History of the Jews, Vol. 5 (of 6)

This consciousness slumbered gently in him from his youth onwards. But he did not clearly define to himself his attitude towards Judaism. The Jews, in whom solidity, high virtue, and morality were still to be found, repelled him by their unæsthetic exterior and religious ceremonies, which he did not understand. He felt his sense of beauty wounded by the repulsive exterior of Judaism and its representatives. His eye could not penetrate through ugly veils. The circle of more refined Jews, which in early manhood he joined in Berlin – the older men, Friedländer, Ben-David, Jacobson, and their young imitators – did not cherish Judaism so deeply as to infuse into him the spirit of sacrifice for the faith. And in the semi-Jewish circle which also he frequented during his stay in Berlin, as in that of Rachel von Varnhagen, at this time already baptized, he beheld only thorough contempt for Jews and Judaism, and an enthusiastic, romantic predilection for Christianity.

But Heine, unlike Börne, had too independent a judgment to be lured into idolatrous worship of the intellectual idols of the day. Sophistry could not undermine his devotion to Judaism. On the contrary, Heine joined the society of a number of young men whose object was to promote culture among Jews, and as one of its members, he subscribed to their tacit vow, not to suffer themselves to be baptized for the sake of a government appointment. The impulse by which he and the other members were actuated was no doubt vague; but at any rate it manifests the desire to do his share towards the improvement of his brethren. He undertook to aid in strengthening the society and in widening its scope. Heine's opinion even of the much-despised Polish Jews was not utterly unfavorable, and they found a champion in him.

Heine would have espoused the cause of Judaism with heart and soul, if Judaism itself, i. e., its sons, had developed powers of mind and character, if the freshness of youth and attractive charms had been coupled with the dignity of its old age, its purport, and calling, and if it could have inspired respect in the educated world. In his impatience he wished to see Judaism, like the legendary Messiah chained at Rome, suddenly divest itself of its ragged cloak, its leprous skin, throw off its aspect of servitude, and be transformed into a richly adorned, blooming, commanding youth. The process of rejuvenescence seemed to him too slow, the means employed too petty, the bearing of those who wished to further it, especially their coquetry with the dominant Church, seemed to him to be weak, apish, and undignified.

Israel lacks energy. Chiropodists (David Friedländer and Co.) have sought to heal the body of Judaism of its fatal excrescences, and on account of their unskillfulness and their cobweb bandage of reason, Israel must bleed to death. Would that the delusion that impotency, privation of strength, one-sided negation are glorious, might soon cease… We no longer have the courage to wear a beard, to fast, to hate, and by reason of hatred to suffer. This is the motive of our reformation. Those who have received their enlightenment and education from comedians wish to give Judaism new decorations and new scenes, and the prompter is to wear white bands instead of a beard. They wish to pour the ocean into a neat little hand-basin… Others desire evangelical Christianity under Jewish names."… "Even I do not possess the strength of mind (he frankly confessed) to wear a beard, and to allow myself to be called, 'dirty Jew'."

We see clearly his attachment to Judaism in the case of his pardonable hatred of the oppressor and despiser of his race, of the enemy who had received salvation from Judaism, which he imprisoned and spat upon. In the renewed pain of old wounds, inflicted upon the Jews by heathen and Christian Rome, he compressed a world of boiling anger into the word Edom. Thus he jeered in a poem to Edom: —

"For a thousand years or longerWe bear with each other in a brotherly way;Thou dost endure that I should breathe,I endure that thou shouldst rave."Only sometimes, on dark days,Was thy mood a curious one,And thy pietistic clawsDidst thou color with my blood."Now our friendship waxeth stronger,And daily increaseth in strength;For I myself began to rave,And I become almost like to thee."

Still greater was Heine's hatred towards deserters, traitors, Jews who for the sake of personal gain turned their back upon their suffering brethren, and went over to the enemy. Heine could not believe that a Jew ever was baptized from earnest conviction; baptism was in his opinion self-delusion, if not a lie. The Gospel, preached in vain to the poor of Judæa, was now, as he averred, prospering among the rich. Heine gave vent to this hatred in his dramatic poem "Almansor" (completed in 1823). But he found it unsuitable to introduce the characters as Jews, to tell in glowing verses of their affliction and the contempt in which they were held. He therefore put these verses into the mouths of the Mussulmans of Granada, who through devilish malice were experiencing the same cruel fate as the Jews, and who felt a yawning chasm in their hearts at having been forced to embrace Christianity. It is unmistakable that these verses breathe forth Jewish suffering. The Jewish poet, however, incurred bitter enmity by this drama.

