Fear is natural by night. Man in the day-time is beset by foes; but

while he can use his eyes, he has a sense of security. Something he can

effect towards self-protection. But in the dark he feels helpless.

Hence it is natural that the Hebrew poets of the Midrash (on Psalm 92)

have used as a theme Adam’s first experience of the dark. There was no

darkness on the first Friday after Creation. The primeval light, which

illumined the world from end to end, was not quenched, though Adam had

already sinned before night-fall of the day on which he was born. But

the Sabbath came with the Friday’s close, and the celestial rays shone

on through the hours that should have been obscure. When, however, the

Sabbath had passed, the heavenly light passed with it, and Adam, to his

consternation, was unable to see. Would not the wily serpent choose

this as a favorable moment for insidious onslaught? Then the light that

failed in nature was kindled in man’s intellect. Adam, by the friction

of two stones, cleverly made artificial light, and so could see again.

So runs one form of the Jewish legend. Another (I am summarizing both

from Prof. Louis Ginzberg’s _Legends of the Jews_, vol. i, pp. 86-89)

expresses the thought differently. The primeval light does not figure

in this version, but it is the normal sun that sinks before Adam’s gaze

on the Saturday night. Adam was filled with compunction. “Woe is me!”,

he exclaimed, “I have sinned, and because of me is the world darkened;

because of me it will again return to a condition of chaos.” So he

passed the long vigil of the dark in tears, and Eve wept with him. But

with the day he dried his eyes. For he saw the sun rise once more, and

realized that the alternations of day and night were part of the divine

order of nature.

In both these fancies Adam is much disturbed by his first experience

of the dark, a guilty conscience made a coward of him. But not all

Hebrew homilists rested in this attitude of fear. The author of the

eighth Psalm is above all the poet of the night in its more uplifting

aspects. He sees not the terror, but the illumination of the dark. The

poet contemplates the heavens at night; he does not mention the sun,

but “the moon and the stars” which God has ordained. “Unquestionably,

the star-lit sky, especially in the transparent clearness of an Eastern

atmosphere, is more suggestive of the vastness and variety and mystery

of the universe.” So writes Dr. Kirkpatrick on Psalm 8. 3, and he

refers to an eloquent passage in Whewell’s _Astronomy_, Book III,

Chapter 3. Certainly those who have beheld the heavens on an Oriental

night can conceive nothing more glorious than the spectacle, nor recall

aught more wonderful than the Psalmist’s description of it.

It was left to the theologian Blanco White to combine the two thoughts

of fear and illumination, expressed in the Midrash quoted above and in

Psalm 8, into an exquisite Sonnet. The author’s name is queer enough.

But though Joseph Blanco White (1775-1841) was born in Seville, he

was an Irishman by descent. When the family settled in Spain, they

translated the patronymic White into Blanco. On his coming to England,

the theologian simply retained both forms of the name. As the writer in

the _Dictionary of National Biography_ recalls, Blanco White applied

to himself the lines which occur in _Richard II_, Act i, scene 3.

Norfolk, doomed to exile in a foreign land, thus laments his fate:

The language I have learn’d these forty years,

My native English, now I must forgo;

And now my tongue’s use is to me no more

Than an unstringèd viol or a harp.

Strange that this passage, of which only a small part has been here

quoted, has never been turned into Hebrew, with a change in one single

word of the second line, by a Zionist. Yet more strange that Blanco

White, who thus deplored the fact that his paternal English was not his

native speech, has given us one of the greatest poems in the English

language!

Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew

Thee, from report divine, and heard thy name,

Did he not tremble for this lovely Frame,

This glorious canopy of Light and Blue?

Yet ’neath a curtain of translucent dew,

Bathed in the rays of the great setting Flame,

Hesperus with the Host of Heaven came,

And lo! Creation widened in Man’s view.

Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed

Within thy beams, O sun! or who could find,

Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed,

That to such countless Orbs thou mad’st us blind?

Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife?

If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?

It is indeed an exquisite thought. First we have Adam’s fears as night

falls. Then we have the reply, the antidote. The sun really conceals.

Day shows us indeed insect and plant, but not the vast system of worlds

which fill the heavens. It is night that brings to view the amazing

extent of the stars, and unfolds the universe which the day had hidden.

So death may reveal much that life conceals.

Coleridge pronounced this “the finest and most grandly conceived Sonnet

in our language.” The praise is not exaggerated. Yet it was written by

one whose native tongue was Spanish, and who, though his career was

extraordinary enough, never wrote another line in prose or verse that

has lived. Single-speech Hamilton is joined in the realm of immortality

by Single-Sonnet White. Written about a century ago, it lives and

will go on living. As the writer from whom I drew the allusion to

Shakespeare remarks: “Probably Blanco White will continue to be known

by this Sonnet, when his other works, in spite of the real interest of

his views, have been forgotten.”

Great as the Sonnet is, it fails, however, to express the full

significance of the eighth Psalm. The mazes and the wonders of the

starry heaven above, unfolded as the sun sets by night, raise the

question “What is man?” that he should be of account when compared to

these stupendous forces of nature. Yet, crowned with glory and honor,

man is master of these forces. “The splendour of God set above the

heavens is reflected in His image, man, whom He has crowned as His

representative to rule over the earth” (Briggs). Contrasted though the

glories be, the glory of man as creature is related to the glory of God

as Creator.

DISRAELI’S “ALROY”

Benjamin Disraeli was one of the most truthful authors of the

nineteenth century. To confuse his bombast with pose is to

misunderstand him. When, therefore, he said of _Alroy_ that it

expressed his “ideal ambition,” there is no reason to doubt his

sincerity. Mr. Monypenny, whose judgment cannot be trusted in general,

was right when he fully accepted Disraeli’s statement on this point.

Mr. Lucien Wolf had previously shown (in the splendid preface to his

centenary edition of _Vivian Grey_) that “from start to finish, Lord

Beaconsfield’s novels are so many echoes and glimpses of the Greater

Romance of his own life.” Would that Mr. Wolf would give us an equally

fine edition of _Alroy_.

For _Alroy_ is a novel that deserves to live, and probably will live.

From the first it has been better liked by the public than by the

professional critics. Soon after the book first appeared in 1833,

Disraeli wrote to his sister that he heard good reports as to the

popularity of _Alroy_, and with characteristic “conceit,” some may

term it, though to others it appears more like “insight,” he added:

“I hear no complaints of its style, _except from the critics_.” Mr.

Monypenny has repeated the same critical objections to the style. But

such objections have no real basis. _Alroy_ often falls into rhythms

and even into rhymes. Why is this a defect in a prose work? Dickens

frequently followed the same method, and in sundry impressive passages

his sentences scan faultlessly. Are prose and verse so absolutely

divided from one another? If Molière’s bourgeois gentleman found that

he had been speaking prose all his life without knowing it, so do we

sometimes speak verse without being conscious of the fact. Do we not

all “drop into poetry” on occasion, in our ordinary speech in moments

of elevation? Moreover, the Oriental writers had created a form in

which prose and verse merge; and Disraeli, treating an Eastern theme,

might easily have justified his choice of this very form, beloved first

of the medieval Arabs, and then adopted by Hebrew contemporaries.

Then, as to the character of Alroy himself, Disraeli’s latest

biographer says: “The real David Alroy appears to have been little

better than a vulgar impostor, but Disraeli has idealised him into a

figure worthy to be compared with Judas Maccabæus.” Mr. Monypenny

borrowed this judgment (without acknowledgment) from the Rev. Michael

Adler’s able article in the _Jewish Encyclopedia_. I cannot myself

assent to this verdict, though I appreciate the grounds on which it

was reached. The whole thing turns on the application of the term

“Pseudo-Messiah” to such characters. Why call them _false_? There would

be sufficient reason for applying the epithet if we had the clearest

evidence that they were conscious rogues, exploiting their people’s

faith, and using their hope as a ladder towards personal ambition.

We do not know enough of Alroy to assert this of him. Was Disraeli

himself an impostor because he thought of himself as another redeemer

of Israel? There is little doubt that Alroy is drawn from Disraeli

himself, just as the Miriam of the story is modelled on the author’s

own sister. It is bad psychology to dub men of the Alroy type as

impostors. Mr. Zangwill, in his _Dreamers of the Ghetto_--to my mind

his most wonderful book--refuses to explain Sabbatai Zevi in this easy

fashion. Graetz naturally so explained him, but it was precisely in

such matters that Graetz was an unsafe guide. Are we to judge Messianic

claims on the same principles as men judge political upheavals?

Treason never prospers, and for this reason:

That when it prospers no one calls it treason.

Is an enthusiastic believer in himself, as the instrument of a great

emancipation, “pseudo” because he fails? Such explanations explain

nothing.

Whatever be the truth as to the original Alroy--and I repeat that

the historical sources give us inadequate information as to his

inner personality--there is no room for doubting the character of

Disraeli’s fictitious hero. Alroy is a thoroughly sincere portraiture.

Mr. Monypenny thought that the story “never really grips us.” It

depends on who the “us” are. A good many readers find George Eliot’s

_Daniel Deronda_ uninteresting. Yet _Daniel Deronda_ in Hebrew had a

considerable success. Despite its queer mixture of ill-digested lore

and of genuine material derived from what Disraeli termed the “erratic”

Talmud, _Alroy_ has a good deal of Jewish spirit in it. In the many

references to the poetical elements of Jewish life, the sentiment rings

true. This fact works backward. Whence did the novelist derive this

feeling for the beautiful in Judaism except from his father? Isaac

Disraeli presents himself to us as a rather unsympathetic student of

Judaism. In his books he shows knowledge, but no feeling for the

synagogue. It almost seems as though we do not see the real man in his

books, and yet, after all, it may be doubted whether Benjamin inherited

his Jewish idealism from his father. The latter did not at all approve

of his son’s Eastern journey. But Benjamin was consumed with the

desire to visit Jerusalem, and he realized this passionate longing in

1830-1. In later life he said that he had begun _Alroy_ before he left

England. In the preface to _Alroy_ he writes: “Being at Jerusalem in

the year 1831, and visiting the traditionary tombs of the Kings of

Israel, my thoughts recurred to a personage whose marvellous career

had, even in boyhood, attracted my attention, as one fraught with the

richest materials of poetic fiction. And I then commenced these pages

that should commemorate the name of ‘Alroy.’” I do not think that this

statement contradicts his later assertion. When he says: “I _then_

commenced,” he may well be referring to his “boyhood.”

Disraeli thoroughly enjoyed his stay in the Holy Land. He refused to

admit that Athens was more impressive than Jerusalem. “I will not place

this spectacle,” he exclaims of the site of the ancient temple, “below

the city of Minerva.” Perhaps the most arresting detail in _Alroy_ is

the thirty-fifth note--the notes to the book, after the manner of Sir

Walter Scott, are full of curious learning. He discusses the origin

of coffee, the habits of the marten-cat, the art and furniture of the

Orient, the sunset songs of Eastern maidens, the “Daughter of the

Voice,” the Persian hurling of the jerreeds (javelins) into the air,

the practice of the bastinado, the “golden wine” of Mount Lebanon, the

alleged playing of chess before the date of the Trojan War, screens

and fans made of the feathers of the roc, and the “tremulous aigrettes

of brilliants” worn by persons of the highest rank. In all these

directions Disraeli’s learning and fancy run riot, and the result,

sometimes as grotesque as a nightmare, is often successful in producing

the required effect. But this thirty-fifth entry strikes a more

personal note. Let us read it in his own words, remembering, however,

that the Mosque of Omar was certainly in existence in Alroy’s day: “The

finest view of Jerusalem is from the Mount of Olives. It is little

altered since the period when David Alroy is supposed to have gazed

upon it; but it is enriched by the splendid Mosque of Omar, built by

the Moslem conquerors on the supposed site of the Temple, and which,

with its gardens, and arcades, and courts, and fountains, may fairly be

described as the most imposing of Moslem fanes. _I endeavored to enter

it at the hazard of my life._ I was detected and surrounded by a crowd

of turbaned fanatics, and escaped with difficulty; but I saw enough to

feel that minute inspection would not belie the general character I

formed from it from the Mount of Olives. I caught a glorious glimpse of

splendid courts, and light airy gates of Saracenic triumph, flights of

noble steps, long arcades, and interior gardens, where silver fountains

spouted their tall streams amid the taller cypresses.”

