Part 15 (1/2)
”Who had implanted in the mind of Simon the ideal of justice and the sublime word? Who had kindled in his soul the sacred flame, love of truth and research? Verily, he had found all these in the Yes.h.i.+bah. Glory and increase be to you, ye holy places, last refuges of Israel's real heritage! From your portals came forth the elect destined from birth to be the light of their people and breathe new life into the dry bones.”
Even during the period of the _Behalah_ (”Terror”) the Yes.h.i.+bah remained unscathed, beyond the reach of misery and baseness. The venal jobbers, who, with the a.s.sistance of the Kahal, delivered the sons of the poor to the army in order to s.h.i.+eld the rich, did not dare invade the Rabbinical schools. Like the Temple in ancient times, the _Yes.h.i.+bot_ offered a sure refuge. Whenever these sanctuaries were imperilled, national sentiment was aroused, and the threatened encroachments upon the last national treasure were resisted with bitter determination, for the idealism of the people of the ghetto, their hope and their faith, were enshrined there.
Joseph forfeited the privilege of sanctuary residing in the Yes.h.i.+bah on the day he was taken redhanded, in the act of reading a profane book.
Religious fanaticism had never proceeded with so much rigor as during the reign of terror following upon the disorganization of the social life of the Jews by the authorities, and the triumphant a.s.sertion of arbitrary power. Nevertheless, even at this disheartening juncture, the Rabbinical schools were the asylum of whatever of ideal or sublime there remained in Israel.
They furnished all the champions of humanism and the preachers and disseminators of civilization. In them Joseph met the generous comrades who introduced him to the Haskalah, and awakened love for the n.o.ble and the good in him, and boundless devotion to his people.
Hard as flint toward the inefficient leaders, without pity for the hypocrites and the fanatics, the heart of Joseph yet pulsated with love for the Jewish ma.s.ses. Their unsympathetic surroundings and the persecutions to which they were exposed but increased his compa.s.sion for the straying flock of his people. In the general degradation, he succeeded in rising to moral heights, and so could set himself up for an impartial judge. He did not permit himself to be carried away by the sadness of the moment, though he did not remain indifferent to it, and his heart bled at the thought of his people's sufferings. In the human desert, in which he delighted to disport himself, he discovered n.o.ble characters, lofty sentiments, generous friends.h.i.+ps, and, above all, lives devoted entirely to the pursuit of the ideal undeterred by any obstacle.
One after the other he presents the idealists of the ghetto to the reader. There is, first of all, Jedidiah, the common type of the Maskil, working zealously for culture, spreading truth and light in all the circles he can reach, dreaming of a Judaism, just, enlightened, exalted.
Then there are the ardent young apostles, like that n.o.ble friend of Joseph, Gideon, most enlightened and most tolerant of Maskilim. In the measure in which Gideon detests fanaticism, he loves the people. He loves the ma.s.ses with the heart of a patriot and the soul of a prophet.
He loves them exactly as they are, with their beliefs, their simple faith, their poor, submissive lives, their ambitions as the chosen people, and their Messianic hope, to which he himself clings, though in a way less mystical than theirs. Thrilling, patriotic exaltation pervades the chapter on ”The Day of Atonement.” There Smolenskin appears as a genuine romanticist.
Such in outline are the features of this chaotic, superb novel, which, in spite of its faults of technique, remains to this day the truest and the most beautiful product of neo-Hebrew literature.
Ten years after finis.h.i.+ng it, the author added a fourth part, which, on the whole, is nothing but an artificial collection of letters relating only indirectly to the main story. Joseph takes us with him through the Western lands, and then to Russia, whither he returns. In France and in England, he deplores the degeneracy of Judaism, attributing it to the ascendency of the Mendelssohnian school, and he foresees the approach of anti-Semitism. In Russia, he notes the prevalence of economic misery in frightful proportions, especially in the small rural towns, while in the large centres he regrets to see that the communities use every effort to imitate Occidental Judaism with all its faults. The overhasty culture of the Russian Jews, weakly correlated with the economic and political conditions under which they lived, was bound to bring on the breaking up of the pa.s.sive idealism which const.i.tuted their chief strength.
The novel _Keburat Hamor_ (”The Burial of the a.s.s”) is the most elaborate and the most finished of Smolenskin's works. It describes the time of the ”Terror” and the domination of the Kahal. The hero, Hayyim Jacob, is a wag, but pleasantries are not always understood in the ghetto, and he is made to pay for them. His practical jokes and his small respect for the notables of the community, whom he dares to defy and poke fun at, are his ruin.
