Israel Abrahams

“ Be that as it may, Herder enters into the spirit of the rabbinic apologues with rare understanding. He chose the subjects with judgment, and executed the renderings with felicity. There could have been nothing but love for Judaism in the man who thus selected and who thus translated. Graetz was unduly hard on him. It was quite possible for a man to be fond of Jews and yet not drawn to Mendelssohn. ”

“ The most distinguishing features of the government were the vigilant, the most anxious provisions made for the interests, enjoyments, and festivals of the nation; and that enlarged wisdom and profound knowledge of human nature, which led the inspired founder of the Hebrew commonwealth to exalt and sanctify the pleasures of the people by uniting them with religion, while he confirmed and endeared religion by combining it with all the popular gratifications. ”

“ But over and above reproductions of extant works, we need new works. Now the Jewish artist who illustrates a Bible ought not to be content to illustrate anything but a Hebrew text. And if a Bible be for several reasons out of the question, why should we not have a new Haggadah, written by a living Jewish artist, who shall, from a close study of olden models, do for us what Burne-Jones did?—that is, extract from the mysticism of a by-gone age those abiding truths which our contemporary age demands of its art. ”

“ Exactly, but the war of man against nature calls for the exercise of the same qualities. The heroism of the coal-mine is as great from every point of view as the heroism of the battlefield. And the battlefield from first to last is the scene of human nature at its lowest as well as at its highest. Nor is the battlefield the whole of war. Those who persuade themselves that war, though an evil, is not an unmixed evil, will find in the Sorrows of Tatnu and allied books a rather useful corrective to their complacency. ”

“ Off to Rome went he, leading the Alexandrian deputation against the Jews (who were championed by Philo) , denouncing them to the Cæsar, and using every artifice to incite the imperial animosity. With a heart bitter with hostility, Apion would be a fitting assailant of the “haters of mankind.” It is one of the curiosities of fate that, apart from what Josephus has told of him, Apion is best remembered as the author or transmitter of the story of Androcles and the lion. Apion was neither the first nor the last to have a kindlier feeling for a wild beast than for a fellow-man. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And yet to-day’s fool looks and does very much the same as yesterday’s, even though wise men laughed their fill at the latter. Folly, one rather must admit, is immortal. Wise men come and wise men go, but fools go on forever. Wisdom can at most make the fool look foolish for a while.
At rare intervals, however, history offers an example of the slaying power of satire. Idolatry was killed by ridicule. Some people—among them Renan, who ought to have known better—deny to ancient Israel a sense of humor. ”

“ Of a hundred who discuss Moses Mendelssohn’s conception of Judaism, perhaps barely five have read Jerusalem, the book in which that conception is most lucidly expressed. It is a common fate with certain literary masterpieces that they are read in their own day and talked about by posterity. ”

“ Throughout we find, in Coleridge’s remarks on the Jews and Judaism, the same mixture of conventional views and original judgments. He notes the theory that the Jews were destined to “remain a quiet light among the nations for the purpose of pointing out the doctrine of the unity of God,” but spoils the compliment by the comment: “The religion of the Jew is, indeed, a light; but it is the light of the glow-worm, which gives no heat, and illumines nothing but itself.” ”

“ The duty and the desire to honor the dead for the inspiration of the living are not restricted to any one section of our community. There is nothing nationalistic or anti-nationalistic in our common sympathy with the Sorrows of Tatnu, in our common impulse to turn those sorrows to vital account in the present. In a soft age it is well to be reminded that Judaism is above all synonymous with hardihood. ”

“ But the whole is nothing more or less than an account of the life of Buddha, the great Indian saint, the founder of a religion. Jews, Mohammedans, and Christians revelled in the story without having a notion as to its original significance. Nothing so brings races and creeds together as a good tale. The folk are united by their common interest in the same lore. Mr. Zangwill, in his beautiful poem prefixed to Dr. Jacobs’ edition of Barlaam and Josaphat, looks deeper, and finds in the general admiration for this legend a symbol of the universal identity of men’s aspirations for the ideal. ”

“ If this be so, then Lessing was a happy warrior indeed. For religious tolerance is interwoven with his combative life. It was the ideal of his boyhood and of his age. It is to be seen in his “Nathan,” the masterpiece of his mature genius, and it equally underlay his youthful drama The Jews. Nathan the Wise is Mendelssohn, and was drawn on the basis of experience; but the “Traveller,” who is the hero of Die Juden is no individual, having been drawn by Lessing out of his own good heart. ”

