The History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century

by Leo Wiener

It is not difficult to discern a number of distinct strata in the many folk-tales that are current now, even though the motives from various periods may be found hopelessly intertwined in one and the same story. The oldest of these may be conveniently called the Talmudical substratum, as in those older writings the prototypes of them can be found. Of course, these in their turn are of a composite nature themselves, but that need not disconcert us in our present investigation as long as the resemblance is greater to the stories in the Talmud than to the originals from which that collection has itself drawn its information. There is a large variety of subjects that must be classified in that category. Here belong a number of animal fables, of stories of strange beasts, much imaginary geography, but especially a vast number of apocryphal Bible stories.[25] One of the most interesting series of that class is the one that comprises tales of the river Sambation.[26] This river has rarely been discovered by poor mortals, although it has been the object of their lifelong quest. During the week it throws large rocks heavenwards, and the noise of the roaring waters is deafening. On the Sabbath the river rests from its turmoil, to resume again its activity at its expiration. Behind the Sambation lives the tribe of the Red Jews.

The best story of that cycle is told by Meisach. An inquisitive tailor sets out in search of the Sambation River. Of all the Jews that he meets he inquires the direction that he is to take thitherward; and he makes public announcements of his urgent business at all the synagogues that he visits. But all in vain. Three times he has already traversed the length and the breadth of this earth, but never did he get nearer his destination. Undaunted, he starts out once more to reach the tribe of the Red Jews. Suddenly he arrives near that awful river. Overwhelmed by its din, terrified at its eruptions, he falls down on the ground and prays to the all-merciful God. It happened to be a few minutes before the time that the river was to go to rest. The clock strikes, and, as if by magic, the scene is changed. The tailor finds a ford, passes on the other side, and, exhausted from his wandering, he lies down to sleep in the grass. The tribe of men that live there are a race of giants. One of them, noticing the intruder, takes him to be a new species of a grasshopper, picks him up, and slips him in his spacious coat pocket. He proceeds to the bathhouse to take his ablution, and thence to the synagogue, leaving the tailor all the while in his pocket. The giants begin to pray. At the end, while a pause ensues, the pious tailor unconsciously exclaims 'Amen!' Astonished to hear that mysterious voice, the giant brings the tailor to light and showers many signs of respect upon him, for even the giants know how to honor a pious man. The tailor liked it there so much that he never returned to his native home.

Abramowitsch has made a fine use of this story in his Jewish 'Don Quixote.' The hero of that novel has so long pondered about the Sambation River and the mysterious race of men that live beyond it, that he loses his reason, and starts out to find them. But he does not get beyond Berdichev. Another very fruitful class of stories belonging to that category is the one in which the prophet Elijah plays an important part.[27] According to the popular belief, Elijah did not die; he even now frequently comes to visit men, to help them in some dire necessity. His presence is surmised only when he has disappeared, generally leaving behind him a vapory cloud. So rooted is this belief in the visitation of Elijah, that during the ceremony of the circumcision a chair is left unoccupied for the good prophet. Elijah is not the only one that may be seen nowadays. Moses and David occasionally leave their heavenly abodes to aid their devotees or to exhort those that are about to depart from the road of righteousness. King David presides over the repast at the conclusion of the Sabbath, for it is then that a song in which his name is mentioned is recited. There are some who regard it as a devout act to celebrate that occasion with unswerving accuracy. To those who have made the vow of 'Mlawe-Malke,' as the repast is called, King David is wont to appear when they are particularly unfortunate. Unlike Elijah, he makes his presence known by his company of courtiers and musicians, and he himself holds a harp in his hands; and unlike him, he resorts to supernatural means to aid his protégés.

