distinguish the scientific productions of
the investigator. Here is an extract from his words of consolation
addressed to the families of the heroes of the March revolution of
1848:[91]
"They who walked our streets unnoticed, who meditated in their quiet
studies, toiled in their workshops, cast up accounts in offices, sold
wares in the shops, were suddenly transformed into valiant fighters, and
we discovered them at the moment when like meteors they vanished. When
they grew lustrous, they disappeared from our sight, and when they
became our deliverers, we lost the opportunity of thanking them. Death
has made them great and precious to us. Departing they poured unmeasured
wealth upon us all, who were so poor. Our heads, parched like a summer
sky, produced no fruitful rain of magnanimous thoughts. The hearts in
our bosoms, turned into stone, were bereft of human sympathies. Vanity
and illusions were our idols; lies and deception poisoned our lives;
lust and avarice dictated our actions; a hell of immorality and misery,
corroding every institution, heated the atmosphere to suffocation, until
black clouds gathered, a storm of the nations raged about us, and
purifying streaks of lightning darted down upon the barricades and into
the streets. Through the storm-wind, I saw chariots of fire and horses
of fire bearing to heaven the men of God who fell fighting for right and
liberty. I hear the voice of God, O ye that weep, knighting your dear
ones. The freedom of the press is their patent of nobility, our hearts,
their monuments. Every one of us, every German, is a mourner, and you,
survivors, are no longer abandoned."
In an election address of February 1849,[92] Zunz says: "The first step
towards liberty is to miss liberty, the second, to seek it, the third,
to find it. Of course, many years may pass between the seeking and the
finding." And further on: "As an elector, I should give my vote for
representatives only to men of principle and immaculate reputation, who
neither hesitate nor yield; who cannot be made to say cold is warm, and
warm is cold; who disdain legal subtleties, diplomatic intrigues, lies
of whatever kind, even when they redound to the advantage of the party.
Such are worthy of the confidence of the people, because conscience is
their monitor. They may err, for to err is human, but they will never
deceive."
Twelve years later, on a similar occasion, he uttered the following
prophetic words:[93] "A genuinely free form of government makes a people
free and upright, and its representatives are bound to be champions of
liberty and progress. If Prussia, unfurling the banner of liberty and
progress, will undertake to provide us with such a constitution, our
self-confidence, energy, and trustfulness will return. Progress will be
the fundamental principle of our lives, and out of our united efforts to
advance it will grow a firm, indissoluble union. Now, then, Germans! Be
resolved, all of you, to attain the same goal, and your will shall be a
storm-wind scattering like chaff whatever is old and rotten. In your
struggle for a free country, you will have as allies the army of mighty
minds that have suffered for right and liberty in the past. Now you are
split up into tribes and clans, held together only by the bond of
language and a classic literature. You will grow into a great nation, if
but all brother-tribes will join us. Then Germany, strongly secure in
the heart of Europe, will be able to put an end to the quailing before
attacks from the East or the West, and cry a halt to war. The empire,
some one has said, means peace. Verily, with Prussia at its head, the
German empire means peace."
Such utterances are characteristic of Zunz, the politician. His best
energies and efforts, however, were devoted to his researches. Science,
he believed, would bring about amelioration of political conditions;
science, he hoped, would preserve Judaism from the storms and calamities
of his generation, for the fulfilment of its historical mission.
Possessed by this idea, he wrote _Die Gottesdienstlichen Vortraege der
Juden_ ("Jewish Homiletics," 1832), the basis of the future science of
Judaism, the first clearing in the primeval forest of rabbinical
writings, through which the pioneer led his followers with steady step
and hand, as though walking on well trodden ground. Heinrich Heine, who
appreciated Zunz at his full worth, justly reckoned this book "among the
noteworthy productions of the higher criticism," and another reviewer
with equal justice ranks it on a level with the great works of Boeckh,
Diez, Grimm, and others of that period, the golden age of philological
research in Germany.
