FOOTNOTES:
[42] According to approximate computations, the number of Jews in Poland during that period (between 1501 and 1648) grew from 50,000 to 500,000.
[43] "Wine" is used here, as it is in the original, to designate alcoholic drinks in general.
[44] "Propination," in Polish, propinacja (pronounced propinatzya), from Latin and Greek propino, "to drink one's health," signifies in Polish law the right of distilling and selling spirituous liquors. This right was granted to the noble landowners by King John Albrecht in 1496, and became one of their most important sources of revenue. After the partition of Poland this right was confirmed for the former Polish territories by the Russian Government. The right of propination, exercised mostly by Jews on behalf of the nobles, proved a decisive factor in the economic and partly in the social life of Russo-Polish Jewry.
[46] [Popular Polish form of the Jewish name Joseph.]
[48] [I. e. Brest of Kuyavia, a former Polish province on the left bank of the Vistula. It is to be distinguished from the well-known Brest-Litovsk, Brest of Lithuania.]
[49] The parliamentary order of Poland was somewhat complicated. Each region or voyevodstvo (see above, p. [46], n. 1), of which there were about sixty in Poland, had its own local assembly, or sejmik (pronounced saymik), i. e. little Diet, or Dietine. Deputies o£ these Dietines met at the respective sejms (pronounced saym), or Diets, of one of the three large provinces of Poland: Great Poland, Little Poland, and Red Russia. The national sejm, representing the whole of Poland, came into being towards the end of the fifteenth century. Beginning with 1573 it met regularly every two years for six weeks in Warsaw or in Grodno. Before the convocation of this national all-Polish Parliament, all local Dietines assembled on one and the same day to give instructions to the deputies elected to it.
[50] [Gnesen as seat of the Primate; Cracow as capital.]
[51] [Warsaw was originally the capital of the independent Principality of Mazovia. After the incorporation of Mazovia into the Polish Empire, in 1526, Warsaw emerged from its obscurity and in the latter part of the sixteenth century became the capital of united Poland and Lithuania, taking the place of Cracow and Vilna.]
[52] According to another version, they forged the contents of the royal warrant.
[53] [With the gradual weakening of the royal power, which, after the extinction of the Yaghello dynasty, in 1572, was transformed into an elective office, the favorite designation for the Polish Empire came to be Rzecz (pronounced Zhech) Pospolita, a literal rendering of the Latin Res Publica. The term comprises Poland as well as Lithuania, which, in 1569, had been united in one Empire.]
[54] They are referred to in his edicts as calumniae.
[55] [The Arian heresy, as modified and preached by Faustus Socinus (1539-1604), an Italian who settled in Poland, became a powerful factor in the Polish intellectual life of that period. Because of its liberal tendency, this doctrine appealed in particular to the educated classes, and its adherents, called Socinians, were largely recruited from the ranks of the Shlakhta. Under Sigismund III. a strong reaction set in, culminating in the law passed by the Diet of 1658, according to which all "Arians" were to leave the country within two years.]
[56] [Arendar, also arendator, from medieval Latin arrendare, "to rent," signifies in Polish and Russian a lessee, originally of a farm, subsequently of the tavern and, as is seen in the text, other sources of revenue on the estate. These arendars being mostly Jews, the name, abbreviated in Yiddish to randar, came practically to mean "village Jew.">[
[57] [Literally, lord: the lord of the manor, noble landowner.]
[58] There is reason to believe that he is the hero of the legendary story according to which an influential Polish Jew by the name of Saul Wahl, a favorite of Prince Radziwill, was, during an interregnum, proclaimed Polish king by the Shlakhta, and reigned for one night.
[59] [See pp. [29] et seq. Kiev was captured by the Lithuanians in 1320, and remained, through the union of Lithuania and Poland, a part of the Polish Empire until 1654, when, together with the province of Little Russia, it was ceded to Muscovy.]
[61] [Stephen Batory instituted two supreme courts for the realm: one for the Crown, i. e. for Poland proper, and another for Lithuania. The former held its sessions in Lublin for Little Poland and in Piotrkov for Great Poland (see p. [164]).]
[62] A second edition of the book appeared in 1636.
[63] [In addition to the regular Diets, which assembled every two years (see above, p. [76], n. 1), there were held also Election Diets and Coronation Diets, in connection with the election and the coronation of the new king. The former met on a field near Warsaw; the latter were held in Cracow.]
[64] [Moghilev on the Dnieper, in White Russia, is to be distinguished from Moghilev on the Dniester, a town in the present Government of Podolia.]
CHAPTER IV
THE INNER LIFE OF POLISH JEWRY AT ITS ZENITH
1. Kahal Autonomy and the Jewish Diets
The peculiar position occupied by the Jews in Poland made their social autonomy both necessary and possible. Constituting an historical nationality, with an inner life of its own, the Jews were segregated by the Government as a separate estate, an independent social body. Though forming an integral part of the urban population, the Jews were not officially included in any one of the general urban estates, whose affairs were administered by the magistracy or the trade-unions. Nor were they subjected to the jurisdiction of Christian law courts as far as their internal affairs were concerned. They formed an entirely independent class of citizens, and as such were in need of independent agencies of self-government and jurisdiction. The Jewish community constituted not only a national and cultural, but also a civil, entity. It formed a Jewish city within a Christian city, with its separate forms of life, its own religious, administrative, judicial, and charitable institutions. The Government of a country with sharply divided estates could not but legalize the autonomy of the Jewish Kahal, after having legalized the Magdeburg Law of the Christian urban estates, in which the Germans constituted the predominating element. As for the kings, in their capacity as the official "guardians" of the Jews, they were especially concerned in having the Kahals properly organized, since the regular payment of the Jewish taxes was thereby assured. Moreover, the Government found it more to its convenience to deal with a well-defined body of representatives than with the unorganized masses.
