Far be from me to deny that there is an amiable and humane side to this convention. For my part, I prefer to moderate my judgments while the man is still alive. I do not admire over much those who bespatter another with abuse in his lifetime, and with flattery in the moment of his death. But the world thinks differently. Herzberg sinned against this convention; he wrote severely, even bitterly, and also unjustly, of an Anglo-Jewish worthy soon after the interment of the latter. And so he lost his friends, and was ostracized here for the rest of his own life. He resigned his post as Director of the Jerusalem Orphanage—though probably for other reasons. He died in Brussels in 1898.
The incident alluded to in these preceding lines was typical of the man’s nature. He was not easy to get on with. He was not so much quarrelsome as aggressive. Witty, keen-minded, he was above all a man of impulsive emotions. He never defended a cause; he always attacked its opponents. If his fortress were besieged, he answered with a sortie; he could not fight behind the walls. And this is true of the wonderful book which, under the pen-name of “Gustav Meinhardt,” he first published in Hamburg in 1868, calling it Jüdische Familienpapiere. It is the most brilliant vindication of Judaism published in the nineteenth century. But it is an attack on rival systems more than a mere apology for his own religion. The author throughout is plaintiff rather than defendant.
The book consists of a series of letters written from Germany to England. The author of the letters is a youth, Samuel; the recipient of them is an Englishman of means, Samuel’s adoptive father. A Jew by birth, Samuel has been brought up in England as a Christian by the kind-hearted aristocrat, who found the child destitute after the death of his real father, a poor hawker. And now he is sent home to his Jewish relatives on a mission—he is to convert them to his new faith. The letters describe Samuel’s arrival in the abode of his uncle, Rabbi Nathan, and with exquisite charm unfold the gradual reversion of Samuel to his ancestral allegiance. This part of the book is certainly constructive enough. Samuel is overwhelmed with his discoveries. He is fascinated by Rabbi Nathan, and also by his cousin, Rachel. I think it would be difficult to find in literature a more beautiful description of Jewish home-life than Herzberg presents. No wonder that in the end the would-be converter becomes the converted.
The great part of the argument, however, is occupied less with showing the success of Judaism, than the failure of Christianity. Herzberg speaks out; there is no hesitation, no reserve. He never loses his courteous manner, but this formal suavity does not mitigate the truculence of the statements he makes, the severity of the arguments he uses. He is one-sided in that he sets the Church’s failure against the Synagogue’s success, and does not attempt to balance against each other the successes of each and the failures of each. But he is confessedly an advocate and not a judge. It is this that makes his book so valuable. It is an outspoken criticism of modern culture by a well-equipped mind. For to Herzberg, naturally and rightly enough, the Church is typical of Western civilization. Attacking the former, he is assailing the latter, denying the validity of Western—or rather—Germanic, ideals, and disputing their permanent worth.
Before pointing out in a sentence the significance of this attitude for the present condition of Jewish thought, one or two other things must be said about the book. There were three German editions in the author’s lifetime, the third appearing in Zurich in 1893. Why was the third issue made in Switzerland and not in Hamburg? In the circular announcing it, Cæsar Schmidt made a remarkable statement. The author had been urged by his friend to soften some parts of it. He refused. Anti-Semitism made the book, in its unaltered shape, the more necessary; but it also made it desirable to issue it in “free Switzerland.” The author would have bettered the book in one sense, had he yielded to his friend’s counsel. Its historical surveys are not unassailable, and its logic is not always perfect. Yet to have modified its polemical tone would have been to destroy its efficacy. Moreover, Herzberg’s friends can have known little of him if they imagined that he would alter even a comma to please them! I met him several times before 1893, and I could have told them that they were wasting their time in giving him advice. He always went his own way; and he would have been the last to complain because that way was a rugged one.
The author had this satisfaction: his work was enthusiastically admired by a notable circle of readers. Graetz had a high opinion of it. David Kaufmann, a lad of sixteen at the time of its first appearance, was its ardent eulogist; to him the third edition is inscribed. “You will find your erstwhile darling unchanged; for to change it would be to mangle it”—so writes Herzberg to Kaufmann. One would not talk of changing it now, for one does not mutilate classics.
Kaufmann, young as he was in 1868, was already a student of the Breslau Seminary. Let another student of the same institution tell us of the impression the Family Papers made there. Dr. F. de Sola Mendes writes that “he was yet studying at the Breslau Theological Seminary when the book was first brought under his notice by a fellow-student, one of its most enthusiastic admirers. A large number of copies were at once procured and read with avidity by our comrades. It is impossible to describe the applause the book called forth; never had we read so glowing and so powerful a vindication of pure Judaism. We were rejoiced that the country which produced an Eisenmenger, a Wagenseil, Schudt, Pfefferkorn et hoc genus omne, should have yielded in our day, too, so triumphant a Defender of the Faith. Our venerable Director, Dr. Frankel, was as enthusiastic as any of his young disciples in its praise.” The writer of the lines just quoted determined to render the book into English. “The work of translation was commenced and carried on in leisure intervals for the next few years. In January, 1874, in conjunction with Mr. A. Herzberg, then of London, brother of the author, a prospectus was issued in England, proposing the publication of the work by subscription. The project was heartily indorsed by the Chief Rabbi and Dr. H. Adler, the latter of whom kindly made valuable suggestions as to omissions and alterations proper in a version to come before average English readers.” One wonders what the author would have said to such “omissions and alterations.” But the matter was not taken up by the Anglo-Jewish public, and Dr. Mendes eventually issued his excellent translation in New York (1875), under the auspices of that American Jewish Publication Society which preceded the present organization bearing the same name.
There must clearly be much significance in a work which has from time to time aroused so much feeling. As a boy, I read it with mingled delight and consternation. Even then, unconsciously, I must have had a premonition of its inner meaning. I promised above to sum up its import in a sentence, and I can do it. Herzberg stands in line with Ahad ha-‘Am. The former does not give a Zionist turn to his exposition, nor does he speak of a Hebrew culture. But he is practically at the same standpoint. Civilization for the Jew must be expressed in Jewish terms. That is the real moral of Herzberg’s work. Now, as of old, I face such an ideal with delight, but also with consternation. It gives us back much we were in danger of losing, but it tends to take away from us much that we had gained.
LONGFELLOW’S “JUDAS MACCABÆUS”
Whenever Handel’s melody falls on one’s ears, it is impossible to miss the musical beauty of the chorus: