dealing with this passage. On one side, Maimonides himself believed that
Judaism is a dogmatic religion, and that one of its dogmas is the
principle of _Creatio ex nihilo_. On the other side, he found R.
Eliezer—one of the greatest authorities of the early part of the second
century—apparently denying this dogma. The perplexity was indeed a serious
one for Maimonides, but we find no difficulty whatever in extricating
ourselves from it. In the first place, there are many who cling to the
theory which holds that there are no dogmas in Judaism at all, and to them
Maimonides’ difficulty would have no relevance. Secondly, those who
believe that there are dogmas in Judaism may regard such expressions as
those quoted above from the “Chapters of R. Eliezer” in the light of mere
poetical metaphors, or may call them fairy tales or legends, or include
them in some other section of literature, known under the name of
folklore, which is an excuse for every absurdity, the fortunate authors of
which are responsible neither to philosophy nor to religion, and sometimes
not even to common sense. But there is a third consideration that affords
the best solution of the difficulty. The “Chapters of R. Eliezer,” despite
their pompous title, are not the work of R. Eliezer at all. Criticism has
taught us to attach no importance to the heading of a chapter or the
title‐page of a book. We are now in a position to judge from the tone,
style, and contents of the work, that the “Chapters of R. Eliezer” is a
later compilation of the eighth century, and that its author could not
have been R. Eliezer, the teacher of R. Akiba, in the second century. In
this way, these particular difficulties of Maimonides solve themselves for
us in a sufficiently easy way. But it is just these solutions that open up
new difficulties and perplexities which did not exist for the generation
of the great Spanish philosopher. Suppose that we accept the view that
Judaism is not a dogmatic religion. But how are we to conceive a religion
without dogmas, or, if you prefer the expression, without principles or
bases of belief? Or is Judaism, as some platitudinarians think, a mere
national institute with some useful dietary and sanitary laws, but with
nothing that makes for the sanctification of man, with no guidance to
offer us in the great problems of our life, and in the greatest anxieties
of the human soul? On the other hand, granted that we may consider certain
things as mere legend, how are we to discriminate between these and the
things that must be taken seriously? Does it depend on the nature of the
subject, or on the position of the book in the canon of Hebrew literature?
In the thirteenth century symbolical meanings were given to certain
difficult passages in the Talmud; but the process was carried further, and
the Biblical narratives were subjected by philosophers to a like
treatment. R. Solomon ben Adereth and his colleagues (in the thirteenth
century) settled the question by indiscriminately excommunicating all
young men who should study philosophy; but this method is scarcely one to
be commended for present use.
The third, or the philological solution of difficulties, leads to fresh
troubles. A hundred years ago men were in that happy state of mind in
which they knew everything. They knew the exact author and date of every
Psalm; they knew the author of each and every ancient Midrash; they knew
the originator of every law and ordinance; they even knew the writer of
the Zohar, and of other mystical books. There were certainly a few who did
not know all these things, among them Ibn Ezra, Azariah de Rossi, and the
two Delmedigos.(40) But they were merely a miserable historical blunder,
men who had no right to be born when they were. But the philological
method has swept away all this knowingness as by a deluge from heaven, and
men find that they know nothing. True, there linger on a few who still
know all these things, but it is they who are now the anachronism. These,
and such as these, are the perplexities of our time, to the resolution of
which the labours of Krochmal and of a noble band of scholars have been
directed in this century.
Have these perplexities, we must ask, and these puzzles been solved by
Krochmal and his coadjutors? We may with all certainty answer: They have
only pointed out the way, it is for ourselves to proceed by it. It would
be unreasonable to expect that difficulties which have been accumulating
during the course of thousands of years should be solved by the men of one
or two generations. Again, we live in a century in which excavations and
discoveries in other fields have added at once to our knowledge and to our
uncertainty. Each country, we might almost say, over and above the
perplexities that trouble mankind in general, has its own special
difficulties which are entirely unknown to those who dwell outside its
frontiers. I am not disposed to discuss these difficulties in this place.
