Kitabı oku: «History of the Jews, Vol. 5 (of 6)», sayfa 35

Heine's romance was indeed grandly conceived. The scene of action was laid in Germany, but the history of the Jews of Spain, their expulsion, and enforced baptism, were to be the main incidents.

However, at the time when Heine was earnestly engaged in the study of Judaism, and became enthusiastic for its history, and hated Christianity most fiercely, he quietly passed over to the Christian fold (June 28, 1825), and assumed the baptismal name of Christian Johann Heinrich. He had fought for a long time against this temptation. He expressed his opinion upon the question plainly: —

"Not one of my family is opposed to it except myself. This act may be of importance to me, as through it I may the better devote myself to the cause of my unhappy co-religionists. But I should consider it a blot upon my dignity and honor, if I were to be baptized in order to obtain a post in Prussia – in dear Prussia!.. Vexation may drive me to become a Catholic, and hang myself."

In spite of this declaration he became a convert, in order to obtain a position in Prussia, and also to escape from humiliating dependence upon his uncle. In his diary he wrote the following verses upon the subject: —

 
"And unto the cross now bendest thou low,
To the cross that erstwhile thou didst despise;
Which but a few short weeks ago
Seemed so vile in thy scornful eyes."
 

Shortly afterwards (July 20, 1825) he passed his law examination. But he pursued phantoms, and had made a vain sacrifice of his honor. He was unable to procure employment, and could not dispense with his uncle's support. Shamefaced as a girl guilty of some fault, Heine communicated the fact of his conversion in allegorical language to his bosom friend Moser:

"A young Spanish Jew, at heart a Jew, who, owing to the demands of pleasure, had abjured his faith, corresponded with the youthful Judah Abrabanel, and sent him a poem translated from the Moorish. Perhaps he was loth to tell his friend in plain terms of his not very creditable performance; still he sends the poem. – Do not meditate about it."

Through his apostasy, Heine became only the more embittered against Christianity, as though it were directly responsible for his faithlessness, his loss of dignity, and his disloyalty to his better self. "I assure you," he wrote to his intimate friend, "if the law had permitted the stealing of silver spoons, I should not have been baptized." When at about the same time, Edward Gans, the leader of young Israel, founder of the Society of Culture, and one of its active promoters, also embraced Christianity, Heine could not forgive him, for he had not been compelled by poverty to take the step. Heine was yet more indignant when informed that Gans had induced weak-minded Jews to forsake their belief.

"If he does it out of conviction, he is a fool; if out of hypocrisy, he is a rascal."

It also vexed him that his opponents would not forget his Jewish origin, but, as in the case of Börne, reminded him of it at every opportunity. To appease his conscientious scruples in a measure, he continued to work at the romance, "The Rabbi of Bacharach." Through its medium he desired to make known his secret attachment to the Jews, and he wished to publish it in spite of the advice of his friend Moser, who was not blind to the glaring contradiction between thought and act, and the enmity it would necessarily draw down upon him.

Heine was not, however, so constituted as to allow remorse to trouble him for any length of time. Once having turned his back upon Judaism, he sought to lull his conscience. His pleasure-seeking after his conversion was only a means to this end. Heine ingeniously labored to discover faults in the Jews and Judaism, and thus to justify himself. In this impulse originated his hostile sallies against Judaism – that it is, for instance, "not a religion, but a misfortune." Afterwards, he sought to make the dividing line between Judaism and Christianity very faint; he characterized both faiths as self-torturing, monkish, and Nazarite; he vilified them equally, disregarded both, and acknowledged a Hellenistic religion of the "revival of the flesh." Nevertheless, it may be said that, in bright moments, his old love of Judaism revived, and he again showed his thoughtful conception of it. It annoyed Heine that Shakespeare should be reckoned among the Jew-baiters because he had created "Shylock," and he employed his brilliant eloquence to remove this blemish from the Jews and Shakespeare.