As early as the period of royal "paternalism," during the reign of Sigismund I., the king endeavored to extend his fatherly protection to the Jewish system of communal self-government. The appointment of Michael Yosefovich as the "senior" of the Lithuanian Jews, with a rabbi as expert adviser[65], was designed to safeguard the interests of the exchequer by concentrating the power in the hands of a federation of Kahals in Lithuania. On more than one occasion Sigismund I. confirmed the "spiritual judges," or rabbis (judices spirituales, doctores legis), elected by the Jews in different parts of Poland, in their office. In 1518 he ratified, at the request of the Jews of Posen, their election of two leading rabbis, Moses and Mendel, to the posts of provincial judges for all the communities of Great Poland, bestowing upon the newly-elected officials the right of instructing and judging their coreligionists in accordance with the Jewish law. In Cracow, where the Jews were divided into two separate communities—one of native Polish Jews and another of immigrants from Bohemia,—the King empowered each of them to elect its own rabbi. The choice fell upon Rabbi Asher for the former, and upon Rabbi Peretz for the latter, community, and when a dispute arose between the two communities as to the ownership of the old synagogue, the King again intervened, and decided the case in favor of the native community (1519). In 1531 Mendel Frank, the rabbi of Brest, complained to the King that the Jews did not always respect his decisions, and brought their cases before the royal starostas. Accordingly Sigismund I. thought it necessary to warn the Jews to submit to the jurisdiction of their own "doctors," or rabbis, who dispensed justice according to the "Jewish law," and were given the right of imposing the "oath" (herem, excommunication) and all kinds of other penalties upon insubordinates. In the following year the King appointed as "senior," or chief rabbi, of Cracow the well-known scholar Moses Fishel—who, it may be added parenthetically, had taken the degree of Doctor of Medicine in Padua—to succeed Rabbi Asher, referred to previously. Pursuing the same policy of centralization, the King, a few years later, in 1541, confirmed in their office as chief rabbis (seniores) of the whole province of Little Poland two men "learned in the Jewish law," the same Rabbi Moses Fishel of Cracow, and the famous progenitor of Polish Talmudism, Rabbi Shalom Shakhna of Lublin.
In the same measure, however, in which the communal organization of the Jews gained in strength, and the functions of the rabbis and Kahal elders became more clearly defined, the Government gradually receded from its attitude of paternal interference. The magna charta of Jewish autonomy may be said to be represented by the charter of Sigismund Augustus, issued on August 13, 1551, which embodies the fundamental principles of self-government for the Jewish communities of Great Poland.
According to this charter, the Jews are entitled to elect, by general agreement,[66] their own rabbis and "lawful judges" to take charge of their spiritual and social affairs. The rabbis and judges, elected in this manner, are authorized to expound all questions of the religious ritual, to perform marriages and grant divorces, to execute the transfer of property and other acts of a civil character, and to settle disputes between Jews in accordance with the "Mosaic law" (iuxta ritum et morem legis illorum Mosaicae) and the supplementary Jewish legislation. In conjunction with the Kahal elders they are empowered to subject offenders against the law to excommunication and other punishments, such as the Jewish customs may prescribe. In case the person punished in this manner does not recant within a month, the matter is to be brought to the knowledge of the king, who may sentence the incorrigible malefactor to death and confiscate his property. The local officers of the king are enjoined to lend their assistance in carrying out the orders of the rabbis and elders.
This enactment, coupled with a number of similar charters, which were subsequently promulgated for various provinces of Poland, conferred upon the elective representatives of the Jewish communities extensive autonomy in economic and administrative as well as judicial affairs, at the same time insuring its practical realization by placing at its disposal the power of the royal administration.
The firm consolidation of the régime of the self-governing community, the Kahal, dates from that period. In this appellation two concepts were merged: the "community," the aggregate of the local Jews, on the one hand, and, on the other, the "communal administration," representing the totality of all the Jewish institutions of a given locality, including the rabbinate. The activity of the Kahals assumed particularly large proportions beginning with the latter half of the sixteenth century.
All cities and towns with a Jewish population had their separate Kahal boards. Their size corresponded roughly to that of the given community. In large centers the membership of the Kahal board amounted to forty; in smaller towns it was limited to ten. The members of the Kahal were elected annually during the intermediate days of Passover. As a rule the election proceeded according to a double-graded system. Several electors (borerim), their number varying from nine to five, were appointed by lot from among the members of all synagogues, and these electors, after taking a solemn oath, chose the Kahal elders. The elders were divided into groups. Two of these, the rashim and tubim (the "heads" and "optimates"), stood at the head of the administration, and were in charge of the general affairs of the community. They were followed by the dayyanim, or judges, and the gabbaim, or directors, who managed the synagogues as well as the educational and charitable institutions. The rashim and tubim formed the nucleus of the Kahal, seven of them making a quorum; in the smaller communities they were practically identical with the Kahal board.
The sphere of the Kahal's activity was very large. Within the area allotted to it the Kahal collected and turned over to the exchequer the state taxes, arranged the assessment of imposts, both of a general and a special character, took charge of the synagogues, the Talmudic academies, the cemeteries, and other communal institutions. The Kahal executed title-deeds on real estate, regulated the instruction of the young, organized the affairs appertaining to charity and to commerce and handicrafts, and with the help of the dayyanim and the rabbi settled disputes between the members of the community. As for the rabbi, while exercising unrestricted authority in religious affairs, he was in all else dependent on the Kahal board, which invited him to his post for a definite term. Only great authorities, far-famed on account of their Talmudic erudition, were able to assert their influence in all departments of communal life.
The Kahal of each city extended its authority to the adjacent settlements and villages which did not possess autonomous organizations of their own. Moreover, the Kahals of the large centers kept under their jurisdiction the minor Kahals, or prikahalki,[67] as they were officially called, of the towns and townlets of their district, as far as the apportionment of taxes and the judicial authority were concerned. This gave rise to the "Kahal boroughs," or gheliloth (singular, galil). Often disputes arose between the Kahal boroughs as to the boundaries of their districts, the contested minor communities submitting now to this, now to the other, "belligerent." On the whole, however, the moderate centralization of self-government benefited the Jewish population, since it introduced order and discipline into the Kahal hierarchy, and enabled it to defend the civil and national interests of Judaism more effectively.
The capstone of this Kahal organization were the so-called Waads,[68] the conferences or assemblies of rabbis and Kahal leaders. These conferences received their original impetus from the rabbis and judges. The rabbinical law courts, officially endowed with extensive powers, were guided in their decisions by the legislation embodied in the Bible and the Talmud, which made full provision for all questions of religious, civil, and domestic life as well as for all possible infractions of the law. Yet it was but natural that even in this extensive system of law disputed points should arise for which the competency of a single rabbi did not suffice. Moreover there were cases in which the litigants appealed from the decision of one rabbinical court to another, more authoritative, court. Finally lawsuits would occasionally arise between groups of the population, between one community and another, or between a private person and a Kahal board. For such emergencies conferences of rabbis and elders would be called from time to time as the highest court of appeal.
Beginning with the middle of the sixteenth century these conferences met at the time of the great fairs, when large numbers of people congregated from various places, and litigants arrived in connection with their business affairs. The chief meeting-place was the Lublin fair, owing to the fact that Lublin was the residence of the father of Polish rabbinism, the above-mentioned Rabbi Shalom Shakhna, who was officially recognized as the "senior rabbi" of Little Poland. As far back as in the reign of Sigismund I. the "Jewish doctors," or rabbis, met there for the purpose of settling civil disputes "according to their law." In the latter part of the sixteenth century these conferences of rabbis and communal leaders, assembling in connection with the Lublin fairs, became more frequent, and led in a short time to the organization of regular, periodic conventions, which were attended by representatives from the principal Jewish communities of the whole of Poland.
