922.9 M39e
Keep Your Card in This Pocket
lib B kS ^ be issued only on Presentation of proper
Unless labeled otherwise, books may be retained
tor two weeks. Borrowers finding books marked, de-
taced or mutilated are expected to report same at
library desk; oiherwise the last borrower will be held
responsible for all imperfections discovered
The card holder is responsible for all books drawn
on this card.
Penalty for over-due books 2c a day plus cost of
notices.
Lost cards and change of residence must be re
ported promptly.
Public Library
Kansas City, Mo.
TENSION ENVELOPE CORP.
25" '">
SEF2S ^
ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
The publication of this book was made possible
in part by a gift of the
SOLIS-COHEN FAMILY FUND
in honor of
SOLOMON SOLIS-COHEN,
POET, SCIENTIST, PHYSICIAN
one of the founders of The Jewish Publication Society
and a friend of the author of this volume.
ESSAYS IN JEWISH
BIOGRAPHY
by
ALEXANDER MARX
PmLADELPHIA
THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA
5708-1947
TO THE MEMORY OF MY PARENTS
GEORGE AND GERTRUD MARX
Copyright, 1948, by
THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form without permission in
writing from the publisher: except by a reviewer
who may quote brief passages in a review to be
printed in a magazine or newspaper.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
PRESS OF THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY
PHILADELPHIA* PENNA.
Preface
THE twelve biographies included in this volume were
not written according to a plan. Most of them
were called forth by anniversaries of great men;
others were intended as memorials to departed scholars
whose names and achievements deserve to be retained in
the minds of our own and future generations. Moreover,
personal reasons also had a share in motivating my selec
tion of each of these men, whose lives are here presented
to a wider circle of readers.
The four mediaeval scholars discussed herein, though
not statesmen who influenced the course of history, left a
lasting impression on the development of Judaism. The
works of Rashi have attracted me since my early youth.
My Talmud teachers, as well as Professor Adolf Berliner,
my first teacher in Jewish History, imbued me with ad
miration for Rashi's rare personality and I have, in the
course of my talmudic studies, gained in admiration for his
wonderful Commentary on the Talmud. My interest in
Saadia was aroused by the greatness and originality of his
work and the unusual story of his life. It was sustained by
the continued discoveries of new material in the Centra
which changed and clarified the picture of this outstanding
gaon. He was the pathfinder in a variety of fields which
reached the culmination of their development in the works
of that incomparable genius, Moses Maimonides. While
the essays on these three intellectual giants were prepared
in connection with their recent anniversaries, the paper on
Rabbenu Gershom was written at the suggestion of Profes
sor Louis Finkelstein for the Institute of Religious and
Social Studies. It was difficult to get a clear picture of the
x PREFACE
before. Five of them were included in my Studies in Jewish
History andBooklore, New York, 1944; but since that book
was meant for a smaller circle of readers and its edition
of 650 copies is entirely out of print, they are repeated
here.
This book is due to a suggestion made some years ago
to The Jewish Publication Society by my friend, Profes
sor Shalom Spiegel. I am very grateful to him and to the
authorities of The Society for publishing this volume. Miss
Anna Kleban was helpful with the preparation of many
of these essays when they first appeared. Dr. Solomon
Grayzel made numerous valuable suggestions in revising
these papers for publication. I want to express my special
thanks to my wife for her help, her encouragement and
her constructive criticism.
I have striven, so far as it is humanly possible, to pre
sent an objective picture of each of the ancient and modern
scholars, not permitting my personal feelings of admira
tion or intimate friendship to blind my judgment. I hope
that these biographies will find a friendly circle of readers
and will serve, in spite of their simple and artless presenta
tion, as a slight contribution to the study of Jewish history
and the appreciation of some of our great scholars and
sages.
ALEXANDER MARX
New York, December 1, 1947.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE vii-x
1 RAB SAADIA GAON 3-38
2 RABBENU GERSHOM, LIGHT OF THE EXILE 39-60
3 RASHI 61-86
4 MAIMONIDES 87-111
5 MORITZ STEINSGHNEIDER 112-184
6 DAVID HOFFMANN 185-222
7 MAYER SULZBERGER 223-228
8 SOLOMON SCHECHTER 229-250
9 THE JEWISH SCHOLARSHIP OF JOSEPH JACOBS 251-254
10 HENRY MALTER 255-264
11 MAX LEOPOLD MARGOLIS 265-279
12 ISRAEL FRIEDLAENDER THE SCHOLAR 280-289
BIBLIOGRAPHY 293-298
ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
1
Rab Saadia Gaon
, UTSIDE of Palestine no country has exerted a deeper
influence on the development of Judaism than
Babylonia. Jews had been settled there since the
destruction of the first Temple. They had arranged for the
return to the homeland under Cyrus; they had inspired and
financed the later group which returned under Ezra's
leadership and the trips of Nehemiah to strengthen the
new Palestinian settlement. Only a small section of Baby
lonian Jewry, however, had taken an active part in the
restoration of Palestine. The majority had remained in the
new home where they had taken deep root and carried on
their economic activities while looking to Eretz Yisrael for
spiritual guidance. In the course of centuries, they de
veloped a certain degree of intellectual life, undoubtedly
establishing schools in which the Bible and the language
of their fathers were cultivated. Advanced studies, how
ever, could only be carried on in Palestine. It was for this
reason that, shortly before the beginning of the Common
Era, a man like Hillel left the land of his birth to acquire
a deeper knowledge of Jewish law. More than a century
later, Palestinian scholars, who emigrated from Palestine
during the Bar Kochba uprisings against Rome, made
efforts to transfer Jewish intellectual life to Babylonia.