Most of the medieval legends cluster around the Rabbis of Central Europe, who have in one way or another become famous. The cities of Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Worms, Prague, Cracow, have all their special circle of wonderful tales about the supernatural powers of the worthies of long ago. But the king of that cycle of miracle workers is Rambam, as Maimonides is called.[28] His profound learning and great piety, his renowned art of medicine, his extensive travels, have naturally lent themselves to imaginative transformations. He has undergone the same transmogrification that befell Vergil. Like the latter, he is no longer the great scholar and physician, but a wizard who knows the hidden properties of plants and stones, who by will power can transfer himself in space, and who can read dreams and reveal their future significance. His whole life was semi-miraculous. When he had arrived at the proper age to enter an academy of medicine, he applied to a school where only deaf-mutes were accepted as disciples of Æsculapius. This precaution was necessary, lest the secrets of the art be disseminated, to the disadvantage of the craft. Rambam pretended to have neither hearing nor speech. His progress was remarkable, and in a short time he surpassed his teachers in the delicate art of surgery. Once there came to the school a man who asked to be cured of a worm that was gnawing at his brain. The learned doctors held a consultation, and resolved to trepan the skull and extract the worm. This was at once executed, and Rambam was given permission to be present at the operation. With trembling and fear he perceived the mistake of his teachers and colleagues, for he knew full well that the man would have to die as soon as the seventh membrane under the dura mater was cut away. With bated breath, he stood the pang of anxiety until the sixth covering had been removed. Already the doctors were applying the lancet to the seventh, when his patience and caution gave way, and he exclaimed, 'Stop; you are killing him!' His surprised colleagues promised to forgive his deceit if he would extract the worm without injury to the membrane. This Rambam carried out in a very simple manner. He placed a cabbage leaf on the small opening in the seventh covering, and the worm, attracted by the odor of the leaf, came out to taste of the fresh food, whereupon it was ousted.[29]

Of such a character are nearly all of his cures. The supernatural element of the later period, where everything is fantastic, is still absent from the Rabbi legends. There is always an attempt made to combine the wonderful with the real, or rather to transfer the real into the realm of the miraculous. The later stories of miracle-working pursue the opposite course: they engraft the most extraordinary impossibilities on the experiences of everyday life. Rambam's travels have also given rise to a large number of semi-mythical journeys. One of the legends tells of his sojourn in Algiers, where he incurred the hatred of the Mussulmans for having decided that an oil-vat had become impure because a Mohammedan had touched it, whereas another vat into which a weed had fallen was pronounced by him to be ritually pure. Knowing that his life was in danger, he escaped to Egypt, making the voyage in less than half an hour by means of a miraculous document that he took with him and that had the power of destroying space. In Cairo he became the chief adviser of the king, and he later managed to save the country from the visitation of the Algerian minister, who had come there ostensibly to pursue the fugitive Rambam, but in reality to lay Egypt waste by his magical arts.

The most interesting stories that still belong to that cycle are those that have developed in Slavic countries. Out of the large material that was furnished them by the German cities, in conjunction with the new matter with which they became familiar in their new homes, they have moulded many new stories in endless variety. The number of local legends is unlimited. There is hardly an inn on the highways and byways of Western Russia and Galicia that has not its own circle of wonderful tales. Every town possesses its remarkable Rabbi whose memory lives in the deeds that he is supposed to have performed. But none, except the town of Mesiboz, the birthplace of Bal-schem-tow, the founder of the sect of the Khassidim, can boast of such a complete set of legendary tales as the cities of Wilna and Cracow. In Wilna they will still tell the curious stranger many reminiscences of those glorious days when their Rabbis could arrest the workings of natural laws, and when their sentence was binding on ghosts as well as men. They will take him to the synagogue and show him a large dark spot in the cupola, and they will tell him that during an insurrection a cannon-ball struck the building, and that it would have proceeded on its murderous journey but for the command of the Rabbi to be lodged in the wall. They will take him to a street where the spooks used to contend with humankind for the possession of the houses in which they lived:—the contention was finally referred to the Gaon of Wilna. After careful inquiry into the justice of the contending parties he gave his decision, which is worthy of the wisdom of Solomon: he adjudicated the upper parts of the houses, as much of them as there was above ground, to the mortals, while the cellars and other underground structures were left in perpetuity to the shadowy inhabitants of the lower regions.[30] One of the Gaons at Wilna was possessed of the miraculous power to create a Golem, a homunculus. It was a vivified clay man who had to do the bidding of him who had given him temporary life. Whenever his mission was fulfilled he was turned back into an unrecognizable mass of clay.[31]

A special class of legends that have been evolved in Slavic countries are those that tell of the Lamed-wow-niks. According to an old belief the world is supported by the piety of thirty-six saints (Lamed-wow is the numerical representation of that number). If it were not for them, the sins of men would have long ago worked the destruction of the universe. Out of this basal belief have sprung up the stories that relate the deeds of the 'hidden' saints. They are called 'hidden' because it is the very essence of those worthies not to carry their sanctity for show: they are humble artisans, generally tailors or shoemakers, who ply their humble vocations unostentatiously, and to all intents and purposes are common people, poor and rather mentally undeveloped. No one even dreams of their hidden powers, and no one ever sees them studying the Law. When by some accident their identity is made apparent, they vigorously deny that they belong to the chosen Thirty-six, and only admit the fact when the evidence is overwhelmingly against them. Then they are ready to perform some act by which a calamity can be averted from the Jews collectively, and after their successful undertaking they return to their humble work in some other town where there is no chance of their being recognized and importuned.