The activity of these conferences, or conventions, passed, by gradual expansion, from the judicial sphere into that of administration and legislation. At these conventions laws were adopted determining the order of Kahal elections, fixing the competency of the rabbis and judges, granting permits for publishing books, and so forth. Occasionally these assemblies of Jewish notables endorsed by their authority the enactments of the Polish Government. Thus, in 1580, the representatives of the Polish-Jewish communities, who assembled in Lublin, gave their solemn sanction to the well-known Polish law barring the Jews of the Crown, of Poland proper, from farming state taxes and other public revenues, in view of the fact that "certain people, thirsting for gain and wealth, to be obtained from extensive leases, might thereby expose the community to great danger."
Towards the end of the sixteenth century the fair conferences received a firmer organization. They were attended by the rabbis and Kahal representatives of the following provinces: Great Poland (the leading community being that of Posen), Little Poland (Cracow and Lublin), Red Russia (Lemberg), Volhynia (Ostrog and Kremenetz), and Lithuania (Brest and Grodno). Originally the name of the assembly varied with the number of provinces represented in it, and it was designated as the Council of the Three, or the Four, or the Five, Lands. Subsequently, when Lithuania withdrew from the Polish Kahal organization, establishing a federation of its own, and the four provinces of the Crown[69] began to send their delegates regularly to these conferences, the name of the assembly was ultimately fixed as "the Council of the Four Lands" (Waad Arba Aratzoth).
The "Council" was made up of several leading rabbis of Poland,[70] and of one delegate for each of the principal Kahals selected from among their elders—the number of the conferees altogether amounting to about thirty. They met periodically, once or twice a year, in Lublin and Yaroslav (Galicia) alternately. As a rule, the Council assembled in Lublin in early spring, between Purim and Passover, and in Yaroslav at the end of the summer, before the high holidays.
The representatives of the Four Lands—says a well-known annalist of the first half of the seventeenth century[71]—reminded one of the Sanhedrin, which in ancient days assembled in the Chamber of Hewn Stones (lishkath ha-gazith) of the temple. They dispensed justice to all the Jews of the Polish realm, issued preventive measures and obligatory enactments (takkanoth), and imposed penalties as they saw fit. All the difficult cases were brought before their court. To facilitate matters the delegates of the Four Lands appointed dayyane medinoth) to settle disputes concerning property, while they themselves [in plenary session] examined criminal cases, matters appertaining to hazaka (priority of possession) and other difficult points of law.
The Council of the Four Lands was the guardian of Jewish civil interests in Poland. It sent its shtadlans[72] to the residential city of Warsaw[73] and other meeting-places of the Polish Diets for the purpose of securing from the king and his dignitaries the ratification of the ancient Jewish privileges, which had been violated by the local authorities, or of forestalling contemplated restrictive laws and increased fiscal burdens for the Jewish population.
But the main energy of the Waad was directed towards the regulation of the inner life of the Jews. The statute of 1607, framed, at the instance of the Waad, by Joshua Falk Cohen, Rabbi of Lublin, is typical of this solicitude. The following rules are prescribed for the purpose of fostering piety and commercial integrity among the Jewish people: to pay special attention to the observance of the dietary laws, to refrain from adopting the Christian form of dress; not to drink wine with Christians in the pot-houses, in order not to be classed among the disreputable members of the community; to watch over the chastity of Jewish women, particularly in the villages where the Jewish arendars[74] with their families were isolated in the midst of the Christian population. In the same statute rules are also laid down tending to restrain the activities of Jewish usurers and to regulate money credit in general.
In 1623 the Kahals of Lithuania withdrew from the federation of the Four Lands, and established a provincial organization of their own, which was centralized in the convention of delegates from the three principal Kahals of Brest, Grodno, and Pinsk. Subsequently, in 1652 and 1691, the Kahals of Vilna and Slutzk were added. The Lithuanian assembly was generally designated as the "Council of the Principal Communities of the Province of Lithuania" (Waad Kehilloth Rashioth di-Medinath Lita). The organic statute, framed by the first Council, comprises many aspects of the social and spiritual life of the Jews. It lays down rules concerning the mutual relationship of the communities, the methods of apportioning the taxes among them, the relations with the outside world (such as the Polish Diets, the local authorities, the landed nobility, and the urban estates), the elections of the Kahals, and the question of popular education. The Lithuanian Waad met every three years in various cities of Lithuania, but in cases of emergency extraordinary conventions were called. During the first years of its existence the Lithuanian Council was evidently subordinate to that of Poland, but at a later date this dependence ceased.
In this way both the Crown, or Poland proper, and Lithuania had their communal federations with central administrative agencies. As was pointed out previously, the Polish federation was composed of four provinces. The individual Kahals, which were the component parts of each of these four provinces, held their own provincial assemblies, which stood in the same relation to the Waad as the "Dietines," or provincial Diets, of Poland, to the national Diet of the whole country.[75] Thus the communities of Great Poland had their own Great-Polish "Dietine," those of Volhynia their own Volhynian "Dietine," and so forth. The provincial Kahal conventions met for the purpose of allotting the taxes to the individual communities of a given province, in proportion to the size of its population, or of electing delegates to the federated Council. These Jewish Dietines acted as the intermediate agencies of self-government, standing half-way between the individual Kahals on the one hand and the general Waads of the Crown and of Lithuania on the other.
This firmly-knit organization of communal self-government could not but foster among the Jews of Poland a spirit of discipline and obedience to the law. It had an educational effect on the Jewish populace, which was left by the Government to itself, and had no share in the common life of the country. It provided the stateless nation with a substitute for national and political self-expression, keeping public spirit and civic virtue alive in it, and upholding and unfolding its genuine culture.
2. The Instruction of the Young
One of the mainstays of this genuine culture was the autonomous school. The instruction of the rising generation was the object of constant solicitude on the part of the Kahals and the rabbis as well as the conventions and Councils. Elementary and secondary education was centered in the heders, while higher education was fostered in the yeshibahs. Attendance at the heder was compulsory for all children of school age, approximately from six to thirteen. The subjects of instruction at these schools were the Bible in the original, accompanied by a translation into the Judeo-German vernacular,[76] and the easier treatises of the Talmud with commentaries. In some heders the study of Hebrew grammar and the four fundamental operations of arithmetic were also admitted into the curriculum. The establishment of these heders was left to private initiative, every melammed, or Jewish elementary teacher, being allowed to open a heder for boys and to receive compensation for his labors from their parents. Only the heders for poor children or for orphans, the so-called Talmud Torahs, were maintained by the community from public funds. Yet the supervision of the Kahal extended not only to the public, but also to the private, elementary schools. The Kahal prescribed the curriculum of the heders, arranged examinations for the scholars, fixed the remuneration of the teachers, determined the hours of instruction (which were generally from eight to twelve a day), and took charge of the whole school work, in some places even appointing a sort of school board (Hevrah Talmud Torah) from among its own members.