It is proof of Heine's warm attachment to his race that when he was deeply vexed by private and public disappointments, he proceeded to glorify it. The enthralling psalm, once sung by a Hebrew bard at Babel's waters, was constantly in his mind:

"May my tongue cleave parchedTo the roof of my mouth, and my right handWither, if everI forget thee, O Jerusalem."

For affronts put upon him in connection with the performance of "Almansor," it was his intention to take thorough revenge on his German-Christian enemies, and to hold up a mirror to them in a Jewish novel. In the "Rabbi of Bacharach" he described vividly, as only he could, the sad and the glorious scenes of Jewish history, and to this end he carefully studied the Jewish chronicles, as he wished to keep strictly to history. His imagination only illuminated facts, but did not invent them, there being material enough at his disposal. Heine did not shrink from ransacking the rubbish contained in old books, such as Schudt's "Jewish Curiosities," "that memorial of Frankfort Jew-hatred"; and he succeeded in extracting something even from chaff and straw. "The spirit of Jewish history reveals itself more and more to me, and the pursuit of it will no doubt prove useful to me in the future." In the course of Jewish history, outlined by acts of heroism and by sacrifices, he beheld a connection between the plans of Providence: "In the same year in which the Jews were expelled from Spain, the new land of religious liberty was discovered." The golden period of mediæval Jewish history – the history of the Spanish Jews – had greatest charm for him. In the foreground of this stage he wished to introduce proud Jews, who would not bow their necks beneath the yoke of German restrictions and canonical arrogance, and who professed their religion with pride; but this epoch was not well known at that time, and Heine longed in vain for sources whence to draw pregnant information. Instead of facts, those to whom he applied gave him only threshed straw. But Heine allowed no difficulty to prevent his collecting interesting historical material for his novel; this production was to be the child, not of his hate, but of his love. He fairly basked in it: "Since it proceeds from love, it will be an immortal book, an ever-burning lamp in the palace of God – no fitful theatrical light."

Heine's romance was indeed grandly conceived. The scene of action was laid in Germany, but the history of the Jews of Spain, their expulsion, and enforced baptism, were to be the main incidents.

However, at the time when Heine was earnestly engaged in the study of Judaism, and became enthusiastic for its history, and hated Christianity most fiercely, he quietly passed over to the Christian fold (June 28, 1825), and assumed the baptismal name of Christian Johann Heinrich. He had fought for a long time against this temptation. He expressed his opinion upon the question plainly: —

"Not one of my family is opposed to it except myself. This act may be of importance to me, as through it I may the better devote myself to the cause of my unhappy co-religionists. But I should consider it a blot upon my dignity and honor, if I were to be baptized in order to obtain a post in Prussia – in dear Prussia!.. Vexation may drive me to become a Catholic, and hang myself."

In spite of this declaration he became a convert, in order to obtain a position in Prussia, and also to escape from humiliating dependence upon his uncle. In his diary he wrote the following verses upon the subject: —

"And unto the cross now bendest thou low,To the cross that erstwhile thou didst despise;Which but a few short weeks agoSeemed so vile in thy scornful eyes."

Shortly afterwards (July 20, 1825) he passed his law examination. But he pursued phantoms, and had made a vain sacrifice of his honor. He was unable to procure employment, and could not dispense with his uncle's support. Shamefaced as a girl guilty of some fault, Heine communicated the fact of his conversion in allegorical language to his bosom friend Moser:

"A young Spanish Jew, at heart a Jew, who, owing to the demands of pleasure, had abjured his faith, corresponded with the youthful Judah Abrabanel, and sent him a poem translated from the Moorish. Perhaps he was loth to tell his friend in plain terms of his not very creditable performance; still he sends the poem. – Do not meditate about it."

