LEON MODENA’S “RITES”
Said to have been composed at the request of an English nobleman for the delectation of James I, Leon Modena’s account of Jewish ceremonial was certainly intended for Christian readers. Though written in Italian, it first appeared in France (Paris, 1637), through the good offices of the author’s pupil and friend, J. Gaffarel. It was the source of a whole library of similar books. Not only was it translated into several languages, but onwards from Modena’s time, writers, Jewish and Christian, competent and incompetent, devoted themselves to the task of presenting to the world in general the teachings and customs of Judaism. The recent treatise of Oesterley and Box is a lineal descendant of Modena’s Rites.
Of the author it may be said that he was the Admirable Crichton of his age (1571-1648). His range of knowledge and power was extraordinary. As Dr. Johnson said of Oliver Goldsmith, he touched nothing which he did not adorn. Besides writing many books on many subjects, he filled the office of Rabbi at Venice with distinction, his sermons in Italian attracting large audiences. Some of his German critics call him “characterless.” Why? Because he denounced gambling, and yet was a life-long victim to the vice. In his boyhood he produced a pamphlet against card-playing, and in 1631 successfully protested against the excommunication of card-players. But is there lack of character here? Of many another great man could it be said that he saw and approved the better yet followed the worse. And there are things which one dislikes without wishing to put the offenders under a ban. On another occasion, Modena severely attacked Rabbinism, and then published a reply to his own attack. He assuredly was not the only man impelled to refute his own arguments.
Modena was, one might rather say, a man of moods, and therefore of singular openness and width of mind. He suffered not from lack of character, but from an excess of impressionability. A bee has not less character than a caterpillar, because the former flies from flower to flower, while the latter adheres to the same cabbage leaf. Modena, to put the case in yet another way, lived at a transitional period, when Jews were only beginning to acclimatize themselves to modern conditions, and when settled views on many subjects were not only difficult but undesirable. Despite his vagaries, one is rather attracted to him. There must have been solidity as well as versatility in his disposition, or he could not possibly have retained the important rabbinic post he filled for more than half-a-century. Probably the secret was that he not only possessed personal charm, but the real man was best known to those who knew him best. They—or many of them—assuredly admired and loved him.
We will now turn to another figure—the first English translator of Modena’s Riti Ebraici. This was Edmund Chilmead, who was born in 1610 and died in 1654. He was a good scholar and an accomplished musician. Up to 1648 he resided in Oxford, but as a result of the troubles between Charles I and the Parliament, he was expelled from the University because of his royalist opinions. Two things, however, speak well for Cromwell’s toleration. Chilmead was not only allowed to live unmolested in London to the day of his death, but had no hesitation, on the title-page of his translation of Modena, to describe himself still as “Chaplain of Christ Church, Oxon.” The date of the translation gives the clue. “The History of the Rites, Customes, and Manner of Life of the Present Jews throughout the World” was printed “for Jo. Martin and Jo. Ridley, at the Castle in Fleet Street, by Ram Alley” in 1650. By that time Cromwell was probably thinking of the Jewish question, and he must have welcomed this first-hand statement on the Jewish religion. Chilmead’s edition, one must confess, is badly printed, and is not very creditable to the printing capacity of the “Castle in Fleet Street.” One might pardon the many misprints in the Hebrew, but it is hard to overlook the numerous faults in the English. It is not wonderful that, in the following century, Ockley thought it necessary to issue a new version.
Modena’s own original was not, as the title suggests, a history. It does not so much give sources as facts. But this circumstance, that it is mainly descriptive, confers on it a permanent value. For it thus becomes a document. It helps us to realize several aspects of the Jewish position at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The author uses the term history in the sense of narrative; as he states in his Prefatory Epistle, he is concerned with the what and not with the why (“Quod sunt,” not “Propter quod sunt,” as he expresses it). He deals with his present, not with the past, and for that very limitation we may be grateful. He claims, too, that he is a “Relater,” not a “Defender.” That being so, it is of peculiar interest to find what we do in his work, arranged in five books, “according to the number of the Books of the Law.”