Here we, too, have a “glorious glimpse” into one-half of the real

Disraeli--here and in _Tancred_; for the other half we must study his

political novels. _Vivian Grey_, so Disraeli himself said, expressed

his “practical,” as _Alroy_ expressed his “ideal,” ambition. And one

final word. I have said nothing of the plot of _Alroy_. I assume it to

be familiar to my readers. If it be not, they can easily make good the

omission. I have no fear that this story of a twelfth century--shall

I call him “hero” or “impostor”?--will fail to grip. For it is more

than a story, it is--to use that over-worked phrase--also a “human

document.”

ROBERT GRANT’S “SACRED POEMS”

When Gibbon wrote the famous fiftieth chapter of the _Decline and

Fall_, he was suspected of being a Mohammedan, because he dealt

leniently with the Arab religion. Edwin Arnold was half believed to be

a Buddhist, because his _Light of Asia_ idealized the saint of India.

But Robert Grant was never called a Jew, despite the fact that he was

the champion of Jewish rights in Parliament. Grant was too genuine a

Christian for anyone to doubt his orthodoxy. The same man who brought

in the 1830 Bill to remove Jewish political disabilities was the author

of some of the most popular hymns of the Church.

Yet, as though to show the Hebrew spirit of this non-Hebraic friend

of the Hebrews, the best of his poems were written on Hebrew themes.

Sir Robert Grant died in India in 1838; he had gone out as governor of

Bombay. In the following year, his brother, Lord Glenelg, published

Grant’s _Sacred Poems_. It was a small book, containing in all only a

dozen items. But it had a great vogue, and some of the poems found a

place “in almost every collection of devotional verse,” as the children

of the author proudly claim in the preface to the 1868 edition. Grant

would have been especially gratified, one may feel certain, had he been

able to anticipate that his translation of parts of Psalm 104 would be

adopted in such Jewish compilations as the Services for Children drawn

up for use in the New West End Synagogue, London.

A charming poem did Grant write on the text: “Whom have I in heaven but

Thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of Thee”

(Psalm 73. 25). Earth is beautiful with its “woods that wave,” its

“hills that tower,” and “Ocean rolling in his power”; human friendship

is a “gem transcending price,” while love is a “flower from Paradise,”

Yet, amidst this scene so fair,

Should I cease Thy smile to share,

What were all its joys to me?

Whom have I on earth but Thee?

And so with heaven, where “beyond our sight,” there “rolls a world of

purer light,” with its unclouded bliss, its union of severed hearts,

where “immortal music rings” from “unnumbered seraph strings.”

O! that world is passing fair;

Yet if Thou wert absent there,

What were all its joys to me?

Whom have I in heaven but Thee?

The poem might have closed there, perhaps a stronger writer would have

suppressed the thin stanza. But while it detracts from the virility of

the verses, it adds measurably to their tenderness.

Lord of earth and heaven! my breast

Seeks in Thee its only rest;

I was lost, Thy accents mild

Homeward lur’d Thy wandering child;

I was blind; Thy healing ray

Charm’d the long eclipse away;

Source of every joy I know,

Solace of my every woe,

O if once Thy smile divine

Ceas’d upon my soul to shine,

What were earth or heaven to me?

What have I in each but Thee?

Almost as good in idea, though not so perfect in form, is Grant’s set

of verses on Psalm 94. 12: “Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest.”

Enchanted with all that was dazzling and fair,

I followed the rainbow--I caught at the toy;

And still in displeasure Thy goodness was there,

Disappointing the hope, and defeating the joy.

The divine goodness is seen in man’s disappointments, when the

fulfilment of hope would have been loss, not gain.

On the whole, however, Grant is less successful when writing to a text

than when paraphrasing a context. His renderings of certain Psalms

are among the best attempts of the kind. This praise applies to his

version of Psalm 49; less unreservedly to his adaptation of Psalm

2. In rendering Psalm 71, Grant gave sentiment too loose a rein.

Addison had translated the opening verses of Psalm 19, beginning “The

spacious firmament on high.” Grant composed what he called “a sequel

or counterpart” to Addison’s hymn, corresponding to the latter portion

of Psalm 19 as Addison’s fragment corresponds to the earlier portion.

Grant’s supplement ends thus:

Almighty Lord! the sun shall fail,

The moon forget her nightly tale,

And deepest silence hush on high

The radiant chorus of the sky;

But, fixed for everlasting years,

Unmoved amid the wreck of spheres,

Thy word shall shine in cloudless day,

When heaven and earth have passed away.

This is fine, but Grant here hardly bears comparison with Addison: it

is the fate of sequels to prove inferior to their forerunners. There is

nothing in Grant’s version to equal Addison’s close, where the sun,

moon, and stars are

Forever singing as they shine,

“The hand that made us is divine.”

On the other hand, Grant falls very little below Milton in his

imitation of part of Psalm 84. I must find room to quote it in full.

How deep the joy, Almighty Lord,

Thy altars to the heart afford!

With envying eyes I see

The swallow fly to nestle there,

And find within the house of prayer

A bliss denied to me!

Compelled by day to roam for food

Where scorching suns or tempests rude

Their angry influence fling,

O, gladly in that sheltered nest

She smooths, at eve, her ruffled breast,

And folds her weary wing.

Thrice happy wand’rer! fain would I,

Like thee, from ruder climates fly,

That seat of rest to share;

Opprest with tumult, sick with wrongs,

How oft my fainting spirit longs

To lay its sorrows there!

Oh! ever on that holy ground

The cov’ring cherub Peace is found,

With brooding wings serene;

And Charity’s seraphic glow,

And gleams of glory that foreshow

A higher, brighter scene.

For even that refuge but bestows

A transient tho’ a sweet repose,

For one short hour allowed;--

Then upwards we shall take our flight

To hail a spring without a blight,

A heaven without a cloud!

Had Grant ever studied rabbinic commentaries? For this is the very use

made of the eighty-fourth Psalm in the Midrash. The earthly pilgrimage

leads to the heavenly Zion.

I have used for this poem space which some readers may have expected me

to reserve for the best of all of Grant’s renderings, that of portions

of Psalm 104. In this Grant not only does not fall below the greatest

of his predecessors--Henry Vaughan--but he transcends even that

master’s work. It is true that Vaughan renders the whole of this long

Psalm literally, whereas Grant merely paraphrases a few verses. But

none the less, Grant’s “O Worship the King” is a superb reproduction of

the Psalmist’s spirit. As not uncommonly happens with Grant, he falls

off towards the end, and his sixth verse is nowadays justly deleted

when the rendering is used liturgically. Nothing, however, could be

more exquisite than these stanzas:

The earth with its store

Of wonders untold,

Almighty! Thy power

Hath founded of old:

Hath ’stablished it fast

By a changeless decree,

And round it hath cast,

Like a mantle, the sea.

Thy bountiful care

What tongue can recite?

It breathes in the air,

It shines in the light;

It streams from the hills,

It descends to the plains,

And sweetly distils

In the dew and the rain.

One wonders at his versatility. He could draft a bill for parliament

deftly, and then indite such verses as those quoted. There is, indeed,

something akin to the Hebrew genius in the English. For David, too,

could govern, and in the intervals of ruling meditate the Psalms which

make so eternal an appeal. On Robert Grant, the advocate of Jewish

rights, there had, indeed, fallen a portion of the Davidic spirit.

GUTZKOW’S “URIEL ACOSTA”

Twice within my recollection there were hopes of the production

of _Uriel Acosta_ on the English stage. Soon after Sir Hall Caine

published the _Scapegoat_--that noblest of recent tales with a “Jewish”

plot--Sir Herbert Tree was present with the novelist at a Maccabean

banquet. On that occasion Sir Herbert, adopting a suggestion of my own,

announced that he had proposed to Mr. Zangwill the office of preparing

_Uriel Acosta_ for His Majesty’s Theatre. Nothing has come of it. Some

years before, that competent actor, Mr. A. Bandmann, was lessee of the

Lyceum for a time. He had often played the part of Uriel in Germany

with success, and he had an English version made. It was not performed,

but the plan was so far fruitful that Mr. H. Spicer’s adaptation was

published.

It is a workmanlike but undistinguished rendering. It introduces

mistakes for which Gutzkow is guiltless (such as the barbarism

_Sanhedrim_), and it omits points which make up Gutzkow’s merit.

Curious, for instance, is it that the English version should obscure

the line which so lingers in the mind of the reader of the original,

the line in fact most often quoted of everything that Gutzkow wrote.

I refer, of course, to the old Rabbi’s constant comment on Uriel’s

heresies. These, urged the Rabbi, are as old as old; it has all

happened before (“Alles ist schon einmal dagewesen”). It is a striking

variant on Solomon’s epigram, “there is nothing new under the sun”

(Ecclesiastes I. 9), and it drones through the recantation scene with

fine dramatic effect. Far superior to this English version is the

Hebrew rendering published by Salomo Rubin in 1856.

The actual facts about Uriel Acosta are soon told. His was an

arresting personality, but his importance has been much overrated.

Acosta would have been deservedly forgotten but for the similarity

between his career and that of another Amsterdam Jew of the same

period--Baruch Spinoza. Both came into conflict with the synagogue,

both were excommunicated. But there the resemblance ends. In Gutzkow’s

play, Uriel proclaims himself sufficient unto himself (“Mir selber

bin ich eine ganze Welt”). This is just what Spinoza was, just what

Uriel was not. Gutzkow represents Uriel as a youth at the time of

his suicide. But he was certainly over fifty, and more probably was

nearer sixty. He shot himself in 1647; and as it appears that he was

born in Oporto in 1590, he must have been fifty-seven at the moment of

his tragic end. Uriel (or Gabriel as he was then named) was the scion

of a Marano family, and in 1617 contrived to escape to Holland, where

he resumed Judaism. But he was no more contented with his ancestral

religion than he had been with the creed to which he had compulsorily

conformed. He advocated a purely deistic philosophy, was excommunicated

by the synagogue, recanted, again defied the authorities, was again

excommunicated, and finally underwent the degradation of a public

penance, after which he put an end to his troubled life. Uriel’s

misfortune was that, though, like Spinoza, he was unable to go with the

mass in its beliefs, yet unlike Spinoza, he was unable to stand alone.

Gutzkow was attracted to the subject by his own devotion to freedom.

In the stormy movements which culminated in the outbreaks of 1848,

Gutzkow was directly implicated. He was born in 1811, and, when barely

twenty, suffered imprisonment as a leader of the “Young Germany”

party. Besides, Gutzkow had many close Jewish friends, among them

Berthold Auerbach, who, perhaps, introduced Uriel Acosta to his

notice. When Gutzkow wrote his play on the subject, Europe was on the

eve of revolution. It is significant, in face of the anti-Semitism

which really originated on the failure of the Liberals, that Gutzkow

selected, in 1847, a Jewish _mis-en-scène_, in order to depict the

struggle between the old order and the new. And it is impossible to

refuse admiration to the insight and skill which enable the author,

while obviously sympathizing with the new, to treat the old with

justice and even with tenderness. The characters are all types.

Menasseh, father of Judith, is the fair-dealing merchant, accepting the

current religion of his people without enthusiasm for or against its

demands. Judith, the heroine, more or less betrothed to Jochai, the

villain of the piece, is vaguely susceptible to the newer ideas of her

tutor and lover Uriel. Jochai is a rather conventionally drawn rascal.

