Finally, mention must be made of Constance and Anna de Rothschild, whose two volume "History and Literature of the Israelites" (1872) created a veritable sensation, and awakened the literary world to the fact that the Rothschild family is distinguished not only for wealth, but also for the talent and religious zeal of its authoresses.
I have ventured to group these women of the Rothschild family together as a conclusion to the history of Jewish women in literature, because I take their work to be an earnest of future accomplishment. Such examples cannot fail to kindle the spark of enthusiasm slumbering in the hearts of Jewish women, and the sacred flame of religious zeal, tended once more by women, will leap from rank to rank in the Jewish army. As it is, a half-century has brought about a remarkable change in feeling towards Judaism. Fifty years ago the following lines by Caroline Deutsch, one of the above-mentioned modern German writers, could not have awakened the same responsive chord as now:
"Little cruet in the Temple
That didst feed the sacrificial flame,
What a true expressive symbol
Art thou of my race, of Israel's fame!
Thou for days the oil didst furnish
To illume the Temple won from foe—
So for centuries in my people
Spirit of resistance ne'er burnt low.
It was cast from home and country,
Gloom and sorrow were its daily lot;
Yet the torch of faith gleamed steady,
Courage, like thy oil, forsook it not.
Mocks and jeers were all its portion,
Death assailed it in ten thousand forms—
Yet this people never faltered,
Hope, its beacon, led it through all storms.
Poorer than dumb, driven cattle,
It went forth enslaved from its estate,
All its footsore wand'rings lighted
By its consciousness of worth innate.
Luckless fortunes could not bend it;
Unjust laws increased its wondrous faith;
From its heart exhaustless streaming,
Freedom's light shone on its thorny path.
Oil that burnt in olden Temple,
Eight days only didst thou give forth light!
Oil of faith sustained this people
Through the centuries of darkest night!"
We can afford to look forward to the future of Judaism serenely. The signs of the times seem propitious to him whose eye is clear to read them, whose heart not too embittered to understand their message aright.
Our rough and tumble time, delighting in negation and destruction, crushing underfoot the tender blossoms of poetry and faith, living up to its quasi motto, "What will not die of itself, must be put to death," will suddenly come to a stop in its mad career of annihilation. That will mark the dawn of a new era, the first stirrings of a new spring-tide for storm-driven Israel. On the ruins will rise the Jewish home, based on Israel's world-saving conception of family life, which, having enlightened the nations of the earth, will return to the source whence it first issued. Built on this foundation, and resting on the pillars of modern culture, Jewish spirit, and true morality, the Jewish home will once more invite the nations to exclaim: "How beautiful are thy tents, O Jacob, thy dwellings, O Israel!"
May the soft starlight of woman's high ideals continue to gleam on the thorny path of the thinker Israel; may they never depart from Israel, those God-kissed women that draw inspiration at the sacred fount of poesy, and are consecrated by its limpid waters to give praise and thanksgiving to Him that reigns on high; may the poet's words ever remain applicable to the matrons and maidens of Israel:[35]
"Pure woman stands in life's turmoil
A rose in leafy bower;
Her aspirations and her toil
Are tinted like a flower.
Her thoughts are pious, kind, and true,
In evil have no part;
A glimpse of empyrean blue
Is seen within her heart."
MOSES MAIMONIDES
"Who is Maimonides? For my part, I confess that I have merely heard the name." This naïve admission was not long since made by a well-known French writer in discussing the subject of a prize-essay, "Upon the Philosophy of Maimonides," announced by the académie universitaire of Paris. What short memories the French have for the names of foreign scholars! When the proposed subject was submitted to the French minister of instruction, he probably asked himself the same question; but he was not at a loss for an answer; he simply substituted Spinoza for Maimonides. To be sure, Spinoza's philosophy is somewhat better known than that of Maimonides. But why should a minister of instruction take that into consideration? The minister and the author—both presumably over twenty-five years of age—might have heard this very question propounded and answered some years before. They might have known that their colleague Victor Cousin, to save Descartes from the disgrace of having stood sponsor to Spinozism, had established a far-fetched connection between the Dutch philosopher and the Spanish, pronouncing Spinoza the devoted disciple of Maimonides. Perhaps they might have been expected to know, too, that Solomon Munk, through his French translation of Maimonides' last work, had made it possible for modern thinkers to approach the Jewish philosopher, and that soon after this translation was published, E. Saisset had written an article upon Jewish philosophy in the Revue des Deux Mondes, in which he gave a popular and detailed exposition of Maimonides' religious views. All this they did not know, and, had they known it, they surely would not have been so candid as the German thinker, Heinrich Ritter, who, in his "History of Christian Philosophy," frankly admits: "My impression was that mediæval philosophy was not indebted to Jewish metaphysicians for any original line of thought, but M. Munk's discovery convinced me of my mistake."[36]
Who was Maimonides? The question is certainly more justifiable upon German than upon French soil. In France, attention has been invited to his works, while in Germany, save in the circle of the learned, he is almost unknown. Even among Jews, who call him "Rambam," he is celebrated rather than known. It seems, then, that it may not be unprofitable to present an outline of the life and works of this philosopher of the middle ages, whom scholars have sought to connect with Spinoza, with Leibnitz, and even with Kant.[37]