“ If Tatnu is no person, neither do its sorrows form a book. They constitute rather a library of narratives, small in size but great in substance. They are hardly literary, yet they belong to the masterpieces of literature. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No one, unless it be that earlier Jewish philosopher Spinoza, had ever put the case for toleration so cogently. Whether Mendelssohn’s own principles are consistent with his further conclusion that once a Jew always a Jew, will ever be doubted. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 44a) had said: An Israelite, though he sin, remains an Israelite. Mendelssohn rather said: An Israelite has no right to sin. True, the world need not accept Judaism, but the Jew may never reject it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A careful study of his writings on religion will convince any unprejudiced reader that Wise was also a theologian of no mean order. In his lifetime it was customary to throw easy jibes at him as an ignoramus. But the charge was false. Not long ago I read for the first time Wise’s most ambitious books, as well as the Selected Writings, edited in 1900 by Drs. Philipson and Grossman. Now Wise, throughout his career, worked consciously with the “aim to reconcile Judaism with the age and its needs.” Every Jewish leader, to whatever school he belongs, does that. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Truth is usually unable to meet falsehood on equal terms; the genuine, for the most part, cannot soil its hands with the foul ammunition of imposture. Sometimes, however, truth is less squeamish. And so, when Pfefferkorn was engaged in slinging slime at Reuchlin, there was suddenly hurled at his own person an avalanche of mud, under which he and his party sank buried from heel to head. ”

“ This exposition is one of our main sources of information for the Judaism of the first century of the Christian era. His picture of life under the Jewish law is a panegyric, but praise is not always partiality. Is it an exaggerated claim that Josephus makes on behalf of Judaism? Surely not. “I make bold to say,” exclaims Josephus in his peroration, “that we are become the teachers of other men in the greatest number of things, and those the most excellent. For what is more excellent [Pg 38] than unshakable piety? What is more just than obedience to the laws? ”

“ One other striking merit of Ha-Tikwah must be observed. Unlike many other poets of Zion, Imber does not denounce. He makes no attack on those who do not share his feelings. He points to the continued existence of the hope for the return, but he refrains from condemning, except by the merest [Pg 364] implication, those who have no consciousness of the hope. There is true art here, which I am able to appreciate, far removed as I am from Imber’s nationalism. For, on the one hand, art is best when it pleases some without paining others. ”

“ Every available material must be drawn on if we are to construct a sound edifice. It is a just verdict of Graetz’s that De Rossi’s “power of reconstruction was small.” But he showed subsequent generations how to build. De Rossi, finally, was not one who regarded Jewish literature merely as the subject matter for research. He was intensely interested in it for its own sake. He was a poet as well as a historian. And this he shows both by his whole style and outlook as well as by the Hebrew and Italian verses that he wrote. ”

“ Mendelssohn did not believe that all men were destined to attain to truth by the road of Judaism. “Judaism boasts of no exclusive revelation of immutable truths indispensable to salvation.” Hence, too, “Judaism has no articles of faith.” It follows that not unbelief was punished under the Jewish régime, but contumacious disobedience. ”

“ And whereas purple-red suggests the God of judgment who, when He frowns in anger, changes the heavens into blackness and the moon into blood, purple-blue suggests the God of peace, who overarches the earth with the blue of heaven, like a tent of peace. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Monogamy is so clearly felt to be the best policy for mankind, under modern conditions, that religion in the West maintains it. “Religion” and “policy” are here at one.
Addison fairly gives his enthusiasm the rein when he discusses Jewish education. “The care of the Jews is very laudable in this particular, there being not many people in the world more watchful to have their children early tinctured with religion than the present Hebrews.” Though they usually speak “Moresco, the Language of their Nativity, and a sort of Spanish which enables them for Traffick,” they learn Hebrew. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The unquenchable enthusiasm which led high and low to forsake their homes and engage in eastern adventures, the unflinching courage with which the dangers of battle and the hardships and privations of wearisome campaigns were borne, the transparent singleness of purpose which animated many a soldier of the cross—all these factors tend to cover the sordid truth with a glamor of idealism and chivalry. ”