But the strength of the play is the contrast, on the one hand, between

Uriel and the Rabbis, and, on the other, between the various schools

of Rabbis among themselves. Da Silva has the tolerance of uncertainty

as to his own position, Akiba has the broad generosity which comes

from confidence in his old-world loyalty. The scenes between Uriel

and Silva, and between the former and Akiba would make a success on

any stage. “May you never repent of this repentance,” cries Da Silva

to Akiba when there is talk of Uriel’s recantation. There is strong

emotional interest in this recantation. Shall Uriel recant for Judith’s

sake? Hardly. But he cannot resist the appeal of his blind mother. “I

tremble before thy sightless eyes; shut thine eyes, mother! Yea, I will

do it.”

The close is tragic. Both Judith and Uriel perish at their own hands.

But the tragedy did not end there. Mention has been made of Da Silva.

If Uriel is the counterpart of the talmudic arch-heretic, Elisha ben

Abuyah, then is Da Silva the reincarnation of Elisha’s contemporary

Meir. Who has not wept over the heart friendship but mind estrangement

of these two men? Da Silva stands in the same relation to Uriel. He

hates the heresy, but loves the heretic. Uriel himself uses words which

sum up the situation. “Love or Truth? What if the heart be wiser than

the mind?” Spinoza (who was really fifteen years of age when Uriel

died) flits across the scene as a little boy, strewing flowers and

wondering why people wonder at his childish thoughts. Uriel bids him

“Keep thy soul’s secret and so find peace.” This is perhaps the most

tragic incident in the play, though the dramatist contrives to relieve

the tension by the simple beauty of the Spinoza interlude.

Still, however, the whole of the tragedy has not yet been told. For

Hermann Jellinek has not yet been named. Indeed, _three_ remarkable

Jellinek brothers now come on the scene. In 1847 two little works

appeared on Gutzkow’s _Uriel_. The one (_Elischa ben Abuya_) was

written by Adolf Jellinek, then the youthful preacher of Leipzig,

afterwards the famous pulpit orator of Vienna. The other was _Uriel

Acosta’s Leben und Lehre_, and its author was Hermann Jellinek (younger

than Adolf by a couple of years). The booklet was inscribed to a

third brother, Moritz. Now Hermann Jellinek was roused to a heated

indignation by Gutzkow’s “fictions” about Uriel. Uriel was no lovelorn

boy, but a middle-aged philosopher; he died not for loss of Judith, but

as a martyr to truth. Hermann Jellinek in so many words sees his own

prototype in Acosta; less than a year later he at all events shared

his hero’s tragic end; but under more dignified circumstances. What

the historical Uriel Acosta lacked, Hermann Jellinek possessed in over

measure--the quality of determination. Hermann was a revolutionary,

and took part in the Viennese rising of 1848, being twenty-six at the

time. He does not seem to have actually resisted the troops, but he was

court-martialled, and sentenced to death. His friends made every effort

to save him, but he was relentless. Nothing could move him to present

a conciliatory front to the authorities. In this at least he could be

no Uriel! Recant? No! “Shoot me,” he cried, “but ideas cannot be shot.”

They shot him, and his ideas may be found in two or three volumes, of

which dusty copies occur in a few libraries. I have some of them on my

table as I write. It is not easy to say which is the greater tragedy,

Acosta’s or Jellinek’s; but for the moment at least let Jellinek have

his way. For an hour we have resurrected, if not his ideas, at all

events his name.

GRACE AGUILAR’S “SPIRIT OF JUDAISM”

Known to the many for her novels, Grace Aguilar is known to the few

for her _Spirit of Judaism_. The book passed through a real adventure,

quite as exciting as the fictional fortunes of any of her romantic

heroes. Somewhat before 1840, Miss Aguilar wrote to Isaac Leeser,

of Philadelphia. She had, in 1839, read the Rabbi’s first published

sermons--his Bible was yet to come. She asked him “to undertake the

editorial supervision of her manuscript work on the _Spirit_ of our

religion.” Leeser courteously responded to the request. “I shall

readily be believed,” he wrote in 1842, “that I felt truly happy that

such a demand had been made upon me; and I accordingly offered my

services to do as I was desired.” Miss Aguilar completed the book,

but chance decreed that it was not to reach its goal. She sent it

out to America “through a private channel,” and it never came to

Leeser’s hands. Such a mishap did not thwart so ardent and industrious

a girl--she was not much over twenty at the time. She accordingly

proceeded to re-write it “from her original sketches,” made in 1837. On

the second occasion fortune was more kind, though the book encountered

some further delays before it appeared, in 1842, in America.

A second edition--much inferior from the point of view of “get-up”--was

published in 1849, again in Philadelphia. The second issue was No. xiii

of the _Jewish Miscellany_ of the original Jewish Publication Society.

The book was never printed in England. My own introduction to it was

curiously made. Being deeply interested in the new plans for teaching

Hebrew, I wrote (in 1903), a preface to a book on the Yellin method.

I showed the proof of my essay to the late Rev. S. Singer, whereupon

he remarked: “Grace Aguilar said much the same thing more than half

a century ago.” And so, indeed, she did. She saw that Hebrew must be

taught naturally, that the language must be made to “engage a child’s

fancy,” by first of all introducing to it familiar Hebrew words from

the child’s every-day life. Glad was I to find this anticipation of

modern opinion, and I cited it fully.

[Illustration: GRACE AGUILAR]

From that time I have, for other reasons, grown very fond of the

book--of which I possess the 1849 reprint. It is so delightfully

fresh and young, so confident and enthusiastic. Moreover, there

is something entertaining in Leeser’s conception of his editorial

function. Not that he could well help himself. He was almost compelled

to apply a wet blanket to her fire. She had expressly invited him to

confine himself to removing obscurities and appending the necessary

notes. “The chief point of difference between Miss Aguilar and myself,”

says Leeser, “are her seeming aversion to the _tradition_, and her

idea that the mere teaching of formal religion opens the door to the

admission of Christianity.” On the second point, Leeser’s answer is

effective. If, through unintelligent teaching, ceremonial religion

degenerates into a burden, then the outcome is more likely to be

disregard for the old than regard for a new faith. “Indifference is

a far greater enemy to us than conversion,” said Leeser in 1842, and

assuredly we can use identical words now. It is not so clear, however,

that Leeser was equally successful in meeting Miss Aguilar on the

problem of tradition. She was very emphatic in her desire to base

Judaism on the Bible, but she was only verbally, not spiritually, a

Karaite. She often uses the very language of tradition, and in one

place says: “The religion of no Hebrew is perfect, unless the form be

hallowed by the spirit, the spirit quickened by the form. The heart

must be wholly given to the Lord, yet still the instituted form must be

obeyed.” Miss Aguilar probably objected to the minutiae of pietism--in

the ritual sense--when she spoke of tradition; she had no philosophical

conception of it. Leeser could hardly be expected to set her right; he

was as little of a mystic as she was.

No doubt, however, she was to this extent an anti-traditionalist that

she thought the Bible in itself an all-sufficient basis for Judaism.

Her book is cast in the form of a commentary on the Shema--in fact,

it is called “Shema Israel, the Spirit of Judaism.” She begins by

expounding the unity of God; she shows that it is the real difference

between Synagogue and Church; and then ends her chapter with a

passionate plea for friendly intercourse between Jew and Christian on

the basis of frank and unashamed profession of Judaism by the former.

She was absolutely right. It is not merely the only honest, it is also

the only stable basis for such intercourse.

To Grace Aguilar, Moses was “the mouth of God” (that is her own

phrase). There is nothing between a theory of verbal inspiration and

the belief that Moses “invented” and “presumed on the ignorance and

superstition of the rescued nation.” With a feminine love of italics

she contends that “we _must_ believe God framed _every law_ mentioned

in the Mosaic books or _none_.” How crude this sounds! On the one hand,

it cuts off all thought of inspiration before Moses, on the other, all

thought of it after the close of the scriptural canon. It would have

seemed to her almost blasphemous to regard Hillel as animated with the

same spirit of God that moved Haggai. She dismisses the “Oral Law” in

an aside. “The Bible is the foundation of religion.” Miss Aguilar goes

on to complain that English Bibles were not found in Jewish homes.

But the explanation is easy. In those days it was impossible to find

an acceptable English Bible for Jewish use. The Authorized Version

was marred not only by Christological renderings, but also by the

Christological insertions of the headings to the chapters. Before the

publication of the Revised Version it had become possible to obtain an

Anglican edition without the headings. But I doubt whether that was

the case so early as 1842. Moreover, Jews have always been slow to

acknowledge that the _Hebrew_ Bible was insufficient. There was much

that is creditable in this reluctance to face facts; though there was

also much that was dangerous.

It is impossible to do justice in a brief article to the intense love

of Judaism shown in Miss Aguilar’s book. She pleads for the religion

with persuasive eloquence; it must appeal to the heart and the reason;

it must permeate the home; it must regulate life. She would have family

prayers daily. To this topic she returns over and over again. “The

youthful members of a little domestic congregation would look back with

warm emotion, in after years, to that period when, with their brothers

and sisters, they thronged around their parents to listen to the word

of God, and made known their common wants together.” But the thought

that dominates her whole book is the perfect truth and sufficiency of

Judaism. It only needs to be known to be preferred to every possible

alternative. No Jew can ever become lukewarm if he understands his

religion. But he must understand its spirit. “We know that they who

depart from the faith of their fathers are ever those reared in the

severest obedience to mere forms.” Whereupon Leeser in his note

comments: “This is certainly a sweeping clause though there is a great

deal of truth in it.” He adds that the fault “does not lie in the

_forms_, but in the absence of _spiritual_ education.” That is clearly

the reason why Miss Aguilar called her book “The Spirit of Judaism.”

She was no foe to forms as such. She strongly defends the dietary laws,

in the very chapter whence the last quotation was taken. _Obedience_

is the term writ large on every page; but so is _belief_. When Judaism

is believed in and obeyed, then will redemption be nigh, release from

captivity at hand, and the advent of the Messiah approaching. But how

movingly she says it in her own fiery words!

ISAAC LEESER’S BIBLE

The twenty years around the middle of the nineteenth century witnessed

the preparation of several Jewish translations of the Bible. Moses

Mendelssohn had shown the way in the previous century; he did not,

however, produce a _complete_ German Bible. This was done with success

by a body of scholars led by Zunz (Berlin, 1838). Ludwig Philippson,

in the very next year, began an enterprise the accomplishment of which

occupied him till 1856. His edition was not only annotated; it was also

adorned with illustrations. In 1875 the Philippson Bible came out anew

with the Doré pictures.

[Illustration: ISAAC LEESER

(From a Painting by Solomon Nunez de Carvalho)]

As for English versions by Jews, David Levi edited the Pentateuch

in 1787. But, to pass over certain publications of separate books,

no complete Bible appeared in England from a Jewish hand until the

issue of Benisch’s version (1851-56). This was a melancholy affair.

Real and original scholarship is shown in every page. He claimed for

his rendering “fidelity, uniformity and independence.” But he had no

sense for English style. He unnecessarily and grotesquely altered

the familiar words of the Authorized Version. Hence, one is bound to

speak of this monument of learning and earnestness as “melancholy”;

it might so easily have been acceptable. His corrections of the

Authorized were often necessary. Thus, in the Ten Commandments he

rightly put “Thou shalt not murder” for the current “Thou shalt not

kill.” The Revised Version made the same correction. So, too, he was

right when, for historical reasons, he made a change in Leviticus 23.

15. In the Authorized Version this runs: “And ye shall count unto

you from the morrow after the Sabbath.” But by the Jewish tradition

the Feast of Weeks is not counted from a Saturday but from the first

day of Passover--on whatever day that happens to fall. Hence Benisch

substituted: “And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after _the

day of rest_.” Naturally, too, he corrected certain dogmatic prejudices

of the Anglican Version.

Curiously enough, Isaac Leeser leaves “Thou shalt not kill”

uncorrected. But he was vigilant with “the morrow after the Sabbath,”

for which he substitutes “the morrow after the holy day.” On the other

hand, he retained the word “Sabbath” (where the Hebrew has _Shabbaton_)

applied to the first and eighth days of Tabernacle, _e. g._,

Leviticus 23. 39. This, however, he altered in his later editions to

_a rest_; Benisch has _strict rest_. The Revised Version has a similar

correction: _solemn rest_.