"Did Shakespeare aim at depicting a Jewess in Jessica? Certainly not. He portrayed only a daughter of Eve, one of those pretty birds who, as soon as they are fledged, flutter forth from the home-nest to their lovers… In Jessica there is especially noticeable a certain timid shame which she cannot overcome in donning male garments. In this trait one may, perhaps, recognize the modesty characteristic of her race, which endows its daughters with so marvelous a charm. The chastity of the Jews is probably the consequence of the aversion which they felt to Oriental sensuality and the immoral worship which flourished among their neighbors, the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians, and has continued, changing only its outward form, to the present day. The Jews are a chaste, abstemious, so to speak, an abstract people, and in purity of morals, approach the German nations… The Greeks and Romans were devoted to the soil … the later Northern immigrants to the person of their chieftains … whilst the Jews from ancient times were attached to the law, to abstract thought, like our modern cosmopolitan Republicans … liberty and equality were their religion."

Advanced in years, when a severe nervous affliction had still more cleared the mirror of his thoughts, Heine became conscious of the superiority of morality based upon piety over beauty, and returned with his whole heart to the love of his youth, his reverence for Judaism. His "Confessions" (1853–54) are inspired hymns to Jewish history and the Jewish people, and it is apparent that they are sincere. He was always enthusiastic on behalf of the Bible.

"The Jews may console themselves for the loss of Jerusalem and the Ark of the Covenant; this loss is but trifling when compared with the Bible, the indestructible treasure which they have saved… I owe the re-awakening of my religious feelings to that Holy Book (the Bible), and it has become for me equally the source of salvation and the object of most ardent admiration… I think I may flatter myself that I comprehend the character of Moses as revealed in the first portion of the sacred book (of the Old Testament). I consider his a most imposing figure. What a giant form! How small Sinai appears when Moses stands upon it! This mountain is only the pedestal for the feet of the man, whose head reaches up to the heavens, where he speaks with God… Formerly, I felt no especial affection for Moses, probably because the Hellenic spirit was paramount in me, and I could not pardon the legislator of the Jews his hatred against the plastic arts. I did not see that, notwithstanding his hostility to art, Moses was a great artist, and possessed the true artistic spirit! But this spirit was directed by him, as by his Egyptian compatriots, to colossal and indestructible undertakings… He built human pyramids, carved human obelisks; he took a poor shepherd family and created a nation from it, a great, eternal, holy people, a people of God, destined to outlive the centuries, and to serve as a pattern to all other nations, even as a prototype to the whole of mankind: he created Israel… As of the artist, so also I have not always spoken with sufficient respect of his work, the Jews… The history of the Middle Ages, and even of other times, seldom inscribed in its annals the names of these knights of the holy spirit, because they usually fought with closed visor. The deeds of the Jews, as well as their peculiar character, are little known to the world. One thinks one knows them, because their beards are visible, but nothing else has come in view; and now, as in the Middle Ages, they are a profound mystery, which may perhaps be revealed on the day of which the prophet speaks…

"Yes, to the Jews, to whom the world owes its God, it also owes His Word, the Bible; they saved it from the wreck of the Roman Empire, and in the frantic scramble of migrating tribes they preserved the precious book, until Protestantism sought it with them, translated the discovered work into the vernacular, and disseminated it through the whole world… In the North of Europe and America, the influence of Palestine has grown to be so great, that one can fancy oneself transplanted into the midst of Jews… I will not speak of most of the new communities of the United States where the life of the Old Testament is pedantically imitated … but the caricature will not disappear, and the real, imperishable, and true portion, namely, the morality of ancient Judaism, will also flourish in those countries as luxuriantly as in former days on the banks of the Jordan and upon the heights of Lebanon. No palms are needed for man to be good; and to be good is better than to be beautiful… Judæa has always appeared to me as a piece of the West lost in the East. In fact, with its spiritual belief, its severe, pure, almost ascetic morals, its abstract inner life, this land and its people have ever formed a remarkable contrast to the surrounding countries and their inhabitants, who paid homage to the most licentious and infamous nature cults, and dissipated their existence in bacchanalian orgies. Israel piously sat beneath its fig-tree, and sang the praise of the invisible God, and practised virtue and justice; whilst in the temples of Babylon, Nineveh, Sidon, and Tyre, sanguinary and immoral rites were celebrated, the description of which even now strikes us with horror. When one thinks of its surroundings, this early greatness of Israel cannot be sufficiently admired. Of Israel's love of liberty, whilst slavery was justified not alone in its immediate vicinity but by all the nations of antiquity, even by philosophers – of this I would rather not speak, in order to avoid compromising the Bible with our present rulers… Instead of wrestling with the impossible, instead of foolishly decreeing the abolition of property, Moses strove to render it moral; he endeavored to bring the possession of property into harmony with morality, with the law of reason, and this he effected by the institution of the Jubilee, when all alienated hereditary property, which amongst an agricultural people was land, reverted to the original owners, no matter how they had lost possession thereof. This ordinance offers a most decided contrast to the law of prescription among the Romans… Moses did not wish to abolish the holding of property; his plan was that every one should possess some land, that no one should become a slave, with slavish propensities, through poverty, for freedom was the ultimate aim of the great emancipator, and this desire breathes through all his laws dealing with pauperism. He detested slavery immoderately, almost fiercely… If a slave, however, freed by law, refused to leave the house of his master, Moses commanded that the incorrigible rascal be nailed by his ear to the door-post of his master's house… O Moses, our teacher, Moshe Rabbenu, exalted enemy of serfdom, I pray thee furnish me with hammer and nails, that I may nail our willing slaves, in their liveries of black and red and gold, by their long ears to the Brandenburg Gate."

