The History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century

by Leo Wiener

In 1828 J. B. Levinsohn wrote his Hebrew work, 'Teudo Beisroel,' by which the Haskala took a firm footing in Russia. About the same time there circulated manuscript copies of a Judeo-German essay by the same author, in which a sad picture of Jewish communal affairs was painted in vigorous and idiomatic words. This essay, called 'The World Turned Topsy-Turvy,'[76] is given in the form of a conversation by three persons, of whom one is a stranger from a better country where the affairs of the Jews are administered honestly. The other two in turn lay before him an array of facts which it is painful to regard as having existed in reality. It is interesting to note that the stranger, who is Levinsohn himself, advocates the formation of agricultural colonies for the Jews, by which he hoped to better their wretched condition and to gain for them respect among those who accused them of being averse to work.

The most original and most prolific Judeo-German writer of this early period was Israel Aksenfeld.[77] He was born in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, and had passed the early days of his life in the neighborhood of the Rabbi of Braslow, a noted Khassid, being himself a follower of that sect. Later in life, in the fifties, he is remembered as a notary public in Odessa. He was a man of great culture. Those who knew him then speak in the highest terms of the kindly old man that he was. They also like to dwell on the remarkable qualities of his cultured wife, from whom he is supposed to have received much inspiration.[78] That is all that is known of his life. Gottlober mentions also in his 'Recollections' that he had written twenty-six books, and that according to Aksenfeld's own statements they had been written in the twenties or thereabout. Of these only five were printed in the sixties; the rest are said to be stored away in a loft in Odessa, where they are held as security for a debt incurred by the trustee of his estate. Although this fact is known to some of the Jews of that city, no one has taken any steps to redeem the valuable manuscripts. This is to be greatly regretted, as his books throw light on a period of history for which there is no other documentary evidence except that given by the writings of men who lived at that time.

Of the five books printed, one is a novel, the other four are dramas. The first, under the name of 'The Fillet of Pearls,' shows up the hypocrisy and rascality of the Khassidic miracle-workers, as only one who has himself been initiated in their doings could relate them. The hero of the novel is Mechel Mazeewe. He is discovered eating on a minor fast day, and the Rabbi uses this as an excuse for extorting all the money the poor fellow had earned by teaching little children and young women. His engagement to one of his pupils, the daughter of the beadle, is broken off for the same reason. Disgusted with his town, he goes away from it in order to earn a living elsewhere. Good fortune takes him to Breslau, where he, for the first time, discovers that there are also clean, honest, peaceful Jews. He is regenerated, and returns to his native town, where in the meantime the miracle-working Rabbi has succeeded in rooting out the last vestige of heresy. At the house of the Rabbi, Mechel has an occasion to prove the falseness of his pretensions to the assembled people. Mechel is reunited with his bride.

This bare skeleton of the plot is developed with great care, and is adorned with a variety of incidents, each forming a story within the story. The biting satire, the sharp humor, the rapid development of situations, are only excelled by his dramatic sense, which makes him pass rapidly from descriptions, without elaborating them to the form of dialogue. His mastery of the dialect is remarkable; for although one can here and there detect his intimate acquaintance with German literature, there is not a single case where he has been led under obligations to the German language in thought or a word: German is as foreign to him as French or Latin. Of his dramas it will be sufficient to discuss one to show their general structure. The most dramatic of these is the one entitled 'The First Recruit' and tells of the terrible time in 1827 when the Ukase drafting Jewish young men into the army had for the first time been promulgated. To the ignorant masses it seemed as though the world would come to an end. To avoid the great misfortune of having their sons taken away from them, they married them off before they had reached their teens; finding that that did not prevent the 'catchers' from seizing them, maimed, halt, sickly men were preferred as husbands to their daughters; in short, all was done to avert the unspeakable calamity of serving the Czar. As in the novel, there are plots within the plot, and didactic passages are woven into the play without in the least disturbing its unity.

