Studies in Judaism 22

Studies in Judaism 22

V. A JEWISH BOSWELL

There is a saying in the Talmud "Nothing exists of which there is not some

indication in the Torah." These words are often quoted, and some modern

authors have pressed them so far as to find even the discoveries of

Columbus and the inventions of Watt and Stephenson indicated in the Law.

This is certainly misapplied ingenuity. But it is hardly an exaggeration

to maintain that there is no noble manifestation of real religion, no

__EXPRESSION__ of real piety, reverence, and devotion, to which Jewish

literature would not offer a fair parallel.

 

Thus it will hardly be astonishing to hear that Jewish literature has its

Boswell to show, more than three centuries before the Scottish gentleman

came to London to admire his Johnson, and more than four centuries before

the Sage of Chelsea delivered his lectures on Hero Worship. And this

Jewish Boswell was guided only by the motives suggested to him in the old

Rabbinic literature. In this literature the reverence for the great man,

and the absorption of one's whole self in him, went so far that one Rabbi

declared that the whole world was only created to serve such a man as

company.(106)

 

Again, the fact that, in the language of the Rabbis, the term for studying

the Law and discussing it is "to attend" or rather "to serve the disciples

of the Wise" may also have led people to the important truth that the

great man is not a lecturing machine, but a sort of living Law himself.

"When the man," said one Rabbi, "has wholly devoted himself to the Torah,

and thoroughly identified himself with it, it becomes almost his own

Torah." Thus people have not only to listen to his words but to observe

his whole life, and to profit from all his actions and movements.

 

This was what the Jewish Boswell sought to do. His name was Rabbi Solomon,

of St. Goar, a small town on the Rhine, while the name of the master whom

he served was R. Jacob, the Levite, better known by his initials Maharil,

who filled the office of Chief Rabbi in Mayence and Worms successively.

The main activity of Maharil falls in the first three decades of the

fifteenth century. Those were troublous times for a Rabbi. For the

preceding century with its persecution and sufferings--one has only to

think of the Black Death and its terrible consequences for the Jews--led to

the destruction of the great Schools, the decay of the study of the Law,

and to the dissolution of many congregations. Those which remained lost

all touch with each other, so that almost every larger Jewish community

had its own _Minhag_ or ritual custom.(107)

 

It was Maharil who brought some order into this chaos, and in the course

of time his influence asserted itself so strongly that the rules observed

by him in the performing of religious ceremonies were accepted by the

great majority of the Jewish communities. Thus the personality of Maharil

himself became a standing Minhag, suppressing all the other Minhagim

(customs).

 

But there must have been something very strong and very great about the

personality of the man who could succeed in such an arduous task. For we

must not forget that the Minhag or custom in its decay degenerates into a

kind of religious fashion, the worst disease to which religion is liable,

and the most difficult to cure. It is therefore an irreparable loss both

for Jewish literature and for Jewish history, that the greatest part of

Maharil's posthumous writings are no longer extant, so that our knowledge

about him is very small. But the little we know of him we owe chiefly to

the communicativeness of his servant, the Solomon of St. Goar whom I

mentioned above.

 

Solomon not only gave us the "Customs" of his master, but also observed

him closely in all his movements, and conscientiously wrote down all that

he saw and heard, under the name of _Collectanea_. It seems that the bulk

of these _Collectanea_ was also lost. But in the fragments that we still

possess we are informed, among other things, how Maharil addressed his

wife, how he treated his pupils, how careful he was in the use of his

books, and even how clean his linen was. Is this not out-Boswelling

Boswell?

 

The most striking point of agreement between the Boswell of the fifteenth

and him of the eighteenth century, is that they both use the same passage

from the Talmud to excuse the interest in trifles which their labours of

love betrayed. Thus Solomon prefaces his _Collectanea_ with the following

words: "It is written, His leaf shall not wither. These words were

explained by our Sages to mean that even the idle talk of the disciples of

the wise deserves a study. Upon this interpretation I have relied. In my

love to R. Jacob the Levite, I collected everything about him. I did not

refuse even small things, though many derided me. Everything I wrote down,

for such was the desire of my heart."