Through his apostasy, Heine became only the more embittered against Christianity, as though it were directly responsible for his faithlessness, his loss of dignity, and his disloyalty to his better self. "I assure you," he wrote to his intimate friend, "if the law had permitted the stealing of silver spoons, I should not have been baptized." When at about the same time, Edward Gans, the leader of young Israel, founder of the Society of Culture, and one of its active promoters, also embraced Christianity, Heine could not forgive him, for he had not been compelled by poverty to take the step. Heine was yet more indignant when informed that Gans had induced weak-minded Jews to forsake their belief.

"If he does it out of conviction, he is a fool; if out of hypocrisy, he is a rascal."

It also vexed him that his opponents would not forget his Jewish origin, but, as in the case of Börne, reminded him of it at every opportunity. To appease his conscientious scruples in a measure, he continued to work at the romance, "The Rabbi of Bacharach." Through its medium he desired to make known his secret attachment to the Jews, and he wished to publish it in spite of the advice of his friend Moser, who was not blind to the glaring contradiction between thought and act, and the enmity it would necessarily draw down upon him.

Heine was not, however, so constituted as to allow remorse to trouble him for any length of time. Once having turned his back upon Judaism, he sought to lull his conscience. His pleasure-seeking after his conversion was only a means to this end. Heine ingeniously labored to discover faults in the Jews and Judaism, and thus to justify himself. In this impulse originated his hostile sallies against Judaism – that it is, for instance, "not a religion, but a misfortune." Afterwards, he sought to make the dividing line between Judaism and Christianity very faint; he characterized both faiths as self-torturing, monkish, and Nazarite; he vilified them equally, disregarded both, and acknowledged a Hellenistic religion of the "revival of the flesh." Nevertheless, it may be said that, in bright moments, his old love of Judaism revived, and he again showed his thoughtful conception of it. It annoyed Heine that Shakespeare should be reckoned among the Jew-baiters because he had created "Shylock," and he employed his brilliant eloquence to remove this blemish from the Jews and Shakespeare.

"Did Shakespeare aim at depicting a Jewess in Jessica? Certainly not. He portrayed only a daughter of Eve, one of those pretty birds who, as soon as they are fledged, flutter forth from the home-nest to their lovers… In Jessica there is especially noticeable a certain timid shame which she cannot overcome in donning male garments. In this trait one may, perhaps, recognize the modesty characteristic of her race, which endows its daughters with so marvelous a charm. The chastity of the Jews is probably the consequence of the aversion which they felt to Oriental sensuality and the immoral worship which flourished among their neighbors, the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians, and has continued, changing only its outward form, to the present day. The Jews are a chaste, abstemious, so to speak, an abstract people, and in purity of morals, approach the German nations… The Greeks and Romans were devoted to the soil … the later Northern immigrants to the person of their chieftains … whilst the Jews from ancient times were attached to the law, to abstract thought, like our modern cosmopolitan Republicans … liberty and equality were their religion."

Advanced in years, when a severe nervous affliction had still more cleared the mirror of his thoughts, Heine became conscious of the superiority of morality based upon piety over beauty, and returned with his whole heart to the love of his youth, his reverence for Judaism. His "Confessions" (1853–54) are inspired hymns to Jewish history and the Jewish people, and it is apparent that they are sincere. He was always enthusiastic on behalf of the Bible.

"The Jews may console themselves for the loss of Jerusalem and the Ark of the Covenant; this loss is but trifling when compared with the Bible, the indestructible treasure which they have saved… I owe the re-awakening of my religious feelings to that Holy Book (the Bible), and it has become for me equally the source of salvation and the object of most ardent admiration… I think I may flatter myself that I comprehend the character of Moses as revealed in the first portion of the sacred book (of the Old Testament). I consider his a most imposing figure. What a giant form! How small Sinai appears when Moses stands upon it! This mountain is only the pedestal for the feet of the man, whose head reaches up to the heavens, where he speaks with God… Formerly, I felt no especial affection for Moses, probably because the Hellenic spirit was paramount in me, and I could not pardon the legislator of the Jews his hatred against the plastic arts. I did not see that, notwithstanding his hostility to art, Moses was a great artist, and possessed the true artistic spirit! But this spirit was directed by him, as by his Egyptian compatriots, to colossal and indestructible undertakings… He built human pyramids, carved human obelisks; he took a poor shepherd family and created a nation from it, a great, eternal, holy people, a people of God, destined to outlive the centuries, and to serve as a pattern to all other nations, even as a prototype to the whole of mankind: he created Israel… As of the artist, so also I have not always spoken with sufficient respect of his work, the Jews… The history of the Middle Ages, and even of other times, seldom inscribed in its annals the names of these knights of the holy spirit, because they usually fought with closed visor. The deeds of the Jews, as well as their peculiar character, are little known to the world. One thinks one knows them, because their beards are visible, but nothing else has come in view; and now, as in the Middle Ages, they are a profound mystery, which may perhaps be revealed on the day of which the prophet speaks…