The higher Talmudic school or college, the yeshibah, was entirely under the care of the Kahal and the rabbis. This school, which provided a complete religious and juridical education based on the Talmud and the rabbinical codes of law, received the sanction of the Polish Government. King Sigismund Augustus granted the Jewish community of Lublin permission to open a yeshibah, or "gymnazium" (gymnazium ad instituendos homines illorum religionis), with a synagogue attached to it, bestowing upon its president, a learned rabbi, not only the title of "rector," but also extensive powers over the affairs of the community (1567). Four years later the same King granted an even larger license to "the learned Solomon of Lemberg, whom the Jewish community of Lemberg and the whole land of Russia[77] have chosen for their 'senior doctor' (ab-beth-din, or rosh-yeshibah)," conferring upon him the right to open schools in various cities, "to train the students in the sciences," to keep them under his control, and to inure them to a strict discipline.
In the course of time Talmudic yeshibahs sprang up in all the cities of Poland and Lithuania. The functions of rector, or rosh-yeshibah, were performed either by the local rabbi or by a man especially selected for this post on account of his learning. It seems that the combination of the two offices of rabbi and college president in one person was limited to those communities in which the duties of the spiritual guide of the community were not complex, and admitted of the simultaneous discharge of pedagogic functions. In the large centers, however, where the public responsibilities were regularly divided, the rosh-yeshibah was an independent dignitary, who was clothed with considerable authority. Similar to the contemporary rectors of Jesuit colleges, the rosh-yeshibah was absolute master within the school walls; he exercised unrestricted control over his pupils, subjecting them to a well-established discipline and dispensing justice among them.
The contemporary chronicler quoted above, Rabbi Nathan Hannover, of Zaslav, in Volhynia, portrays in vivid colors the Jewish school life of Poland and Lithuania in the first half of the seventeenth century.
In no country—quoth Rabbi Nathan[78]—was the study of the Torah so widespread among the Jews as in the Kingdom of Poland. Every Jewish community maintained a yeshibah, paying its president a large salary, so as to enable him to conduct the institution without worry and to devote himself entirely to the pursuit of learning.... Moreover, every Jewish community supported college students (bahurs), giving them a certain amount of money per week, so that they might study under the direction of the president. Every one of these bahurs was made to instruct at least two boys, for the purpose of deepening his own studies and gaining some experience in Talmudic discussions. The [poor] boys obtained their food either from the charity fund or from the public kitchen. A community of fifty Jewish families would support no less than thirty of these young men and boys, one family supplying board for one college student and his two pupils, the former sitting at the family table like one of the sons.... There was scarcely a house in the whole Kingdom of Poland where the Torah was not studied, and where either the head of the family or his son or his son-in-law, or the yeshibah student boarding with him, was not an expert in Jewish learning; frequently all of these could be found under one roof. For this reason every community contained a large number of scholars, a community of fifty families having as many as twenty learned men, who were styled morenu[79] or haber.[80] They were all excelled by the rosh-yeshibah, all the scholars submitting to his authority and studying under him at the yeshibah.
The program of study in Poland was as follows: The scholastic term during which the young men and the boys were obliged to study under the rosh-yeshibah lasted from the beginning of the month of Iyyar until the middle of Ab [approximately from April until July] in the summer and from the first of the month of Heshvan until the fifteenth of Shebat [October-June] in the winter. Outside of these terms the young men and the boys were free to choose their own place of study. From the beginning of the summer term until Shabuoth and from the beginning of the winter term until Hanukkah all the students of the yeshibah studied with great intensity the Gemara [the Babylonian Talmud] and the commentaries of Rashi[81] and the Tosafists.[82]
The scholars and young students of the community as well as all interested in the study of the Law assembled daily at the yeshibah, where the president alone occupied a chair, while the scholars and college students stood around him. Before the appearance of the rosh-yeshibah they would discuss questions of Jewish law, and when he arrived every one laid his difficulties before him, and received an explanation. Thereupon silence was restored, and the rosh-yeshibah delivered his lecture, presenting the new results of his study. At the conclusion of the lecture he arranged a scientific argumentation (hilluk), proceeding in the following way: Various contradictions in the Talmud and the commentaries were pointed out, and solutions were proposed. These solutions were, in turn, shown to be contradictory, and other solutions were offered, this process being continued until the subject of discussion was completely elucidated. These exercises continued in summer at least until midday. From the middle of the two scholastic terms until their conclusion the rosh-yeshibah paid less attention to these argumentations, and read instead the religious codes, studying with the mature scholars the Turim[83] with commentaries, and with the [younger] students the compendium of Alfasi[84].... Several weeks before the close of the term the rosh-yeshibah would honor the members of his college, both the scholars and the students, by inviting them to conduct the scientific disputations on his behalf, though he himself would participate in the discussion in order to exercise the mental faculties of all those attending the yeshibah.
Attached to the president of the yeshibah was an inspector, who had the duty of visiting the elementary schools, or heders, daily, and seeing to it that all boys, whether poor or rich, applied themselves to study and did not loiter in the streets. On Thursdays the pupils had to present themselves before the trustee (gabbai) of the Talmud Torah, who examined them in what they had covered during the week. The boy who knew nothing or who did not answer adequately was by order of the trustee turned over to the inspector, who subjected him, in the presence of his fellow-pupils, to severe physical punishment and other painful degradations, that he might firmly resolve to improve in his studies during the following week. On Fridays the heder pupils presented themselves in a body before the rosh-yeshibah himself, to undergo a similar examination. This had a strong deterrent effect upon the boys, and they devoted themselves energetically to their studies.... The scholars, seeing this [the honors showered upon the rosh-yeshibah], coveted the same distinction, that of becoming a rosh-yeshibah in some community. They studied assiduously in consequence. Prompted originally by self-interest, they gradually came to devote themselves to the Torah from pure, unselfish motives.
By way of contrast to this panegyric upon Polish-Jewish school life, it is only fair that we should quote another contemporary, who severely criticizes the methods of instruction then in vogue at the yeshibahs.
The whole instruction at the yeshibah—writes the well-known preacher Solomon Ephraim of Lenchitza (d. 1619)[85]—reduces itself to mental equilibristics and empty argumentations called hilluk. It is dreadful to contemplate that some venerable rabbi, presiding over a yeshibah, in his anxiety to discover and communicate to others some new interpretation, should offer a perverted explanation of the Talmud, though he himself and every one else be fully aware that the true meaning is different. Can it be God's will that we sharpen our minds by fallacies and sophistries, spending our time in vain and teaching the listeners to do likewise? And all this for the mere ambition of passing for a great scholar!... I myself have more than once argued with the Talmudic celebrities of our time, showing the need for abolishing the method of pilpul and hilluk, without being able to convince them. This attitude can only be explained by the eagerness of these scholars for honors and rosh-yeshibah posts. These empty quibbles have a particularly pernicious effect on our bahurs, for the reason that the bahur who does not shine in the discussion is looked down upon as incapable, and is practically forced to lay aside his studies, though he might prove to be one of the best, if Bible, Mishnah, Talmud, and the Codes were studied in a regular fashion. I myself have known capable young men who, not having distinguished themselves in pilpul, forfeited the respect of their fellow-students, and stopped studying altogether after their marriage.
