Chapter II
Days of Transition
1648-1794
In the diary of a Polish squire we find the following item: “Jan. 5. As the lessee Herszka had not yet paid me the rental of 91 gulden, I went to his house to get my debt. According to the contract, I can arrest him and his wife for as long as I wish, until he settles the bill, and so I ordered him locked up in the pig-sty and left his wife and his sons in the inn. The youngest son, however, I took with me to the palace to be instructed in the rudiments of our religion. The boy is unusually bright and shall be baptized. I already wrote to our priest concerning it, and he promised to come to prepare him. Leisza at first stubbornly refused to make the sign of the cross and repeat our prayers, but Strelicki administered a sound whipping, and to-day he even ate ham. Our venerable priest Bonapari... is inventing all manner of means to break his stiff-neckedness.” Meassef, St. Petersburg, 1902, pp. 192-193.
3
See Wolkonsky, Pictures of Russian History and Literature, Boston, 1897, p. 136.
4
Orshansky, in Yevreyskaya Biblyotyeka, ii. 207.
5
Meassef, St. Petersburg, 1902, p. 195; Beck and Brann, Yevreyskaya Istoriya, p. 326; JE, iv. 155; xi. 113.
7
FKN, pp. 126-132; Voskhod, 1893; on the Hasidim and Mitnaggedim see below.
8
Ma’aseh Tobiah, p. 18; Meassef, pp. 206-209; Geiger (Melo Hofnayim, Berlin, 1840, pp. 1-29) published Delmedigo’s corroboration of this statement.
9
Rapoport, Etan ha-‘Ezrahi, Ostrog, 1776, Introduction.
10
Cf. Zederbaum, Keter Kehunnah, pp. 72-74, 84, 121, etc., and Ha-Shiloah, xxi. 165; Schechter, Studies in Judaism, i., Philadelphia, 1896, i. 17 f., and Greenstone, The Messiah Idea in Jewish History, pp. 237 f. According to some, Judah he-Hasid and his followers went to Palestine in the expectation, not of the Messiah, but of Shabbataï Zebi, who was believed to have been in hiding for forty years, in imitation of the retirement of Moses in Midian for a similar period of years. “The ruins of Rabbi Judah he-Hasid’s synagogue” and Yeshibah in Jerusalem still keep the memory of the event fresh in the minds of Palestinian Jews.
12
Ha-Boker Or, iv. 103-105: [Hebrew: H’fkormot Mn Nshmot M’lh Hngon.]
13
Cf. Emden, op. cit., p. 185, and Shimush, Amsterdam, 1785, pp. 78-80, with Pardes, ii. 204-214.
15
Levin, op. cit., pp. 28-30.
16
See Ha-Bikkurim, i. 1-26; ii. 1-20; Ha-Zeman (monthly), 1903, ii. 6; Plungian, Ben Porat, Vilna, 1858, p. 33; Keneset Yisraël, iii. 152 seq.
26
Wolff, Maimoniana, Berlin, 1813, p. 177.
27
How touching and suggestive is the word [Hebrew: Shbi] in an acrostic at the end of his Introduction to his Gibe’at ha-Moreh, a commentary on the Moreh Nebukim:
‘hobi ykr kor’
‘bi vshm shmi hd’
Shbi bmlt bhtboknn
29
FKI, p. 196.
30
Maggid, Toledot Mishpehot Ginzberg, pp. 52-53; Emden, Sheëlat Ya’abez, Altona, 1739, p. 65 a.
31
FKN, pp. 109-114, 269; FKI, p. 300.
32
FKI, p. 394; Delitzsch, op. cit, p. 84.
33
L’univers Israélite, liii. 831-841: “C’est, vous le voyez, un juif polonais qui contribua puissamment à l’émancipation des juifs de France. Et je me demande si le Judaisme du monde entier ne doit pas rendre hommage à notre coreligionnaire polonais autant peut-être qu’ à Menasse ben Israël.” FKI, p. 333; Ha-Meliz, ii. no. 50; Shulammit, iii. 425; Graetz, op. cit. (Engl. transl.), v. 443.
34
See Berliner, Festschrift, 1903, pp. 1-4.
35
See Ha-Meliz, viii. nos. 11, 22, 23; FSL, p. 139; Monatsschrift, xxiv, 348-357.
36
Delitzsch, op. cit., pp. 115-118; Ha-Zeman (monthly), ii. 23 f.
37
See Meassef, 1788, p. 32, and Levin’s ed. of Moreh Nebukim, Zolkiev, 1829, Introduction.
38
Ha-Meassef, 1809, pp. 68-75, 136-171.
39
See Sefer ha-Berit, Introduction, and Weissberg, Aufklärungsliteratur, Vienna, 1898, p. 83.
40
FKI, p. 428.