It is not my purpose to compare Leeser’s Version with others. From the

hour when his “Law of God” appeared in Philadelphia, in 1845, Leeser’s

Pentateuch won the affectionate regard of American Jews. The Pentateuch

was issued in octavo, in Hebrew and English; the whole of the Bible

came out in quarto, in English alone, towards the end of 1853. From

that time it has been often reprinted in varying forms, simply and

in editions _de luxe_. But it is not the printers who made the book

popular, though I must remark that, despite the small public support

the enterprise secured, the 1845 Leeser Pentateuch is a beautiful

specimen of the printer’s art. What made the book was the people’s

growing love for Leeser. Can higher praise be given, can a finer fate

be wished, than that a man’s book shall live in his brethren’s hearts

because of him?

This is not the time to criticise Leeser’s work. Like Benisch, he had

no feeling for English style. He could, in the twenty-third Psalm,

alter the wonderful melody of “He maketh me to lie down in green

pastures,” into “In pastures of tender grass he causeth me to lie

down.” He could take the haunting rhythm of Job’s “There the wicked

cease from troubling, there the weary are at rest,” and give us “and

where the exhausted weary are at rest,” which is no nearer the literal

Hebrew (“the wearied in strength”), and is incomparably farther from

its beauty. Or again, the felicitous opening lines of the nineteenth

Psalm, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth

his handiwork,” become in Leeser “The heavens relate the glory of

God; and the expanse telleth of the works of his hands.” It is this

more than anything else that made it impossible for English Jews to

use Leeser’s Bible. Revision of Leeser on scholarly grounds was also

necessary, no doubt. Thus, in his rendering of Esther 6. 8, where Haman

suggests the details of the pageant in behalf of the man whom the king

delighteth (why did Leeser substitute _desireth_?) to honor, Leeser

has: “Let them bring a royal apparel which the king hath worn, and a

horse on which the king hath ridden, and let there be placed a royal

crown on his head.” But, as Ibn Ezra had in part already pointed out

(as Leeser notes), and as we know to be almost certainly the case, the

crown was for the _horse’s_ head. In the Revised Version the passage

runs: “Let royal apparel be brought which the king useth to wear, and

the horse that the king rideth upon, and on the head of which a royal

crown is set.”

Naturally, in what precedes I have turned to familiar passages. My

comments only touch the fringe of the problem of Bible revision. In

one important particular, Leeser anticipated the Revised Version: he

arranged the English in paragraphs and not in verses. Since Leeser’s

day, however, not only have we learned more as to the precise meaning

of words, but we have won a closer insight into the idiomatic use

of the Hebrew tenses. The American revision, now issued under the

auspices of the American Jewish Publication Society, has given us at

once a scholarly translation, and one which remains true to the English

excellences of the version made in the reign of King James.

Leeser’s Bible, therefore, is more or less doomed, It cannot but

pass out of general use. But it can never pass out of our esteem and

affection. Leeser, though he indignantly repudiated sectarian bias, did

not translate the Bible as an exercise in scholarship. He belonged

to those who believed in the Bible. Quite naively he tells us in

his Preface (dated September 20, 1853) that he is “an Israelite in

faith, in the full sense of the word; he believes in the Scriptures

as they have been handed down to us; in the truth and authenticity of

prophecies and their ultimate literal fulfilment.” Nor did he think

that the age of miracles was past. He admitted that there were sources

of information which he had not consulted when preparing his Bible.

But he had done his best, and felt that he was therefore working with

a hand stronger than his own. “I thought, in all due humility, that I

might safely go to the task, confidently relying upon that superior

aid which is never withheld from the inquirer after truth.” What a

combination of sophistication and simplicity we have here! In the

mid-nineteenth century such a union of rationalism and faith was rare;

it is growing rarer every day. We shall soon be thinking of putting

Isaac Leeser’s memory in a museum of Jewish antiquities as a specimen

of a lost type.

LANDOR’S “ALFIERI AND SALOMON”

There is only one Jew in Landor’s long series of _Imaginary

Conversations_, and he was, most probably, an invention of the

author’s. “Salomon the Florentine Jew,” who discourses in Landor’s

pages with Count Vittorio Alfieri, never existed; at all events he is

not identifiable. There is no mention of such a person in Alfieri’s

autobiography; so Landor’s editor--Mr. C. G. Crump--is careful to point

out. Still, Landor (1775-1864) spent several years in Florence, and it

is possible that he heard of some Jewish worthy whom he used for the

purpose of his dialogue.

Landor treats his solitary Jewish character with courtesy. “You are

the only man in Florence with whom I would willingly exchange a

salutation,” says Alfieri at the opening of the conversation. Salomon

expresses himself as highly flattered. The actual dialogue is not one

of Landor’s best, unless it be for its recognition of the sterling

quality of the English middle-class. “It is among those who stand

between the peerage and the people that there exists a greater mass

of virtue and of wisdom than in the rest of Europe.” The historical

Alfieri found himself out of sympathy both with kings and with the

French Revolution which destroyed kingship. It was a happy touch of

Landor’s, therefore, to put into Alfieri’s mouth the praise of the

class which stood between royalty and the masses.

But _Alfieri and Salomon_ is hardly a successful work of art. It has

neither the romantic beauty of Landor’s _Aesop and Rhodope_, nor the

dramatic interest of his _Hannibal and Marcellus_. Naturally, however,

it has some good epigrams. “A poet can never be an atheist,” says

Landor’s Alfieri. He calls on God to confound the fools who always

eulogize the least praiseworthy of princes because, he complains, “the

rascals have ruined my physiognomy; I wear an habitual sneer upon my

face.” How many a genius has been made similarly disagreeable because

he could not suffer fools gladly! Very true again is Alfieri’s paradox

that the gravest people are the wittiest. “Few men have been graver

than Pascal, few have been wittier.” Had Landor’s Florentine Salomon

been a real Jew, he could have capped Alfieri’s citation of Pascal

by referring to many a Jewish instance, among them Abraham Ibn Ezra.

On the contrary, Salomon disputes the truth of Alfieri’s statement.

Landor is fond of national generalizations. “Not a single man of genius

hath ever appeared in the whole extent of Austria,” he makes Salomon

say; while Alfieri asserts that “the Spaniards have no palate, the

Italians no scent, the French no ear.” Fortunately it did not occur

to Landor to sum up the Jews in an epigram. He retained, however, the

eighteenth century tolerance, and might have been lenient. The only

thing he thoroughly detested was priest-craft, fanaticism. His Salomon

confesses that “theology is without attraction” for him, and the saying

came from Landor’s heart.

There is not much of the Jew in Salomon. He might have been any

cultured contemporary of Alfieri. At one point, however, he refuses to

hazard a word as to certain clerics, while Alfieri freely judges and

condemns them. “The people who would laugh with you, would stone me,”

says Salomon. Was this really true of the end of the eighteenth century

in Italy? I doubt it. Landor is no true guide to the opinions of his

age. To continue. Landor’s Salomon speaks of Florence as his native

city; he knows it and its extraordinary story in every detail; he

discusses its men of genius, though he admits: “My ignorance of Greek

forbids me to compare our Dante with Homer.” Salomon is through and

through Italian. Perhaps Landor meant to depict him as a Jew by putting

into his mouth a good anecdote:

A sailor found upon the shore a piece of amber; he carried it home,

and, as he was fond of fiddling, began to rub it across the strings of

his violin. It would not answer. He then broke some pieces off, boiled

them in blacking, and found to his surprise and disquiet that it gave

no fresh lustre to the shoe-leather. ‘What are you about?’ cried a

messmate. ‘Smell it, man; it is amber.’ ‘The devil take it,’ cried the

finder, ‘I fancied it was resin’; and he threw it into the sea. We

despise what we cannot use.

There is one touch in _Alfieri and Salomon_ which makes it look as

though the latter were a real personage. Salomon urges Alfieri to

ignore his detractors and inferiors, and to be assured that, though his

contemporaries might belittle him, posterity would be more appreciative.

_Salomon_: All the present race of them, all the creatures in the

world which excite your indignation, will lie in the grave, while

young and old are clapping their hands or beating their bosoms at your

_Bruto Primo_....

_Alfieri_: I believe, sir, you were the first in commending my

tragedies.

_Salomon_: He who first praises a good book becomingly is next in

merit to the author.

That sentence, “you were the first in commending my tragedies,” has a

genuine ring, it is life-like. Had Landor any real ground for believing

that a certain Florentine Jew named Salomon or Solomon was the first

to recognize Alfieri’s genius for tragedy? It is an interesting fact,

if it be a fact. Even so, it has its curious side. Alfieri (1749-1803)

was a prolific writer of plays, but the best of his tragedies--and

his tragedies as a whole were superior to his comedies--was not his

_Brutus_. It is queer that the Jew should forget which was the best. It

was certainly Alfieri’s _Saul_, published in October, 1784. It won more

success than any other of his dramas. His “severe and unadorned manner”

was peculiarly adapted to the rugged simplicity of the characters which

are presented in _Saul_. The drama deals with the last day of the king,

the scene being laid in the Israelite camp on mount Gilboa. There are

only six characters: Saul, Gionata (Jonathan), David, Micol, Abner,

Achimelech, with stage armies of “soldati israeliti” and “soldati

filistei.” Apart from the subtle contrasts between David the warrior

and David the minstrel, the finest thing in the play is the management

of Saul’s insanity. Indeed, it has been truly said of Alfieri: “In

the representation of that species of mental alienation, where the

judgment has perished but traces of character still remain, he is

peculiarly happy.”

Another poet who was in Florence with Landor also chose the subject

of Saul for one of his most dramatic efforts. I refer to Robert

Browning, who had intellectually much in common with Landor, though

his temperament and philosophy of life were quite other. Landor

ignored Alfieri’s _Saul_, Browning imitated it. Earlier, in 1820,

Joseph Ephrathi, no doubt instigated by Alfieri’s success, produced

a Hebrew drama with Saul as hero. Gutzkow later on wrote a tragedy

on the subject. Another who treated of the topic was Byron. He had

no likeness to Landor, but was not dissimilar to Alfieri; both were

aristocrats, both pretended to cynicism, both were versatile authors,

both squanderers of a great opportunity. It is strange that it was left

to Alfieri to detect the dramatic possibilities in the tragedy of Saul.

Handel’s exploitation of the theme was, naturally, musical rather than

dramatic. In the new freedom of the English stage we shall, no doubt,

soon have plays and to spare on the subject. Landor, as we have seen,

makes no use whatever of biblical personages for his dialogues. But

English poetry has not done ill with Saul’s memory. Sir Philip Sydney,

or one of his age, gave us as beautiful a rendering as we need wish of

David’s elegy over Saul and Jonathan. What could be more lovely than

Pleasant they were in life, and fair,

Nor yet did death their love divide.

or than

Ah! Jonathan, my brother! lorn

And friendless I must look to be!--

That heart whose woe thou oft hast borne

Is sore and stricken now for thee!

Young bridegroom’s love on bridal morn,

Oh! it was light to thine for me;

Thy timeless lot I now must plain,

Even on thine own high places slain!

How lowly now the mighty are,

How still the weapons of the war!

We have got rather far from Landor. Yet I cannot but think that the

best thought suggested by his _Alfieri and Salomon_ is just Alfieri’s

_Saul_, to which the parties to the “imaginary conversation” make no

allusion.

PART V

PART V

BROWNING’S “BEN KARSHOOK”

Two great literary forces, poets both yet both greater in what they

said than in how they said it, expressed their most intimate beliefs

on life and destiny under the guise of a Jewish personation. Nathan

the Wise, the hero of Lessing’s drama, was Lessing, just as Rabbi Ben

Ezra, the supposititious soliloquist of Browning’s poem, was Browning.

Lessing, it is certain, had a living model in Moses Mendelssohn. Nathan

was drawn from his friend. Had Browning any such model? Yes and no.