Secular studies were not included in the curriculum of the yeshibahs. The religious codes composed during that period allow the study of "the other sciences" only "on occasion," and only to those who have completely mastered Talmudic and rabbinic literature. Needless to say, no yeshibah student could lay claim to such mastery until the completion of the college course. Moreover, the secular sciences had to be excluded from the yeshibah, for the external reason that the latter was generally located in a sacred place, near the synagogue, where the mere presence of a secular book was regarded as a profanation. Yet it occasionally happened that young men strayed away from the path of the Talmud, and secretly indulged in the study of secular sciences and of Aristotelian philosophy. This fact is attested by the great rabbinical authority of the sixteenth century, Rabbi Solomon Luria. "I myself"—he writes indignantly—"have seen the prayer of Aristotle copied in the prayer-books of the bahurs." This somewhat veiled expression indicates, in all likelihood, that among the books of the yeshibah students "contraband" was occasionally discovered, in the shape of manuscripts of philosophic content. Unfortunately we hear nothing more definite as to the way in which the Jewish youth of that period became infatuated with anathematized philosophy. We have reason to assume, however, that such deviations from the rigorous discipline of rabbinical scholarship were few and far between.
The yeshibahs, providing as they did an academic training, were the nurseries of that intellectual aristocracy which subsequently became so powerful a factor in the life of Polish-Lithuanian Jewry. This numerically considerable class of scholars looked down upon the uneducated multitude. Yet the level of literacy even among the latter was comparatively high. All boys, without exception, attended the heder, where they studied the Hebrew language and the Bible, while many devoted themselves to the Talmud. A different attitude is observable towards female education. Girls remained outside the school, their instruction not being considered obligatory according to the Jewish law. No heders for girls are mentioned in any of the documents of the time. Nor did a single woman attain to literary fame among the Jews of Poland and Lithuania. The girls were taught at home to read the prayers, but they were seldom instructed in the Hebrew language, so that the majority of women had but a very imperfect notion of the meaning of the prayers in the original. In consequence, the women began at that time to use the translations of the prayers in the Jewish vernacular, the so-called Jüdisch-Deutsch.
3. The High-Water Mark of Rabbinic Learning
The high intellectual level of the Polish Jews was the result of their relative economic prosperity. As for the character of their mental productivity, it was the direct outcome of their social autonomy. The vast system of Kahal self-government enhanced not only the authority of the rabbi, but also that of the learned Talmudist and of every layman familiar with Jewish law. The rabbi discharged, within the limits of his community, the functions of spiritual guide, head of the yeshibah, and inspector of elementary schools, as well as those of legislator and judge. An acquaintance with the vast and complicated Talmudic law was to a certain extent necessary even for the layman who occupied the office of an elder (parnas, or rosh-ha-Kahal), or was in some way connected with the scheme of Jewish self-government. For the enactments of the Talmud regulated the inner life of the Polish Jews in the same way as they had done formerly in Babylonia, in the time of the autonomous Exilarchs and Gaons. But it must be remembered that, since the times of the Gaons, Jewish law had been considerably amplified, Rabbinic Judaism having been superimposed upon Talmudic Judaism. This mass of religious lore, which had been accumulating for centuries, now monopolized the minds of all educated Jews in the empire of Poland, which thus became a second Babylonia. It reigned supreme in the synagogues, the yeshibahs, and the elementary schools. It gave tone to social and domestic life. It spoke through the mouth of the judge, the administrator, and the communal leader. Lastly it determined the content of Jewish literary productivity. Polish-Jewish literature was almost exclusively consecrated to rabbinic law.
The beginnings of Talmudic learning in Poland can be traced back to the first half of the sixteenth century. It had been carried thither from neighboring Bohemia, primarily from the school of the originator of the pilpul method, Jacob Pollack.[86] A pupil of the latter, Rabbi Shalom Shakhna (ab. 1500-1558), is regarded as one of the pioneers of Polish Talmudism. All we know about his fortunes is that he lived and died in Lublin, that in 1541 he was confirmed by a decree of King Sigismund I. in the office of chief rabbi of Little Poland, and that he stood at the head of the yeshibah which sent forth the rabbinical celebrities of the following generation.[87] It is quite probable that the rabbinical conferences of Lublin, which afterwards led to the formation of the "Council of the Four Lands," owe their inception to the initiative of Rabbi Shakhna. After his death his son Israel succeeded to the post of chief rabbi in Lublin. But it was a pupil of Shakhna, Moses Isserles, known in literature by the abbreviated name of ReMO (1520-1572),[88] who became famous throughout the entire Jewish world.
Moses Isserles, the son of a well-to-do Kahal elder in Cracow, became prominent in the rabbinical world early in life. He occupied the post of a member of the Jewish communal court in his native city, and stood at the head of the yeshibah. This combination of scholarly and practical activities prompted him to delve deep in the existing rabbinical codes, and he found, as a result of his investigation, that they were not exhaustive, and were in need of amplification.
Isserles was not even satisfied with the thoroughgoing elaboration of Jewish law which had been undertaken by his Palestinian contemporary Joseph Caro. When, in the middle of the sixteenth century, Caro's comprehensive commentary on the Code Turim,[89] entitled Beth-Yoseph ("House of Joseph"), appeared, Isserles composed a commentary on the same code under the name Darkhe Moshe ("Ways of Moses"), in which he considerably enlarged the legal material collected there, drawing from sources which Caro had left out of consideration.
When, a few years later, the latter published his own code, under the name of Shulhan Arukh ("The Dressed Table"), Isserles called attention to the fact that its author, being a Sephardic Jew, had failed in many cases to utilize the investigations of the rabbinic authorities among the Ashkenazim, and had left out of consideration the local religious customs, or minhagim, which were current among various groups of German-Polish Jewry. These omissions were carefully noted and supplied by Isserles. He supplemented the text of the Shulhan Arukh by a large number of new laws, which he had framed on the basis of the above-mentioned popular customs or of the religious and legal practice of the Ashkenazic rabbis. Caro's code having been named by the author "The Dressed Table," Isserles gave his supplements thereto the title "Table-cloth" (Mappa).[90] In this supplemented form the Shulhan Arukh was introduced, as a code of Jewish rabbinic law, into the religious and everyday life of the Polish Jews. The first edition of this combined code of Caro and Isserles appeared in Cracow in 1578, followed by numerous reprints, which testify to the extraordinary popularity of the work.