The tragedy consists of eight scenes. The first opens with a noisy meeting at the house of Solomon Rascal, a Parnes-Chōdesch (representative of the Jewish community), on a Saturday afternoon. The cause of the disturbance is the order to furnish one recruit from their town, which had just been brought in from the capital of the district by two soldiers. The assembled kahal are wondering whether it is incumbent upon them to sign the receipt of the order, while the infuriated mob without is clamoring that the Ukase will be ineffective as long as not signed by the representatives of the Congregation. The kahal is divided on the subject, and the women take a part in the discussion, making matters lively. Upon the advice of one of the men, the meeting is adjourned to the house of Aaron Wiseman, the honored merchant of their town of Nowhere, where they expect to get a satisfactory solution in their perplexity. The second scene is the ideal scene of the play. Here is depicted the happy and orderly home life of the cultured merchant,—the reverse of the picture just portrayed. Jisrolik the Ukrainian arrives and announces the decision of the kahal to refer the matter to him. Aaron Wiseman explains how the Emperor had not intended to bring new misfortunes upon the Jews by the mandate, but how by imposing on them the honorable duty of defending their country, he was investing them with a new privilege upon which greater liberties would follow. This he farther elucidates in the next scene before the assembled representatives of the Congregation. The fourth scene is laid in the inn, where we are introduced to Nachman the Big, the practical joker and terror of the town. In the following scene, Aaron Wiseman advises the kahal to use a ruse by which Nachman will voluntarily offer himself as a soldier, thus freeing the town from the unpleasant duty of making a more worthy family unhappy. Wiseman explains that Nachman has been a source of trouble to all, and that military service would be the only thing that would keep him from a possible life of crime. The ruse is accomplished in the following manner: it is known that Nachman has been casting his eyes on Früme, the good and beautiful daughter of Risches the Red, the tax-gatherer. It is proposed to send a schadchen to Nachman, pretending that Früme's parents seek an alliance with him, and that Früme loves him, and that she wants to get a proof of his affection in his offering himself up as a soldier. The apparent incongruity of the request is amply accounted for in the play by the fact that he who has lost his heart also loses his reason. In the next two scenes the plot is carried out, and Nachman becomes a soldier. The last scene contains the tragic denouement. Chanzi, the go-between, comes to the house of Früme and tells her of the fraud perpetrated on Nachman. But, alas, Früme actually loves Nachman, and she silently suffers at the recital of the story. The climax is reached when her father arrives and tells of Nachman's self-sacrifice, how he has given himself up for the love he bears her, how they put him in chains and took him away. Früme bears her secret to the last, but her heart breaks, and she dies. The sorrow of her parents is great. During the lamentation Nachman's blind mother arrives, led by a little girl. She has learned of Chanzi's treachery, and breaks out in loud curses against those who took part in the plot. As she steps forward, she touches the dead body of her whom Nachman had thought to be his bride. She addresses her as though she were alive and consoles her that she need not be ashamed of Nachman, who had been an inoffensive, though somewhat wild, boy. While speaking this, she faints over her body.

The characters are all admirably delineated, and how true to nature the whole play is one can see from a matter-of-fact story, by Dick,[79] of the effects of the Ukase on the city of Wilna. Except for the tragic plot, the drama may serve as a historical document of the event, and is a valuable material for the study of the Jewish mind in the beginning of Nicholas's reign. This must also be said of the other plays of Aksenfeld, which all deal with conditions of contemporary Jewish society.

Similar to Aksenfeld's subject in 'The Fillet of Pearls' is the comedy 'The Marriage Veil' by Gottlober, which he wrote in 1838. Jossele, a young man with modern ideas, is to be married to a one-eyed monster, while his sweetheart, Freudele, is to be mated on the same day with a disfigured fool. By Jossele's machinations, in which he takes advantage of the superstitions of the people, he is united under the marriage veil to Freudele, while the two monstrosities are married to each other. This is found out too late to be mended. This plot is only an excuse to show up the hypocrisy and rascality of the miracle-working Rabbi in even a more grotesque way than in 'The Fillet of Pearls.' A much finer work is his story 'The Transmigration,' which, however, is said to be based on a similar story in the Hebrew, by Erter. In this a dead soul, previous to finding its final resting-place, relates of its many transmigrations ere reaching its last stage. The succession of mundane existences is strictly in keeping with the previous moral life of the soul. It starts out with being a Khassidic singer, who, like all the followers of the Rabbi, is represented as an ignorant dupe. After his death he naturally is turned into a horse, the emblem of good-natured stupidity according to the popular Jewish idea. Then he is in turn a Precentor, a fish, a tax-gatherer, a dog, a critic, an ass, a doctor, a leech, a usurer, a pig, a contractor. By far the most interesting and dramatic incident is that of the doctor, who is trying to pass for a pious Jew, but who is caught eating lobsters, which are forbidden by the Mosaic Law, and who dies from strangulation in his attempt to swallow a lobster to hide his crime. The story is told in a fluent manner, is very witty, and puts in strong relief the various characters which are satirized.

Like the poetry of the same period, the prose literature of the writers previous to the sixties is of a militant nature. It had for its aim the dispersion of ignorance and superstition, and the introduction of the Haskala and Western civilization among the Jews of Russia. The main attack of all these early works was directed against the fanaticism of the Khassidic sect, against the hypocrisy of its miracle-working Rabbis in whose interest it lay to oppose the light at all cost. But the authors not only attacked the evil, they also showed the way for a reform: this they did by contrasting the low, sordid instincts of the older generation with the quiet, honest lives of the new. Of course, the new generation is all German. The ideal characters of Ettinger's drama, Aksenfeld's hero in 'The Fillet of Pearls,' Gottlober's Jossele, have all received their training in Germany. At the same time, in accordance with the Mendelssohnian School, these ideal persons are not opposed to the tenets of Judaism; on the contrary, they are represented as the advocates of a pure religion in place of the base substitute of Khassidism. Outside of the didactic purpose, which, however, does not obtrude on the artistic development of the story, the Judeo-German literature of that period owes its impulse to the three German authors, Lessing, Schiller, Jean Paul Richter. As regards its language, the example set by Lefin prevails, and all the productions are written in an idiomatic, pure dialect of the author's nearest surroundings. There is but one exception to that, and that is 'The Discovery of America,' which, being mainly intended for a Lithuanian public, is written in a language which makes approaches to the literary German, whereby it opened wide the way to misuses of various kinds.

X. PROSE WRITERS FROM 1863-1881: ABRAMOWITSCH

ZEDERBAUM,[80] the friend and fellow-townsman of Ettinger, began in 1863 to publish a Judeo-German weekly under the name of Kol-mewasser, as a supplement to his Hebrew weekly, the Hameliz. This was the first organ of the kind for Russia, for the one edited in Warsaw forty years before was not written in the dialect of the people. Let us look for the cause of such an innovation.