Jewish Literature and Other Essays Part 3

Leviathan with hook was caught; Alas! ye little fish!

The deep and mighty stream ran dry, Ah woe! ye shallow brooks!"

Nor is humor lacking. "Ah, hamper great, with books well-filled, thou'rt gone!" is a bookworm's eulogy.

Poets naturally have not been slow to avail themselves of the material stored in the Haggada. Many of its treasures, tricked out in modern verse, have been given to the world. The following are samples:[16]

BIRTH AND DEATH

"His hands fast clenched, his fingers firmly clasped, So man this life begins.

He claims earth's wealth, and const.i.tutes himself The heir of all her gifts.

He thinks his hand may s.n.a.t.c.h and hold Whatever life doth yield.

But when at last the end has come, His hands are open wide, No longer closed. He knoweth now full well, That vain were all his hopes.

He humbly says, 'I go, and nothing take Of all my hands have wrought.'"

The next, "Interest and Usury," may serve to give the pertinacious opponent of the Talmud a better opinion of its position on financial subjects:

"Behold! created things of every kind Lend each to each. The day from night doth take, And night from day; nor do they quarrel make Like men, who doubting one another's mind, E'en while they utter friendly words, think ill.

The moon delighted helps the starry host, And each returns her gift without a boast.

'Tis only when the Lord supreme doth will That earth in gloom shall be enwrapped, He tells the moon: 'Refrain, keep back thy light!'

And quenches, too, the myriad lamps of night.

From wisdom's fount hath knowledge ofttimes lapped, While wisdom humbly doth from knowledge learn.

The skies drop blessings on the grateful earth, And she--of precious store there is no dearth-- Exhales and sends aloft a fair return.

Stern law with mercy tempers its decree, And mercy acts with strength by justice lent.

Good deeds are based on creed from heaven sent, In which, in turn, the sap of deeds must be.

Each creature borrows, lends, and gives with love, Nor e'er disputes, to honor G.o.d above.

When man, howe'er, his fellowman hath fed, Then 'spite the law forbidding interest, He thinketh naught but cursed gain to wrest.

Who taketh usury methinks hath said: 'O Lord, in beauty has Thy earth been wrought!

But why should men for naught enjoy its plains?

Ask usance, since 'tis Thou that sendest rains.

Have they the trees, their fruits, and blossoms bought?

For all they here enjoy, Thy int'rest claim: For heaven's...o...b.. that shine by day and night, Th' immortal soul enkindled by Thy light, And for the wondrous structure of their frame.'

But G.o.d replies: 'Now come, and see! I give With open, bounteous hand, yet nothing take; The earth yields wealth, nor must return ye make.

But know, O men, that only while ye live, You may enjoy these gifts of my award.

The capital's mine, and surely I'll demand The spirit in you planted by my hand, And also earth will claim her due reward.'

Man's dust to dust is gathered in the grave, His soul returns to G.o.d who gracious gave."

R. Yehuda ben Zakka answers his pupils who ask:

"Why doth the Law with them more harshly deal That filch a lamb from fold away, Than with the highwaymen who shameless steal Thy purse by force in open day?"

"Because in like esteem the brigands hold The master and his serving man.

Their wickedness is open, frank, and bold, They fear not G.o.d, nor human ban.

The thief feels more respect for earthly law Than for his heav'nly Master's eye, Man's presence flees in fear and awe, Forgets he's seen by G.o.d on high."

That is a glimpse of the world of the Haggada--a wonderful, fantastic world, a kaleidoscopic panorama of enchanting views. "Well can we understand the distress of mind in a mediaeval divine, or even in a modern _savant_, who, bent upon following the most subtle windings of some scientific debate in the Talmudical pages--geometrical, botanical, financial, or otherwise--as it revolves round the Sabbath journey, the raising of seeds, the computation of t.i.thes and taxes--feels, as it were, the ground suddenly give way. The loud voices grow thin, the doors and walls of the school-room vanish before his eyes, and in their place uprises Rome the Great, the _Urbs et Orbis_ and her million-voiced life.

Or the blooming vineyards round that other City of Hills, Jerusalem the Golden herself, are seen, and white-clad virgins move dreamily among them. s.n.a.t.c.hes of their songs are heard, the rhythm of their choric dances rises and falls: it is the most dread Day of Atonement itself, which, in poetical contrast, was chosen by the 'Rose of Sharon' as a day of rejoicing to walk among those waving lily-fields and vine-clad slopes. Or the clarion of rebellion rings high and shrill through the complicated debate, and Belshazzar, the story of whose ghastly banquet is told with all the additions of maddening horror, is doing service for Nero the b.l.o.o.d.y; or Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian tyrant, and all his hosts, are cursed with a yelling curse--_a propos_ of some utterly inappropriate legal point, while to the initiated he stands for t.i.tus the--at last exploded--'Delight of Humanity.' ... Often--far too often for the interests of study and the glory of the human race--does the steady tramp of the Roman cohort, the pa.s.sword of the revolution, the shriek and clangor of the b.l.o.o.d.y field, interrupt these debates, and the arguing masters and disciples don their arms, and, with the cry, 'Jerusalem and Liberty,' rush to the fray."[17] Such is the world of the Talmud.

