But who was Isaac Pinto? It is not at all clear. Some have hastily spoken of him as though he were identical with Joseph Jesurun Pinto, who was sent out by the London Sephardim to New York in 1758. The home authorities, at the request of the New York Congregation Shearith Israel, elected a Hazan, but the chosen candidate, “having since declined going for reasons unknown to us,” writes the London Mahamad, through its treasurer, H. Men. da Costa, “we this day (June 7, 1758) proceeded to a second election, and our chois fell on Mr. Joseph Jesurun Pinto, who was examined by our direction and found very well versed in the reading of the Pentateuch and in the functions of a Hazan.” This Hazan could do more: he was able, as Mr. Kohut shows, to write Hebrew, for in October, 1760, he composed a prayer for recitation on the “General Thanksgiving for the Reducing of Canada to His Majesty’s Dominions.” The prayer was written in Hebrew, but printed in English, being translated by a “Friend of Truth.” A note at the end of the booklet runs thus: “N. B. The foregoing prayer may be seen in Hebrew, at the Composer’s Lodgings.” Mr. Kohut adds: “Apparently original Hebrew scholarship was a curiosity in New York City in 1760.”
A year before, Joseph Jesurun Pinto instituted the keeping of records as to those “entitled to Ashcaboth” (memorial prayers), and drew up a still used table of the times for beginning the Sabbath for the meridian of New York; he must have been a man of various gifts and activities.
What relation Isaac Pinto was to the Hazan we have no means of telling. Joseph’s father was named Isaac, but this can scarcely have been our translator. An Isaac Pinto died in 1791, aged seventy; he may be (as Mr. Kohut suggests) the translator in question; in 1766 he would have been in his forty-fifth year. Steinschneider thought that he was identical with the author of a work against Voltaire (Amsterdam, 1762) and other treatises. “But,” as Mr. Kohut argues, “this versatile author lived at Bordeaux, while our translator was in all probability a resident of New York.” Mr. L. Hühner accepts this identification, and adds the possibility that this same Isaac Pinto was settled in Connecticut as early as 1748. More certain is it that Isaac Pinto is the same who appears in the earliest minute-book of the New York Congregation Shearith Israel as a contributing member and seat-holder (1740, 1747, and 1750).
Isaac Pinto was certainly living in New York in 1773. Ezra Stiles was president of Yale from 1778 till 1795, and in his diary he makes many references to Jews, as is well known from the publications of the American Jewish Historical Society. Under date June 14, 1773, Stiles has this entry: “In the forenoon I went to visit the Rabbi (Carigal)—discoursed on Ventriloquism and the Witch of Endor and the Reality of bringing up Samuel. He had not heard of Ventriloquism before and still doubted it. He showed me a Hebrew letter from Isaac Pinto to a Jew in New York, in which Mr. Pinto, who is now reading Aben Ezra, desires R. Carigal’s thoughts upon some Arabic in Aben Ezra.” Prof. Jastrow, from whose essay I cite the last sentence, adds: “As late as April 14, 1790, Stiles refers to a letter received from Pinto, whom he speaks of as ‘a learned Jew in New York,’ regarding a puzzling Hebrew inscription found by Stiles in Kent in the fall of 1789. Unfortunately there is no other reference to this supposed Hebrew inscription, on which Pinto was unable to throw any light.” Stiles does not seem to have provided sufficient data. We would fain know more of this Isaac Pinto. But the glimpses we get of him are enough to satisfy us that he was a man of uncommon personality.
MENDELSSOHN’S “JERUSALEM”
Of a hundred who discuss Moses Mendelssohn’s conception of Judaism, perhaps barely five have read Jerusalem, the book in which that conception is most lucidly expressed. It is a common fate with certain literary masterpieces that they are read in their own day and talked about by posterity. The fame of Mendelssohn, moreover, underwent something like an eclipse during the last generation. To paraphrase what Antony said of Cæsar, but yesterday his word might have stood against the world; now, none so poor as to do him reverence.
The depreciation of Mendelssohn was due to two opposite reasons. For some time, though most Jews were unconscious of it, it was becoming obvious that there were two, and only two, thorough-going solutions of the Jewish problem for the modern age. The one may be termed religious liberalism, the other territorial nationalism. Now, Mendelssohn’s views are in accord with neither of these tendencies. He was so far from being a territorialist—and I use that term in the widest sense—that he has been acclaimed and denounced as the father of assimilation. He was so remote from liberalism, that he has been acclaimed and denounced as the founder of neo-orthodoxy. His theory of life was that the emancipated Jew could and must go on obeying under the new environment the whole of the olden Jewish law. This is not possible! cry both the liberal and the nationalist. Hence the liberal asserts one-half, the nationalist the other half of the Mendelssohnian theory. The liberal would modify the law, the nationalist would change the environment. In other words, instead of holding Mendelssohn in low esteem, both sides ought to recognize that they each derive half their inspiration from him.
