Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,

To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere.’

It is not the number of our years, but the things done in them, that will be counted to us in eternity. Ibn Gabirol lived his life to the full, although it was twenty years short of the allotted sum.

2. ‘Rashi’ (1040–1105).—Something more of a scholar, and something less of a poet, was Rabbi Solomon Isaaci, a French contemporary of Ibn Gabirol, who was born at Troyes in the year 1040. Though accusations against the Jews of France had grown frequent, and their position ever more and more insecure since the death of Charles the Bald in 877, yet their schools, particularly in the south and south-east of the country, were still flourishing and uninterfered with at the date of the little Solomon’s birth. His father and his uncle were both learned men, and the child was a student almost from his cradle. He was born, in fact, into a community of scholars, and something of the simplicity, and something too of the poverty which belongs to the scholarly life clung to him all his days. His means were small, but his wants were few, and he seemedalways extremely content with his portion of ‘plain living and high thinking.’ He married at eighteen, which is, perhaps, some explanation both of the poverty and of the content. But happiness did not quench his thirst for knowledge. So eager was he to learn all he could possibly be taught, that, like Akiba before him, he did not hesitate to leave his wife and children in the pursuit of study. He went to the then celebrated theological colleges of Mainz and Worms, and worked there to such good purpose that his fellow-students dubbed him [a]‏פַּרְשַׁנְדָּתָא‎], which is a Chaldaic equivalent for ‘Explainer of the Law.’ He is said to have made [a]‏פְּשַׁט‎] of the Talmud, which means to have arrived at a clear and simple rendering of the text—a great feat if we are to accept it literally. He made also a commentary on the Bible, which gives evidence of wide research and clear thought, but his Talmud commentary is considered, by competent judges, to be the more valuable of the two. With all his learning, Rabbi Solomon Isaaci would seem to have been one of those delightfully genial people who naturally earn nicknames among their companions, or, at least, get long-sounding titles affectionately shortened. In the very little we know of the inner lives of these long dead heroes, it is often necessary to add inferences to facts, and it is very suggestive that many of the greatest of these scholars used what Dean Swift calls the ‘little language’ among each other. The famous Maimonides was familiar Rambam in his own circle. Ibn Ezra was known as Raba, and something of the modest, happy nature of the wise Rabbi Solomon Isaaci seems to be revealed to us whenwe hear that this learned scholar and distinguished commentator on Bible and Talmud is seldom called by his grand full names, but only by the initials [a]‏ר ש י‎], (‏רַבִּי שְׁלֹמֹה יִעְחָקִי‎) and it is as ‘Rashi’ he is famous.

3. Abraham Ibn Ezra[36] (1092–1167).—Ibn Ezra, who was born at Toledo in 1092, was a star that shone in many different ways. He was a man of vigorous intellect, and as active in body as in mind. For those quiet days he was a famous traveller, and we find him enjoying a visit to London when he was in his sixty-seventh year (1159).He was just sixteen years old when the fanatic outburst against the Jews in his native town was put down by King Alfonso of Castile,[37] and possibly it was the sense of impending troubles in Spain which first set him thinking of seeking his fortunes abroad. His ‘fortunes’ he never seems to have found, but failures in that direction did not trouble him much. He would laugh at his own disappointments, and say, ‘If I were to take to shroud-making, I do believe men would leave off dying, or if I adopted candle-making as a trade, I am certain the sun would take to shining by night as well as by day till I gave it up.’ Ibn Ezra’s travels were rather the result of a restless and inquiring spirit than of a settled and sustained object. He would learn for a while, and then teach for a while, and do both equally thoroughly, and to the delight of either masters or pupils. And then he would travel again, and prove the most charming and entertaining of companionsto any one whom he might chance to meet. He stayed once for a long time in Italy, and his influence amongst scholars there caused quite a revival to take place in grammatical and analytical study. He was an excellent critic, and his philosophic and scientific commentaries on the Pentateuch, and on some other parts of the Bible, are very valuable. Astronomy, also, was a favourite pursuit of his, and he was a first-rate mathematician. Ibn Ezra must have been, as the phrase goes, a very able man. Yet all qualities have their corresponding defects, and the charm of many-sidedness, when undirected by any high aim, has a tendency to run into indistinctness of outline. Ibn Ezra, it must be confessed, was all his life just a little of a rolling stone, and mere restlessness appears to have had a good deal to do with his frequent change of place and pursuit. His intellect seems to have been more active than his emotions, and it looks almost as if he had more mind than heart. And so the light this star gave forth, though brilliant, was of a somewhat wavery and uncertain sort.