Many a writer since Furnivall has identified the hero of Browning’s

poem with Abraham Ibn Ezra. It is probable that the poet had him

vaguely in mind. When, however, it is sought--as several have done--to

work out the identity in detail, the effort fails. The poet clearly

meant to prevent any such error. For in _Holy-Cross Day_, he introduces

a Rabbi Ben Ezra as singing a “Song of Death” quite different in tone

from the poem in which Rabbi Ben Ezra unfolds his scheme of life.

Browning obviously meant us to infer that Ben Ezra was no one in

particular.

Browning’s Hebrew knowledge was probably good; like his wife he was

apparently able to read the Bible in the original. He also had dipped

into curious, out of the way books on Jewish lore. The Rev. Michael

Adler cleverly detected that he owed some of the astonishing Hebrew

words in his _Jocoseria_ to a little read edition of the Itinerary

of Benjamin of Tudela. Very bad Hebrew it is, but its author was not

Browning but Baratier (see _Jewish Chronicle_, April 25, 1890). On the

other hand, Dr. Joseph Jacobs records in the _Jewish Quarterly Review_

for April, 1890, an incident which shows that the poet was “shaky” in

his use of Hebrew names. One of Browning’s most important “Jewish”

poems was his _Johanan Hakkadosh_, Johanan the Holy. Dr. Jacobs tells

us that the author was about to call this worthy “Hakkadosh Johanan.”

But “through a common friend I pointed out the error to the poet, and

the adjective was put in its proper position.” Another misconception of

epithets will be noted below.

Similarly with the poem entitled _Ben Karshook’s Wisdom_. Who was

“Ben Karshook”? I doubt whether the writer could have told. In the

Tauchnitz copy of 1872, as well as in the English edition of 1889,

as Mrs. Sutherland Orr points out, the name is spelt “Karshish.” Ben

Karshook, seems a mere jumble of Ben Hyrkanos. But either way, there

was no Rabbi of the name. Elsewhere, Browning employs the name Karshish

to designate an Arabian physician. It was one of Browning’s foibles, to

quote Dr. Jacobs again, to give an impression of recondite learning.

Ben Karshook would seem to have been the poet’s first attempt at a

Jewish, as distinct from a biblical subject. _Holy-Cross Day_ was the

first to be published; it appeared in 1855. _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ came in

1864, _Filippo Baldinucci_ in 1876, _Johanan Hakkadosh_ (with other

Jewish poems) in 1883. This list is not a complete summary, but (if

one adds _Abt Vogler_) it includes the most important. _Ben Karshook’s

Wisdom_ was not published until a year later than _Holy-Cross Day_,

for it was printed in the _Keepsake_ for 1856. But it was written

on April 27, 1854 (according to the statement of Berdoe). Browning

himself omitted the poem, apparently by accident, from one of his own

volumes, where it is included in the table of contents but not in the

book. He never reprinted it. The result has been that it has often been

reproduced by others for that very reason; and now, though it has been

given a place in the Oxford Browning, let it be printed again!

I.

“Would a man ’scape the rod?”

Rabbi Ben Karshook saith,

“See that he turn to God

The Day before his death.”

“Ay, could a man inquire

When it shall come?” I say

The Rabbi’s eye shoots fire--

“Then let him turn to-day.”

II.

Quoth a young Sadducee:

“Reader of many rolls,

Is it so certain we

Have, as they tell us, souls?”

“Son, there is no reply!”

The Rabbi bit his beard:

“Certain, a soul have _I_--

_We_ may have none,” he sneered.

Thus Karshook, the Hiram’s-Hammer,

The Right-hand Temple-column,

Taught babes in grace their grammar,

And struck the simple, solemn.

The first part is an apt version of the saying of Rabbi Eliezer, son

of Hyrkanos: “Repent one day before thy death” (Pirke Abot 2. 15).

Whereon the Talmud (Shabbat 153a) records that Eliezer’s disciples

asked Browning’s very question, and received precisely the same

answer. The second group of stanzas introduces us to a young Sadducee

who has doubts as to the existence of the soul. The poet obviously

got his information from Mark, but was a trifle confused as to what

he read there. The Sadducees (Mark 12. 18) denied the resurrection,

and some have supposed their denial to have extended to the belief in

immortality. (See Dr. Kohler’s remarks in the _Jewish Encyclopedia_,

vol. x, p. 631, top of second column.) To Browning this may have seemed

equivalent to questioning the existence of the soul. Assuredly, granted

that there be a soul at all, it must be immortal.

What is the point of calling Karshook “Hiram’s Hammer?” Browning is

probably drawing on Josephus. Hiram, who helped in building the temple,

also interchanged difficult problems with Solomon. (_Antiquities_,

viii, 5. 3). Hence, Browning uses the name in relation to these

puzzles, so wisely answered in the poem. It was also Hiram--not

identical with the king of Tyre--who constructed the two temple

columns Jachin and Boaz. Or, as Dr. Halper has cleverly suggested, the

poet may have had in his mind a confused reminiscence of the Rabbinic

praise of Johanan ben Zaccai, who (in Berakot 28 b.) is described as

_Right-hand Temple-column, Strong Hammer_. Browning possibly mixed

up the Hebrew _hazak_ (strong) with _hiram_, and so transformed the

epithet into “Hiram’s Hammer.” If these and similar reminiscences were

passing through Browning’s mind, they might well result in the verse

which terminates with the brilliant phrase “struck the simple, solemn.”

It needs rare wisdom to make a fool think--or even better, make him

silent.

Dr. Jacobs well summed up our indebtedness to Browning when he said

that “it is not in the minutiae of Hebrew scholarship that we are to

look for Browning’s sympathy with the Jewish spirit,” so markedly shown

in his writings. Mr. Stopford Brooke (_The Poetry of Robert Browning_,

1902, pp. 33-4) puts the case strongly but truly when he declares that

“no English poet, save perhaps Shakespeare, whose exquisite sympathy

could not leave even Shylock unpitied, had spoken of the Jew with

compassion, knowledge and admiration, till Browning wrote of him. The

Jew lay deep in Browning.” The writer of those sentences no doubt

would not call Richard Cumberland a poet; his plays were friendly

enough to the Jew. But Browning’s understanding was more profound than

Cumberland’s. It is a mistake to say, as a recent critic has said, that

“Browning would have us see that the purest religion is of any creed or

none.” That was perhaps Lessing’s view. Browning seems to go further.

He saw in Judaism certain elements of absolute truth; therefore he

presented those elements through Jewish characters.

K. E. FRANZOS’ “JEWS OF BARNOW”

George MacDonald was a novelist of distinction. When an English

translation of _Ein Kampf ums Recht_ appeared (under the title _For

the Right_), MacDonald wrote an introduction. “Not having been asked

to do so, I write this preface from admiration of the book.” It was a

significant fact, he continued, that the generation had produced a man

capable of such an ideal as the book represented. It was a work which

substituted for the “half wisdom” of the cry “art for art’s sake” the

whole wisdom of the cry “art for truth’s sake.” And MacDonald concluded

as he began: “I have seldom, if ever, read a work of fiction that

moved me with so much admiration.” Mr. Gladstone, too, was among the

enthusiastic eulogists of the novel.

Its author was Karl Emil Franzos, to whom we owe, besides that

masterpiece of his genius, _For the Right_ (1887), also the less

mature work of his earlier years, _The Jews of Barnow_ (1877). He

will always be remembered for a saying of his which appeared in his

first-published book, a narrative of travel-sketches, _Aus Halb-Asien_

(1876): _Jedes Land hat die Juden die es verdient_ (“Every country has

the Jew that it deserves”). Macaulay said much the same thing, but less

epigrammatically, nearly half a century earlier. It is not a completely

satisfactory generalization, but it is an effective counter to the

cruel theory that every Jew gets the country he deserves. “It is not

the fault of the Polish Jews that they are less civilized than their

brethren in the faith in England, Germany, and France.” Writing this

sentence forty years ago, Franzos used the word “civilized” in a narrow

sense. All that it really amounted to was that the conventions of

Barnow were not those of Berlin. Franzos makes quite a grim problem out

of the Barnow Jewess’s revolt against the _Scheitel_, without seeing

that in point of fact the revolt was only one, and an early, phase of

the new feminist movement which was to spread all over the world.

What were Franzos’ qualifications for becoming the historian of a

Podolian ghetto? He lived out his boyhood there; and he never lost the

Jewish sympathies generated by his early experiences. Years afterwards,

when he was at the summit of his renown, the most famous Jewish

littérateur of his age, he associated himself heartily at Berlin with

the work being done for Israel in Russia. The Barnow of his tales was

the Czortkow of his youth. Whether he, therefore, presented a true

picture is not so certain. He himself was convinced that, though he

strove to give poetic value to the scenes, he none the less depicted

the scenes accurately. “I have never permitted my love of the beautiful

to lead me into the sin of falsifying the facts and conditions of life,

and am confident that I have described this strange and outlandish mode

of existence precisely as it appeared to me.” Franzos’ claim that he

drew a sincere picture cannot be disputed, but a sincere picture is not

necessarily an accurate one. Things may not “appear” to one truly. How

stands it with Franzos?

The Barnow of the tale is a gloomy little town, and the houses of its

ghetto small and dirty. Yet it boasts the great white mansion of its

millionaire; it has its real spring days when the air is deliciously

soft and warm. And it knows how to keep the Sabbath, how to welcome the

bride with an emotion which stirs its spirit to the very depths. But

all the passion is expended on the adoration of the Divinity. “The same

race whose genius gave birth to the Song of Songs--the eternal hymn of

love--and to whom the world owes the story of Ruth, the most beautiful

idyl of womanhood ever known--has now, after a thousand years of the

night of oppression and wandering, learned to look on marriage as a

mere matter of business, by which to secure some pecuniary advantage,

and as a means of preventing the chosen of the Lord from dying off the

face of the earth.” The author grows more and more indignant as he

writes: “These men know not what they do--they have no suspicion of the

sin of which they are guilty in thus acting.”

This, for Franzos, was the tragedy of Barnow. It is the theme of

several of his tales. Sometimes it is the boy, sometimes the girl, who

rides a-tilt against the paternal choice of a mate. The father selects

for his son or daughter the most pious and wealthy partner available.

They will not know each other, but what of that? They will have plenty

of time to make acquaintance after marriage. One Barnow father thus

defends the system: “We don’t look upon the chicken as wiser than

the hen. And, thank God, we know nothing of love and all that kind

of nonsense. We consider that two things are alone requisite when

arranging a marriage, and these are health and wealth. The bride and

bridegroom in this case possess both.” Franzos obviously regards this

justification as one of the “outlandish” features of Barnow’s manners.

But were he alive to-day, he would recognize that Moses Freudenthal,

the Barnow father who thus argues, was anticipating the latest formula

of Eugenics! The novelist, however, remorselessly sees only the tragedy

and not the amenities of the system. From the side of the man, in the

story _Nameless Graves_, Franzos put it thus: “As a general rule, the

long-haired Jewish youth never even thinks of any girl until his father

tells him that he has chosen a wife for him. He sometimes sees his

bride for the first time at betrothal, but in a great many cases he

does not see her until his marriage-day; and then, whether she pleases

him or not, he makes up his mind to get used to her, and generally

succeeds.” But the Barnow young men turn and look at Lea as she walks

down the street--“a thing hitherto unknown.” Even in the _Klaus_, when

“quiet, dreamy, and very dirty Talmudists bent over their heavy folios,

her name was sometimes mentioned, followed by many a deep sigh.” A

revolution in male manners, undoubtedly.

On the other side, things are even worse in Barnow. If the men actually

think of choosing for themselves, the women go and do likewise.