Like almost all that Zunz wrote, _Die Gottesdienstlichen Vortraege der
Juden_ was the result of a polemic need. By nature Zunz was a
controversialist. Like a sentinel upon the battlements, he kept a sharp
lookout upon the land. Let the Jews be threatened with injustice by
ruler, statesman, or scholar, and straightway he attacked the enemy with
the weapons of satire and science. One can fancy that the cabinet order
prohibiting German sermons in the synagogue, and so stifling the
ambition of his youth, awakened the resolve to trace the development of
the sermon among Jews, and show that thousands of years ago the
well-spring of religious instruction bubbled up in Judah's halls of
prayer, and has never since failed, its wealth of waters overflowing
into the popular Midrash, the repository of little known, unappreciated
treasures of knowledge and experience, accumulated in the course of many
centuries.
In the preface to this book, Zunz, the democrat, says that for his
brethren in faith he demands of the European powers, "not rights and
liberties, but right and liberty. Deep shame should mantle the cheek of
him who, by means of a patent of nobility conferred by favoritism, is
willing to rise above his _co-religionists_, while the law of the land
brands him by assigning him a place among the lowest of his
_co-citizens_. Only in the rights common to all citizens can we find
satisfaction; only in unquestioned equality, the end of our pain.
Liberty unshackling the hand to fetter the tongue; tolerance delighting
not in our progress, but in our decay; citizenship promising protection
without honor, imposing burdens without holding out prospects of
advancement; they all, in my opinion, are lacking in love and justice,
and such baneful elements in the body politic must needs engender
pestiferous diseases, affecting the whole and its every part."
Zunz sees a connection between the civil disabilities of the Jews and
their neglect of Jewish science and literature. Untrammelled,
instructive speech he accounts the surest weapon. Hence the homilies of
the Jews appear to him to be worthy, and to stand in need, of
historical investigation, and the results of his research into their
origin, development, and uses, from the time of Ezra to the present day,
are laid down in this epoch-making work.
The law forbidding the bearing of German names by Jews provoked Zunz's
famous and influential little book, "The Names of the Jews," like most
of his later writings polemic in origin, in which respect they remind
one of Lessing's works.
In the ardor of youth Zunz had borne the banner of reform; in middle age
he became convinced that the young generation of iconoclasts had rushed
far beyond the ideal goal of the reform movement cherished in his
visions. As he had upheld the age and sacred uses of the German sermon
against the assaults of the orthodox; so for the benefit and instruction
of radical reformers, he expounded the value and importance of the
Hebrew liturgy in profound works, which appeared during a period of ten
years, crystallizing the results of a half-century's severe application.
They rounded off the symmetry of his spiritual activity. For, when
Midrashic inspiration ceased to flow, the _piut_--synagogue
poetry--established itself, and the transformation from the one into the
other was the active principle of neo-Hebraic literature for more than a
thousand years. Zunz's vivifying sympathies knit the old and the new
into a wondrously firm historical thread. Nowhere have the harmony and
continuity of Jewish literary development found such adequate expression
as in his _Synagogale Poesie des Mittelalters_ ("Synagogue Poetry of
the Middle Ages," 1855), _Ritus des synagogalen Gottesdienstes_ ("The
Ritual of the Synagogue," 1859), and _Litteraturgeschichte der
synagogalen Poesie_ ("History of Synagogue Poetry," 1864), the capstone
of his literary endeavors.
In his opinion, the only safeguard against error lies in the pursuit of
science, not, indeed, dryasdust science, but science in close touch with
the exuberance of life regulated by high-minded principles, and
transfigured by ideal hopes. Sermons and prayers in harmonious relation,
he believed,[94] will "enable some future generation to enjoy the fruits
of a progressive, rational policy, and it is meet that science and
poetry should be permeated with ideas serving the furtherance of such
policy. Education is charged with the task of moulding enlightened minds
to think the thoughts that prepare for right-doing, and warm,
enthusiastic hearts to execute commendable deeds. For, after all is said
and done, the well-being of the community can only grow out of the
intelligence and the moral life of each member. Every individual that
strives to apprehend the harmony of human and divine elements attains to
membership in the divine covenant. The divine is the aim of all our
thoughts, actions, sentiments, and hopes. It invests our lives with
dignity, and supplies a moral basis for our relations to one another.