"Yes, to the Jews, to whom the world owes its God, it also owes His Word, the Bible; they saved it from the wreck of the Roman Empire, and in the frantic scramble of migrating tribes they preserved the precious book, until Protestantism sought it with them, translated the discovered work into the vernacular, and disseminated it through the whole world… In the North of Europe and America, the influence of Palestine has grown to be so great, that one can fancy oneself transplanted into the midst of Jews… I will not speak of most of the new communities of the United States where the life of the Old Testament is pedantically imitated … but the caricature will not disappear, and the real, imperishable, and true portion, namely, the morality of ancient Judaism, will also flourish in those countries as luxuriantly as in former days on the banks of the Jordan and upon the heights of Lebanon. No palms are needed for man to be good; and to be good is better than to be beautiful… Judæa has always appeared to me as a piece of the West lost in the East. In fact, with its spiritual belief, its severe, pure, almost ascetic morals, its abstract inner life, this land and its people have ever formed a remarkable contrast to the surrounding countries and their inhabitants, who paid homage to the most licentious and infamous nature cults, and dissipated their existence in bacchanalian orgies. Israel piously sat beneath its fig-tree, and sang the praise of the invisible God, and practised virtue and justice; whilst in the temples of Babylon, Nineveh, Sidon, and Tyre, sanguinary and immoral rites were celebrated, the description of which even now strikes us with horror. When one thinks of its surroundings, this early greatness of Israel cannot be sufficiently admired. Of Israel's love of liberty, whilst slavery was justified not alone in its immediate vicinity but by all the nations of antiquity, even by philosophers – of this I would rather not speak, in order to avoid compromising the Bible with our present rulers… Instead of wrestling with the impossible, instead of foolishly decreeing the abolition of property, Moses strove to render it moral; he endeavored to bring the possession of property into harmony with morality, with the law of reason, and this he effected by the institution of the Jubilee, when all alienated hereditary property, which amongst an agricultural people was land, reverted to the original owners, no matter how they had lost possession thereof. This ordinance offers a most decided contrast to the law of prescription among the Romans… Moses did not wish to abolish the holding of property; his plan was that every one should possess some land, that no one should become a slave, with slavish propensities, through poverty, for freedom was the ultimate aim of the great emancipator, and this desire breathes through all his laws dealing with pauperism. He detested slavery immoderately, almost fiercely… If a slave, however, freed by law, refused to leave the house of his master, Moses commanded that the incorrigible rascal be nailed by his ear to the door-post of his master's house… O Moses, our teacher, Moshe Rabbenu, exalted enemy of serfdom, I pray thee furnish me with hammer and nails, that I may nail our willing slaves, in their liveries of black and red and gold, by their long ears to the Brandenburg Gate."

The spirit of the Jewish law and of Jewish history had indeed come upon this erratic son of Israel, and revealed to him what few of his predecessors had thoroughly grasped, and none had so luminously delineated. Heine appreciated equally the profound wisdom displayed in the laws and the intellectual contests in the centuries of Jewish history, as also the precious ore of poetry, which streamed forth from the greatest Jewish poet of the Middle Ages. Scarcely had Michael Sachs, the preacher with the Psalmist soul and prophetic speech, unveiled the hidden beauties of the "Religious Poetry of the Jews in Spain," and more especially the almost forgotten glory of the poet Jehudah Halevi Alhassan, before Heine, deeply moved, set up a memorial to this singer and brother in race and art. With his magic wand he invoked the shade of Jehudah Halevi from the grave, and depicted him in his complete ideality and the full glow of his inspiration.

Until his last breath the struggle continued within Heine's breast between the two great principles in the construction of the world's history, the pure morality of Judaism and the symmetrical beauty of Hellenism, both of which he reverenced, but was unable to reconcile: —

"The contrasts are boldly paired,Love of pleasure in the Greek, and the thought of God in the Judæan,*****Oh! this conflict will never end,The true must always contend with the beautiful."

