Chapters On Jewish Literature Part 7

SPANISH-JEWISH EXEGESIS AND POETRY.

Steinschneider.--_Jewish Literature_, pp. 141, 146-179.

CHAPTER XI

RASHI AND ALFa.s.sI

Nathan of Rome.--Alfa.s.si.--Rashi.--Rashbam.

Before Hebrew poets, scientists, philosophers, and statesmen had made Spain famous in Jewish annals, Rashi and his school were building up a reputation destined to a.s.sociate Jewish learning with France. In France there was none of the width of culture which distinguished Spain. Rashi did not shine as anything but an exponent of traditional Judaism. He possessed no graces of style, created no new literature. But he represented Judaism at its simplest, its warmest, its intensest. Rashi was a great writer because his subject was great, not because he wrote greatly.

But it is only a half-truth to a.s.sert that Rashi had no graces of style.

For, if grace be the quality of producing effects with the least display of effort, then there was no writer more graceful than Rashi.

His famous Commentary on the Talmud is necessarily long and intricate, but there is never a word too much. No commentator on any cla.s.sic ever surpa.s.sed Rashi in the power of saying enough and only enough. He owed this faculty in the first place to his intellectual grasp. He edited the Talmud as well as explained it. He restored the original text with the surest of critical instincts. And his conscience was in his work. So thoroughly honest was he that, instead of slurring over difficulties, he frankly said: "I cannot understand ... I do not know," in the rare cases in which he was at a loss. Rashi moreover possessed that wondrous sympathy with author and reader which alone qualifies a third mind to interpret author to reader. Probing the depth of the Talmud, Rashi probed the depth of the learned student, and realized the needs of the beginner. Thus the beginner finds Rashi useful, and the specialist turns to him for help. His immediate disciples rarely quote him by name; to them he is "_the_ Commentator."

Rashi was not the first to subject the Talmud to critical a.n.a.lysis. The Gaonim had begun the task, and Nathan, the son of Yechiel of Rome, compiled, in about the year 1000, a dictionary (_Aruch_) which is still the standard work of reference. But Rashi's nearest predecessor, Alfa.s.si, was not an expounder of the Talmud; he extracted, with much skill, the practical results from the logical mazes in which they were enveloped. Isaac, the son of Jacob Alfa.s.si, derived his name from Fez, where he was born in 1013. He gave his intellect entirely to the Talmud, but he acquired from the Moorish culture of his day a sense of order and system. He dealt exclusively with the _Halachah_, or practical contents of the Rabbinic law, and the guide which he compiled to the Talmud soon superseded all previous works of its kind. Solomon, the son of Isaac, best known as _R_abbi _Sh_elomo _Iz_chaki (Rashi), was born in 1040, and died in 1105, in Troyes, in Champagne. From his mother, who came of a family of poets, he inherited his warm humanity, his love for Judaism.

From his father, he drew his Talmudical knowledge, his keen intellect.

His youth was a hard one. In accordance with medieval custom, he was married as a boy, and then left his home in search of knowledge rather than of bread. Of bread he had little, but, starved and straitened in circ.u.mstances though he was, he became an eager student at the Jewish schools which then were dotted along the Rhine, residing now at Mainz, now at Speyer, now at Worms. In 1064 he settled finally in Troyes. Here he was at once hailed as a new light in Israel. His spotless character and his unique reputation as a teacher attracted a vast number of eager students.

Of Rashi's Commentary on the Talmud something has already been said. As to his exposition of the Bible, it soon acquired the widest popularity.

It was inferior to his work on the Talmud, for, as he himself admitted in later life, he had relied too much on the Midrash, and had attended too little to evolving the literal meaning of the text of Scripture. But this is the charm of his book, and it is fortunate that he did not actually attempt to recast his commentary. There is a quaintness and fascination about it which are lacking in the pedantic sobriety of Ibn Ezra and the grammatical exactness of Kimchi. But he did himself less than justice when he a.s.serted that he had given insufficient heed to the _Peshat_ (literal meaning). Rashi often quotes the grammatical works of Menachem and Dunash. He often translates the Hebrew into French, showing a very exact knowledge of both languages. Besides, when he cites the Midrash, he, as it were, constructs a Peshat out of it, and this method, original to himself, found no capable imitators.