Well, then, let us hope for redemption--for the universal recognition of
a form of government under which the rights of man are respected. Then
free citizens will welcome Jews as brethren, and Israel's prayers will
be offered up by mankind."
These are samples of the thoughts underlying Zunz's great works, as well
as his numerous smaller, though not less important, productions:
biographical and critical essays, legal opinions, sketches in the
history of literature, reviews, scientific inquiries, polemical and
literary fragments, collected in his work _Zur Geschichte und
Litteratur_ ("Contributions to History and Literature," 1873), and in
three volumes of collected writings. Since the publication of his
"History of Synagogue Poetry," Zunz wrote only on rare occasions. His
last work but one was _Deutsche Briefe_ (1872) on German language and
German intellect, and his last, an incisive and liberal contribution to
Bible criticism (_Studie zur Bibelkritik_, 1874), published in the
_Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlaendischen Gesellschaft_ in Leipsic.
From that time on, when the death of his beloved wife, Adelheid Zunz, a
most faithful helpmate, friend, counsellor, and support, occurred, he
was silent.
Zunz had passed his seventieth year when his "History of Synagogue
Poetry" appeared. He could permit himself to indulge in well-earned
rest, and from the vantage-ground of age inspect the bustling activity
of a new generation of friends and disciples on the once neglected field
of Jewish science.
Often as the cause of religion and civil liberty received a check at
one place or another, during those long years when he stood aside from
the turmoil of life, a mere looker-on, he did not despair; he continued
to hope undaunted. Under his picture he wrote sententiously: "Thought is
strong enough to vanquish arrogance and injustice without recourse to
arrogance and injustice."
Zunz's life and work are of incalculable importance to the present age
and to future generations. With eagle vision he surveyed the whole
domain of Jewish learning, and traced the lines of its development.
Constructive as well as critical, he raised widely scattered fragments
to the rank of a literature which may well claim a place beside the
literatures of the nations. Endowed with rare strength of character, he
remained unflinchingly loyal to his ancestral faith, "the exalted hobby
of his soul"--a model for three generations. Jewish literature owes to
him a scientific style. He wrote epigrammatic, incisive, perspicuous
German, stimulating and suggestive, such as Lessing used. The reform
movement he supported as a legitimate development of Judaism on
historical lines. On the other hand, he fostered loyalty to Judaism by
lucidly presenting to young Israel the value of his faith, his
intellectual heritage, and his treasures of poetry. Zunz, then, is the
originator of a momentous phase in our development, producing among its
adherents as among outsiders a complete revolution in the appreciation
of Judaism, its religious and intellectual aspects. Together with
self-knowledge he taught his brethren self-respect. He was, in short, a
clear thinker and acute critic; a German, deeply attached to his beloved
country, and fully convinced of the supremacy of German mind; at the
same time, an ardent believer in Judaism, imbued with some of the spirit
of the prophets, somewhat of the strength of Jewish heroes and martyrs,
who sacrificed life for their conviction, and with dying lips made the
ancient confession: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is
one!"
His name is an abiding possession for our nation; it will not perish
from our memory. "Good night, my prince! O that angel choirs might lull
thy slumbers!"
HEINRICH HEINE AND JUDAISM
I
No modern poet has aroused so much discussion as Heinrich Heine. His
works are known everywhere, and quotations from them--gorgeous
butterflies, stinging gnats, buzzing bees--whizz and whirr through the
air of our century. They are the _vade mecum_ of modern life in all its
moods and variations.
This high regard is a recent development. Within the last thirty years a
complete change has taken place in public opinion. Soon after the poet's
death, he was entirely neglected. The _Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung_,
whose columns had for decades been enriched with his contributions, took
three months to get up a little obituary notice. Then followed a period
of acrimonious detraction; at last, cordial appreciation has come.
The conviction has been growing that in Heine the German nation must
revere its greatest lyric poet since Goethe, and as time removes him
from us, the baser elements of his character recede into the background,
his personality is lost sight of, and his poetry becomes the paramount
consideration.
What is the attitude of Judaism? Does it acknowledge Heine as its son?
Is it disposed to accept _cum beneficio inventarii_ the inheritance he
has bequeathed to it? To answer these questions we must review Heine's
life, his relations to Judaism, his opinions on Jewish subjects, and the
qualities which prove him heir to the peculiarities of the Jewish race.