Nor have I the ability to do so. But of two things I am perfectly certain:
the first is, that for a solution of these difficulties which, in the
language of Maimonides, “confuse the notions of all intelligent and
religious persons,” the only hope is in true knowledge and not in
ignorance; and secondly, this knowledge can only be obtained by a
combination of the utmost reverence for religion and the deepest devotion
to truth. The poor old Rabbis who have been so foully decried by their
calumniators as hedonists, and so foolishly praised by sorry apologists as
materialistic optimists, strongly insisted that when a man woos the truth,
his suit can only prosper if he is influenced by the purest and most
single‐hearted affection. “A man,” says the Siphré, “must not say: ‘I will
study the Torah in order that I may attain the title of Rabbi or savant,
or that I may become rich by it, or that I may be rewarded for it in the
world to come.’ He must study for love’s sake.” Such a knowledge, which is
free from all taint of worldliness and of other‐worldliness, a knowledge
sought simply and solely for pure love of God, who is Truth,—such a
knowledge is in the highest sense a saving knowledge, and Nachman Krochmal
was in possession of it.
III. RABBI ELIJAH WILNA, GAON
The three great stars of German literature are usually characterised by
German scholars in the following way: Goethe they say represents the
beautiful, Schiller the ideal, while Lessing represents truth. I think
that we may apply the same characteristics to the three great luminaries,
with which the Jewish middle ages ceased—for as Zunz somewhere remarked,
the Jewish middle ages lasted till the beginning of the eighteenth
century—and the modern age of Judaism opened. I am thinking of Mendelssohn
in Germany, Israel Baalshem, the founder of the sect of the Chassidim in
Podolia, and Elijah Wilna, or as he is more frequently called, the
Gaon,(41) the Great One, in Lithuania.
As to Mendelssohn, enough, and perhaps more than enough, has already been
written and spoken about his merits in awakening the sense for the
beautiful and the harmonious which was almost entirely dormant among the
Jews of his age. In regard to the second, namely, Israel Baalshem, I have
only to refer the reader to the first essay in this volume. The subject of
the present essay will be R. Elijah Wilna, who, among the Jews, as Lessing
among the Germans, represented truth, both by his life and by his literary
activity.
I say that the Gaon represented truth, but these words must be taken _cum
grano salis_. For I do not mean at all to say that he was in possession of
the whole truth, still less in _exclusive_ possession of it. It is true as
we shall learn in the course of this essay, that the Gaon was a genius of
the first order. But there are matters of truth, the obtaining of which
cannot be accomplished by genius alone. R. Elijah Wilna did not know any
other language than Hebrew. Truths, therefore, which are only to be
reached through the medium of other languages, remained a secret to him.
Again, records of ancient times which are buried in the shelves of remote
libraries or under the ruins of past civilisations are not always a matter
of intuition. Even the most gifted of men have to wait patiently till
these are brought to light by the aid of spade and shovel, or the pen of
some obscure copyist. But R. Elijah lived at a time when excavation had as
yet done very little for Semitic studies, and when a Jew scarcely got
admittance into the great libraries of Europe. Thus much truth which we
get now in a very easy way was beyond this seer’s eye.
But even if all the libraries on earth had been at his disposal, even if
he had read all the cuneiform writings which ornament the British Museum,
and had deciphered all the Hieroglyphics which the Louvre possesses, even
in that case we should not be justified in terming him a representative of
the truth, without qualifying our words.
“Truth,” said the old Rabbis, “is the Seal of the Holy One, praised be
He.” But Heaven has no Lord Chancellor. Neither men nor angels are trusted
with the great Seal. They are only allowed to catch a glimpse of it, or
rather to long after this glimpse. However, even the longing and effort
for this glimpse will bring man into communion with God, and make his life
divine. And the life of the Gaon was, as we shall see, one long effort and
unceasing longing after the truth.
Again, if I say that the Gaon represented truth, you must not think that
he lacked the two other qualities. A life entirely devoted to such a great
cause as that of seeking the truth is, _ipso facto_, ideal and harmonious.
It is only in his influence on Judaism—more particularly on the Jews in
the North of Europe—that this feature in his life becomes more prominent
than his other admirable qualities.
In what this truth consisted, how the Gaon arrived at it, and by what
means he conveyed it to others, we shall see in the course of this essay.