The Shulhan Arukh became the substructure for the further development of Polish rabbinism. Only very few scholars of consequence had the courage to challenge the authority of this generally acknowledged code of laws. One of these courageous men was the contemporary and correspondent of Isserles, Solomon Luria, known by the abbreviated name of ReSHaL[91] (ab. 1510-1573). Solomon Luria was a native of Posen, whither his grandfather had immigrated from Germany. Endowed with a subtle, analytic mind, Luria was a determined opponent of the new school dialectics (pilpul), taking for his model the old casuistic method of the Tosafists,[92] which consisted in a detailed criticism and an ingenious analysis of the Talmudic texts. In this spirit he began to compose his remarkable commentary on the Talmud (Yam shel Shelomo, "Sea of Solomon"[93]), but succeeded in interpreting only a few tractates.
In all his investigations Luria manifested boldness of thought and independence of judgment, without sparing the authorities whenever he believed them to be in the wrong. Of the Shulhan Arukh and its author Luria spoke slightingly, claiming that Joseph Caro had used his sources without the necessary discrimination, and had decided many moot points of law arbitrarily. In consequence of this independence of judgment, Solomon Luria had many enemies in the scholarly world, but he had, on the other hand, many enthusiastic admirers and devoted disciples. In the middle of the sixteenth century he occupied the post of rabbi in the city of Ostrog, in Volhynia. By his Talmudic lectures, which attracted students from the whole region, he made this city the intellectual center of Volhynian and Lithuanian Jewry. The last years of his life he spent in Lublin, where to this day there exists a synagogue which bears his name.
Luria and Isserles were looked upon as the pillars of Polish rabbinism. Questions of Jewish ritual and law were submitted to them for decision, not only from various parts of their own country but also from Western Europe, from Italy, Germany, and Bohemia. Their replies to these inquiries, or "Responsa" (Shaaloth u-Teshuboth), have been gathered in special collections. These two rabbis also carried on a scientific correspondence with each other. As a result of their divergent character and trend of mind, heated discussions frequently took place between them. Thus Luria, in spite of all his sobriety of intellect, gravitated towards the Cabala, while Isserles, with all his rabbinic conservatism, devoted part of his leisure to philosophy. The two scholars rebuked each other for their respective "weaknesses." Luria maintained that the wisdom of the "uncircumcised Aristotle" could be of no benefit, while Isserles tried to prove that many views of the Cabala were not in accord with the ideas of the Talmud, and that mysticism was more dangerous to faith than a moderate philosophy.
Isserles was right. The philosophy with which he occupied himself could scarcely be destructive of Orthodoxy. This is shown by his large work Torath ha-`Olah ("The Law of the Burnt-Offering," 1570),[94] which represents a weird mixture of religious and philosophic discussions on themes borrowed from Maimonides' "Guide of the Perplexed," interspersed with speculations about the various classes of angels or the architecture of the Jerusalem temple, its vessels and order of sacrifices. The author professes to detect in all the details of the temple service a profound symbolism. Notwithstanding the strange plan of the book there are many chapters in it that show the intimate familiarity of Isserles with the philosophic literature of the Sephardim, a remarkable record for an Ashkenazic rabbi of the sixteenth century.
The intimate connection between rabbinic learning and Jewish life stood out in bold relief from the moment the "Council of the Four Lands" began to discharge its regular functions. The Council had frequent occasion to decide, for practical purposes, complicated questions appertaining to domestic, civil, and criminal law, or relating to legal procedure and religious practice, and the rabbis who participated in these conferences as legal experts were forced to accomplish a large amount of concrete, tangible work for themselves and their colleagues. Questions of law and ritual were everywhere assiduously investigated and elaborated, with that subtle analysis peculiar to the Jewish mind, which pursues every idea to its remotest consequences and its most trifling details.
The subject as well as the method of investigation depended, as a rule, on the social position of the investigator. The rabbis of higher rank, who took an active part in the Kahal administration, and participated in the meetings of the Councils, either of the Crown or of Lithuania, paid particular attention to the practical application of Talmudic law. One of the oldest scholars of this category during the period under discussion was Mordecai Jaffe (died 1612), a native of Bohemia, who occupied the post of rabbi successively in Grodno, Lublin, Kremenetz, Prague, and Posen. Towards the end of the sixteenth century he presided a number of times over the conferences of the "Council of the Four Lands." Though a pupil of Moses Isserles, Jaffe did not consider the Shulhan Arukh as supplemented by his teacher the last word in codification. He objected to the fact that its juridical conclusions were formulated dogmatically, without sufficient motivation.
For this reason he undertook the composition of a new and more elaborate code of laws, arranged in the accepted order of the four books of the Turim,[95] which is known as Lebushim, or "Raiments."[96] The method of Mordecai Jaffe differs from that of Joseph Caro and Isserles in the wealth of the scientific discussions which accompany every legal clause. At first Jaffe's code created a split in the rabbinical world, and threatened to weaken the authority of the Shulhan Arukh. In the end, however, the latter prevailed, and was acknowledged as the only authoritative guide for the religious and juridical practice of Judaism. Apart from his code, Mordecai Jaffe wrote, under the same general title Lebushim, five more volumes, containing Bible commentaries, synagogue sermons, and annotations to Maimonides' "Guide," as well as Cabalistic speculations.
Jaffe's successor as leading rabbi and president of the "Council of the Four Lands" was, in all likelihood, Joshua Falk Cohen (died 1616), Rabbi of Lublin and subsequently rector of the Talmudic yeshibah in Lemberg. He attained to fame through his commentary to the Hoshen Mishpat, the part of Caro's code dealing with civil law,[97] which he called Sepher Meïrath `Enaïm, "A Book of the Enlightenment of the Eyes"[98] (abbreviated to SeM`A). He also framed, at the instance of the Waad, a large part of the above-mentioned regulations of 1607,[99] which were issued for the purpose of establishing piety and good morals more firmly among the Jews of Poland.
A more scholastic and less practical tendency is noticeable in the labors of Joshua Falk's contemporary, Meïr of Lublin (1554-1616), known by the abbreviated name of MaHaRaM.[100] He was active as rabbi in Cracow, Lemberg, and Lublin, delivered Talmudic discourses before large audiences, wrote ingenious, casuistic commentaries to the most important treatises of the Talmud (entitled Meïr `Ene Hahamim, "Enlightening the Eyes of the Wise"), and was busy replying to the numerous inquiries addressed to him by scholars from all parts (Shaaloth u-Teshuboth Maharam). Laying particular stress on subtle analysis, Rabbi Meïr of Lublin looked down upon the codifiers and systematic writers of the class to which Isserles and Jaffe belonged. The trifling minuteness of his investigations may be illustrated by the fact that he considered it necessary to write a special "opinion" about the question whether a woman is guilty of conjugal infidelity, if she is convicted of having had relations with the devil, the latter having visited her first in the shape of her husband and afterwards in the disguise of a Polish nobleman.
