Studies in Judaism 10

Studies in Judaism 10

There must have been some fascinating charm in Nachman's personality,

which made him irresistible to all who came into contact with him.

Rapoport has described his first interview with Krochmal. "It is more than

thirty years since I first made his acquaintance, and beheld the glory of

his presence. Though he was in weak health, still his soul was strong; and

as soon as I conversed with him there came over me a spirit of judgment

and knowledge. I felt almost transformed into another man." Elsewhere the

same writer says: "Oh, how sweet to me were these walks with

Krochmal--sweeter than all the pleasures of this world. I could never have

enough of his wisdom; with his every word he conveyed a new lesson."

 

After a lengthy stay at Lemberg, Krochmal partially, though not entirely,

recovered from his severe illness; he remained weak and pale for the rest

of his days. His antagonists, the Chassidim, believed him to be possessed

by a demon who could find no better dwelling-place than in the person of

this arch-heretic. Had it been in their power they would probably have

dragged him to some exorcist for the purpose of driving out his German,

French, Latin, and other symptoms of demoniacal heresy. Happily the

orthodox were powerless to do this, so Krochmal was left unmolested, and

was allowed to resume his walks and studies. It may be here remarked that

Krochmal in general avoided giving the Chassidim any cause for reasonable

complaint. Rapoport asserts that his master was "deeply religious and a

strict observer of the law. He was zealously anxious to perform every

ordinance, Biblical or Rabbinical." The only liberty that Krochmal claimed

for himself and his disciples was the right to study what they thought

best and in the way they thought best. When this liberty was attacked, he

showed a firmness and resolution which would hardly have been expected

from this quiet and gentle man. To one of his pupils, who made concessions

to the Chassidim and their Zaddikim worship, Krochmal wrote: "Be firm in

this matter unless you wish to earn the contempt of every honest man. One

who is afraid of these people, and debases himself before them bears a

mean soul that was born to slavery. The man that wishes to rise above the

mob, with its confused notions and corrupt morality, must be courageous as

a lion in conquering the obstacles that beset his path. Consideration of

what people will say, what bigots will whisper, what crafty enemies will

scheme--questions such as these can have but one effect,--to darken the

intellect and confuse the faculty of judgment."

 

So Krochmal continued his studies without interruption till 1814, when the

death of his wife's mother brought his period of ease and comfort to an

end. His father-in-law seems to have died some time before, and Krochmal

was forced to seek his own living. He became a merchant, but it is to be

regretted that he did not prove as successful a man of business as he was

a man of letters. He found it a hard struggle to earn a living. But the

severest trial which he had to undergo was the death of his wife in 1826.

In a letter, dating from about this time, to a friend who had asked him

for assistance in his philosophical inquiries, Krochmal wrote--"How can I

help you now? I am already an old man; my head is gray, and my health is

broken. In the last three years I have met with many misfortunes. My

beloved wife died after a long illness. My daughter will soon leave me to

get married, my elder son will depart to seek his livelihood, and I shall

be left alone with only a child of ten years, the son of my old age. I

will lift up mine eyes unto the hills: From whence shall my help come?"

 

Nachman was evidently in very low spirits at this time, but he was in too

true a sense a philosopher to despair. He turned for comfort to his

studies, and at this dark epoch of his life he first became acquainted

with the Philosophy of Hegel, whose system he was wont to call the

"Philosophy of Philosophies."

 

For the next ten years the works of Hegel and inquiries into Jewish

history appear to have absorbed all the leisure that his mercantile

occupation left him. We shall presently see what the result of these

studies was. No fresh subjects were undertaken by Krochmal in the last

years of his life; he had already acquired a fund of knowledge vast enough

to engage all his thoughts. There are, however, some remaining points in

his private circumstances which it may not be uninteresting to mention.

 

Krochmal, as has been already related, was not prosperous in his business.