The schools they founded were at first only of local sig
nificance, but they laid the foundation for the- great de
velopment of the following period.
Only with the codification of the Oral Law in an authori
tative code, the Mishna, around the year 200, did it become
possible to create a center of Jewish studies outside of the
3
4 ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
Holy Land. Two of the greatest pupils of Rabbi Judah the
Prince, the compiler of the Mishna, were to become the
architects of the great Babylonian center. Rab and Samuel,
who for years had studied in the academy of the great
master, returned to their old home and established schools,
thus giving a new impetus to Jewish learning in Babylonia.
The one took over the older school of Nehardea and
imbued it with a new spirit. The other founded an academy
in Sura, a place where complete ignorance had prevailed.
After the destruction of Nehardea, its school was trans
ferred to Pumbedita, and the two sister academies of Sura
and Pumbedita became the spiritual centers of Judaism
for many centuries.
In these academies the Mishna was expounded and
reinterpreted to fit the different economic conditions of
Babylonia. In the course of three centuries, the academies
created the gigantic work which was to become the corner
stone of Judaism for all time the Babylonian Talmud*
When the creative spirit of these schools ceased to func
tion, after the year 500, the Amoraim, the authors of the
Talmud, were succeeded by two generations of Saboraim,
who put the discussions of the academies during the pre
ceding centuries into final form. They were the redactors
of the Talmud.
A time of stagnation followed. The new heads of the
academies, the geonim, devoted themselves to the study
and interpretation of the great work; but only few traces
of their activity during the next two centuries have been
preserved.
In the middle of the eighth century, we first meet with
a head of one of the academies who is more than a mere
name to us he is the blind Gaon Yehudai of Pumbedita,
the author of the first code produced by the Babylonian
schools. Rab Yehudai must have been a very great per
sonality, for, although he presided over his academy for
RAB SAADIA GAON 5
only three years, he exerted a deep influence on his con
temporaries. The following generations limited their
literary activity mainly to answering questions directed
to them from Babylonia and from other countries. These
geonic responsa contain the nucleus for the various
branches of Jewish literature which developed in the fol
lowing period. Originally very brief, these responsa some
times grew to great length. The first text of the prayer
book, composed by the Gaon Rab Amram at the request
of the Spanish communities, was in its form nothing but
a responsum.
The Babylonian Jews were a well organized group,
guided in spiritual matters by the geonim. Politically,
however, the exilarch, a scion of the royal family of Judah,
ruled over them as an autonomous, recognized minority
in the caliphate. He represented them at court, where the
exilarch held a very high position. The office had flourished
throughout the Persian period by appointment of successive
Persian rulers, and later, after the Muhammedan conquest
of Babylonia, was continued by the caliphs. After designa
tion by the Jewish representatives, the exilarch was in
ducted into his office with great solemnity by the heads of
the two academies.
Relations between the political and the spiritual heads
of Jewry were not always pleasant. Our sources inform us
of a number of bitter quarrels between the two. Even in
the academies, peace and goodwill did not always prevail.
Several times the academies were split between contenders
for the Gaonate, and two opponents presided simulta
neously over factions of the membership of the same school.
Most of the geonim of both academies belonged to the
same few leading families which opposed the election of
anyone from the outside. Sherira Gaon, the historian of
the academies, refers disdainfully to one of his predecessors,
Aaron ben Joseph ha-Kohen, i. e., Kalaf ben Sarjado, of
6 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
whom I shall have to speak later. Sherira states that
originally Aaron did not belong to the scholars of the
academy, but was the son of a merchant.
During the five centuries of the geonic period, only one
of the heads of the academies was not a native Babylonian.