In the domain of dialectics Rabbi Meïr found a successful rival in the person of Samuel Edels, known by the abbreviated name of MaHaRSHO[101] (died 1631), who occupied the post of rabbi in Posen, Lublin, and Ostrog. In his comprehensive expositions to all the sections of the Talmudic Halakha (Hiddushe Halakhoth, "Novel Expositions of the Halakha"), he endeavored principally to exercise the thinking faculties and the memory of his students by an ingenious comparison of texts and by other scholastic intricacies. The dialectic commentary of Edels became one of the most important handbooks for the study of the Talmud in the heders and yeshibahs, and is frequently used there in our own days. His commentary on the Talmudic Haggada is strewn over with Cabalistic and religio-philosophic ideas of the conservative Jewish thinkers of the Middle Ages.
In the middle of the seventeenth century the authority of the Shulhan Arukh, as edited by Isserles, had been so firmly established in Poland that this code was studied and expounded with even greater zeal than the Talmud. Joel Sirkis (died 1640) delivered lectures on Jewish Law on the basis of the Turim and the Shulhan Arukh. He wrote a commentary to the former under the name of Beth Hadash ("New House," abbreviated to BaH), and published a large number of opinions on questions of religious law. He held the Cabala in esteem, while condemning philosophy violently. His younger contemporaries devoted themselves exclusively to the exposition of the Shulhan Arukh, particularly to the section called Yore De`a,[102] dealing with the Jewish ritual, such as the religious customs of the home, the dietary laws, etc. Two elaborate commentaries to the Yore De`a appeared in 1646, the one composed by David Halevi, rabbi in Lemberg and Ostrog, under the title Ture Zahab,[103] and the other written by the famous Vilna scholar Sabbatai Kohen, under the name Sifthe Kohen ("Lips of the Priest").[104] These two commentaries, known by their abbreviated titles of TaZ and ShaK, have since that time been published together with the text of the Shulhan Arukh.
This literary productivity was largely stimulated by the rapid growth of Jewish typography in Poland. The first Jewish book printed in that country is the Pentateuch (Cracow, 1530). In the second half of the sixteenth century two large printing-presses, those of Cracow and Lublin, were active in publishing a vast number of old and new books from the domain of Talmudic, Rabbinic, and popular-didactic literature. In 1566 King Sigismund Augustus granted Benedict Levita, of Cracow, the monopoly of importing into Poland Jewish books from abroad. Again, in 1578, Stephen Batory bestowed on a certain Kalman the right of printing Jewish books in Lublin, owing to the difficulty of importing them from abroad. One of the causes of this intensified typographic activity in Poland was the papal censorship of the Talmud, which was established in Italy in 1564. From that time the printing-offices of Cracow and Lublin competed successfully with the technically perfected printing-presses of Venice and Prague, and the Polish book-market, as a result, was more and more dominated by local editions.
4. Secular Sciences, Philosophy, Cabala, and Apologetics
The Talmudic and Rabbinic science of law, absorbing as it did the best mental energies of Polish Jewry, left but little room for the other branches of literary endeavor. Among the daring "swimmers in the Talmudic ocean," contending for mastery in erudition and dialectic skill, there were but few with deeper spiritual longings who evinced an interest in questions of philosophy and natural science. The only exceptions were the physicians, who, on account of their profession, received a secular education at the universities of that period.
Originally the Jewish physicians of Poland were natives either of Spain, whence they had been expelled in 1492, or of Italy, being in the latter case graduates of the Catholic University of Padua. Several of these foreign medical men became the body-physicians of Polish kings, such as Isaac Hispanus under John Albrecht and Alexander; Solomon Ashkenazi (who subsequently was physician and diplomat at the court of the Turkish Sultan Selim II.) under King Sigismund Augustus; Solomon Calahora under Stephen Batory, and others. But as early as the first part of the sixteenth century these foreigners were rivaled by native Jewish physicians, who traveled from Poland to Padua for the special purpose of receiving a medical training. Such was, for example, the case in 1530 with Moses Fishel, of Cracow, who was at once rabbi and physician. These trips to Italy became very frequent in the second part of the sixteenth century, and the number of Polish Jewish students in Padua was on the increase down to the eighteenth century. It is characteristic that the Christian Poles studying in Padua refused to enter their Jewish compatriots upon their "national register," in order, as is stated in their statutes, "not to mar the memory of so many celebrated men by the name of an infidel" (1654). In the university registers the Jewish students appeared as Hebraei Poloni.
As for religious philosophy, which was then on the wane in Western Europe, it formed in Poland merely the object of amateurish exercises on the part of several representatives of Rabbinic learning. Moses Isserles and Mordecai Jaffe commented, as was pointed out above, on the "Guide" of Maimonides in a superficial manner, fighting shy of its inconvenient rationalistic deductions. The favorite book of the theologians of that period was Ikkarim ("Principles"), the system of dogmatic Judaism formulated by the conservative Sephardic thinker Joseph Albo. Commentaries to this book were written by Jacob Koppelman, of Brest-Kuyavsk[105] (Ohel Ya`kob, "Tent of Jacob,"[106] Cracow, 1599), and Gedaliah Lifshitz, of Lublin (Etz Shathul, "Planted Tree,"[107] 1618). The former, a lover of mathematics, loaded his commentary with geometrical and astronomical arguments, being of the opinion that it was possible in this way to prove scientifically the existence of God and the correlation of all phenomena. The latter was more inclined towards metaphysics and morals. How far this commentator was from grasping the true meaning of the original may be seen from his annotations to the introductory theses of the book. Commenting on the passage in which Albo states that "the happiness of man depends on the perfection of his thought and conduct," Lifshitz makes the following observation: "By human happiness is understood the life beyond the grave, for the goal of man in this world consists only in the attainment of eternal bliss after death."
In this way the Polish rabbis fashioned philosophy after their own pattern, and thereby rendered it "harmless." Free research was impossible, and perhaps not unattended by danger in an environment where tradition reigned supreme. The Chief Rabbi of Cracow, the above-mentioned Joel Sirkis, expressed the view that philosophy was the mother of all heresies, and that it was the "harlot" of which the wise king had said, "None that go unto her return again" (Proverbs ii. 19). He who becomes infatuated with philosophy and neglects the secret wisdom of the Cabala is liable, in Sirkis' opinion, to excommunication, and has no place among the faithful. The well-known mathematician and philosopher Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (called in abbreviated form "YaSHaR of Candia"[108]) who spent nearly four years in Poland and Lithuania (1620-1624), arraigns the Polish Jews for their opposition to the secular sciences:
Behold—he says in Biblical phraseology[109]—darkness covereth the earth, and the ignorant are numerous. For the breadth of thy land is full of yeshibahs and houses of Talmud study.... [The Jews of Poland] are opposed to the sciences,... saying, The Lord hath no delight in the sharpened arrows of the grammarians, poets, and logicians, nor in the measurements of the mathematicians and the calculations of the astronomers.