THE JEW IN THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION[18]

In the childhood of civilization, the digging of wells was regarded as beneficent work. Guide-posts, visible from afar, marked their position, and hymns were composed, and solemn feasts celebrated, in honor of the event. One of the choicest bits of early Hebrew poetry is a song of the well. The soul, in grateful joy, jubilantly calls to her mates: "Arise!

sing a song unto the well! Well, which the princes have dug, which the n.o.bles of the people have hollowed out."[19] This house, too, is a guide-post to a newly-found well of humanity and culture, a monument to our faithfulness and zeal in the recognition and the diffusion of truth.

A scene like this brings to my mind the psalmist's beautiful words:[20]

"Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard, that went down to the skirts of his garment; as the dew of Hermon, running down upon the mountains of Zion; for there hath the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore."

Wondrous thoughts veiled with wondrous imagery! The underlying meaning will lead us to our feast of the well, our celebration in honor of newly-discovered waters. Our order is based upon the conviction that all men should be banded together for purposes of humanity. But what is humanity? Not philanthropy, not benevolence, not charity: it is "human culture risen to the stage on which man is conscious of universal brotherhood, and strives for the realization of the general good." In early times, leaders of men were anointed with oil, symbol of wisdom and divine inspiration. Above all it was meet that it be used in the consecration of priests, the exponents of the divine spirit and the Law.

The psalmist's idea is, that as the precious ointment in its abundance runs down Aaron's beard to the hem of his garment, even so shall wisdom and the divine spirit overflow the lips of priests, the guides, friends, and teachers of the people, the promoters of the law of peace and love.

"As the dew of Hermon, running down upon the mountains of Zion!" High above all mountains towers Hermon, its crest enveloped by clouds and covered with eternal snow. From that supernal peak grateful dew trickles down, fructifying the land once "flowing with milk and honey." From its clefts gushes forth Jordan, mightiest stream of the land, watering a broad plain in its course. In this guise the Lord has granted His blessing to the land, the blessing of civilization and material prosperity, from which spring as corollaries the duties of charity and universal humanity.

A picture of the olden time this, a lodge-address of the days of the psalm singers. Days flee, time abides; men pa.s.s away, mankind endures.

Filled with time-honored thoughts, inspired by the hopes of by-gone generations, striving for the goal of n.o.ble men in all ages, like the psalm singers in the days of early culture, we celebrate a feast of the well by reviewing the past and looking forward down the avenues of time.

Less than fifty years ago a band of energetic, loyal Jews, on the other side of the Atlantic, founded our beloved Order. Now it has established itself in every part of the world, from the extreme western coast of America to the blessed meadows of the Jordan; yea, even the Holy Land, unfurling everywhere the banner of charity, brotherly love, and unity, and seeking to spread education and culture, the forerunners of humanity. Judaism, mark you, is the religion of humanity. By far too late for our good and that of mankind, we began to proclaim this truth with becoming energy and emphasis, and to demonstrate it with the joyousness of conviction. The question is, are we permeated with this conviction? Our knowledge of Judaism is slight; we have barely a suspicion of what in the course of centuries, nay, of thousands of years, it has done for the progress of civilization. In my estimation, our house-warming cannot more fittingly be celebrated than by taking a bird's-eye view of Jewish culture.

The Bible is the text-book of general literature. Out of the Bible, more particularly from the Ten Commandments, flashed from Sinai, mankind learned its first ethical lesson in a system which still satisfies its needs. To convey even a faint idea of what the Bible has done for civilization, morality, and the literature of every people--of the innumerable texts it has furnished to poets, and subjects to painters--would in itself require a literature.

The conflicts with surrounding nations to which they were exposed made the Jews concentrate their forces, and so enabled them to wage successful war with nations mightier than themselves. Their heroism under the Maccabees and under Bar-Kochba, in the middle ages and in modern days, permits them to take rank among the most valiant in history. A historian of literature, a non-Jew, enumerates three factors const.i.tuting Jews important agents in the preservation and revival of learning:[21] First, their ability as traders. The Phoenicians are regarded as the oldest commercial nation, but the Jews contested the palm with them. Zebulon and Asher in very early times were seafaring tribes. Under Solomon, Israelitish vessels sailed as far as Ophir to bring Afric's gold to Jerusalem. Before the destruction of the Holy City, Jewish communities established themselves on the westernmost coast of Europe. "The whole of the known world was covered with their settlements, in constant communication with one another through itinerant merchants, who effected an exchange of learning as well as of wares; while the other nations grew more and more isolated, and shut themselves off from even the spa.r.s.e opportunities of mental culture then available."