The spirit of the Jewish law and of Jewish history had indeed come upon this erratic son of Israel, and revealed to him what few of his predecessors had thoroughly grasped, and none had so luminously delineated. Heine appreciated equally the profound wisdom displayed in the laws and the intellectual contests in the centuries of Jewish history, as also the precious ore of poetry, which streamed forth from the greatest Jewish poet of the Middle Ages. Scarcely had Michael Sachs, the preacher with the Psalmist soul and prophetic speech, unveiled the hidden beauties of the "Religious Poetry of the Jews in Spain," and more especially the almost forgotten glory of the poet Jehudah Halevi Alhassan, before Heine, deeply moved, set up a memorial to this singer and brother in race and art. With his magic wand he invoked the shade of Jehudah Halevi from the grave, and depicted him in his complete ideality and the full glow of his inspiration.

Until his last breath the struggle continued within Heine's breast between the two great principles in the construction of the world's history, the pure morality of Judaism and the symmetrical beauty of Hellenism, both of which he reverenced, but was unable to reconcile: —

 
"The contrasts are boldly paired,
Love of pleasure in the Greek, and the thought of God in the Judæan,
 

*****

 
Oh! this conflict will never end,
The true must always contend with the beautiful."
 

He suspected that the harmonious intermingling of the two elements was the task of European civilization; but he was unable to effect it in himself. From this conflict his aberrations arose, and also his impulse to dominate them by ridicule, and thus prevent their mastering him.

The Jewish world is greatly indebted to its two apostate sons, Börne and Heine. They did not indeed destroy all German anti-Jewish feeling, but they at least subdued it. Referring to the absurd cry of "Hep, hep," Heine once said, "This can never occur again, for the press is a weapon, and there are two Jews who possess German style, the one being myself, the other Börne." His prediction was nearly fulfilled, for since the appearance of these two, such fierce outbreaks against Jews have not recurred. Germany has not produced more talented, more artistic, more refined writers than these two Jews.

Young Germany, which originated the present state of culture, and created the Year of Liberation, 1848, is the offspring of these two Jewish fathers. Invective, calumny, and the secret police were perfectly correct in designating the leaders of young Germany as Jews, because without the influence of the Jewish spirit they would not have become the champions of freedom. Jew-haters thought that they were inflicting disgrace on the fair-haired combatants in calling them Jews, whilst actually they only bestowed honor upon them. But the list of Börne's and Heine's services to Germany is not yet exhausted. They induced the French to respect the staunchness of the German spirit. Börne and Heine were the first to draw France and Germany together, to unite German depth of thought with French elegance. They first dispelled the clouds which separated these two nations, causing the French people to ascend and the Germans to descend the mountain, meet each other half-way, and, regardless of mutual antagonism and of their oppressors, stretch forth their hands in brotherly union. This Messianic time, when it arrives, will have been prepared by two Jews, who were fulfilling their national mission.