Heine's family was Jewish. On the paternal side it can be traced to
Meyer Samson Popert and Fromet Heckscher of Altona; on the maternal side
further back, to Isaac van Geldern, who emigrated in about 1700 from
Holland to the duchy of Juelich-Berg. He and his son Lazarus van Geldern
were people of importance at Duesseldorf, and his other sons, Simon and
Gottschalk, were known and respected beyond the confines of their city.
Simon van Geldern was the author of "The Israelites on Mount Horeb," a
didactic poem in English, and on his trip to the East he kept a Hebrew
journal, which can still be seen. His younger brother Gottschalk was a
distinguished physician, and occupied a position of high dignity in the
Jewish congregations in the duchies of Juelich and Berg. It is said that
he provided for the welfare of his brethren in faith "as a father
provides for his children." His only daughter Betty (Peierche) van
Geldern, urged by her family and in obedience to the promptings of her
own heart, married Samson Heine, and became the mother of the poet.
Heine himself has written much about his family,[95] particularly about
his mother's brother. Of his paternal grandfather, he knew only what
his father had told him, that he was "a little Jew with a great beard."
On the whole, his education was strictly religious, but it was tainted
with the deplorable inconsistency so frequently found in Jewish homes.
Themselves heedless of religious ceremonies, parents exact from their
children punctilious observance of minute regulations. Samson Heine was
one of the Jews often met with in the beginning of this century who,
lacking true culture, caught up some of the encyclopaedist phrases with
which the atmosphere of the period was heavy. Heine describes his
father's extraordinary buoyancy: "Always azure serenity and fanfares of
good humor." The reproach is characteristic which he addressed to his
son, when the latter was charged with atheism: "Dear son! Your mother is
having you instructed in philosophy by Rector Schallmeier--that is her
affair. As for me, I have no love for philosophy; it is nothing but
superstition. I am a merchant, and need all my faculties for my
business. You may philosophize as much as you please, only, I beg of
you, don't tell any one what you think. It would harm my business, were
people to discover that my son does not believe in God. Particularly the
Jews would stop buying velvets from me, and they are honest folk, and
pay promptly. And they are right in clinging to religion. Being your
father, therefore older than you, I am more experienced, and you may
take my word for it, atheism is a great sin."
Two instances related by Joseph Neunzig, one of his playmates, show how
rigorously Harry was compelled to observe religious forms in his
paternal home. On a Saturday the children were out walking, when
suddenly a fire broke out. The fire extinguishers came clattering up to
the burning house, but as the flames were spreading rapidly, all
bystanders were ordered to range themselves in line with the firemen.
Harry refused point-blank to help: "I may not do it, and I will not,
because it is _Shabbes_ to-day." But another time, when it jumped with
his wishes, the eight year old boy managed to circumvent the Law. He was
playing with some of his schoolmates in front of a neighbor's house. Two
luscious bunches of grapes hung over the arbor almost down to the
ground. The children noticed them, and with longing in their eyes passed
on. Only Harry stood still before the grapes. Suddenly springing on the
arbor, he bit one grape after another from the bunch. "Red-head Harry!"
the children exclaimed horrified, "what are you doing?" "Nothing wrong,"
said the little rogue. "We are forbidden to pluck them with our hands,
but the law does not say anything about biting and eating." His
education was not equable and not methodical. Extremely indulgent
towards themselves, the parents were extremely severe in their treatment
of their children. So arose the contradictions in the poet's character.
He is one of those to whom childhood's religion is a bitter-sweet
remembrance unto the end of days. Jewish sympathies were his
inalienable heritage, and from this point of view his life must be
considered.
The poet's mother was of a different stamp from his father. Like most of
the Jews in the Rhenish provinces, his father hailed Napoleon, the first
legislator to establish equality between Jews and Christians, as a
savior. His mother, on the other hand, was a good German patriot and a
woman of culture, who exercised no inconsiderable influence upon the
heart and mind of her son. Heine calls her a disciple of Rousseau, and
his brother Maximilian tells us that Goethe was her favorite among
authors.