No one has characterized the Jews better than did Mohammed when he
called the Jews The People of the Book. In fact, nearly all that
the Jews have achieved during their existence as a people they have
achieved in the domain of literature. Even at the time when the Jews
lived in Palestine and were at the height of their power, their
achievements in the field of practical civilization were relatively
poor. When the Jews disappeared as a sovereign nation from among the
nations of the earth they did not leave behind them a highly developed
civilization as did ancient Rome, nor did they leave behind them a
highly developed science and art, as did the Greeks, but they did leave
a book that subsequently became _the_ book of humanity. The economic
structure of ancient Judea was primitive, and only the tribes living
on the borderland and communicating with the peoples across the border
succeeded in developing trade and commerce. The interior of Judea was
an agricultural country and its inhabitants pious and simple-minded
people without ambition to create values of civilization and without
pretence. Just as the economic structure of ancient Judea was primitive
and simple, so was the political fabric.
The ancient Jewish state never succeeded in entirely subduing the
individual and making him respect the supreme authority of the State.
The prophets repeatedly exhorted the people to abide by the law and to
respect the authority of the State. This would go to indicate that,
even in the best days ancient Judea has seen, individualism was supreme
and the authority of the State thus considerably weakened. We have
no record of the ancient Jews ever having built great roads, or ever
having been a great seafaring nation, or having done other things that
would testify to their creative genius in the field of civilization.
But, on the other hand, they have created great books and have always
been active in the field of literature, as have no other people on
earth. It may be that their literary genius and activity absorbed
all their energies, so that the literary values they created were
created at the expense of the creation of values of civilization.
From time immemorial to the present day, the Jews, first as a nation
and then as individuals, have been busily engaged in writing books,
and, besides the Bible--that became _the_ book of humanity and that
has influenced the mind of humanity more than any other book in world
literature--they have written a number of books at various times and
in various languages which had a striking effect on the human mind and
were instrumental in shaping and framing it.
The appearance of Philo of Alexandria puzzled and amazed the entire
ancient world. The Greeks themselves considered him a wonder and
expressed their admiration for him by saying that they did not know
whether Plato Philonized or Philo Platonized. How Philo's writings have
influenced the course of spiritual development in Europe and how they
contributed shape and form to the philosophy of Christianity is known
to everyone who is acquainted with the history of the European mind.
Christian authors have often asserted that part of the success of St.
Paul is to be ascribed to his literary genius, his striking style and
to the concise form of his literary expression. And how can we think
of Christianity without Philo and St. Paul, though the former did not
consciously contribute anything to the makeup of Christianity?
When, during the chaos following the disintegration of the Roman
Empire, the Jews disappeared from the arena of European literature, the
best Jewish minds were busy creating books and literary styles, which
remain unique to the present day. We refer to the Talmud and Midrash
or, to be more precise, to Halakhah and Hagadah. The day will come when
European scholarship will pay more attention to these two marvelous
books. A famous German scholar, Professor Strack, declared a few years
ago that "for the last four hundred years the European peoples have
studied the Bible and have worked very hard to understand it. Now,
since we are better acquainted with the Bible, we will have to take up
the study of the Talmud and the Midrash. Only then will we understand
Judaism." Whatever place the Talmud may hold in the history of law and
no matter how it is valued by great jurists, it is certainly unique in
its literary style. The Talmudic style may or may not be a beautiful
one, but it is certainly peculiar, striking and original to the core.
Literature is first of all style; what is true of the originality of
the Talmudic style is also true of the strikingly original style of the
Midrash.
At the time when the style of these two books was created the greatest
representative of European literature of that period, St. Augustine,
appeared and gave to Christian humanity the best book of its time,
the _Confessiones_. The _Confessiones_ is a striking book powerfully
written. Its style is both soft and forceful; because of that it became
one of the best books of the Church. Wherein, however, lies the secret
of that book? What made it a success? It is the attempt to imitate
the Bible, just as Nietzsche's _Zarathustra_ took up the style of the
Bible and became the best-known book of the nineteenth century. But how
does St. Augustine's _Confessiones_ compare with the Bible? In certain
places it is an artificial imitation of the Bible, pure and simple, or,
to be more accurate, a poor imitation of the Psalms; only very rarely
does Augustine reach the height of the true Biblical style. Because
St. Augustine succeeded in imitating the style of the book which we
created he became the literary master-mind of Europe of his time.