CHAPTER XV.
REFORM AND YOUNG ISRAEL

Segregation of the Jews – Its Results – Secession and Obstinate Conservatism – Israel Jacobson – His Reforms – The Hamburg Reform Temple Union – Gotthold Salomon – Decay of Rabbinical Authority – Eleazar Libermann – Aaron Chorin – Lazarus Riesser – Party Strife – Isaac Bernays – His Writings – Bernays in Hamburg – Mannheimer – His Congregation in Vienna – Berlin Society for Culture – Edward Gans – His Baptism – Collapse of the Society for Culture.

1818–183 °C. E

The advance of the Jews in Germany had been completed in an amazingly short time, as appears when we contrast Mendelssohn's reticence in touching upon religious and political conditions in Christendom with the boldness of Börne and Heine, who displayed them in their naked form. And mark the progress made in France! Here the Jews had become men, dauntlessly encountering every opponent, and ready to avenge with the sword insulting remarks on their origin. Judaism, however, was less rapid in casting off servile forms than its followers. For nearly two thousand years it had struggled for existence against every new people and every new tendency which appeared on the stage of history. With Greeks and Romans, Parthians and Neo-Persians, Goths and Slavonic tribes, with Arabs and mediæval knights in armor, with monks of every order and fanatic Lutherans, it had maintained ever-recurring contests, and had of necessity become covered with disfiguring scars and foul dust. To defend itself against the assaults of so many hostile powers and during so long a period, Judaism had been compelled to surround itself with an impenetrable coat of mail, to isolate itself completely, or withdraw into a shrine of its own, every access to which was carefully barricaded. So accustomed had the Jews become to their heavy armor, that it seemed to have grown into their very being; nor could it be discarded so long as new battles were imminent. Left to its own resources, and excluded from the external world, especially since the expulsion of its members from Spain and Portugal, and their simultaneous banishment from many German districts, Judaism had created a dreamland for itself. It had admitted magical formulas into its world of thought and fancy to distract the minds of its adherents from pangs of torture, so that they might endure them with greater ease, or forget them entirely. Suddenly its sons were awakened from their dreams by the dazzling sunlight, and beheld the real world, to which they were utter strangers. At first they closed their eyes the tighter, in order to retain the pleasant dream-pictures. In this new age, and in the new conditions, they could not at once find their proper level, and they feared that the altered state of affairs was a mere stratagem, a novel method of warfare in disguise, which their ancient enemies expected to use against Judaism.

During its long journey through the world, and its acquaintance with many nations, Judaism, in spite of its exclusiveness, had admitted various perverse ideas, which became as thoroughly a part of itself, as if derived from the original stock. Memory had been weakened through persecution and martyrdom; the power of thought had also suffered somewhat through daily increasing afflictions. At first it was too distracted to apply tests, to distinguish foreign and unfit elements from native and essential parts and remove them. Among the Jews in Germany, England, and France, the adoption of the uncultivated Polish manner had conferred a barbarous aspect upon Judaism, and among the Portuguese and Italian Jews, owing to Isaac Lurya and Chayim Vital, it had assumed a Kabbalistic form. This disfigurement of Judaism existing among the Portuguese along with external decorum, and its neglected condition in Polish and German communities, affected every element of religious life – divine service, sermons, marriages, interments, in short, every ceremonial, especially those of a public nature. The official representatives and expounders of Judaism, the rabbis and leaders of divine service, were repulsive, either semi-barbarians or visionaries. The foreign additions and excrescences, the fungous growth attached to the original trunk, were regarded by these leaders of Judaism as integral elements. The times had not yet matured men, who, by a delicate perception of the inner kernel of Judaism (as contained in the Bible and the Talmud), by wide vision, and clear insight, could recognize the abuses that had accumulated in the course of time, and separate them from the essential parts. To remove these objectionable excrescences gradually, and with a gentle hand, without giving offense, required profound understanding. A necessary reform, not prompted by external considerations, had been suggested several centuries earlier by far-sighted men; but the modern generation had no knowledge thereof. Neither was there any adequate representative body in the Jewish world. There was, to be sure, an organization, possessing, or in a position easily to obtain, a sort of official character and authority, namely, the French Synhedrion and Consistory. But the chiefs, David Sinzheim and Abraham di Cologna, had not the needful discernment to accomplish the ennoblement and rejuvenescence of Judaism. Sinzheim was only an orthodox Talmudist, and Di Cologna an interesting preacher. The right men were wanting to undertake and promote this much-needed reform, not of the religion itself – for neither the leaders nor the rank and file had lost any degree of morality through the deterioration of Judaism – but of its exterior, to beautify it and remove excrescences. No men being forthcoming, time effected the changes, and so quarrels and contentions were produced. It was destined to be no easy work for Judaism to cast its slough.