Rab Saadia ben Joseph al-Fayyumi, i. e., from the
Egyptian district of Fayyum had come to Babylonia as
a recognized scholar. The mere fact that such a man at
tained this outstanding position which made him one of
the world-leaders of Jewry is sufficient to indicate that we
are dealing here with a towering personality, a man of such
outstanding qualifications that all notions of local pride, of
petty objections, were silenced by his merits. What the
particular merits were which brought to him this unique
distinction, we shall discuss later.
We now turn to the life of this greatest and most orig
inal of the geonim, the pioneer in so many fields of Jewish
literature, the thousandth anniversary of whose death was
commemorated in 1942.
The discoveries of the last fifty years in the treasures of
the Geniza have enormously enriched our knowledge of
the life and works of our hero. The Geniza was a room in
an ancient synagogue at Cairo into which, for a thousand
years, discarded books and documents in Hebrew char
acters had been dumped. Although there are still a great
many gaps in the information we have gleaned rand
further researches in the scattered documents of the Cairo
treasure trove may help to fill some of these gaps we can
draw today a much fuller picture of Saadia's life and
activity than was possible in the last century. Even the
date of his birth was wrongly transmitted by an early his
torian, so that the millennium of his birth was] celebrated
ten years too late in 1892. We know now that Saadia
was born in 882, between the 27th of June and the 5th of
RAB SAADIA GAON 1
July, and died in the night between Sunday and Monday,
May 16, 942, about 2 o'clock in the morning. This infor
mation we owe to his two sons who, eleven years after his
death, compiled a list of his works in which they also gave
the date of his death and a statement that he died some
forty days before his sixtieth birthday.
Saadia was a man of strong convictions as well as of a
pugnacious nature and was often involved in controversies.
Some of the data on his personal life are derived from
remarks made by his opponents in bitter attacks on his
personality. From such sources we gather that his native
place was Dilaz in the Fayyum and that his father followed
him to Palestine and died in Jaffa. In order to disparage
him, his opponents claimed that his father was a butcher,
a barber, and even a muezzin in a mosque! While Saadia
claims descent from Shelah, the son of Juda, his enemies
maintained that he was descended from converts. Sherira,
in the epistle in which he traces the history of the oral tra
dition, refers to Saadia's father as a scholar, and there is
thus good reason to disregard the charges of evil-tongued
adversaries.
Saadia was reared in Egypt, where he received his edu
cation. There he started his literary activity and gathered
a group of pupils around him. We conclude from this that
the Muhammedan conquest had greatly improved the
condition of the Jews in Egypt, too, and had caused a
revival of spiritual activity after the oppression by the
Church.
About the teachers who inspired the young genius to
devote his great gifts to the furthering of Jewish learning,
we know nothing. The Arabic historian Masudi mentions
the name of the Tiberias scholar, Abu Kathir Yahya al-
Katib, as Saadia's teacher. But Saadia probably came
under his influence at a later period, when he had emi
grated to Palestine.
8 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
We know that at the age of twenty Saadia composed
his dictionary, Agron, which he later revised, and that at
the age of twenty-three he inaugurated his polemical
writings with a refutation of the work of Anan, the founder
of Karaism.
Again our sources do not permit us to state whether the
sectarian movement of the Karaites, which at that time
had its center in Palestine, had spread to Egypt. Possibly
Saadia had become acquainted with Anan's work and
considered it necessary to write against it, although Kara-
ism had not as yet extended its influence to his homeland.
The Egyptian period of Saadia 5 s life is shrouded in dark
ness. We cannot tell when he left Egypt for Palestine. The
only allusion to a definite date is found in a letter to his
pupils whom he left in Egypt. In this letter, written in 921
or 922, he says that he had not heard from them for six
and a half years and that he was separated for this length
of time from his wife and children. Accordingly, it is stated
that he left Egypt in 915. But a description is extant of a
trip through Palestine and Syria by a young man in his
early twenties, which Schechter thought might possibly
have been written by Saadia. If that hypothesis is correct,
we should have to conclude that Saadia left his home about
ten years earlier and perhaps returned again to Egypt.
However that may be, we may assume that there was no
challenge to his abilities in Egypt, and that he decided
to turn to one of the centers of Jewish spiritual life to find
for himself a wider sphere of activity. But success was slow
in coming.
What his activities were in the various cities of Palestine
and Syria that he visited, and how long he stayed there,
we cannot teU. As stated above, he probably enjoyed for
some time the instruction of a scholar at Tiberias, but the
Palestinian academy did not offer an opening to the gifted
RAB SAADIA GAON 9
foreigner. There, as in Babylonia, all the important posi
tions were held by the members of a few families. Un
doubtedly, he wrote some books during these years and
made a name for himself. Only thus can we understand
his being in correspondence with one of the Babylonian
geonim, R. Judah, the head of the Pumbedita academy,
who died in 917.