R. Elijah was born at Wilna in the year 1720. His father, Solomon Wilna,
is called by his biographers the great Rabbi Solomon, and is said to have
been the descendant of R. Moses Rivkas, the author of a learned work,
containing notes to the Code of the Law by R. Joseph Caro.(42)
Having quoted the biographers, I must point out that there are only two
biographies of the Gaon: the one by Finn, in his book _Faithful City_,(43)
on the celebrities of Wilna, the other by Nachman of Horodna, in his book
_Ascension of Elijah_.(44) The former is a very honest account of the
Gaon’s life, but a little too short. The latter is too long, or rather too
much intermixed with that sort of absurd legend, the authors of which are
incapable of marking the line which separates the monster from the hero.
Even in the region of imagination we must not for a moment forget the good
advice given to us by one of our greatest scholars who had to deal with a
kindred subject: “He,” says this scholar, “who banishes the thought of
higher and lower from his study, degrades it into a mere means of
gratifying his curiosity, and disqualifies it for the lofty task which it
is called upon to perform for modern society.” We shall thus cling to the
higher and stop at the hero.
Our hero was the first‐born of five brothers. They were all famous men in
their little world. According to the tradition in Wilna, Elijah was a
lovely child, with beautiful eyes, and goodly to look at, or as it is
expressed in another place, “as beautiful as an angel!” The tradition, or
rather the legend, relates that as a child of six years he was already the
pupil of R. Moses Margalith, the famous author of a commentary on the
Talmud of Jerusalem. At the age of seven years he is said to have already
perplexed the Chief Rabbi of his native town by his controversial skill in
Talmudical subjects. At the early age of nine he was acquainted with the
contents of the Bible, the Mishnah, the Talmud and its ancient
commentaries; and even the Cabbalistic works of R. Isaac Loria were no
secret to the youthful scholar.(45) At the age of twelve years he is said
to have acquired the seven liberal arts, and to have puzzled the scholars
of Wilna by his astronomical knowledge. At thirteen, when according to
Jewish law he attained his majority, he was already the accomplished or
“the great one” (Gaon); so far tradition. I am afraid that tradition is
here, against all experience, too exact in its dates. But we may learn
from it that the child Elijah showed many signs of the future Gaon, and
was therefore considered as the prodigy of his age. Again it is likewise
pretty certain that no man could boast of having been the master of
Elijah. He was not the product of any school, nor was he biassed by the
many prejudices of his time. He was allowed to walk his own way in his
struggle after truth.
It is rather an unfortunate thing that history is so much made up of
parallels and contrasts that the historian or even the biographer cannot
possibly point out the greatness of some men without touching, however
slightly, on the smallness of others. It is only natural that every strong
shining object should push the minor lights of its surroundings into the
background and darken them. Thus, when we are speaking of the superiority
of the Gaon, we cannot escape hinting at least at the shortcomings of his
contemporaries, as well as of his predecessors.
To indicate briefly in what this superiority consisted, I will premise
here a few words from a _Responsum_ by one of his great predecessors, the
Gaon Rabbi Hai.(46) Consulted by a student as to the meaning of certain
mystical passages in the tractate _Chagigah_,(47) Rabbi Hai, in warning
his correspondent not to expect from him a long philosophical
dissertation, writes as follows: “Know that it never was our business to
palliate matters and explain them in a way of which the author never could
have thought. This is fashionable with other people, but our method is to
explain the words of this or that authority in accordance with his own
meaning. We do not pledge ourselves that this meaning is ‘right rule’ in
itself, for there _do_ exist statements made by the old authorities that
cannot be accepted as norm.” Thus far the words of the Gaon of the tenth
century, which speak volumes. The Gaon of the eighteenth century followed
the same course. All his efforts were directed to this point; namely, to
find out the true meaning of the Mishnah, the true meaning of the
Gemara,(48) the true meaning of the Gaonim, the true meaning of the great
codifiers, and the true meaning of the commentators on the ancient
Rabbinical literature. Whether this meaning would be acceptable to us
mattered very little to him. His only object was to understand the words
of his predecessors, and this he obtained, as we shall soon see, by the
best critical means. This was the method of the Gaon; that of other
scholars (at least of the great majority) was dictated by entirely
different considerations. They would not suffer the idea that the great
man could be wrong at times. To them, all that he said was “right rule.”
