Volume II Part 8 (2/2)
[Footnote 2: On the yes.h.i.+bah in Volozhin, in the government of Vilna, see Vol. I, p. 380 et seq. Mir is a townlet in the government of Minsk.]
[Footnote 3: An old Hebrew expression for secular learning.]
Instructive in this respect is the fate of one of the most remarkable Talmudists of his time, Rabbi Menashe Ilyer. Ilyer spent most of his life in the townlets of Smorgoni and Ilya (whence his surname), in the government of Vilna, and died of the cholera, in 1831. While keeping strictly within the bounds of rabbinical orthodoxy, whose adepts respected him for his enormous erudition and strict piety, Menashe a.s.siduously endeavored to widen their range of thought and render them more amenable to moderate freedom of research and a more sober outlook on life. But his path was strewn with thorns. When on one occasion he expounded before his pupils the conclusion, which he had reached after a profound scientific investigation, that the text of the Mishnah had in many cases been wrongly interpreted by the Gemara,[1] he was taken to task by a conference of Lithuanian rabbis and barely escaped excommunication.
[Footnote 1: The Mishnah is a code of laws edited about 200 C.E. by Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi. The Gemara consists largely of the comments of the talmudic authorities, who lived after that date, on the text of this code.]
Having conceived a liking for mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy, Menashe decided to go to Berlin to devote himself to these studies, but on his way to the German capital, while temporarily sojourning in Koenigsberg, he was halted by his countrymen, who visited Prussia on business, and was cowed by all kinds of threats into returning home. By persistent private study, this native of a Russian out-of-the-way townlet managed to acquire a fair amount of general culture, which, with all its limitations, yielded a rich literary harvest. In 1807 he made his _debut_ with the treatise _Pesher Dabar_ (”The Solution of the Problem”), [1] in which he gave vent to his grief over the fact that the spiritual leaders of the Jewish people kept aloof from concrete reality and living knowledge. While the book was pa.s.sing through the press in Vilna, Lithuanian fanatics threatened the author with severe reprisals.
Their threats failed to intimidate him. When the book appeared, many rabbis threw it into the flames, and made every possible effort to arrest its circulation, with the result that the voice of the ”heretic”
was stifled.
[Footnote 1: Literally, ”The Interpretation of a Thing,” from Eccl.
8.1.]
Ten years later, while residing temporarily in Volhynia, the hot-bed of hasidism, Menashe began to print his religio-philosophic treatise _Alfe Mena.s.sheh_ (”The Teachings of Mana.s.seh”). [1] But the first proof-sheets sufficed to impress the printer with the ”heretical” character of the book, and he threw them together with the whole ma.n.u.script into the fire. The hapless author managed with difficulty to restore the text of his ”executed” work, and published it at Vilna in 1822. Here the rabbinical censors.h.i.+p pounced upon him. The book had not yet left the press, when the rabbi of Vilna, Saul Katzenellenbogen, learned that in one pa.s.sage the writer deduced from a verse in Deuteronomy (17.9) the right of the ”judges” or spiritual leaders of each generation to modify many religious laws and customs in accordance with the requirements of the time. The rabbi gave our author fair warning that, unless this heretical argument was withdrawn, he would have the book burned publicly in the synagogue yard. Menashe was forced to submit, and, contrary to his conviction, weakened his heterodox argument by a number of circ.u.mlocutions.
[Footnote 1: With a clever allusion to the Hebrew text of Deut. 33.17.]
These persecutions, however, did not smother the fire of protest in the breast of the excommunicated rural philosopher. In the last years of his life he published two pamphlets, [1] in which he severely lashed the shortcomings of Jewish life, the early marriages, the one-sided school training, the repugnance to living knowledge and physical labor.
However, the champions of orthodoxy took good care to prevent these books from reaching the ma.s.ses. Exhausted by his fruitless struggle, Menashe died, unappreciated and almost unnoticed by his contemporaries.
[Footnote 1: One of these, ent.i.tled _Samme de-Hayye_ (”Elixir of Life”), was written in Yiddish, being designed by the author for the lower cla.s.ses.]