41
See Emden, Torat ha-Kenaot, pp. 123-127, and Hitabkut (Pinczov’s letters); Voskhod, 1882, nos. viii-ix; FSL, pp. 136-137; Friedrichsfeld, Zeker Zaddik, p. 12.
42
Maimon, Autobiography, pp. 106-107; FSL, p. 135.
43
See LTI, ii. 96, n. 1, and Yellin and Abrahams, Maimonides, p. 160, and reference on p. 330, n. 72; Ha-Zeman (monthly), i. 102-103; Margolioth, Bet Middot, p. 20. Heine’s admiration for these idealists or those who succeeded them is well worth quoting. In his essay on Poland, he says: “In spite of the barbaric fur cap which covers his head and the even more barbaric ideas which fill it, I value the Polish Jew much more than many a German Jew with his Bolivar on his head and his Jean Paul inside of it.... The Polish Jew in his unclean furred coat, with his populous beard and his smell of garlic and his Jewish jargon, is nevertheless dearer to me than many a Westerner in all the glory of his stocks and bonds.”
44
Op. cit. Letter ii.
45
Likkute Kadmoniot, Vilna, 1860, Introduction.
Notes
6 Meassef, p. 200. On Russia at the time of Peter the Great, see Macaulay, History of England, ch. xxiii., where he describes the “savage ignorance and the squalid poverty of the barbarous country.” In that country “there was neither literature nor science, neither school nor college. It was not till more than a hundred years after the invention of printing that a single printing-press had been introduced into the Russian empire, and that printing-press speedily perished in a fire, which was supposed to have been kindled by priests.” When Pyoter Vyeliki (Peter the Great), while in London, saw the archiepiscopal library, he declared that “he had never imagined that there were so many printed volumes in the world.” See also Carlyle, History of Frederick the Great, iv. 7.
11 Among the many wonderful episodes in the life of the master, his biographer mentions also that he could swallow down the largest gobletful in a single gulp (Shibhe ha-Besht, Berdichev, 1815, pp. 7-8). The best, though not an impartial work on Hasidism is Zweifel’s Shalom ‘al Yisraël, 4 vols., Zhitomir, 1868-1872.
14 See Schechter, op. cit., pp. 73-93; Silber, Elijah Gaon, 1906; Levin, ‘Aliyat Eliyahu, Vilna, 1856, and FKN, pp. 133-155.
17 Sirkes (Bayit Hadash, Cracow, 1631, p. 40) decides that Jews may employ in their synagogue melodies used in the church, since “music is neither Jewish nor Christian, but is governed by universal laws.” See also Hayyim ben Bezalel’s Wikkuah Mayim Hayyim, Introduction, and passim.
18 See J.S. Raisin, Sect, Creed and Custom in Judaism, Philadelphia, 1907, p. 9, and ch. viii.; Ha-Meliz, x. 186, 192-194.
19 See Ha-Zeman (monthly), 1903, ii. 7.; Shklov, Euclidus, Introduction; Keneset Yisraël, 1887, and Hagra on Orah Hayyim, Shklov, 1803, Introduction.
20 See Graetz, op. cit, xi. 590, 604, 606. The Gaon, who as a rule was very mild, lost patience with the Hasidim and wielded the weapons of the kuni (or stocks and exposures) and excommunication without mercy. The Hasidim were also accused of being not only religious dissenters but revolutionaries. Zeitlin, quoted in Yiddishes Tageblatt, from the Moment, March, 1913.
21 See Karpeles, Time of Mendelssohn, p. 297; Kayserling, Mendelssohn, p. 12; Ha-Meliz, 1900, nos. 194-196.
22 Epstein, Geburat ha-Ari, Vilna, 1870, p. 29; Rabinovich, Zunz, Warsaw, 1896; Wessely, op. cit., ii.; Linda, Reshit Limmudim, Berlin, 1789, and Ha-Zeman (monthly), ii. 28.
23 Delitzsch, Zur Geschichte der jüdischen Poesie, Leipsic, 1836, p. 118; Bernfeld, Dor Tahapukot, Warsaw, 1897, pp. 88 f. Dubno also edited Luzzatto’s La-Yesharim Tehillah, which, according to Slouschz, marks the beginning of the renaissance in Hebrew belles-lettres.
24 Published in Berlin in 1793. It was translated into English by Murray (Solomon Maimon, Boston, 1888) and into Hebrew by Taviov (Warsaw, 1899).
25 Bernfeld, op. cit., ii. 66 f. JE, s.v. Maimon; and Autobiography (Engl. transl.), p. 217. For Maimon’s system of philosophy and also for a complete bibliography of his writings, see Kunz, Die Philosophic Salomon Maimons, Heidelberg, 1912, pp. xxv, 531.
28 See Murray’s Introduction to the Autobiography; Auerbach, Dichter und Kaufmann; Zangwill, Nathan the Wise and Solomon the Fool.