Through the fame of Rashi, France took the leadership in matters Talmudical. Blessed with a progeny of famous men, Rashi's influence was carried on and increased by the work of his sons-in-law and grandsons.

Of these, Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam, 1100-1160) was the most renowned.

The devoted attention to the literature of Judaism in the Rhinelands came in the nick of time. It was a firm rock against the storm which was about to break. The Crusades crushed out from the Jews of France all hope of temporal happiness. When Alfa.s.si died in 1103 and Rashi in 1105, the first Crusade had barely spent its force. The Jewish schools in France were destroyed, the teachers and scholars ma.s.sacred or exiled.

But the spirit lived on. Their literature was life to the Jews, who had no other life. His body bent over Rashi's illuminating expositions of the Talmud and the Bible, the medieval Jew felt his soul raised above the miseries of the present to a world of peace and righteousness, where the wicked ceased from troubling, and the weary were at rest.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ALFa.s.sI AND RASHI.

Graetz.--III, p. 285 [292] _seq._

ALFa.s.sI.

I.H. Weiss.--_J.Q.R._, I, p. 290.

RASHI.

Schiller-Szinessy.--_Encycl. Brit._, Vol. XX, p. 284.

CHAPTER XII

THE SPANISH-JEWISH POETS (II)

Jehuda Halevi.--Charizi.

Turning once more to the brighter condition of Jewish literature in Spain, we reach a man upon whom the whole vocabulary of praise and affection has been exhausted; a man of magnetic attractiveness, whom contemporaries and successors have agreed to admire and to love. Jehuda Halevi was born in Toledo about 1085, the year in which Alfonso VI recaptured the city from the Moors. It was a fit birth-place for the greatest Jewish poet since Bible times. East and West met in Toledo. The science of the East there found Western Christians to cultivate it. Jew, Moor, and Christian displayed there mutual toleration which existed nowhere else. In the midst of this favorable environment Jehuda Halevi grew to early maturity. As a boy he won more than local fame as a versifier. At all festive occasions his verses were in demand. He wrote wedding odes, elegies on great men, eulogies of the living. His love poems, serenades, epigrams of this period, all display taste, elegance, and pa.s.sion.

The second period of Jehuda Halevi's literary career was devoted to serious pursuits, to thoughts about life, and to practical work. He wrote his far-famed philosophical dialogue, the _Cuzari_, and earned his living as a physician. He was not an enthusiastic devotee to medicine, however. "Toledo is large," he wrote to a friend, "and my patients are hard masters. I, their slave, spend my days in serving their will, and consume my years in healing their infirmities." Before making up a prescription, he, like Sir Thomas Browne, used to say a prayer in which he confessed that he had no great faith in the healing powers of his art. Jehuda Halevi was, indeed, dissatisfied with his life altogether.

"My heart is in the East, but I am sunk in the West," he lamented. He was unhappy because his beloved was far from him; his lady-love was beyond the reach of his earnest gaze. In Heine's oft-quoted words,

She for whom the Rabbi languished Was a woe-begone poor darling, Desolation's very image, And her name--Jerusalem.

The eager pa.s.sion for one sight of Jerusalem grew on him, and dominated the third portion of his life. At length nothing could restrain him; go he would, though he die in the effort. And go he did, and die he did in the effort. The news of his determination spread through Spain, and everywhere hands were held out to restrain him. But his heart lightened as the day of departure came. His poems written at this time are hopeful and full of cheery feeling. In Egypt, a determined attempt was made by the Jews to keep him among them. But it was vain. Onward to Jerusalem: this was his one thought. He tarried in Egypt but a short while, then he pa.s.sed to Tyre and Damascus. At Damascus, in the year 1140 or thereabouts, he wrote the ode to Zion which made his name immortal, an ode in which he gave vent to all the intense pa.s.sion which filled his soul. The following are some stanzas taken from this address to Jerusalem:

The glory of the Lord has been alway Thy sole and perfect light; Thou needest not the sun to shine by day, Nor moon and stars to illumine thee by night.