And with fatal results. Half educated, feasting on surreptitious

and precocious courses of the works of Paul de Kock, fascinated by

Christian lovers, the girls of Barnow go through agitating experiences,

sometimes heading for the rocks, always wrecking the harmony of the

home. Esther and Chane differ only in externals; the one openly defies

Mrs. Grundy, the other, in appearance only, obeys her. But both are

led by passion to kick over the traces; both are treated by Franzos

as victims of the loveless marriage system. Esterka Regina makes

renunciation, but her last act was to write to the lover--a Jew this

time--whom she had renounced, practically to confess to him that her

marriage had been a failure. She had chosen the course mapped out by

her parents, not from motives of obedience, but because her ignorant

bringing-up had unfitted her for the position she would have had to

occupy had she followed the dictates of her heart.

I have hinted above my doubts whether Franzos drew for us a correct

picture of Barnow conditions. Amid all the realistic touches, here and

there one comes across evidence of defective vision. He painted Barnow

as he saw it, but he did not see it as it was. His father was district

physician, a real friend of his fellow-Jews, but not living their

life. The son saw Galician Jewish life from an aloof point of view. It

is significant that in one of his tales he confuses the Friday eve with

the Saturday night prayers. It is a slip with no serious consequences,

but it does reveal the limitations of Franzos’ knowledge. None of his

tragic heroines strikes so convincing a note as does, for instance,

Bernstein’s graciously pathetic Voegele. Bernstein ceased to be a Jew,

while Franzos remained faithful. Spiritual fidelity, however, does not

necessarily carry with it realistic artistry.

HERZBERG’S “FAMILY PAPERS”

Wilhelm Herzberg was a victim to the world’s sensitiveness. And a

queer sensitiveness it is! You may abuse a man as much as you like,

and as unfairly as you like, while he is alive. But you must not speak

harsh, even if they be true, things of him when he is recently dead.

_De mortuis nil nisi bonum!_ After a decent interval, criticism may

resume operations. But for the hour you may only say soft things of the

departed.

Far be from me to deny that there is an amiable and humane side to

this convention. For my part, I prefer to moderate my judgments while

the man is still alive. I do not admire over much those who bespatter

another with abuse in his lifetime, and with flattery in the moment of

his death. But the world thinks differently. Herzberg sinned against

this convention; he wrote severely, even bitterly, and also unjustly,

of an Anglo-Jewish worthy soon after the interment of the latter.

And so he lost his friends, and was ostracized here for the rest

of his own life. He resigned his post as Director of the Jerusalem

Orphanage--though probably for other reasons. He died in Brussels in

1898.

The incident alluded to in these preceding lines was typical of the

man’s nature. He was not easy to get on with. He was not so much

quarrelsome as aggressive. Witty, keen-minded, he was above all a

man of impulsive emotions. He never defended a cause; he always

attacked its opponents. If his fortress were besieged, he answered

with a sortie; he could not fight behind the walls. And this is

true of the wonderful book which, under the pen-name of “Gustav

Meinhardt,” he first published in Hamburg in 1868, calling it _Jüdische

Familienpapiere_. It is the most brilliant vindication of Judaism

published in the nineteenth century. But it is an attack on rival

systems more than a mere apology for his own religion. The author

throughout is plaintiff rather than defendant.

The book consists of a series of letters written from Germany to

England. The author of the letters is a youth, Samuel; the recipient

of them is an Englishman of means, Samuel’s adoptive father. A Jew by

birth, Samuel has been brought up in England as a Christian by the

kind-hearted aristocrat, who found the child destitute after the death

of his real father, a poor hawker. And now he is sent home to his

Jewish relatives on a mission--he is to convert them to his new faith.

The letters describe Samuel’s arrival in the abode of his uncle,

Rabbi Nathan, and with exquisite charm unfold the gradual reversion of

Samuel to his ancestral allegiance. This part of the book is certainly

constructive enough. Samuel is overwhelmed with his discoveries. He is

fascinated by Rabbi Nathan, and also by his cousin, Rachel. I think it

would be difficult to find in literature a more beautiful description

of Jewish home-life than Herzberg presents. No wonder that in the end

the would-be converter becomes the converted.

The great part of the argument, however, is occupied less with showing

the success of Judaism, than the failure of Christianity. Herzberg

speaks out; there is no hesitation, no reserve. He never loses his

courteous manner, but this formal suavity does not mitigate the

truculence of the statements he makes, the severity of the arguments

he uses. He is one-sided in that he sets the Church’s failure against

the Synagogue’s success, and does not attempt to balance against

each other the successes of each and the failures of each. But he is

confessedly an advocate and not a judge. It is this that makes his

book so valuable. It is an outspoken criticism of modern culture by

a well-equipped mind. For to Herzberg, naturally and rightly enough,

the Church is typical of Western civilization. Attacking the former,

he is assailing the latter, denying the validity of Western--or

rather--Germanic, ideals, and disputing their permanent worth.

Before pointing out in a sentence the significance of this attitude

for the present condition of Jewish thought, one or two other things

must be said about the book. There were three German editions in

the author’s lifetime, the third appearing in Zurich in 1893. Why

was the third issue made in Switzerland and not in Hamburg? In the

circular announcing it, Cæsar Schmidt made a remarkable statement.

The author had been urged by his friend to soften some parts of it.

He refused. Anti-Semitism made the book, in its unaltered shape, the

more necessary; but it also made it desirable to issue it in “free

Switzerland.” The author would have bettered the book in one sense,

had he yielded to his friend’s counsel. Its historical surveys are not

unassailable, and its logic is not always perfect. Yet to have modified

its polemical tone would have been to destroy its efficacy. Moreover,

Herzberg’s friends can have known little of him if they imagined that

he would alter even a comma to please them! I met him several times

before 1893, and I could have told them that they were wasting their

time in giving him advice. He always went his own way; and he would

have been the last to complain because that way was a rugged one.

The author had this satisfaction: his work was enthusiastically admired

by a notable circle of readers. Graetz had a high opinion of it. David

Kaufmann, a lad of sixteen at the time of its first appearance, was its

ardent eulogist; to him the third edition is inscribed. “You will find

your erstwhile darling unchanged; for to change it would be to mangle

it”--so writes Herzberg to Kaufmann. One would not talk of changing it

now, for one does not mutilate classics.

Kaufmann, young as he was in 1868, was already a student of the Breslau

Seminary. Let another student of the same institution tell us of the

impression the _Family Papers_ made there. Dr. F. de Sola Mendes

writes that “he was yet studying at the Breslau Theological Seminary

when the book was first brought under his notice by a fellow-student,

one of its most enthusiastic admirers. A large number of copies

were at once procured and read with avidity by our comrades. It is

impossible to describe the applause the book called forth; never had

we read so glowing and so powerful a vindication of pure Judaism.

We were rejoiced that the country which produced an Eisenmenger,

a Wagenseil, Schudt, Pfefferkorn _et hoc genus omne_, should have

yielded in our day, too, so triumphant a Defender of the Faith. Our

venerable Director, Dr. Frankel, was as enthusiastic as any of his

young disciples in its praise.” The writer of the lines just quoted

determined to render the book into English. “The work of translation

was commenced and carried on in leisure intervals for the next few

years. In January, 1874, in conjunction with Mr. A. Herzberg, then of

London, brother of the author, a prospectus was issued in England,

proposing the publication of the work by subscription. The project was

heartily indorsed by the Chief Rabbi and Dr. H. Adler, the latter of

whom kindly made valuable suggestions as to omissions and alterations

proper in a version to come before average English readers.” One

wonders what the author would have said to such “omissions and

alterations.” But the matter was not taken up by the Anglo-Jewish

public, and Dr. Mendes eventually issued his excellent translation in

New York (1875), under the auspices of that American Jewish Publication

Society which preceded the present organization bearing the same name.

There must clearly be much significance in a work which has from time

to time aroused so much feeling. As a boy, I read it with mingled

delight and consternation. Even then, unconsciously, I must have had a

premonition of its inner meaning. I promised above to sum up its import

in a sentence, and I can do it. _Herzberg stands in line with Ahad

ha-‘Am._ The former does not give a Zionist turn to his exposition, nor

does he speak of a _Hebrew_ culture. But he is practically at the same

standpoint. Civilization for the Jew must be expressed in Jewish terms.

That is the real moral of Herzberg’s work. Now, as of old, I face such

an ideal with delight, but also with consternation. It gives us back

much we were in danger of losing, but it tends to take away from us

much that we had gained.

LONGFELLOW’S “JUDAS MACCABÆUS”

Whenever Handel’s melody falls on one’s ears, it is impossible to miss

the musical beauty of the chorus:

See the conquering hero comes,

Sound the trumpets, beat the drums.

But the words make one shudder. They are so turgid, so inappropriate.

Judas Maccabæus, of all men, to strut forth to such a welcome--he, who

belonged to the first of those who declared:

Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us

But unto Thy name give glory!

Tennyson speaks of “perfect music set unto noble words.” Handel’s music

may be as perfect as art is capable of, but his librettist betrayed

him by supplying words far from noble. They would better have suited

Antiochus than Judas. In fact, Handel originally wrote the melody for

Joshua who would have approved them as little as the Maccabee.

We still have to wait for a really great drama written round Judas

Maccabæus as hero. The most has therefore been made of Longfellow’s

attempt, which was turned into Yiddish by Belinson (1882) and into

Hebrew by Massel (1900). Judas is not an easy character to draw. He

was truculent enough, yet there must have been a fascinating sweetness

in him. The key-note is struck in a phrase supplied by the First

Book of the Maccabees. He and his brethren “fought with gladness the

battle of Israel.” The _joyousness_ of duty is a touch which marks

off the Maccabees from the Puritans, and which, developed in Israel’s

after-history, helped to form the Jewish character. Longfellow, who

wrote his _Judas Maccabæus_ in 1872, when he had passed the zenith of

his powers, misses the point altogether.

Yet he realizes other aspects of his hero’s disposition. He partly,

though not completely, shares Handel’s mistake of turning Judas into a

braggart. But he atones by presenting very fully the _sentimentality_

of the Maccabee. To dub a warrior sentimental may seem contradictory,

but the finest soldiers have been just the most sentimental. In Judas,

sentimentality shows itself chiefly in his seizing upon associations

aroused by local scenery. Wherever he happens to be--so the historians

of his age inform us--he recalls past incidents which occurred there.

Here, again, we have in Judas a quality which afterwards became a

deep-seated characteristic of the Jew, his romanticism. Longfellow was

himself a romantic as well as a Puritan, and perfectly presents this

side of Judas’s disposition. Thus at Beth-horon Judas recalls how, on

the same battlefield, Joshua,

The great captain of the hosts of God,

A slave brought up in the brick-fields of Egypt,

O’ercame the Amorites. There was no day

Like that, before or after it, nor shall be.

The sun stood still, the hammers of the hail

Beat on their harness; and the captains set

Their weary feet upon the necks of kings,

As I will upon thine, Antiochus,

Thou man of blood!--Behold, the rising sun

Strikes on the golden letters of my banner,

_Be Elohim Yehovah!_ Who is like

To thee, O Lord among the gods?--Alas!

I am not Joshua, I cannot say,

“Sun, stand thou still on Gibeon, and thou Moon

In Ajalon!” Nor am I one who wastes

The fateful time in useless lamentation:

But one who bears his life upon his hand

To lose it or to save it, as may best

Serve the designs of Him who giveth life.

The “nor shall be” which closes the fourth line of this quotation is

a false note. The Maccabee did expect to repeat Joshua’s glory; that

expectation of recurrent providences was the basis of Israel’s belief

in Providence. Again, even though in his day Hebrew had given way to

Aramaic as the national speech (let some of our Hebrew zealots remember

that Judas Maccabæus did _not_ talk in Hebrew!), none the less Judas

would hardly have been guilty of the error to begin a Hebrew sentence

in the middle. Yet Longfellow repeats this curious slip later on,

making Judas rush to battle, shouting _Be Elohim Yehovah!_ as though

“Among the gods, O Lord” (for that is what the Hebrew words mean)

could possibly be a war-cry. No doubt he knew that in one theory the

name Maccabee is explained as the initials of the Hebrew text “Who is

like unto Thee among the mighty (or the gods), O Lord.” But it was a

queer confusion that made him employ the second half of the verse as

a signal, and to substitute _elohim_ for the _elim_ of the Song of

Moses (Exod. 15. 11). I say nothing of his putting into Judas’ mouth

the monstrosity _Yehovah_--a misspelling (more common in the form

_Jehovah_) which was invented about the year 1520 by the reformers.