The changes in Judaism, like those in the Jews, began in Germany. To the German Jews (because Mendelssohn had come from their midst) a task was allotted similar to that achieved in earlier times by the Alexandrian and Spanish, and in part by the Provençal Jews, that of reconciling Judaism with culture. But when these efforts commenced, the situation was already one of great confusion, and the method by which they were conducted only intensified the difficulties. During the struggles of the German Jews to secure emancipation, when every step towards freedom was accomplished only after the most strenuous exertions, when each advance was met with scorn and neglect, when they were continually being hurled back into their humiliated condition and reminded of their despised state, two equally unpleasant phenomena manifested themselves. Those who, improved by culture and education, swam with the stream, estranged themselves from Judaism, disowned all connection with its official acts, and despised it as the obstacle to their civil or social advancement. To them Judaism appeared as a mummy, a petrifaction, or a specter, which restlessly and aimlessly flitted through the centuries, a picture of grief beyond help. Only a few of this educated class, like Heine in his bright moments, when not led astray by wantonness, were clear-sighted enough to recognize life in this mummy, capable some day of bursting its cerements and engaging in combat with its enemies. On the other hand, the majority of the Jews, who still bore in their hearts deep love for the wrinkled mother of all religions, clung to those unessential forms to which from youth they had been accustomed, because they perceived the treachery of the opposite party, and did not wish to be classed amongst the betrayers of Judaism. "They loved stones, and treasured dust." Theirs was no longer the innocent piety of bygone days which had no opposition to contend with, but an active, passionate feeling. The representatives of the old school became anxious and suspicious about the growing weakness of religious feeling, the loosening of all bonds of union, the manifest symptoms of apostasy, and the contempt for their origin. Judaism seemed a gigantic structure composed of tiny cubes, supporting each other and the whole. They feared the downfall of the whole edifice, if a single support became loose. They had no confidence in the permanence of the structure, for whose maintenance they were ready to sacrifice their lives. They would give up not even the use of their miserable jargon, defiant of every grammatical law, in the ritual, nor their indecorous habits, nor any particular of their disorderly system. Every sign of yielding, any departure from the old order, appeared to them an act of treachery to Judaism.

It seemed impossible to find a means of uniting these opposites. Nevertheless, an attempt was made, but in a rough, unskillful manner, the result being that the advance of Judaism was retarded for a considerable time. The first to undertake some sort of reform was Israel Jacobson. He was especially fitted for the leadership of a new party by his attachment to his faith, his admiration for beauty and external qualities, his activity, wealth, and high position. Immediately after the Westphalian Consistory had been appointed, and he had been placed at its head, he came forward with innovations of a two-fold nature. From the public service in the synagogue connected with the newly-erected school in Cassel, he removed all objectionable and noisy features, especially the sing-song reading so much in use. He naturally insisted upon the delivery of sermons in German. He also introduced new forms and methods borrowed from the Church, such as German as well as Hebrew prayers, insipid German songs by the side of the psalms pregnant with thought, and the ceremony of confessing the faith (Confirmation) for half-grown boys and girls – an idea without meaning in Judaism.

Jacobson exercised such power over his associates in the Westphalian Consistory, that they unresistingly accepted these innovations. He then proceeded to introduce his reforms into all the communities of Westphalia, with the threat that he would have such synagogues as refused to adopt his regulations closed. This compulsion, however, aroused the feelings of the orthodox party; the introduction of the German language into divine service being particularly objectionable to the majority. A rabbi of mild temperament, Samuel Eger of Brunswick (died 1842), had the courage to protest against the arbitrary conduct of the president of the consistory. He prophetically expressed the conviction, that by employing German prayers and hymns the Hebrew language would fall into disuse, and finally die out, and the bond uniting the Jews dispersed throughout the world would thereby be relaxed. Jacobson appears to have paid no heed to these warnings and signs of opposition. The dissatisfied Jews must have lodged complaints about him and his new schemes with King Jerome, for the king reprimanded him for his autocratic interference in matters of conscience and his ardor for reform.