The second factor conducing to mental advancement was the schools which have flourished in Israel since the days of the prophet Samuel; and the third was the linguistic attainments of the Jews, which they owed to natural ability in this direction. Scarcely had Greek allied itself with Hebrew thought, when Jews in Alexandria wrote Greek comparable with Plato's, and not more than two hundred years after the settlement of Jews in Arabia we meet with a large number of Jewish poets among Mohammed's disciples, while in the middle ages they taught and wrote Arabic, Spanish, French, and German--versatility naturally favorable to intellectual progress.

Jewish influence may be said to have begun to exercise itself upon general culture when Judaism and h.e.l.lenism met for the first time. The result of the meeting was the new product, Judaeo-h.e.l.lenic literature.

Greek civilization was attractive to Jews. The new ideas were popularized for all strata of the people to imbibe. Shortly before the old pagan world crumbled, h.e.l.lenism enjoyed a beautiful, unexpected revival in Alexandria. There, strange to say, Judaism, in its home antagonistic to h.e.l.lenism, had filled and allied itself with the Greek spirit. Its literature gradually adopted Greek traditions, and the ripe fruit of the union was the Jewish-Alexandrian religious philosophy, the mediation between two sharply contradictory systems, for the first time brought into close juxtaposition, and requiring some such new element to harmonize them. When ancient civilization in Judaea and in h.e.l.las fell into decay, human endeavor was charged with the task of reconciling these two great historical forces diametrically opposed to each other, and the first attempt looking to this end was inspired by a Jewish genius, Jesus of Nazareth.

The Jews of Alexandria were engaged in widespread trade and shipping, and they counted among them artists, poets, civil officers, and mechanics. They naturally acquired Greek customs, and along with them h.e.l.lenic vices. The baccha.n.a.lia of Athens were enthusiastically imitated in Jerusalem, and, as a matter of course, in Alexandria. This point reached, Roman civilization a.s.serted itself, and the people sought to affiliate with their Roman victors, while the rabbis devoted themselves to the Law, not, however, to the exclusion of scientific work. In the ranks of physicians and astronomers we find Jewish masters and Jewish disciples. Medicine has always been held in high esteem by Jews, and Samuel could justly boast before his contemporaries that the intricate courses of the stars were as well known to him as the streets of Nehardea in Babylonia.[22]

The treasures of information on pedagogics, medicine, jurisprudence, astronomy, geography, zoology, botany, and last, though not least, on general history, buried in the Talmud, have hitherto not been valued at their true worth. The rabbis of the Talmud stood in the front ranks of culture. They compiled a calendar, in complete accord with the Metonic cycle, which modern science must declare faultless. Their cla.s.sification of the bones of the human body varies but little from present results of the science of anatomy, and the Talmud demonstrates that certain Mishna ordinances are based upon geometrical propositions, which could have been known to but few mathematicians of that time. Rabbi Gamaliel, said to have made use of a telescope, was celebrated as a mathematician and astronomer, and in 289 C. E., Rabbi Joshua is reported to have calculated the orbit of Halley's comet.

The Roman conquest of Palestine effected a change in the condition of the Jews. Never before had Judah undergone such torture and suffering as under the sceptre of Rome. The misery became unendurable, and internal disorders being added to foreign oppression, the luckless insurrection broke out which gave the deathblow to Jewish nationality, and drove Judah into exile. On his th.o.r.n.y martyr's path he took naught with him but a book--his code, his law. Yet how prodigal his contributions to mankind's fund of culture!

About five hundred years later Judah saw springing up on his own soil a new religion which appropriated the best and the most beautiful of his spiritual possessions. Swiftly rose the vast political and intellectual structure of Mohammedan power, and as before with Greek, so Jewish thought now allied itself with Arabic endeavor, bringing forth in Spain the golden age of neo-Hebraic literature in the spheres of poetry, metaphysical speculation, and every department of scientific research.