Several forms of prayer appear for the first time in his pages. Certainly Chilmead is the earliest to give us in English the Prayer for the Government, or a translation of the Thirteen Articles drawn up by Maimonides. Modena, again, tells us that in his day it was customary to “leave about a yard square of the wall of the house unplaistered on which they write either the verse of Psalm 137, ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,’ or the words Zecher Lahorban—a Memorial of the Desolation.” He knows only wooden Mezuzahs. Jews in Italy have pictures and images in their houses, “especially if they be not with Relief, or Imbossed work, nor the Bodies at large.” Few, he reports, take heed to the custom of placing the beds north and south; many attach significance to dreams. Jewish men never paint their faces, for the custom is “effeminate”; and “in whatsoever country they are, they (the men) usually affect the long garment, or Gown.” The women dress “in the habite of the countries where they inhabite”; but after marriage wear a perruke to cover their natural hair. The Jews build their synagogues wherever they can, “it being impossible for them now to erect any statelie or sumptuous Fabricks.” Things, as we know, soon after Modena’s time became different, for by the middle of the seventeenth century, several fine synagogues were built in Rome and elsewhere. The women “see whatever is done in the School (thus Chilmead renders scuola or synagogue), though they are themselves unseen of any man.” In the same city there will be places of worship “according to the different customes of the Levantines, Dutch (German), and Italians.” Then, “in their singing, the Dutch far exceed all the rest: the Levantines and Spaniards use a certain singing tone, much after the Turkish manner; and the Italians affect a more plain, and quiet way in their devotions.” The “Favours” of “having a hand” in the acts connected with the reading of the Law “are bought of the Chaunter, and he that biddeth most, shall have a share in them.”
Willingly, did space permit, we would follow the author through his account of the Judaism of his time. The majority of Jews, he says, are poor, yet annually they send “Almes to Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias, and Hebron.” The Jews never “torment, or abuse, or put to any cruel death, any Brute Beast.” Very few Jews are able to speak Hebrew; all learn the language of the countries where they are born. “Onely those of the Morea still retain the Hebrew Tongue also, and use it in their Familiar Letters.” In Italy, he records, the Talmud “continues utterly prohibited,” and copies are not to be found in the country. Jews do not regard “Vowes” as “commendable”; yet “when they are made, they ought to be kept.” Not many now observe the “tradition” against eating “Fish and Flesh together.” He tells us of an arrangement by which, for the Sabbath, some “so ordered the matter aforehand, that the Fire should kindle itself at such and such a time.” The Passover bread is made in “flat cakes of divers forms and shapes.” The “Ceremonie with a Cock,” on the eve of the Day of Atonement, “is now left off both in the East and in Italy, as being a thing both Superstitious and Groundlesse.” But they still, on Purim, “as often as they hear Haman named, beat the ground, and make a great murmuring noise.” Bigamy “is seldome or never used.” Marriages are usually performed before full moon, and the favorite days are Wednesdays and Fridays, with Thursdays for widows. “Little boyes, with lighted torches in their hands,” sing before the bridal couple, who are seated under the canopy. The Ketubah is read at the marriage. Modena mentions the charms against Lilit, and name-changing in case of sickness. He describes how, in Germany, in the case of girls, “the Chaunter goeth home to the Parents house, and lifting the child’s cradle on high, he blesseth it, and so giveth it the Name.” Modena also informs us that the Karaites were, in his time, numerous in Constantinople, Cairo, and Russia.
Modena records that among the Jews “there are many women that are much more devout and pious than the men, and who not only endeavour to bring up their children in all manner of Vertuous Education; but are a means also of restraining their husbands from their Vitious Courses, they would otherwise take, and of inclining them to a more Godly way of Life.” With which handsome and just compliment we will take leave of our author.
PART III
Part III
MENASSEH AND REMBRANDT
On April 25, 1655, six months before starting on his mission to Cromwell, Menasseh ben Israel—visionary about to play the rôle of statesman—completed in Amsterdam the Spanish book which forms the subject of this paper. Duodecimo in size (5¹⁄₄ x 2⁷⁄₈ inches), it consists of 12 + 259 pages, with a list of the author’s works published or projected, and on the last of the unpaginated leaves a Latin version of Psalm 126. In the catalogue of his works appended to the Vindiciæ Judæorum (London, 1656) Menasseh includes “Piedra pretiosa, of Nebuchadnezzar’s image, or the fifth Monarchy.” This was not, however, the real title. The title was, in truth, in Hebrew Eben Yekarah, and in Spanish Piedra Gloriosa, i.e., the “Precious Stone.” The date given above for the completion of the book is fixed by the dedication, which is addressed to Menasseh’s Christian friend, Isaac Vossius.
On a casual glance the book seems a hopeless jumble of incongruities. Nebuchadnezzar’s image, Jacob’s dream, the combat of David and Goliath, the vision of Ezekiel—what have these in common, and what has the title to do with them? The answer to these questions is soon found.