He suspected that the harmonious intermingling of the two elements was the task of European civilization; but he was unable to effect it in himself. From this conflict his aberrations arose, and also his impulse to dominate them by ridicule, and thus prevent their mastering him.

The Jewish world is greatly indebted to its two apostate sons, Börne and Heine. They did not indeed destroy all German anti-Jewish feeling, but they at least subdued it. Referring to the absurd cry of "Hep, hep," Heine once said, "This can never occur again, for the press is a weapon, and there are two Jews who possess German style, the one being myself, the other Börne." His prediction was nearly fulfilled, for since the appearance of these two, such fierce outbreaks against Jews have not recurred. Germany has not produced more talented, more artistic, more refined writers than these two Jews.

Young Germany, which originated the present state of culture, and created the Year of Liberation, 1848, is the offspring of these two Jewish fathers. Invective, calumny, and the secret police were perfectly correct in designating the leaders of young Germany as Jews, because without the influence of the Jewish spirit they would not have become the champions of freedom. Jew-haters thought that they were inflicting disgrace on the fair-haired combatants in calling them Jews, whilst actually they only bestowed honor upon them. But the list of Börne's and Heine's services to Germany is not yet exhausted. They induced the French to respect the staunchness of the German spirit. Börne and Heine were the first to draw France and Germany together, to unite German depth of thought with French elegance. They first dispelled the clouds which separated these two nations, causing the French people to ascend and the Germans to descend the mountain, meet each other half-way, and, regardless of mutual antagonism and of their oppressors, stretch forth their hands in brotherly union. This Messianic time, when it arrives, will have been prepared by two Jews, who were fulfilling their national mission.

CHAPTER XV.

REFORM AND YOUNG ISRAEL

Segregation of the Jews – Its Results – Secession and Obstinate Conservatism – Israel Jacobson – His Reforms – The Hamburg Reform Temple Union – Gotthold Salomon – Decay of Rabbinical Authority – Eleazar Libermann – Aaron Chorin – Lazarus Riesser – Party Strife – Isaac Bernays – His Writings – Bernays in Hamburg – Mannheimer – His Congregation in Vienna – Berlin Society for Culture – Edward Gans – His Baptism – Collapse of the Society for Culture.

1818–183 °C. E

The advance of the Jews in Germany had been completed in an amazingly short time, as appears when we contrast Mendelssohn's reticence in touching upon religious and political conditions in Christendom with the boldness of Börne and Heine, who displayed them in their naked form. And mark the progress made in France! Here the Jews had become men, dauntlessly encountering every opponent, and ready to avenge with the sword insulting remarks on their origin. Judaism, however, was less rapid in casting off servile forms than its followers. For nearly two thousand years it had struggled for existence against every new people and every new tendency which appeared on the stage of history. With Greeks and Romans, Parthians and Neo-Persians, Goths and Slavonic tribes, with Arabs and mediæval knights in armor, with monks of every order and fanatic Lutherans, it had maintained ever-recurring contests, and had of necessity become covered with disfiguring scars and foul dust. To defend itself against the assaults of so many hostile powers and during so long a period, Judaism had been compelled to surround itself with an impenetrable coat of mail, to isolate itself completely, or withdraw into a shrine of its own, every access to which was carefully barricaded. So accustomed had the Jews become to their heavy armor, that it seemed to have grown into their very being; nor could it be discarded so long as new battles were imminent. Left to its own resources, and excluded from the external world, especially since the expulsion of its members from Spain and Portugal, and their simultaneous banishment from many German districts, Judaism had created a dreamland for itself. It had admitted magical formulas into its world of thought and fancy to distract the minds of its adherents from pangs of torture, so that they might endure them with greater ease, or forget them entirely. Suddenly its sons were awakened from their dreams by the dazzling sunlight, and beheld the real world, to which they were utter strangers. At first they closed their eyes the tighter, in order to retain the pleasant dream-pictures. In this new age, and in the new conditions, they could not at once find their proper level, and they feared that the altered state of affairs was a mere stratagem, a novel method of warfare in disguise, which their ancient enemies expected to use against Judaism.