I would that, where G.o.d's spirit was of yore Poured out unto thy holy ones, I might There too my soul outpour!

The house of kings and throne of G.o.d wert thou, How comes it then that now Slaves fill the throne where sat thy kings before?

Oh! who will lead me on To seek the spots where, in far distant years, The angels in their glory dawned upon Thy messengers and seers?

Oh! who will give me wings That I may fly away, And there, at rest from all my wanderings, The ruins of my heart among thy ruins lay?

The Lord desires thee for his dwelling-place Eternally, and bless'd Is he whom G.o.d has chosen for the grace Within thy courts to rest.

Happy is he that watches, drawing near, Until he sees thy glorious lights arise, And over whom thy dawn breaks full and clear Set in the orient skies.

But happiest he, who, with exultant eyes, The bliss of thy redeemed ones shall behold, And see thy youth renewed as in the days of old.

Soon after writing this Jehuda arrived near the Holy City. He was by her side at last, by the side of his beloved. Then, legend tells us, through a gate an Arab horseman dashed forth: he raised his spear, and slew the poet, who fell at the threshold of his dear Jerusalem, with a song of Zion on his lips.

The new-Hebrew poetry did not survive him. Persecution froze the current of the Jewish soul. Poets, indeed, arose after Jehuda Halevi in Germany as in Spain. Sometimes, as in the hymns of the "German" Meir of Rothenburg, a high level of pa.s.sionate piety is reached. But it has well been said that "the hymns of the Spanish writers link man's soul to his Maker: the hymns of the Germans link Israel to his G.o.d." Only in Spain Hebrew poetry was universal, in the sense in which the Psalms are universal. Even in Spain itself, the death of Jehuda Halevi marked the close of this higher inspiration. The later Spanish poets, Charizi and Zabara (middle and end of the twelfth century), were satirists rather than poets, witty, sparkling, ready with quaint quips, but local and imitative in manner and subject. Zabara must receive some further notice in a later chapter because of his connection with medieval folk-lore. Of Charizi's chief work, the _Tachkemoni_, it may be said that it is excellent of its type. The stories which it tells in unmetrical rhyme are told in racy style, and its criticisms on men and things are clever and striking. As a literary critic also Charizi ranks high, and there is much skill in the manner in which he links together, round the person of his hero, the various narratives which compose the _Tachkemoni_. The experiences he relates are full of humor and surprises. As a phrase-maker, Charizi was peculiarly happy, his command of Hebrew being masterly. But his most conspicuous claim to high rank lies in his origination of that blending of grim irony with bright wit which became characteristic of all Jewish humorists, and reached its climax in Heine.

But Charizi himself felt that his art as a Hebrew poet was decadent.

Great poets of Jewish race have risen since, but the songs they have sung have not been songs of Zion, and the language of their muse has not been the language of the Hebrew Bible.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

JEHUDA HALEVI.

Graetz.--III, II.

J. Jacobs.--_Jehuda Halevi, Poet and Pilgrim_ (_Jewish Ideals_, New York, 1896, p. 103).

Lady Magnus.--_Jewish Portraits_ (Boston, 1889), p. 1.

TRANSLATIONS OF HIS POETRY by Emma Lazarus and Mrs. Lucas (_op. cit._): Editions of the Prayer-Book; also _J.Q.R._, X, pp. 117, 626; VII, p. 464; _Treasurers of Oxford_ (London, 1850); I. Abrahams, _Jewish Life in the Middle Ages_, chs. 7, 9 and 10.