The whole work is Messianic, and in his usual symbolic style, Menasseh seizes on a “Stone” as the central feature for his little treatise. There was the stone, “cut out without hands,” which smote the image seen by the king of Babylon. There was the stone, gathered from the field of Beth-el, on which Jacob laid his weary head to rest when fleeing from his brother. There was the stone, picked smooth from the brook, with which David slew the Philistine. Perhaps the three were one and the same stone, Menasseh seems to imply. Anyhow, he saw in all these incidents a Messianic reference. Nebuchadnezzar’s image, with its feet of clay, typified the Gentiles that were to rise and fall before the great day of the Lord. The ladder of Jacob, with its ascending and descending angels, typified again the rise and fall of nations. David’s victory over Goliath foreshadowed the triumph of the Messiah over the powers of earth. And the whole is rounded off with Ezekiel’s vision of the chariot with its strange beasts and emblems—a chariot which, in the view accepted by Menasseh, typified the Kingdom of the Messiah.
MENASSEH BEN ISRAEL
(From an etching by Rembrandt, in the possession of Mr. Felix Warburg, New York)
Following the dedication to Vossius is an explanatory note to “the Reader.” In this note the author explains that to make his meaning clear he has added four illustrations. He does not name the artist. But we know that he was none other than Menasseh’s neighbor and intimate, Rembrandt. Four etchings, signed by Rembrandt and dated 1654, are possessed by more than one library; probably the fullest sets are to be found in the Fitzwilliam and British Museums. They were originally etched on one plate, which was afterwards cut into four. When all four etchings formed one plate, the arrangement was (as Mr. Middleton explains in his Descriptive Catalogue of the Etched Work of Rembrandt, p. 240):
(I) Upper left: Nebuchadnezzar’s Image. Clothed only about the loins; there is a band or fillet about the head, and a short cloak hangs behind. The stone which breaks the legs of the image (the feet are seen falling to the left) has been cast from a roughly shaped rock. The stone is near part of a globe; illustrating the text “And the stone that broke the image became a great mountain, and filed the whole earth” (Daniel 2. 35). The brow is inscribed “Babel,” the right and left arms “Persae” and “Medi,” the waist “Graeci,” the legs “Romani” and “Mahometani.” These names only appear in the fifth “state” of the etching. There’s a proof of the fourth “state” in Paris, which bears the names written in Rembrandt’s own hand.
(II) Upper right: Vision of Ezekiel. The lower part, in the foreground, shows the four creatures of the chariot; above is a “glory,” amid the rays of which is seen the Almighty, surrounded by adoring angels.
(III) Lower left: Jacob’s Ladder. The patriarch, bearded, lies half-way up the ladder, tended by an angel, others are bending down in gaze, while one figure is seen mounting the rungs immediately above.
(IV) Lower right: Combat of David and Goliath. The most spirited drawing of all; in a scene overhung by rocks with warriors looking on, the giant grasps his lance in his left hand and with shield advanced on his right arm is charging David, who has his sling in action over his right shoulder.
The Museum, as already implied, possesses proof of the etchings in various “states”—the artist touched and retouched them, until they assumed the state reproduced by the present writer in 1906, in commemoration of the tercentenary of Rembrandt’s birth. The etchings are beautiful tokens of sympathy between the Rabbi and the painter. The various “states” show, as Mr. I. Solomons has suggested, that Rembrandt took unremitting pains to obtain Menasseh’s approval of his work.
Yet he failed to win this approval. It is pretty certain that the etchings were never used. Mr. Fairfax Murray possessed the Piedra Gloriosa with the etchings, and has now presented the volume to the University Library, Cambridge; another copy is to be seen in the Musée Carnavalet, Paris, a copy formerly owned by M. Dutuit of Rouen. But Mr. Solomons seems right in asserting that “the original etchings in the copies of Mr. Murray and M. Dutuit were no doubt inserted after by admirers of Rembrandt’s work, but certainly not with the knowledge and sanction of Menasseh.” Why not? The etchings are good work; they really illustrate their subject, and must have added to the commercial, as well as to the artistic value of Menasseh’s work.
The most curious fact is that, though Rembrandt’s etchings were never used, a set of copper-plate engravings, based, as Mr. Solomons guesses, by the Jewish engraver Salom Italia on Rembrandt but not identical with his work, is found in some copies of Menasseh’s book—copies possessed by Mr. Solomons, M. Didot, and the Levy Collection in Hamburg. These engravings are laterally inverted, the right of Rembrandt’s etchings becomes the left of Salom Italia’s engravings. There are other differences in detail, all calculated to render the pictures more fitted for book illustration, but of all the changes only one is of consequence, and it was Mr. Solomons who detected the real significance of the change.
The change referred to gives the clue to the whole mystery. On comparing the two versions of the Vision of Ezekiel a striking variation is discernible. The figure of the Almighty has been suppressed! Here was the fatal defect in Rembrandt’s work. Menasseh could not possibly use a drawing in which the Deity is represented; he was not the one to repeat the inadvertence of the artist of the Sarajevo Haggadah. Possibly he only detected the fault at the last hour. But a fatality clung to the second set of illustrations also. Several copies of the Piedra Gloriosa are extant without any pictures at all.