Jacobson's glory ended with the speedy downfall of the Westphalian kingdom. Having moved to Berlin, he furnished a room in his house as a synagogue (1815), although he had formerly been opposed to private synagogues, and introduced his reformed service with German prayers, songs, and a choir. At first there was no room for an organ. Afterwards Jacob Beer, the banker, the father of Meyer Beer, provided a large chamber (1817), where an organ could be put up. After the victory of the Germans over Napoleon, it became the fashion to be religious, and it infected Jews who had previously not experienced the slightest necessity for devotional exercises, and had been quite indifferent to religious ceremonial. Such sentimentalists, who had no regard for Judaism, attended the services of Jacobson, in order to "edify themselves" and "be devout," as the new phrases ran. The "Society of Friends" furnished members. This was the origin of a Reform party, a tiny community within the community, which however, as could be easily foreseen, had a future, owing to the energy displayed at the commencement and the repulsive form of the ordinary divine service. The great attraction in the new form of service was the German sermon, which Jacobson usually delivered. His addresses exercised great power, because the so-called "homiletic discourses" of the rabbis and the Polish or Moravian itinerant preachers, were dull and unattractive.

But the private synagogue in Berlin, owing to complaints made by some of the orthodox party, was closed by the Prussian government. The king of Prussia, Frederick William III, was averse to all innovations, even in Jewish circles, and hated them as being revolutionary plots. A young preacher from the school of Jacobson thereupon betook himself to Hamburg, having been invited to conduct a free school established by certain rich Jews. Here he set on foot the plan of erecting a reform temple on the model of Jacobson's.

This young minister, Kley, had brought from Jacobson's synagogue a complete scheme, which included German hymns and prayers, sermons, and the organ. He composed a so-called "religious song-book," in imitation of the Protestant liturgy, an empty and feeble work, suited only to a race of children, ignorant of the psalms, the pattern sources of religious devotion. But there were men in Hamburg who, although they approved of modern ideas, were yet unwilling to break entirely with Judaism and its past, and who decidedly objected to the omission of Hebrew in their prayers. The chiefs of this movement were M. J. Bresselau, himself a good Hebrew stylist, and Sæckel Fränkel (died in Hamburg, 1833), likewise a Hebrew scholar, who had retranslated several of the Apocryphal books into the sacred language. These two men compiled a selection from the Hebrew prayers in use, in order to amalgamate them with the newly-adopted German songs and prayers, a discordant medley in contents and form, which somewhat called to mind a friendly compromise among contending parties. About fifty families joined, and thus arose the Reform Temple Union in Hamburg. This mongrel birth was ushered into the world without love and enthusiasm. Its promoters were so prosaic that the anniversary of the battle of Leipsic was chosen for the day of the consecration of the Temple (October 18, 1818). The preacher Kley, in order to have ample material for a discourse, had to use as a starting point the German wars of freedom, which had caused the Jews in Germany to retrograde rather than to advance. Young maidens sang hymns with the young men, in order to create the sensation which the cause itself could not awaken, and this gave great offense. Kley could not have kept the Temple community together for long, had not the Templars, as they were called, found an efficient preacher in Gotthold Salomon, of Dessau (died 1862), who was well acquainted with biblical and Jewish literature, and knew how to conceal the bareness of the new movement. On the one hand, he invested the Temple with Protestant attributes, and on the other, by reason of his conceit and ostentation, he gave it an aggressive character. With Salomon the influence of the preacher among the German Jews commenced; the pulpit took the place of the school, and from it there often resounded the hollow phrases which conceal thought, or the lack of thought. The Temple Union had officially given up the belief in the Messiah, without exactly defining what position Judaism was to assume with reference to Christianity. Some of the zealous reformers meditated a complete rupture, and the refusal to contribute to the communal funds.