Now suppose a great author like Maimonides had overlooked an important
passage in the Talmud or any other statement by a great authority, the
alternative remaining to them was either to explain away the passage of
the Talmud or to give the words of Maimonides a strange meaning. This led
originally to the famous method of the _Pilpul_ (casuistry), a kind of
spiritual gymnastic, which R. Liva of Prague in the sixteenth century, and
many others condemned as most pernicious to Judaism and leading to the
decay of the study of the Torah.
Now it is beyond doubt that the method of the two Gaonim is the only right
one. But, in justice to the casuistic school, which includes many a great
name, it is only right to remember that this impartiality towards
acknowledged authorities as maintained by our hero is not at all such an
easy matter as we imagine. We quote often with great satisfaction the
famous saying, _Amicus Plato, amicus Socrates, sed magis amica veritas_,
“Plato is our friend, so is Socrates, but Truth is, or rather ought to be,
our greatest friend.” This sounds very nicely, but let us only realise
what difficulties it involves. To be a friend of Socrates or Plato means
to know them, or in other words to have a thorough knowledge of the
writings of the one and the recorded utterances of the other. But such a
knowledge can with most men only be obtained by devoting one’s _whole_
life to the study of their works, so that there is not left much time for
new friendships. And the few who are able to save a few years after long
wanderings with these Greek philosophers, seldom see the necessity of new
friendships. For what else did those long courtships of Plato or Aristotle
mean except that those who conducted them thought that thereby they would
wed Truth?
This impartiality is the more difficult when these friends are invested
with a kind of religious authority where humility and submission are most
important factors. The history of Lanfranc, the predecessor of Anselm of
Canterbury, gives a striking example of what this submission meant in the
Middle Ages. One day, we are told, when he was still an ordinary monk, he
was reading at the table and pronounced a word as it ought to be
pronounced, but not as seemed right to the person presiding, who bade him
say it differently; “as if he had said _docēre_, with the middle syllable
long, as is right, and the other had corrected it into _docĕre_, with the
middle short, which is wrong; for that Prior was not a scholar. But the
wise man, knowing that he owed obedience rather to Christ than to Donatus,
the grammarian, gave up his pronunciation, and said what he was wrongly
told to say; for to make a short syllable long, or a long one short, he
knew to be no deadly sin, but not to obey one set over him in God’s behalf
was no light transgression.”(49)
But this admiration—and here we turn again to the Gaon—must not prevent us
from believing that Providence is not confined to such ungrammatical
Priors, and that the men who are really working on behalf of God are those
who teach us to pronounce rightly, and to think rightly, and to take
matters as they are, not as we desire them to be on account of our
friends.
As for the critical means to which I have alluded, the Gaon himself said
somewhere that simplicity is the best criterion of truth, and this is the
most characteristic feature of all his literary career. The Gaon studied
Hebrew grammar in order to obtain a clear notion of the language in which
the Scriptures are written. He tried to attain to the knowledge of the
Bible by reading the Bible itself; and was not satisfied to become
acquainted with its contents from the numerous quotations which are made
from it in Rabbinical literature. Again, he studied mathematics,
astronomy, and philosophy, as far as they could be found in Hebrew books.
Certainly the Gaon did not study these subjects for their own sake, and
they were considered by him only as a means to the end, or as the phrase
goes, as the “hand‐maidens” of Theology, the queen of all sciences. But it
may be looked upon as a mark of great progress in an age when Queen
Theology had become rather sulky, continually finding fault with her hand‐
maidens, and stigmatising every attention paid to them as conducive to
disloyalty. To these accusations the Gaon answered that Queen Theology
does not study her own interests. Knowledge of all arts and sciences, the
Gaon maintained, is necessary for the real understanding of the Torah
which embraces the whole of them. From his own writings it is evident that
he himself was familiar with Euclid, and his _Ayil Meshulash_ contains
several original developments of Euclid. It was at his suggestion that a
certain Baruch of Sclow translated Euclid into the Hebrew language.