And it is fortunate that Jews are, at this juncture, coming to appreciate Mendelssohn all over again. Our German brethren have just initiated a capital series of little books which cost less than a shilling each. The first of these “Monuments of the Jewish Spirit” contains the Jerusalem, and much else of Mendelssohn’s work. Here one reads again the words first penned by the Berlin Socrates in 1783: Judaism knows nothing of a revealed religion, Israel possessed a divine legislation. “Thought is free,” we can hear Mendelssohn thundering—if so harsh a verb can be applied to so gentle a spirit—“let no Government interfere with men’s mode of conceiving God and truth.” State and religion are separated as wide as the poles. Israel has its own code, which in no way conflicts with the State; still less does Israel seek to impose that code on the State. Mendelssohn did not believe that all men were destined to attain to truth by the road of Judaism. “Judaism boasts of no exclusive revelation of immutable truths indispensable to salvation.” Hence, too, “Judaism has no articles of faith.” It follows that not unbelief was punished under the Jewish régime, but contumacious disobedience. The Jew was never commanded: believe this, disbelieve that; but do this, and leave that undone. Judaism is the Jew’s way of attaining goodness, other people can attain it in other ways. Not consonance but manifoldness is the design and end of Providence. “Religious union is not toleration, it is diametrically opposed to it.” Toleration consists rather in this: “Reward and punish no doctrine; hold out no allurement or bribe for the adoption of theological opinions.” How far in advance of his age Mendelssohn was! It took a full century after his Jerusalem for England to abolish theological tests at the universities, tests which indeed did “reward and punish” doctrines. Mendelssohn goes on: “Let everyone who does not disturb public happiness, who is obedient to the civil government, who acts righteously towards his fellow-man, be allowed to speak as he thinks, to pray to God after his own fashion, or after the fashion of his fathers, and to seek eternal salvation where he thinks he may find it.” No one, unless it be that earlier Jewish philosopher Spinoza, had ever put the case for toleration so cogently. Whether Mendelssohn’s own principles are consistent with his further conclusion that once a Jew always a Jew, will ever be doubted. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 44a) had said: An Israelite, though he sin, remains an Israelite. Mendelssohn rather said: An Israelite has no right to sin. True, the world need not accept Judaism, but the Jew may never reject it. “I do not see,” cries Mendelssohn, “how those who were born in the house of Jacob can, in any conscientious manner, disencumber themselves of the law. We are allowed to think about the law, to inquire into its spirit ... but all our fine reasoning cannot exonerate us from the strict obedience we owe to it.” I am not now criticising Mendelssohn. I am trying to expound him. To live under the law of the State and at the same time to remain loyal to the law of Judaism is hard. But Mendelssohn went on: Bear both burdens. That assuredly is a counsel which should be inscribed in golden letters over the portal of Judaism now, even though we may interpret the burdens differently in our different circumstances.
Mendelssohn’s masterpiece includes much else. But what precedes ought to be enough to whet readers’ appetites for the whole meal. On an occasion when I had a long talk with William James, I spoke to him of Mendelssohn, and he admitted that his own Pragmatic theories were paralleled by the Jerusalem. He promised to write on the subject, but death claimed him all too soon. Whether we agree with Mendelssohn or not, let us at least agree in appreciation of his genius. What he did, and what we do not do, is to face unflinchingly the discussion of fundamentals. Reading Mendelssohn is to breathe the fresh air. But there’s the rub! Read Mendelssohn? How, if we know no German? It is deplorable that the Jerusalem is no longer accessible in English. I say no longer, because once it was accessible. And not once only, but twice.
In 1852, Isaac Leeser published an English version in Philadelphia. No wonder our American brothers still hold Leeser in such reverent esteem. He deserved well of the Jewry of his land. But Leeser’s was not the first English translation of Jerusalem. In 1838, M. Samuels issued in two volumes an English version in London; it was dedicated to Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, and contained much besides the Jerusalem. I know nothing of the translator except one thing that he was not, and another thing that he was. He was not a native Englishman, and he was a good scholar. About a dozen years earlier (1825) he had produced a volume, entitled “Memoirs of Moses Mendelsohn” (what a pitfall that double s is to printers! Throughout M. Samuels’ earlier book an s is missing in the name; in the later publication it has been recovered). Samuels asserts himself a “disciple of the leading system of the work”; perhaps this accounts for his enthusiasm, shown in his conscientious annotations, which are fragrant with genuine Jewish thought. With very slight furbishing up, Samuels’ rendering could be reprinted to-day. One of the most urgent needs of our age in English-speaking lands is that Jews should once more become familiar with the thought of the eighteenth century, and particularly of Mendelssohn. Like many another of my generation, I was brought up rather to decry him. I have learned better now, and would fain urge others to a like reconsideration.