Things went from bad to worse, and he was compelled in 1836 to seek a

situation. "There ought to be literary men poor," some writer has

maintained, "to show whether they are genuine or not." This test Krochmal

successfully passed through. Even as a young man Nachman's strength of

character was admired by his contemporaries not less than his rare

learning. In his subsequent distress, he gave evidence of the truth of

this judgment. Despite his poverty, his friends could not prevail upon him

to accept the post of Rabbi in any Jewish community. "I am unwilling," he

wrote to a friend, "to be the cause of dissensions in any Jewish

congregation. I should prefer to die of hunger rather than become a Rabbi

under present circumstances." He expressed his views on this subject even

more decidedly on a later occasion when the Berlin congregation offered

him the post of Chief Rabbi in that town. In a letter, conveying his

refusal of this honourable office, he says: "I never thought of becoming

the Conscience-counsellor (_Gewissensrath_) of men. My line of studies was

not directed to that end, nor would it accord with my disposition and

sentiments. The only post that I should care to accept would be that of

teacher in the Jewish Theological Seminary, which, as I was informed, you

were thinking of establishing in Berlin." The plan to found such an

institution was not realised till forty years later, and in the interval

Nachman had to look for his living in other regions than Jewish theology.

Being in poor circumstances, and as his children and friends had left him,

he felt very lonely at Zolkiew. "Nobody cares for me here," he writes,

"and I am equally indifferent." His one desire was to obtain a situation

at Brody, possibly as book-keeper with a salary of some thirty pounds a

year, on condition that he would be expected to devote only half the day

to his business duties, thus securing for himself leisure for

philosophical studies.

 

His terms were accepted, and he obtained the humble post he sought. He

remained in Brody for the next two years, 1836-8, but at the end of 1838

he fell so dangerously ill that he could no longer resist the pressing

request of his daughter to live with her at Tarnopol. She had urged him to

take this step even previous to his removal to Brody, but he had declined

on the plea that he preferred to live by the labour of his hands. Now,

however, he yielded to her wish, and betook himself to Tarnopol, where for

two years longer he lived affectionately tended by his children and

respected by all who knew him. In May 1840, Krochmal's illness began to

develop fatal symptoms, and he died in the arms of his daughter on the

31st of July (the first of Ab), at the age of fifty-five. As Zunz happily

remarked: "This great man was born on the 7th of Adar, the birthday of

Moses (according to Jewish tradition), and died on the first of Ab, the

anniversary of the death of Aaron, the High Priest."

 

I have tried in the foregoing remarks to give a short sketch of our

Rabbi's life according to the accounts of Zunz, Rapoport, and Letteris.

There is one other point to which I must allude, as it involves a

consideration on which Letteris seems to lay much stress. This biographer

appears to think that Krochmal was in his youth greatly influenced by the

society in which he moved, consisting as it did of many learned and

enlightened men. There is, too, the oft-quoted saying of Goethe:--

 

 

Wer den Dichter will verstehen

Muss in Dichters Lande gehen.

 

 