2. THE STAGNATION OF HASIDISM
A critical att.i.tude toward the existing order of things could on occasions a.s.sert itself in the environment of Rabbinism, where the mind, though forced into the mould of scholasticism, was yet working at high speed. But such ”heretical” thinking was utterly inconceivable in the dominant circles of Hasidism, where the intellect was rocked to sleep by mystical lullabies and fascinating stories of the miraculous exploits of the Tzsaddiks. The era of political and civil disfranchis.e.m.e.nt was a time of luxuriant growth for Hasidism, not in its creative, but rather in its stationary, not to say stagnant, phase.
The old struggle between Hasidism and Rabbinism had long been fought out, and the Tzaddiks rested on their laurels as teachers and miracle-workers. The Tzaddik dynasties were now firmly entrenched. In White Russia the sceptre lay in the hands of the Shneorsohn dynasty, the successors of the ”Old Rabbi,” Shneor Zalman, the progenitor of the Northern Hasidim. [1] The son of the ”Old Rabbi,” Baer, nicknamed ”the Middle Rabbi” (1813-1828), and the latter's son-in-law Mendel Lubavicher [2] (1828-1866) succeeded one another on the hasidic ”throne” during this period, with a change in their place of residence. Under Rabbi Zalman the townlets of Lozno and Ladi served as ”capitals”; under his successors, they were Ladi and Lubavichi. The three localities are all situated on the border-line of the governments of Vitebsk and Moghilev, in which the Hasidim of the _Habad_ persuasion [3] formed either a majority, as was the case in the former government, or a substantial minority, as was the case in the latter.
[Footnote 1: See Vol. I, p. 372.]
[Footnote 2: From the townlet Lubavichi. See later in the text.]
[Footnote 3: Compare Vol. I, p. 234, n. 2.]
Rabbi Baer, the son and successor of the ”Old Rabbi,” did not inherit the creative genius of his father. He published many books, made up mostly of his Sabbath discourses, but they lack originality. His method is that of the talmudic _pilpul_, [1] transplanted upon the soil of Cabala and Hasidism, or it consists in expatiating upon the ideas contained in the _Tanyo_. [2] The last years of Rabbi Baer were darkened by the White Russian catastrophes, the expulsion from the villages in 1823, and the ominous turn in the ritual murder trial of Velizh. On his death-bed he spoke to those around him about the burning topic of the day, the conscription ukase of 1827.
[Footnote 1: i.e., Dialectics. Comp. Vol. I, p. 122.]
[Footnote 2: The t.i.tle of the philosophic treatise of Rabbi Shneor Zalman. See Vol. I, p. 372, n. 1.]
His successor Rabbi Mendel Lubavicher proved an energetic organizer of the hasidic ma.s.ses. He was highly esteemed not only as a learned Talmudist--he wrote rabbinical _novellae and response--and as a preacher of Hasidism, but also as a man of great practical wisdom, whose advice was sought by thousands of people in family matters no less than in communal and commercial affairs. This did not present him from being a decided opponent of the new enlightenment. In the course of Lilienthal's educational propaganda in 1843, Rabbi Mendel was summoned by the Government to partic.i.p.ate in the deliberations of the Rabbinical Committee at St. Petersburg. There he found himself in a tragic situation. He was compelled to give his sanction to the Crown schools, although he firmly believed that they were subversive of Judaism, not only because they were originated by Russian officials, but also because they were intended to impart secular knowledge. The hasidic legend narrates that the Tzaddik pleaded before the Committee pa.s.sionately, and often with tears in his eyes, not only to retain in the new schools the traditional methods of Bible and Talmud instruction, but also to make room in their curriculum for the teaching of the Cabala. Nevertheless, Rabbi Mendel was compelled to endorse against his will the ”G.o.dless”
plan of a school reform, and a little later to prefix his approbation to a Russian edition of Mendelssohn's German Bible translation. His att.i.tude toward contemporary pedagogic methods may be gauged from the epistle addressed by him in 1848 to Leon Mandelstamm, Lilienthal's successor in the task of organizing the Jewish Crown schools. In this epistle Rabbi Mendel categorically rejects all innovations in the training of the young. In reply to a question concerning the edition of an abbreviated Bible text for children, he trenchantly quotes the famous medieval aphorism:
The Pentateuch was written by Moses at the dictation of G.o.d. Hence every word in it is sacred. There is no difference whatsoever between the verse ”And Timna was the concubine” (Gen. 36. 12) and ”Hear, O Israel: the Lord our G.o.d, the Lord is one” (Deut 6. 4). [1]
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