The entire literature of confessions from Augustine to Rousseau and
from Rousseau to Tolstoy has its inspiration in the Bible; as long as
humanity will produce poets who think in terms of eternity and who feel
at one with the cosmos they will have to fall back on the Bible, as did
Dante and Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe and Nietzsche.
Just as our national book, the Bible, became the inexhaustible source
of inspiration to the great representatives of world literature, just
so have many books written by Jews within the last five hundred years
influenced and affected the European mind. The books of Spinoza in
the seventeenth, of Mendelssohn in the eighteenth, of Heinrich Heine
and Karl Marx in the nineteenth and those of Bergson in the twentieth
century were all cornerstones in the realm of the literature of modern
times. Only recently has attention been called by the admirers of
Spinoza to the exquisite and truly artistic style of the lonely Jew
of Amsterdam. Mendelssohn was certainly not a first-rate philosopher,
but he is considered by his admirers and opponents alike a first-rate
writer and literary master-mind; next to Lessing he was the greatest
German stylist of his time.
The deep impression that Karl Marx made on his contemporaries we
understand less by reading his minor writings. As an economist of
genius he could appeal to a small community of scholars, but as a
literary man of rare qualities, as a powerful writer who wrote with
blood and venom, he succeeded in greatly infuriating his opponents and
enthusing his adherents.
Heine has been called by Nietzsche the wonder of world literature. The
conservative Germans, the Prussians especially, hate him thoroughly,
but they cannot help singing his "Lorelei" and "Die zwei Grenadiere"
when they feel truly German or truly patriotic. This Düsseldorf
Jew, who received a convent education and who, according to his own
testimony, did not master the German language before he was sixteen,
became _the_ lyrical poet of the German nation and discovered the tune
of the German soul.
Five decades after Heine's death there appears a Polish Jew in the
firmament of French literature who acquires for himself the name
of the _maître écrivain_. The French, with their great literary and
artistic traditions and with their own exquisite literary taste, are
not so hasty in bestowing upon one of their writers the honor of the
title of _maître écrivain_. But they lost no time in giving that honor
to the Polish Jew, Bergson. Educated Frenchmen agree that even if all
the philosophic teachings of Bergson should prove to be false or should
be refuted he would nevertheless remain a great figure in the gallery
of French literature. He may die as a philosopher, but he will remain
immortal as a litterateur.
We have mentioned only the principal great books written within the
last three hundred years, which have caused true revolutions in the
literary world and for which most other peoples have no match. If an
historian of literature were to study the subject of the influence of
the Jews on world literature, especially of modern times, he would have
to write not one, but five volumes, and even then he would not exhaust
the subject, not because of the multitude of the books the Jews have
written, but because of the creative values of these books and of the
influence exercised on their contemporaries. It is a remarkable fact
that the best piece of German literary eloquence was written by a Jew,
Ludwig Boerne, and every German schoolboy has to know his piece of
eloquence, "Denkrede ueber Jean Paul," by heart. Of Israel Zangwill the
English say that he comes nearest to Dickens. Hugo von Hoffmannsthal,
the offspring of a Galician Jew and a relative of the late Graf von
Aehrenthal, today holds such a unique position in German literature
that even the wildest anti-Semites do not dare to attack him. The
French Academy has recognized another German Jew, Ludwig Fulda, as
the best German metrician of his time. And there are such powerful
publicists as Maximilian Harden and Max Nordau, such men as Wasserman
and Schnitzler, who have contributed to the literary glory of the
Jewish people in recent times.
The Aryan peoples will seldom concede that the Jews are one of the most
capable literary peoples that have ever lived, but there are many signs
that would go to indicate that they are fully conscious of it. The
French never forget to mention the fact that the mothers of Rabelais
and Montaigne were Jewesses and there is a German folksong that begins
with the verse:
"Er hat wie Börne geschrieben
Er hat wie Heine gedichtet."
The humorous papers in Italy, when taking Luigi Luzzatti to task, are
always cartooning him as a little Jew buried in books, and it is a
current expression in Italy today that "he eats books like Luzzatti."
A Jew and a book are nearly synonymous. We were and we are to the
present day a bookish people. The book has been until now our greatest
glory. For thousands of years we have been dreamers and writers.
The book was our shield and our weapon and the only outlet for our
energies. Now it seems that a great and radical change is going to
take place in our lives. We may and will probably never abandon the
book altogether, but we are on the verge of becoming an active people,
instead of being solely a bookish people.