One of the most perfect stories of that kind is told of a hidden saint who lived in Cracow in the days of Rabbenu Moses Isserls. The Polish king had listened to the representations of his minister that as descendant of the Persian king he was entitled to the sum of money which Haman had promised to him but which he evidently had not paid, having been robbed of it by the Jews. He ordered the Jews of Cracow to pay forthwith the enormous sum upon pain of being subjected to a cruel persecution. After long fasting Rabbenu Isserls told his congregation to go to Chaim the tailor who was living in the outskirts of the town and to ask him to use his supernatural powers in averting the impending calamity. After the customary denials, Chaim promised to be the spokesman of the Jews before the king. On the next morning he went to the palace. He passed unnoticed by the guards into the cabinet of his majesty and asked him to sign a document revoking his order. In anger, the king went to the door to chide the guards for having admitted a ragged Jew to his presence. As he opened it, he stepped into space, and found himself in a desert. He wandered about for a whole day and only in the evening he met a poor man who offered him a piece of dry bread and showed him a place of shelter in a cave. The poor man advised him not to tell of his being a king to any one that he might meet, lest he be robbed or killed. He gave him a beggar's garments, and supplied him with a meal of dry bread every day. At the expiration of a year, the poor man offered him work as a woodcutter with an improvement in his fare if he would first sign a document. The king was only too happy to change his monotonous condition, and without looking at it signed the paper presented to him. His trials lasted two years more, after which he became a sailor, was shipwrecked and carried back to Cracow. Just then he awoke to discover that his three years' experience had only lasted fifteen minutes by the clock. He abided by his agreement in the document which he had signed in his dream, and thus the great misfortune was once more warded off by the piety of a Lamed-wow-nik. The minister, the story continues, escaped to Italy and hence to Amsterdam, where he became a convert to Judaism. In his old age he returned to Cracow to make pilgrimages to the graves of Rabbenu Isserls and Chaim, the saint.

All the previous stories and legends pale into insignificance by the side of the endless miracles spun out by the Khassidim and ascribed to the founder of the sect and his disciples.[32] Nothing is too absurd for them. There seems to be a conscious desire in these stories to outdo all previous records, in order to throw the largest halo on their Bal-schem-tow, or Bescht, as he is called by his initials. Bal-schem-tow was neither the miracle-worker that his adherents would have him, nor the impostor that his opponents imagine him to have been. He was a truly pious man who sought a refuge in mysticism against the verbalism of the Jews of his days, in the middle of the eighteenth century. His followers, unfortunately mistaking the accidental in his teachings for the essentials of the new doctrine, have raised the Cabbalistic lucubrations of his disciples to the dignity of religious books, and have opened wide the doors for superstitions of all kinds. The realities of this world hardly exist for them, or are at best the temporal reflexes of that mystic sphere in which all their thoughts soar. Their rabbis are all workers of miracles, and Bescht is adored by them more than Moses and the Biblical saints. His life and acts have been so surrounded by a legendary atmosphere that it is now, only one hundred and fifty years after his life, not possible to disentangle truth from fiction and to reconstruct the real man. A large number of books relate the various miraculous incidents in his life, but the one entitled 'Khal Chsidim' surpasses them all in variety, and attempts to give as it were a chronological sequence of his acts.

In that book his grandfather and father are represented as foreshadowing the greatness of their descendant. His grandfather is a minister to a king, and Elijah announces to him that at the age of one hundred years his wife will bear him a son who will be a shining light. His father is a wizard and a scholar, and enjoins his son before his death to study with a hidden saint in the town of Ukop. After his studies were completed he became a teacher in Brody, and a judge. He marries the sister of Rabbi Gerschon, who takes him for a simpleton, and in vain tries to instruct him. No one knows of the sanctity of Bescht. He goes into the mountains accompanied by his wife, and there meditates a long while. At one time he was about to step from a mountain into empty space, when the neighboring mountain inclined its summit and received the erring foot of Bescht. After seven years of solitary life he returns to Brody to become a servant in Gerschon's household. Later his career of miracle-working begins: he heals the sick, exorcises evil spirits, brings down rain by prayers, breaks spells, conquers wizards, predicts the future, punishes the unbelievers, rewards the faithful by endowing them with various powers, and does sundry other not less wonderful things. When he prays, the earth trembles, and no one can hear his voice for loudness. He sleeps but two hours at night and prays the rest of the time, while a nimbus of fire surrounds him.