4. A Great Traveller.—Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela was a Spanish merchant, who, between the years 1165 and 1173, visited the Jewish communities then existing in Europe, in Asia, and in Africa, and has left the most valuable record extant of the general condition of the Jews at that period throughout the three continents. It is quite likely that commercial pursuits shared with the pursuit of knowledge the motive of Rabbi Benjamin’s wanderings. For, in the modern sense, he certainly did not ‘make a book’ of his travels. The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela is theplainest and most unvarnished record of experiences, and, on the face of it, the work of a man who had no great literary ability. There is a lack both of detail and of polish in these rather rough notes of twelfth-century travel, and some critics have gone so far as to account for this meagreness by suggesting that Rabbi Benjamin might, in strict truth, have dated some of his despatches from Tudela. But more charitable and better informed commentators do not accuse our traveller of this bad faith, but explain his baldness of description and his occasional omissions by the much more likely suggestion that parts of the diary may have been altogether lost. The text which we now possess is considered by competent judges to be an abridgment of the original, and if this be the case, it would account for many otherwise unaccountable omissions. For instance, there is very little space indeed given to the Jews of Germany, who were numerous enough in the twelfth century to have afforded plenty of material to a traveller bent on recording his impressions. There would seem to be no cause for any wilful omission of this sort on the part of Benjamin, but the accidental loss of the German descriptions would easily explain it. With all its drawbacks, the book is extremely valuable. It gives us a glimpse of Jews, ‘toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing,’ in the midst of alien peoples, and it enables us to see how they looked to the eyes of a very keen-sighted and very plain-speaking traveller, who spent eight years in visiting all the chief cities of the world in the second half of the twelfth century. Rabbi Benjamin wrote his journals in Rabbinic Hebrew. They havebeen translated into Latin, French, Dutch, and English, but, strange to say, never into German.Possibly the Germans considered a book of travels, which did not say much about them and their country, to be too trivial for the trouble of translation.[38]

5. Jehudah Halevi (1085–1140).—When the cry of Hep! Hep! was ringing in all its first fierce frenzy over Europe, there were just one or two quiet corners in the Continent where the sound was forbidden. Peter of Arragon and Alfonso VI. of Castile were the Caleb and Joshua of their age, who stood steadfast, refusing to join in a ‘false report,’ and follow a multitude to do evil. Within the century that had just closed, France, Italy, Germany, Bohemia, and Greece had each been, at different times, the scene of terrible persecutions of the Jews. In Spain alone, under the mild sway of the Ommeyade kaliphs, Jews found peaceable homes. By the beginning of the twelfth century the Catholic kings were fast winning back Spain from the Moors, but the tolerant policy of the Mahomedans was yet, for a while, maintained. Space and liberty were still accorded to Jewish subjects, and it was on the safe soil of Old Castile, whilst Alfonso VI. reigned, that the poet,Jehudah Halevi, of whom a sober historian[39] gravely writes that the words ‘created in the image of God,’ when applied to him, read like the most simple and literal of descriptions, passed his childhood. AsJehudah grew up he became the very centre and chief of the group of tuneful and unworldly sages who, whilst the world was hurrying after vain shadows, and forgetting all about such beautiful realities as learning and humanity, remind us, by their calm and studious and religious lives, that such things did exist even in the dark ages. The quiet, uneventful histories of such men have been almost covered up from sight in the din and dust raised by recurring crowds of ‘chivalrous’ crusaders. Even in the age in which they lived, these gentle old scholars were not very visible, nor very prominent figures. They seem to stand a little apart, writing their poetry and philosophy, studying among the wise, teaching among the ignorant, and rarely eager for fame, and never for reward. Like the scholars of an older period, these, whom we find behind the scenes of the Middle Ages, used ‘the Law’ neither as a spade to dig with, nor as a crown to shine with. A modest livelihood was contentedly dug out of some handicraft or profession, and as to shining, they never thought about it at all.

Jehudah Halevi, physician and poet, was the highest type of this old-fashioned class of authors, and in his lifetime was far wider known as a doctor than as a poet. Even his doctoring was done on old-fashioned lines. As he stands in his laboratory he writes:

‘This draught that I myself combine,

What is it? Only Thou dost know