He was scarcely more than a child when he was guilty of unprecedented conduct. Wrapped in blue drapery, like a corpse risen from the grave, and spreading terror wherever he appeared, he made his way one evening into the room in which cakes were stored for the next day's annual banquet of the _Hebrah Kadisha_ (”Holy Brotherhood”), the all- powerful society, organized primarily to perform the last rites and ceremonies for the dead, to which the best Jews of a town belong. He got possession of all the dainty morsels, and made away with them. It was an unpardonable crime, high treason against saintliness. An inquiry was ordered, but the culprit was not discovered.
In revenge, the Brotherhood ordained the ”burial of an a.s.s” for the nameless criminal, and the verdict was recorded in the minutes of the society.
The incorrigible Hayyim Jacob continues to perpetrate jokes, and the Kahal decides to surrender him to the army recruiting officer. Warned betimes, he is able to make good his escape. He returns to his native town later on under an a.s.sumed name, imposes upon everybody by his scholars.h.i.+p, and marries the daughter of the head of the community. But his natural inclinations get the upper hand again. Meantime, he has confided the tale of his youthful tricks to his wife. She is disturbed by what she knows, she cannot endure the idea of the unparalleled punishment that awaits her husband should he be identified, for to undergo the ”burial of an a.s.s” is the supremest indignity that can be offered to a Jew. The body of the offender is dragged along the ground to the cemetery, and there it is thrown into a ditch made for the purpose behind the wall enclosing the grounds. But was not her father the head of the community? Could he not annul the verdict? She discloses the secret to him, and the effect is to fill him with instantaneous rage: What! to that wicked fellow he has given his daughter, to that heretic! He wants to force him to give up his wife, but no more than the husband will the woman listen to any such proposal. Hayyim Jacob succeeds in ingratiating himself with his father-in-law, though by fraud and only for a short time. After that, one persecution after another is inflicted upon him, and he succ.u.mbs.
So much for the background upon which the novelist has painted his scenes, authentic reproductions from the life of the Jews in Russia. The character of Hayyim Jacob stands out clear and forceful. His wife Esther is the typical Jewish woman, loyal and devoted unto death, of irreproachable conduct under reverses of fortune, and braving a world for love of her husband. The prominent characters of the ghetto are drawn with fidelity, though the colors are sometimes laid on too thick.
The author has been particularly happy in re-creating the atmosphere of the ghetto, with its contradictions and its pa.s.sions, the specialized intellectuality which long seclusion has forged for it, and its odd, original conception of life.
Smolenskin goes to the Yes.h.i.+bah for the subject of one of his novels, _Gemul Yesharim_ (”The Recompense of the Righteous”). The author describes the part played by the Jewish youth in the Polish insurrection. The ingrat.i.tude of the Poles proves that the Jews have nothing to expect from others, and they should count only upon their own resources.
_Gaon we-Sheber_ (”Greatness and Ruin”) is a collection of scattered novelettes, some of which are veritable works of art.
_Ha-Yerushah_ (”The Inheritance”) is the last of Smolenskin's great novels. It was first published in _Ha-Shahar_, in 1880-81. Its three volumes are full of incoherencies and long drawn out arguments.
The life of the Jews of Odessa, however, and of Roumania, is well depicted, and also the psychologic stages through which the older humanists pa.s.s, deceived in their hopes, and groping for a return to national Judaism.
Smolenskin's last novel, _Nekam Berit_ (”Holy Vengeance”, _Ha- Shahar_, 1884), is wholly Zionistic. It was the author's swan song.
Not long after its completion, an illness carried him off.
The novels of Smolenskin are a series of social doc.u.ments and propagandist writings rather than works of pure art. Their chief defects are the incoherence of the action, the artificiality of the _denouement_, their simplicity in all that concerns modern life, as well as their excessive didactic tendencies and the long-winded style of the author. Most of these defects he shares with such writers as Auerbach, Jokai, and Thackeray, with whom he may be placed in the same cla.s.s. In pa.s.sing judgment, it must be borne in mind that the Hebrew writer's life was one prolonged and bitter struggle for bare existence, his own and _Ha-Shahar's_, for the periodical never yielded him any income. Only his idealism and the consciousness of the useful purpose he was serving sustained him in critical moments. These circ.u.mstances explain why his works bear the marks of hasty production. However that may be, since he gave them to the Jewish world, his novels have, even more than his articles, exercised unparalleled influence upon his readers.
In a word, the life of the Russian ghetto, its misery and its pa.s.sions, the positive and the negative types of that vanis.h.i.+ng world, have been set down in the writings of Smolenskin with such power of realism and such profound knowledge of conditions that it is impossible to form a just idea of Russo-Polish Judaism without having read what he has written.
CHAPTER XII
CONTEMPORANEOUS LITERATURE