The Cabala, which might be designated as an Orthodox counter-philosophy, made constant progress in Poland. The founder of the Polish Cabala was Mattathiah Delacruta, a native of Italy, who lived in Cracow. In 1594 he published in that city the system of Theoretic Cabala, entitled "Gates of Light" (Sha`are Ora), by a Sephardic writer of the fourteenth century, Joseph Gicatilla, accompanying it by an elaborate commentary of his own. Delacruta was, as far as the subject of the "hidden science" was concerned, the teacher of the versatile Rabbi Mordecai Jaffe, who, in turn, wrote a supercommentary to the mystical Bible commentary by the Italian Menahem Recanati.
Beginning with the seventeenth century, the old Theoretic Cabala is gradually superseded in Poland by the Practical Cabala,[110] taught by the new school of ARI[111] and Vital.[112] The Cabalist Isaiah Horowitz, author of the famous work on ascetic morals called SHeLoH,[113] had been trained in the yeshibahs of Cracow and Lemberg, and for several years (1600-1606) occupied the post of rabbi in Volhynia. His son, Sheftel Horowitz, who was rabbi in Posen (1641-1658), published the mystical work of his father, adding from his own pen a moralist treatise under the title Vave ha-`Amudim.[114] Nathan Spira, preacher and rector of the Talmudic academy in Cracow (1585-1633), made a specialty of the Practical Cabala. His more ingenious than thoughtful book, "Discovering Deep Things"[115] (Megalle `Amukoth, Cracow, 1637), contains an exposition in two hundred and fifty-two different ways of Moses' plea before God for permission to enter the Promised Land (Deuteronomy iii. 23). It consists of an endless chain of Cabalistic word-combinations and obscure symbolic allusions, yielding some inconceivable deductions, such as that Moses prayed to God concerning the appearance of the two Messiahs of the house of Joseph and David, or that Moses endeavored to eliminate the power of evil and to expiate in advance all the sins that would ever be committed by the Jewish people. Nathan Spira applied to the Cabala the method of the Rabbinical pilpul, and created a new variety of dialectic mysticism, which was just as far removed from sound theology as the scholastic speculations of the pilpulists were from scientific thinking.
More wholesome and more closely related to life was the trend of the Jewish apologetic literature which sprang up in Poland in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. The religious unrest which had been engendered by the Reformation gave rise to several rationalistic sects with radical, anti-ecclesiastic tendencies. Nearest of all to the tenets of Judaism was the sect of the Anti-Trinitarians (called Unitarians, Arians, or Socinians[116]), who denied the dogma of the Trinity and the divine nature of Jesus, but recognized the religious and moral teachings of the Gospels. Among the Anti-Trinitarian leaders were the theologian Simon Budny, of Vilna, and Martin Chekhovich, of Lublin. Stung by the fact that the Catholic clergy applied to them the contemptuous appellation of "Judaizers," or semi-Jews, the sectarians were anxious to demonstrate to the world that their doctrine had nothing in common with Judaism. For this purpose they carried on oral disputes with the rabbis, and tried to expose the "Jewish falsehoods" in their works.
Martin Chekhovich was particularly zealous in holding theological disputations, both in Lublin and in other cities, "with genuine as well as pseudo-Jews." The results of these disputations are embodied in several chapters of his books entitled "Christian Dialogues" (1575) and "Catechism" (1580). One of his Jewish opponents, Jacob (Nahman) of Belzhytz,[117] found it necessary to answer him in public in a little book written in the Polish language (Odpis na dyalogi Czechowicza, "Retort to the Dialogues of Chekhovich," 1581). Jacob of Belzhytz defends the simple dogmas of Judaism, and accuses his antagonists of desiring to arouse hostility to the Jewish people. The following observation of Jacob is interesting as showing the methods of disputation then in vogue:
It often happens that a Christian puts a question to me from Holy Writ, to which I reply also from Holy Writ, and I try to argue it properly. But suddenly he will pick out another passage [from the Bible], saying: "How do you understand this?" and thus he does not finish the first question, on which it would be necessary to dwell longer. This is exactly what happens when the hunter's dogs are hounding the rabbit which flees from the road into a by-path, and, while the dogs are trying to catch it, slips away into the bushes. For this reason the Jew too has to interrupt the Christian in the midst of his speech, lest the latter escape like the rabbit as soon as he has finished speaking.
Chekhovich replied to Jacob's pamphlet in print in the same year. While defending his "Dialogues," he criticized the errors of the Talmud, and made sport of several Jewish customs, such as the use of tefillin, mezuza, and tzitzith.
A serious retort to the Christian theologians came from Isaac Troki, a cultured Karaite,[118] who died in 1594. He argued with Catholics, Lutherans, and Arians in Poland, not as a dilettante, but as a profound student of the Gospels and of Christian theology. About 1593 he wrote his remarkable apologetic treatise under the title Hizzuk Emuna ("Fortification of the Faith"). In the first part of his book, the author defends Judaism against the attacks of the Christian theologians, while in the second he takes the offensive and criticizes the teachings of the Church. He detects a whole series of contradictions in the texts of the Synoptic Gospels, pointing out the radical deviations of the New Testament from the Old and the departure of the later dogmatism of the Church from the New Testament itself. With calmness and assurance he proves the logical and historical impossibility of the interpretations of the well-known Biblical prophecies which serve as the substructure of the Christian dogma.
For a long time no one was bold enough to print this "dreadful treatise," and it was circulated in manuscript both in the Hebrew original and in a Spanish and German version. The Hebrew original, accompanied by a Latin translation, was printed for the first time from a defective copy by the German scholar Wagenseil, Professor of Law in Bavaria. Wagenseil published the treatise Hizzuk Emuna in his collection of anti-Christian writings, to which he gave the awe-inspiring title "The Fiery Arrows of Satan" (Tela Ignea Satanae, 1681), and which were published for missionary purposes, "in order that the Christians may refute this book, which may otherwise fortify the Jews in their errors." The pious German professor could not foresee that his edition would he subsequently employed by men of the type of Voltaire and the French encyclopedists of the eighteenth century as a weapon to attack the doctrine of the Church. Voltaire commented on the book of Isaac Troki in these words: "Not even the most decided opponents of religion have brought forward any arguments which could not be found in the 'Fortification of the Faith' by Rabbi Isaac." In modern times the Hizzuk Emuna has been reprinted from more accurate copies, and has been translated into several European languages.[119]