As is well known, the misspelling arose by reading the _vowels_ of

_adonai_ (Lord), as the Name was quite early read, with the consonants

of the Name as written in the Hebrew text.

In another aspect Longfellow is perhaps unfairly kind to Judas. Henry

V, as Shakespeare drew him, was something of a braggadocio. But the

dramatist might almost have been thinking of Judas when he makes his

Henry exclaim before Agincourt: “I pray thee, wish not one man more.”

Judas, too, knew that much of the glory of victory depended upon the

success of the few over the many, “the fewer men the greater share of

honour.” Judas, unlike Henry, would have meant the more signal would be

the revelation of God’s power, if the human means by which the battle

was won were weaker. On the other hand, the Books of the Maccabees do

not, so far as one’s memory goes, indicate that Judas, any more than

Henry, was chivalrous in the narrower sense. The Jewish exemplar of the

chivalrous warrior is David not Judas. Longfellow, however, presents

Judas as the chivalrous knight. One hesitates what to think of the

third scene in Act III of Longfellow’s play. In “mysterious guise,”

Nicanor enters the Jewish camp, a herald “unheralded,” gliding “like a

serpent silently” into the very presence of Judas. Nicanor discovers

himself.

_Judas_: Thou art indeed Nicanor. I salute thee.

What brings thee hither to this hostile camp

Thus unattended?

_Nicanor_: Confidence in thee.

Thou hast the noble virtues of thy race,

Without the failings that attend those virtues.

Thou can’st be strong, and yet not tyrannous,

Can’st righteous be and not intolerant.

Let there be peace between us.

_Judas_: What is peace?

Is it to bow in silence to our victors?

Is it to see our cities sacked and pillaged?

Our people slain, or sold as slaves, or fleeing

At night-time by the blaze of burning towns;

Jerusalem laid waste; the Holy Temple

Polluted with strange gods? Are these things peace?

This is cleverly conceived. Nicanor’s degrading compliments as well

as his false offer of peace are rejected with due scorn. Longfellow

probably got the idea for this scene from the story told of Mattathias,

to whom the Syrian envoys made overtures, which the dour father of the

Maccabee knew how to treat. But what one doubts is whether Nicanor

would have trusted himself to the Maccabean camp. The scene ends:

_Judas_: Go to thy tents.

_Nicanor_: Shall it be war or peace?

_Judas_: War, war, and only war. Go to thy tents

That shall be scattered, as by you were scattered

The torn and trampled pages of the Law,

Blown through the windy streets.

_Nicanor_: Farewell brave foe!

_Judas_: Ho, there, my captains! Have safe conduct given

Unto Nicanor’s herald through the camp,

And come yourselves to me.--Farewell, Nicanor!

One wonders whether such an end to such a scene were possible? Still,

if David would have acted thus generously, why not Judas? We must allow

for the insight of genius. Longfellow may have understood the story

more truly than his critic. If to the valor, the recklessness of self,

the romanticism, the all-pervading joyousness of Judas, we may add the

trait of generosity, then is he indeed among the noblest models of

chivalry which history can show.

ARTOM’S SERMONS

When, in February, 1873, Haham Artom was pressed to publish a selection

of his Sermons, he consented, but with reluctance. For, said he, “I am

fully aware of the difficulty of speaking and writing in a language

which is not my own ... a language which, some years ago, was unknown

to me.” Artom never lost his Italian accent, and the slight survival

of his native idiom added grace to his English orations. He was an

attractive figure in the pulpit; and as effective as attractive.

He died in 1879. Having frequently heard him preach, having, indeed,

been present when many of these very addresses were first given, I

have again, after more than forty years, turned to the printed volume.

Is any of the fire left? Has all the charm evaporated? His commanding

presence, his beautiful voice, his dramatic gestures, his extempore

delivery of carefully prepared impromptus--were these mannerisms

answerable for the whole of Artom’s power, or was there something

forceful and persuasive in the matter? In a word, do the speeches

survive the speaker?

Let us remember, first and last, that Artom was an artist. He not

only wrote verses, but he composed music; some of his melodies are

still sung in the Sephardic synagogues. He was also an artist in

prose. This gift sometimes led him astray. The faults of the speaker

certainly remain in the speeches. The passages which sounded grotesque

in the hearing, strike one in the reading as more grotesque still.

For instance, in his sermon (November 7, 1874) against Cremation, he

describes in lurid detail the scene at the burning of the body, and

then he proceeds: “A sad and repeated crackling is soon heard, the

combustion is going on rapidly. But to my ears that crackling seems to

be the complaint of the dead person for being treated with such cruelty

and disrespect.”

This is sentimentalism at its falsest. Obviously, such faults of the

orator endure. Have his merits the same lasting quality? The question

may be confidently answered in the affirmative.

He showed true artistry in structure. A preacher must be a builder.

He has to construct a work of art. Not merely in the sense of form,

but also and chiefly in substance. Judaism is the home beautiful;

it fascinates the eye, but it also provides rooms for living. Artom

entertained, and he also fed his guests. Out of his sermons you could

easily piece together a fine edifice of Judaism. Many of its greatest

truths are there, presented very solidly, and for all his decorative

art very simply. Artom was not a thinker, he was a believer. Yet,

though he never felt a doubt, he always realized that there were people

who differed from him. He was thus frequently controversial; he had in

mind some other opinions which he was determined to combat. This method

impelled him to present religion in relation to the realities of his

day. No preacher can be effective, unless he does so; no preacher’s

words endure for other times, unless they are first vital for his own.

In another respect, Artom’s method justified itself. I refer to his

use of rabbinic quotations. He seldom quoted anything else. Here we

have, in part, a mere trick, a mechanical device, artificial rather

than artistic. Every sermon is headed by two texts, the one scriptural,

the other rabbinic. In those olden Jewish homilies called, from their

opening formula, _Yelammedenu_ a similar plan was followed, but

the rabbinic passage was legal, involving some problem of Halakah

or practical laws. Artom’s citations are always homiletical, and

rarely add to the effect of the biblical text. Mechanical, too, is

the division of each address into a Prologue, followed by three

parts, ending with an Epilogue culminating in a prayer. The whole

congregation almost invariably rose at the close of the Haham’s

sermons, to join in these prayers, spoken with genuine but never

unctious fervor. Such severe divisions of the sermon were long _de

rigueur_ on the continent. Nowadays, in the reaction against these

fetters, sermons tend to lose _form_ altogether. But where Artom

showed himself a master was in his use of Midrash in the body of his

addresses. He had nothing like the theological profundity of Jellinek,

who employed Midrash to enforce fundamental ideas with subtlety. Nor

had he Jellinek’s power of “holding the Midrash in chemical solution.”

As Mr. Singer--a greater preacher far than Artom--said in his Memoir

of Jellinek, midrashic quotations in a sermon are as a rule “stuck

clumsily into the discourse, and leave upon the palate the flavour of

undissolved spice or sugar in an ill-prepared Sabbath or Festival dish.

In Jellinek the assimilation is perfect. It is the bone of his bone

and flesh of his flesh. Whether the Midrash or the preacher’s theme

came first, which went the longer way to meet the other, is often as

uncertain to determine as the question, in the case of some of the

finest songs, whether the music suggested the words, or the words the

music.”

Artom did not reach the perfection of Jellinek, but he never sank to

the level of the botcher. What he aimed at he succeeded in attaining.

If his rabbinic quotations at the beginning of a discourse were

perfunctory, those which he made in the body of the discourse were

invariably to the point; they always interpreted. He did not merge

Midrash into his own personality as Jellinek did. But he employed it

as a certain type of painter does the accessories to a picture, to add

color, to relieve the severity of the main idea, to suggest outwardly

that which he is not quite able to express inwardly. Hence he usually

quoted obvious Midrashim, and used them in an obvious sense. He showed

his wisdom in this. If a painter puts in a camel to help me to perceive

that he is representing a desert, he must be very careful to make his

camel recognizable. It will not do to give me a symbolical “Ship of

the Desert,” it must be a camel, palpable and conventional. Within his

limitations, he shows himself the better artist the less he tries to

make his accessories bizarre or even original.

I trust that no one will suspect me of a desire to “damn with faint

praise.” On the contrary, starting with the unquestionable fact that

the living Artom was a great preacher, my intention was to indicate

what we have to keep in mind if we would admire his printed addresses

as they deserve. If we know what to expect from them we shall find it.

Take the following paragraph:

“Our sages said that ‘a precious jewel hung around the neck of

Abraham.’ It was not a talisman, an amulet, supposed by the

superstitious to keep away the consequence of envy, of evil eye; the

jewel was the knowledge of the Lord, of the one God, of the Omnipotent

Being, that knowledge which Abraham disseminated among men; it was the

spiritual jewel which ought to be treasured in the heart of every good

man, of every true Israelite. We have inherited that Jewel, we have it

still. Oh, let us wear it with pride, for it is the noblest decoration.”

There are a hundred such passages in Artom’s volume. They got home

when the orator pronounced them, and they get home still when calmly

read as literature. It is perhaps curious that a preacher who in his

day was admired for his brilliance, should endure less for the sparkle

than for the substance of what he said. That is, however, the common

fate of orators. Happy they, if their utterances have worth after the

personality behind them has passed away.

SALKINSON’S “OTHELLO”

One of the first writers to combat, on the continent of Europe,

Voltaire’s depreciation of Shakespeare was Lessing. But his eulogy

was dated 1759. A year earlier (1758) Moses Mendelssohn, in his essay

on the Sublime, had anticipated Lessing’s judgment. But his influence

did not lead the new-Hebrew school to translate Shakespeare. It was

not till near the middle of the nineteenth century that we find

Hebrew translations even of such famous soliloquies as Hamlet’s “To

be or not to be.” In 1842 Fabius Mieses and in 1856 N. P. Krassensohn

rendered the passage. Both, however, were dependent on Mendelssohn,

translating his German rendering. Others, at the same period, turned

a few passages, including one of Richard II’s monologues, from German

versions into Hebrew.

“To-day we exact our revenge from the English! They took our Bible and

made it their own. We, in return, have captured their Shakespeare.

Is it not a sweet revenge?” With these words Smolenskin opened his

introduction to Salkinson’s Hebrew translation of _Othello_.

It is not easy to explain how it happened that we had to wait till

1874 for the first Hebrew adaptation of a Shakespearean drama. In

fact, with the exception of Salkinson’s _Romeo and Juliet_ (1878), S.

L. Gordon’s _King Lear_ (1899), and Isaac Barb’s _Macbeth_ (1883), I

know of no Hebrew version of plays by the author of _Hamlet_, which

latter drama so far as I have observed, has not even been printed in

Yiddish. (Dr. Halper, however, informs me that _Hamlet_ was translated

into Hebrew by H. J. Bornstein, and that his version appeared in the

pages of Ha-Zefirah somewhere about 1900). _Julius Cæsar_ appeared

in Yiddish in 1886. _King Lear_ has also been printed in the same

language, and the _Merchant of Venice_ received the same honor, at the

hand of Basil Dahl, in New York, in 1899. I use the words “_printed_

in Yiddish” advisedly, because there are extant in manuscript acting

versions of other plays used by Yiddish companies. Of course, select

passages from Shakespeare have often been rendered into Hebrew, as, for

instance, in that curious publication _Young’s Israelitish Gleaner and

Biblical Repository_, Edinburgh, 1855 (pp. 24, 16). The lack of Hebrew

translations may be explained by two considerations. The _Merchant

of Venice_, despite its sympathetic treatment of some aspects of

Shylock’s character, dealt so deadly a blow at the Jews, that there

could be no enthusiasm with regard to the other works. But more

operative was another fact. The available Hebraists for the most part

were ignorant of English. The _Macbeth_ mentioned above was translated

not from the original, but from Schiller’s German.