And I am probably expected to give some account of the state of society in

which Nachman grew up. I regret that I must ask to be excused from doing

so. I cannot consent to take the reader to Krochmal's land. And if I might

venture to give him my humble advice, I should only say, "By all means

stop at home." Goethe may be right about the poet, but his remark does not

apply to the case of the scholar. It may be true, as some think, that

every great man is the product of his time, but it certainly does not

follow that he is the product of his country. Nor could I name any other

country of which Krochmal was the product. Many a city no doubt boasted

itself a town full of "_Chakhamim_ and _Sopherim_"(24) as the Hebrew

phrase is, or, as we would express it, "a seat of learning," full of

scholars of the ancient and modern schools. But neither these ancient

scholars nor the modern were of a kind to produce a real scholar and an

enlightened thinker like Krochmal. There were many men who knew by heart

the whole of the Halachic works of Maimonides, the Mishnah, and even the

whole of the Babylonian Talmud. This is very imposing. But if you look a

little closer, you will find that with a few exceptions--such as the school

of R. Elijah Wilna--these men, generally speaking, hardly deserve the name

of scholars at all. They were rather a sort of studying engines. The

steam-engine passes over a continent, here through romantic scenery, there

in the midst of arid deserts, by stream and mountain and valley, always

with the same monotonous hum and shriek. So these scholars went through

the Talmud with never changing feelings. They did not rejoice at the

description which is given in tractate _Biccurim_(25) of the procession

formed when the first-fruits were brought into the Holy Temple. They were

not much saddened when reading in tractate _Taanith_(26) of the unhappy

days so recurrent in Jewish history. They were not delighted by the wisdom

of _Seder Nezikin_,(27) which deals with civil law; nor were they vexed of

_Seder Taharoth_,(28) which treats of the laws of cleanliness and

uncleanliness, that by their exaggeration gave cause to much dissension in

the time of the Temple. The pre-Talmudic literature, such as the _Siphra_,

_Siphré_, and _Mechilta_(29)--the only existing means of obtaining an

insight into the Talmud--were altogether neglected. All that these readers

cared for was to push on to the end, and the prayer recited at the close

was of more importance to them than the treatise they had perused.

 

Not less melancholy was the spectacle presented by the so-called men of

"Enlightenment" (_Aufklärung_). They belonged chiefly to the rationalistic

school of Mendelssohn, but they equalled their master neither in knowledge

nor in moral character. It was an enlightenment without foundation in real

scholarship, and did not lead to an ideal life, though again I must add

that there were exceptions. These men were rather what Germans would term

_Schöngeister_, a set of dilettanti who cared to study as little as

possible, and to write as much as possible. They wrote bad grammars,

superficial commentaries on the Bible, and terribly dull poems. Of this

literature, with the exception of Erter's _Watchman_,(30) there is

scarcely a work that one would care to read twice. Most of them despised

Rabbinism, but without understanding its noblest forms as they are to be

traced in the Talmud and later Hebrew literature. They did not dislike

Judaism, but the only Judaism they affected was one "which does not oppose

itself to anything in particular"; or, as Heine would have described it,

"Eine reinliche Religion." In one respect these little men were great: in

mutual admiration, which reached such a pitch that such titles as "Great

Luminary," "World-famed Sage," were considered altogether too

insignificant and commonplace.

 

I will now pass to the writings of Krochmal. It must be premised that

Krochmal was not a voluminous author. All his writings, including a few

letters which were published in various Hebrew periodicals, would scarcely

occupy four hundred pages. Krochmal used to call himself "der ewige

Student" (the perpetual pupil). He did not read books, nor study

philosophical systems, with the object of writing books of his own on

them. He read and studied in order that he might become a better and a

wiser man. Besides, he did not think himself competent to judge on grave

subjects, nor did he consider his judgment, even if he formed one, worthy

of publication. He counselled his friends to be equally slow in publishing

their views to the world. "Be not," he wrote to a correspondent,--"be not

hasty in forming your opinions before you have studied the literature of

the subject with care and devotion. This is no easy matter, for no man can

obtain any real knowledge of the Torah and philosophy unless he is

prepared to give himself up in single-hearted devotion to his studies."

Severe though he was to his friends, he was still more severe to himself.

Though he had been collecting materials on subjects of Jewish history and

philosophy from his early youth, it was not until he had endured much

persuasion and pressure from his friends that he began to write down his

thoughts in a connected form. We thus possess only one work from the pen

of this author; but that work is the _Guide of the Perplexed of the

Time_,(31) a posthumous book published in 1851, eleven years after

Krochmal's death. His work had been much interrupted by illness during the

last years of his life, and as a necessary consequence many parts of his

treatise finally remained in an unfinished state. Krochmal commissioned

his children to hand over his papers to Zunz, who was to arrange and edit

them as best he might. Zunz, who in his reverence for Krochmal went so far

as to call him the man of God, gladly accepted the task, in which he was

aided by Steinschneider. Unfortunately, the work was published in Lemberg,

a place famous for spoiling books. Even the skill of these two great

masters did not suffice to save Krochmal's work from the fate to which all

the books printed in Lemberg seem inevitably doomed. Thus Krochmal's work

is printed on bad paper, and with faint ink; it is full of misprints and

the text is sometimes confused with the notes. A second edition appeared

in Lemberg in 1863; but, it is scarcely necessary to add, the reprint is even worse than the original issue.