 

Thus far Solomon. Now, if we turn to the introduction to Boswell's _Life

of Johnson_, we read the following sentence: "For this almost

superstitious reverence, I have found very old and venerable authority

quoted by our great modern prelate, Secker, in whose tenth sermon there is

the following passage: 'Rabbi Kimchi, a noted Jewish commentator who lived

about five hundred years ago, explains that passage in the first Psalm,

"His leaf also shall not wither" from Rabbins yet older than himself, that

even the idle talk, so he expressed it, of a good man ought to be

regarded.' "

 

Croker's note to this passage sounds rather strange. This editor says:

"Kimchi was a Spanish Rabbi, who died in 1240. One wonders that Secker's

good sense should have condescended to quote this far-fetched and futile

interpretation of the simple and beautiful metaphor, by which the Psalmist

illustrates the prosperity of the righteous man." Now Kimchi died at least

five years earlier than Croker states, but dates, we know from Macaulay's

essay on the subject, were not Croker's strong point. But one can hardly

forgive the editor of Boswell this lack of sympathy. Had he known what

strong affinity there was between his most Christian author and the humble

Jew Solomon, he would have less resented this condescension of Archbishop

Secker.

 

As for the Jewish Boswell himself, we know very little about him. The only

place in which he speaks about his own person is that in which he derives

his pedigree from R. Eleazar ben Samuel Hallevi (died 1357), and says that

he was generally called "Der gute (the good) R. Salman." He well deserved

this appellation. In his Will we find the following injunction to his

children: "Be honest, and conscientious in your dealing with men, with

Jews as well as Gentiles, be kind and obliging to them; do not speak what

is superfluous." And wisdom is surely rare enough to render inappropriate

a charge of superfluousness against the work of those who in bygone times

spent their energies in gathering the crumbs that fell from the tables of

the wise.

 

 

 

 

 

VI. THE DOGMAS OF JUDAISM

 

 

The object of this essay is to say about the dogmas of Judaism a word

which I think ought not to be left unsaid.

 

In speaking of dogmas it must be understood that Judaism does not ascribe

to them any saving power. The belief in a dogma or a doctrine without

abiding by its real or supposed consequences (_e.g._ the belief in

_creatio ex nihilo_ without keeping the Sabbath) is of no value. And the

question about certain doctrines is not whether they possess or do not

possess the desired charm against certain diseases of the soul, but

whether they ought to be considered as characteristics of Judaism or not.

 

It must again be premised that the subject, which occupied the thoughts of

the greatest and noblest Jewish minds for so many centuries, has been

neglected for a comparatively long time. And this for various reasons.

First, there is Mendelssohn's assertion, or supposed assertion, in his

_Jerusalem_, that Judaism has no dogmas--an assertion which has been

accepted by the majority of modern Jewish theologians as the only dogma

Judaism possesses. You can hear it pronounced in scores of Jewish pulpits;

you can read it written in scores of Jewish books. To admit the

possibility that Mendelssohn was in error was hardly permissible,

especially for those with whom he enjoys a certain infallibility. Nay,

even the fact that he himself was not consistent in his theory, and on

another occasion declared that Judaism _has_ dogmas, only that they are

purer and more in harmony with reason than those of other religions; or

even the more important fact that he published a school-book for children,

in which the so-called Thirteen Articles were embodied, only that instead

of the formula "I believe," he substituted "I am convinced,"--even such

patent facts did not produce much effect upon many of our modern

theologians.(108) They were either overlooked or explained away so as to

make them harmonise with the great dogma of dogmalessness. For it is one

of the attributes of infallibility that the words of its happy possessor

must always be reconcilable even when they appear to the eye of the

unbeliever as gross contradictions.