There is a further consideration (for after all Schlegel’s fine German

version was at hand for those who knew no English). Drama in Hebrew,

whether original or translated, has always been spasmodic. Drama needs

an audience. Until the Hebrew revival become wider spread, there can

never be a sufficiently popular demand for the presentation of Hebrew

plays to encourage or cultivate the composition of them. It will no

doubt be otherwise in the new Palestine. Indeed we already read of

plans, instituted by M. James Rothschild, to organize a Hebrew Drama in

Judæa.

Isaac Edward (Eliezer) Salkinson, however, knew English well. He

was also gifted with a fine command of Hebrew, which he wrote not

only fluently, but in real poetic style. He was born in Wilna, being

perhaps the son of Solomon Salkind, himself a writer of meritorious

Hebrew verse (_Jewish Encyclopedia_, vol. x, p. 651). Unfortunately,

a knowledge of Hebrew does not of itself suffice to keep a Jew within

the pale of the Synagogue. “As a youth, Salkinson set out for America

with the intention of entering a rabbinical seminary there; but while

in London he was met by agents of the London Missionary Society, and

was persuaded to forsake Judaism.” The Synagogue lost in him one of the

most accomplished Hebraists of modern times.

But though he was lost, his work--or some of it--remains to us, and we

ought not to let it go. Nahum Slousch makes an admirable remark on the

subject in his _Renascence of Hebrew Literature_ (p. 245). Salkinson’s

first great translation was not of Shakespeare, but of Milton. In

1871 appeared a delightful Hebrew version of _Paradise Lost_. It was

a masterly rendering, attaining almost to absolute perfection. Take

Salkinson’s title. He called it _Vayegaresh et ha-adam_ (“So He drove

out the man,” from Genesis 3. 24). How much apter it is for _Paradise

Lost_ than Meir Letteris _Ben Abuyah_ for Goethe’s _Faust_. Salkinson’s

version is genuine Milton. “It was a sign of the times,” says Slousch

of Salkinson’s rendering of an epic so Christian in character, “that

this work of art was enjoyed and appreciated by the educated Hebrew

public in due accordance with its literary merits.” It was, in brief,

an indication that Jewish readers of Hebrew were discriminating between

form and substance. Many who are as old as I am can recall a similar

change in feeling with regard to pictures. To go through a great Art

Gallery was a tax on one’s forbearance. Madonnas at every turn offended

the Jewish consciousness. Now, however, a large number find it quite

easy to admire an artist’s talent irrespective of the subject. Yet

Josef Israels never painted a Madonna, though he was strongly urged to

do so by eminent admirers of his genius.

In the case of Shakespeare’s _Othello_ no such problem as this arises.

In finding a Hebrew title for it, Salkinson did not seek for any

paraphrase. He just searched for a Hebrew name which would sound

like “Othello,” and he found it in the biblical “Ithiel,” which may

signify “God is with me.” “Ithiel” would thus mean much the same as

“Immanuel” (“God is with us”). It cannot be asserted that “Ithiel”

fails to correspond in sense with “Othello,” for the simple reason that

no one seems to know what “Othello” means; Ruskin suggested the sense

_careful_. On the other hand, “Iago” is probably a variant of “Jacob”;

Salkinson calls him Doeg: there is some similarity in character, as in

a name, between the false Doeg and the wily Iago. The other names call

for little comment. Desdemona becomes Asenath, not a happy choice, for

while Desdemona apparently means the “unfortunate,” Asenath is probably

the Egyptian for the “Favorite of Neith.” Cassio is Cesed--a mere

assonance. On the other hand, the Clown is _Lez_ (the scoffer); this

is a reproduction of meaning, not of sound. After all, not the names,

but the play is the thing. Salkinson certainly gives us the play.

His Hebrew is the real Shakespeare. Often have I found in difficult

passages of the English that the Hebrew is a useful help to the

understanding of the original. Sometimes a hasty reader of Salkinson

may think that the translator erred, as in his rendering of Othello’s

last pathetic speech:

Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,

Nor set down aught in malice: then must you speak

Of one that loved not wisely but too well;

Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought,

Perplex’d in the extreme; of one whose hand,

Like the base _Indian_, threw a pearl away

Richer than all his tribe.

Salkinson turns these last two lines into:

Like the despicable _Jew_, who threw a pearl away

Richer than all the wealth of Israel.

It is no mistake. There is good authority for reading _Judean_ in the

English text in place of _Indian_. The most plausible suggestion is

Theobald’s, that Shakespeare was referring to Herod and Mariamne. The

whole of this speech is a triumph of literalness combined with beauty

of phraseology. If Salkinson had only written this one page he would be

famous among modern Hebraists.

_Othello_ was done into Hebrew at the suggestion of Perez Smolenskin,

himself, of course, a noted pioneer of the new-Hebrew school.

Smolenskin was delighted with Salkinson’s performance. “See,” he cried,

“how Shakespeare lends himself to Hebrew. While so many are translating

into Hebrew works utterly foreign to the Hebraic spirit, here we have

one who has chosen a poem which lies near to that spirit.” There is

much truth in this contention. English does very readily lend itself

to translation into Hebrew, just as is the case when the relation is

reversed. No version of the Hebrew Bible, not even Luther’s, has ever

approached the English in its fidelity to the soul of the original.

But Smolenskin goes on to use another argument, which is somewhat

amusing. He draws a picture of the Jewry of his day, and then exclaims:

Lo! here are the very conditions presented to us in _Othello_. And he

bids his contemporaries to draw a moral from the play, to regulate

their conduct by it. I should hardly justify an appreciation of

_Othello_ on moral grounds. It is a great psychological drama, and it

also touches the pinnacle of romanticism. But a moral? Smolenskin seems

to have found in it a warning to men to treat women better. Certainly

one would prefer that our Othellos should be a little milder towards

their Desdemonas in real life.

All this is off the point. Salkinson’s merit lay just in his power

to take a work of art, pass it through the crucible of translation,

and then bring out the result as a work of art still. Translators are

not always traitors. I have said nothing about Salkinson’s _Romeo and

Juliet_, because his _Othello_ came first. But in the former he reveals

the same qualities. I do not know whom I would place above Salkinson in

the list of the best translators into Hebrew.

“LIFE THOUGHTS” OF MICHAEL HENRY

Michael Henry died in 1875. In the following year a volume of his

_Life Thoughts_ was issued. There are twenty-one chapters, all of them

reprinted from the series of “Sabbath Readings,” issued by the Jewish

Association for the Diffusion of Religious Knowledge. The Association,

which, I take pride to remember, was founded by my father, was

afterwards transformed into the Jewish Religious Education Board. The

Association took a broader view of its function than does the Board; at

all events, the discontinuance of the tracts called Sabbath Readings

was a deplorable but not irremediable error.

The _Life Thoughts_ of Michael Henry corresponded to his life. Their

cheery optimism was part of the man’s self. Their philosophy is

not profound, their learning is not conspicuous. But they make for

happiness. Michael Henry was happy when he made others happy, and he

succeeded in his genial ambition. He was only forty-five when his

career ended, but he had crowded in that short space many a momentous

service, especially to the boys and girls whom he loved as though an

elder brother to all of them. It was the Jewish boys and girls who

in 1876 presented the first “Michael Henry” to the Royal National

Life-boat Institution. The boat was twice replaced by other “Michael

Henrys,” and the three boats named after “the scholars’ friend” have

saved 136 lives. From time to time appeals are certain to be made for

funds to enable further “Michael Henrys” to be launched.

If to bring joy into a life is to save it, then the man Michael Henry

saved more lives than all the boats named, or to be named, after him.

I have already spoken of his geniality. A word must be added as to

his piety. Religion to him was the spring of conduct. Here, again,

his optimism reigned supreme. Judaism was the road to good, on earth

and in heaven. In his _Gossip with Boys_ he exclaims: “You may be

very good Jews and yet very happy ones. Virtue and enjoyment are not

incompatible. It is not unmanly to be good. Your right arm will fling

a cricket-ball none the less deftly because your left arm has worn

the _tephillin_ an hour before you went into the play-ground. Your

heart will beat none the less bravely, because it throbs against the

four-cornered band of the _tsitsith_.” These sentences crystallize

Michael Henry’s appeal to the young for manliness and confidence.

Virtue is happiness, duty is manliness--these axioms sum up his creed.

“The smile of hope” he perceives in the “Psalms of David.” He hears

music, he smells perfume in “Home worship.” He tells the “Barmitzvah”

that “by imitation of good, great and true men, the work shall be

done and triumph crown the toil.” The law and the life which “Moses”

proclaimed and led are “both glorious and gracious gifts of heaven to

earth.” “Happy we,” he cries in his _Elijah_, “if when we pass away we

leave behind us, like Elijah, a twofold portion of the spirit which

those whom we love have every reason to desire of us!” From “Josiah”

young and old may learn that “the most manly king of Judah was also

the most religious”; so, too, the character of “Nehemiah” was a

“combination of manliness and holiness.” “Moses Mendelssohn” enables

us to learn to be “good and happy,” and, adds Michael Henry, “it is

refreshing to turn from the troubled stories of kings, warriors, and

statesmen, to the record of this calm, pure life, in which, as in

the religion he followed, peace, love and wisdom are harmoniously

combined.” In his _Message of Love_ (Leviticus 19. 18), he quotes with

a croon of delight the poet’s thought _Seid umschlungen, Millionen_

(“Millions! be locked in one embrace”).

In his paper on “Peace” he enumerates the practical means by which

that end may be advanced, and he continues: “Thus we can promote peace

_outwardly_ in the world, and by that effort promote peace _inwardly_

in our hearts; we can spread around us a peace of earth like a

sun-picture of the spiritual peace we ask from Heaven for ourselves.”

Then, in his paper on “Heaven upon Earth,” he argues that Judaism does

not tell us “to strive against the very nature of our being.” There

is a not very thickly veiled controversialism in the sentences that

follow: “We need not turn the left cheek when stricken on the right,

nor impoverish ourselves to enrich the poor, nor let the guilty go

free because we are not righteous enough to punish, nor leave the

holy charms of family delights to follow the standard of fanatical

self-denial. But what we have to do is this: True to the teachings of

our faith, we have to take our nature as it is; with all its aims,

its passions, its impulses; and, beating the evil from it as the

thresher strikes the chaff from the grain, or the smelter frees the

dross from the gold, we must shape and trim the pure material into its

best form, and work it to its best purpose, drawing from it all that

it has of good; giving to all its strength an upward tendency.” But

Michael Henry is not at his best when he is arguing. We enjoy him in

his unreasoning but fascinating optimism, as when, in _The Everlasting

Light_, after describing the troubles and clouds of life and destiny,

he comfortably assures us: “Have faith, and it all seems easy.” We see

the real Michael Henry in the three stories or rather parables with

which the volume ends, “How we Spoilt our Holiday,” the “Schoolboy and

the Angel,” and the “Everlasting Rose.” These three chapters at least

would bear reprinting. They express Michael Henry in his most charming

aspects of sincerity, clean-heartedness, and unconquerable belief in

the ideal.

But there is one chapter missing from the _Life Thoughts_ of Michael

Henry. It is a strange omission. No man ever excelled the subject of

this article in his power to harmonize his religion with his life.

Michael Henry as pietist, as lover of children, as editor of the

_Jewish Chronicle_ (from 1868), as agent for patents--under all these

aspects the man was one and the same. His _Life Thoughts_ are a

torso, unless we draw on his writings as a mechanician. To restrict

the selection to his contribution to the “Sabbath Readings” was to

misunderstand him. And what a notable chapter could have been added

from the source indicated. I have read his _Defence of the Present

Patent Law_ (1866). It is an able plea, but though it deals with a

severely commercial topic in a business-like spirit, the whole pamphlet

is lit up by the writer’s spiritual personality. Another fact revealed

is this: It shows Michael Henry to have been possessed of a ready wit,

a keen sense of humor. This note is missing from the volume of _Life

Thoughts_.