Another way which led the Gaon to the discovery of many truths was his
study of the pre‐Talmudic literature, and of the Jerusalem Talmud. By some
accident or other it came to pass that only the Babylonian Talmud was
recognised as a guide _in the practices of religious life_. As the great
teachers and their pupils cared more for satisfying the religious wants of
their flocks than for theoretic researches, the consequence was that a
most important part of the ancient Rabbinic literature was almost entirely
neglected by them for many centuries. And it was certainly no
exaggeration, when R. Elijah said that even the Gaonim and Maimonides,
occupied as they were with the practical part of the law, did not pay
sufficient attention to the Talmud of Jerusalem and the Tosephta.(50) The
Gaon was no official head of any Jewish community, and was but little
troubled by decisions of questions which concern daily life. He was thus
in a position to leave for a little while the Babylonian Talmud and to
become acquainted with the guides of the guide. I refer to Siphra, Siphré,
Mechilta, Tosephta, the Seder Olam,(51) the Minor Tractates,(52) and above
all the Talmud of Jerusalem, which, regarded from an historical and
critical point of view, is even of more importance than its Babylonian
twin‐brother. But by this means there came a new light upon the whole of
ancient Rabbinic literature. The words of the Torah, the Midrash says, are
poor in one place, but we shall find them rich in another place. The Gaon
by his acquaintance with the _whole_ of the Torah had no difficulty
whatever in discovering the rich places. If there was a difficult passage
in this or that Tractate, he showed, by giving a reference to some other
place, that it was wanting in some words or lines. Obscure passages in the
Mishnah he tried to elucidate by parallel passages in the Tosephta. The
too complicated controversies of the Babylonian Talmud he tried to explain
by comparing them with the more ancient and more simple Talmud of
Jerusalem.
There is little to be told of the Gaon’s private affairs. Even the date of
his marriage with a certain Miss Anna of Kaidon is not mentioned by his
biographers. But it may be taken for granted that, in accordance with the
custom in Poland, he married at a very early age, say about eighteen
years. It was also when a young man that he travelled for some years
through Poland and Germany. It is rather difficult to say what his object
may have been in making these travels—for the Gaon was not the man to
travel for pleasure’s sake. Perhaps it was to become acquainted with the
great Rabbis of these countries. It is also possible, as others maintain,
that the Gaon considered the many privations which a traveller had to
endure a hundred and fifty years ago, as an atonement for his imaginary
sins. Indeed we find in many ascetic books that travelling, or as they
term it “receiving upon oneself to be banished into the exile,”(53) is
recommended as a very successful substitute for penance. At least it seems
that the coachmen whom the Gaon employed on his journeys looked at it from
this point of view. One of them went so far in adding to the privations of
the Gaon as to run away with his carriage when the Rabbi alighted from it
in order to read his prayers. But the reading of the Eighteen
Benedictions(54) must not be interrupted excepting in the case of danger;
and the Gaon did not consider it very dangerous to be left without money
and without luggage.
These travels ended in the year 1745. The Gaon left Wilna again at a later
date with the purpose of going to Palestine and settling there. But he
found so many obstacles on his way that he was soon compelled to give up
his favourite plan and to return to his native town. It is not known
whether he left Wilna again.
The position which the Gaon occupied in Wilna was, as already hinted, that
of a private man. He could never be prevailed upon to accept the post of
Rabbi or any other office in a Jewish community. I am unable to give the
reason for his declining all the offers made to him in this direction. But
it may be suggested here that it was in the time of the Gaon that there
arose a bitter struggle between the Rabbi and the Jewish wardens of his
native town, which ended in the abolition of the office of Rabbi. The
history of the struggle is the more irritating, as it arose from the
pettiest reasons imaginable. People actually discovered that there was no
light in the house of the Rabbi after the middle of the night, which fact
might lead to the conclusion that he did not study later than 12 o’clock
P.M. What an idle man! And this idleness was the less pardonable in the
eyes of the community, as the Rabbi’s wife was so unfortunate as not to
have been polite enough to some Mrs. Warden. Under such circumstances we
must not wonder if the Gaon did not find it very desirable to meddle with
congregational affairs in an official capacity. The relation of the Gaon
to his contemporaries resembles rather the position in the olden times of
a Tanna or Amora,(55) who neither enjoyed the title of Nasin or that of Ab
Beth Din.(56) Like R. Akiba, or Mar Samuel, the Gaon became influential
among his contemporaries only by his teaching and his exemplary life.