 

Another cause of the neglect into which the subject has fallen is that our

century is an _historical_ one. It is not only books that have their fate,

but also whole sciences and literatures. In past times it was religious

speculation that formed the favourite study of scholars, in our time it is

history with its critical foundation on a sound philology. Now as these

two most important branches of Jewish science were so long neglected--were

perhaps never cultivated in the true meaning of the word, and as Jewish

literature is so vast and Jewish history so far-reaching and eventful, we

cannot wonder that these studies have absorbed the time and the labour of

the greatest and best Jewish writers in this century.

 

There is, besides, a certain tendency in historical studies that is

hostile to mere theological speculation. The historian deals with

realities, the theologian with abstractions. The latter likes to shape the

universe after his system, and tells us how things _ought to be_, the

former teaches us how they _are_ or _have been_, and the explanation he

gives for their being so and not otherwise includes in most cases also a

kind of justification for their existence. There is also the _odium

theologicum_, which has been the cause of so much misfortune that it is

hated by the historian, whilst the superficial, rationalistic way in which

the theologian manages to explain everything which does not suit his

system is most repulsive to the critical spirit.

 

But it cannot be denied that this neglect has caused much confusion.

Especially is this noticeable in England, which is essentially a

theological country, and where people are but little prone to give up

speculation about things which concern their most sacred interest and

greatest happiness. Thus whilst we are exceedingly poor in all other

branches of Jewish learning, we are comparatively rich in productions of a

theological character. We have a superfluity of essays on such delicate

subjects as eternal punishment, immortality of the soul, the day of

judgment, etc., and many treatises on the definition of Judaism. But

knowing little or nothing of the progress recently made in Jewish

theology, of the many protests against all kinds of infallibility, whether

canonised in this century or in olden times, we in England still maintain

that Judaism has no dogmas as if nothing to the contrary had ever been

said. We seek the foundation of Judaism in political economy, in hygiene,

in everything except religion. Following the fashion of the day to esteem

religion in proportion to its ability to adapt itself to every possible

and impossible metaphysical and social system, we are anxious to squeeze

out of Judaism the last drop of faith and hope, and strive to make it so

flexible that we can turn it in every direction which it is our pleasure

to follow. But alas! the flexibility has progressed so far as to classify

Judaism among the invertebrate species, the lowest order of living things.

It strongly resembles a certain Christian school which addresses itself to

the world in general and claims to satisfy everybody alike. It claims to

be socialism for the adherents of Karl Marx and Lassalle, worship of man

for the followers of Comte and St. Simon; it carefully avoids the word

"God" for the comfort of agnostics and sceptics, whilst on the other hand

it pretends to hold sway over paradise, hell, and immortality for the

edification of believers. In such illusions many of our theologians

delight. For illusions they are; you cannot be everything if you want to

be anything. Moreover, illusions in themselves are bad enough, but we are

menaced with what is still worse. Judaism, divested of every higher

religious motive, is in danger of falling into gross materialism. For what

else is the meaning of such declarations as "Believe what you like, but

conform to this or that mode of life"; what else does it mean but "We

cannot expect you to believe that the things you are bidden to do are

commanded by a higher authority; there is not such a thing as belief, but

you ought to do them for conventionalism or for your own convenience."

 

But both these motives--the good opinion of our neighbours, as well as our

bodily health--have nothing to do with our nobler and higher sentiments,

and degrade Judaism to a matter of expediency or diplomacy. Indeed, things

have advanced so far that well-meaning but ill-advised writers even think

to render a service to Judaism by declaring it to be a kind of enlightened

Hedonism, or rather a moderate Epicureanism.

 

I have no intention of here answering the question, What is Judaism? This

question is not less perplexing than the problem, What is God's world?

Judaism is also a great Infinite, composed of as many endless Units, the

Jews. And these Unit-Jews have been, and are still, scattered through all

the world, and have passed under an immensity of influences, good and bad.

If so, how can we give an exact definition of the Infinite, called Judaism?