It is not an exaggerated estimate to say that the middle ages sustained themselves with the fruit of this intellectual labor, which, moreover, has come down as a legacy to our modern era. Two hundred years after Mohammed, the same language, Arabic, was spoken by the Jews of Kairwan and those of Bagdad. Thus equipped, they performed in a remarkable way the task allotted them by their talents and their circ.u.mstances, to which they had been devoting themselves with singular zeal for two centuries. The Jews are missioned mediators between the Orient and the Occident, and their activity as such, ill.u.s.trated by their additions to general culture and science, is of peculiar interest. In the period under consideration, their linguistic accomplishments fitted them to a.s.sist the Syrians in making Greek literature accessible to the Arabic mind. In Arabic literature itself, they attained to a prominent place.

Modern research has not yet succeeded in shedding light upon the development and spread of science among the Arabs under the tutelage of Syrian Christians. But out of the obscurity of Greek-Arabic culture beginnings gleam Jewish names, whose possessors were the teachers of eager Arabic disciples. Barely fifty years after the hosts of the Prophet had conquered the Holy Land, a Jew of Ba.s.sora translated from Syriac into Arabic the pandects by the presbyter Aaron, a famous medical work of the middle ages. In the annals of the next century, among the early contributors to Arabic literature, we meet with the names of Jews as translators of medical, mathematical, and astronomical works, and as grammarians, astronomers, scientists, and physicians. A Jew translated Ptolemy's "Almagest"; another a.s.sisted in the first translation of the Indian fox fables (_Kalila we-Dimna_); the first furnishing the middle ages with the basis of their astronomical science, the second supplying European poets with literary material. Through the instrumentality of Jews, Arabs became acquainted as early as the eighth century, some time before the learning of the Greeks was brought within their reach, with Indian medicine, astronomy, and poetry. Greek science itself they owed to Jewish mediation. Not only among Jews, but also among Greeks, Syrians, and Arabs, Jewish versatility gave currency to the belief that "all wisdom is of the Jews," a view often repeated by h.e.l.lenists, by the "Righteous Brethren" among the Arabs, and later by the Christian monks of Europe.

The academies of the Jews have always been pervaded by a scientific spirit. As they influenced others, so they permitted the science and culture of their neighbors to act upon their life and work. There is no doubt, for instance, that, despite the marked difference between the subjects treated by Arabs and Jews, the peculiar qualities of the old Arabic lyrics shaped neo-Hebraic poetry. Again, as the Hebrew acrostic psalms demonstrably served as models to the older Syrian Church poets, so, in turn, Syriac psalmody probably became the pattern synagogue poetry followed. Thus Hebrew poetry completed a circuit, which, to be sure, cannot accurately be followed up through its historical stages, but which critical investigations and the comparative study of literatures have established almost as a certainty.

In the ninth century a bold, venturesome traveller, Eldad ha-Dani,[23] a sort of Jewish Ulysses, appeared among Jews, and at the same time Judaism produced Sa'adia, its first great religious philosopher and Bible translator. The Church Fathers had always looked up to the rabbis as authorities; henceforth Jews were accepted by all scholars as the teachers of Bible exegesis. Sa'adia was the first of the rabbis to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Arabic. Justly his work is said to "recognize the current of thought dominant in his time, and to express the newly-awakened desire for the reconciliation of religious practice, as developed in the course of generations, with the source of religious inspiration." Besides, he was the first to elaborate a system of religious philosophy according to a rigid plan, and in a strictly scientific spirit.[24] Knowing Greek speculations, he controverts them as vigorously as the _Kalam_ of Islam philosophy. His teachings form a system of practical ethics, luminous reflections, and sound maxims.

Among his contemporaries was Isaac Israeli, a physician at Kairwan, whose works, in their Latin translation by the monk Constantine, attained great reputation, and were later plagiarized by medical writers. His treatise on fever was esteemed of high worth, a translation of it being studied as a text-book for centuries, and his dietetic writings remained authoritative for five hundred years. In general, the medical science of the Arabs is under great obligations to him.

Reverence for Jewish medical ability was so exaggerated in those days that Galen was identified with the Jewish sage Gamaliel. The error was fostered in the _Sefer Asaf_, a curious medical fragment of uncertain authorship and origin, by its rehearsal of an old Midrash, which traces the origin of medicine to Shem, son of Noah, who received it from angels, and transmitted it to the ancient Chaldeans, they in turn pa.s.sing it on to the Egyptians, Greeks, and Arabs.

Though the birth of medicine is not likely to have taken place among Jews, it is indisputable that physicians of the Jewish race are largely to be credited with the development of medical science at every period.

At the time we speak of, Jews in Egypt, northern Africa, Italy, Spain, France, and Germany were physicians in ordinary to caliphs, emperors, and popes, and everywhere they are represented among medical writers.

The position occupied in the Arabian world by Israeli, in the Occident was occupied by Sabatta Donnolo, one of the Salerno school in its early obscure days, the author of a work on _Materia medica_, possibly the oldest original production on medicine in the Hebrew language.