A recently discovered responsum of Sherira Gaon men
tions the questions which Saadia, while still in Palestine,
directed to this Gaon Judah, Sherira's grandfather. One
of these questions dealt with a point of the Jewish calendar
which was to play a decisive part in Saadia's life.
The announcement of the new moon and the determina
tion of the date of the holidays was an ancient privilege
which the Palestinian schools maintained for many cen
turies. Though it is generally assumed that the calendar
was published in the middle of the fourth century by
Hillel II, it seems that it was not automatically followed
without official announcement by the Palestinian authori
ties. As late as 835, a Babylonian exilarch expressly stated
in a letter that, in the interest of the unity of Israel, he, the
geonim, the scholars and the public at large follow the
calendar announcement of the Palestinian scholars. About
the same time, it seems, the Babylonian schools sent a
group of scholars to Palestine to study and discuss the
problem of determining the calendar and, probably soon
afterwards, they emancipated themselves from the ancient
custom of relying on Palestine for the calendrical announce
ment. Yet less than a century later the Babylonian scholars
already claimed that even the oldest among them did not
recollect that they had ever waited for Palestinian guidance
in this matter. At the time, however, there was no dif
ference between the two countries as to the dates of the
holidays,
A new situation arose when an energetic head of the
10 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
Palestinian schools, Aaron ben Meir, a scholar 01 nigh
standing, decided to announce a rule which would prevent
the postponement for two days of Passover and New Year
in the year 921. The Babylonian academies refused to
recognize this rule.
Ben Meir hoped to be able to carry his point, and he
made careful preparations to do so. He had been having
great difficulties with the Karaites. This sect which denied
the authority of the Oral Law had grown very powerful in
Jerusalem. To gain the support of the central government,
Ben Meir traveled to Bagdad and obtained the assistance
of Aaron ben Amram, one of the great bankers at the court
of the caliph. Through the banker's influence, he suc
ceeded in getting a favorable decree against the Karaites.
The exilarch, David ben Zakkai, probably did not co
operate with him and kept aloof. Ben Meir, however, made
contacts with the head of the school of Pumbedita, Rab
Mebasser, who had been appointed by the members of his
school in 917 after the death of Saadia's above-mentioned
correspondent, the Gaon Rab Judah. There had been a
bitter quarrel between the previous exilarch, Ukba, a
cousin of his successor, and the academies. Ukba had been
removed from his position and exiled from the country,
Rab Mebasser and the members of the Pumbedita acad
emy were afraid to see his cousin, David ben Zakkai, take
his place, and refused him recognition. The exilarch there
upon appointed one of his adherents, Rab Kohen Tsedek,
counter-gaon of Pumbedita. But only a smaller group of
the scholars recognized the new appointee.
During his stay in Bagdad, Ben Meir made contact
with the Gaon Mebasser and his partisans, and on his
return promulgated a decree of excommunication against
the exilarch and his appointee, Kohen Tsedek. He was
confident that these friends he had made in Bagdad would
support him in his calendar scheme, which, he claimed,
RAB SAADIA GAON 11
was not to institute a reform, but to follow ancient tradi
tion. He proceeded to make his announcement and it
caused a split in Jewry.
A Christian Syrian chronicler of the eleventh century
records that in 921 the Western (Palestinian) Jews started
their New Year on Tuesday; those of the East (Babylonians)
on Thursday. This statement, first brought to the atten
tion of Jewish scholars by Dr. Cyrus Adler, as well as a
remark of a Karaite zealot of the tenth century about a
controversy on the calendar in Saadia's time, can be
properly understood now on the basis of the documents
which were brought to light from the treasures of the
Geniza.
In the summer of 921, Ben Meir sent circular letters to
various countries, stating that in the fall of that year the
months of Marheshvan and Kislev would have only 29 days,
while according to the Babylonian calculation they would
be full months of 30 days. At the annual solemn convoca
tion which took place on Hosh'ana Rabba on Mount
Olivet, he ordered his son to make a public announcement
to that effect. Thus the struggle between Palestine and
Babylonia was started. .
Saadia was traveling that summer from Aleppo to
Bagdad. He heard rumors of Ben Meir's plans and sent
him letters advising him that he was mistaken in his method
of fixing the calendar and urging him to desist from his
plan. When Saadia arrived in Bagdad, he learned that
he had been wrong in his assumption that Ben Meir would
accept his reasons and give up his new plan. The exilarch
and the heads of the academies thereupon issued letters
denouncing Ben Meir's proceedings and insisting that
their calculation of the calendar be followed. Neither side
was ready to yield, and thus the Passover and the following
New Year's Day were observed on different days by the
adherents of the contending parties. How far the influence
12 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
of the two sides extended we cannot tell, but we learn from
the above-mentioned Karaite that both sides had adherents
in Palestine as well as in Babylonia.
Saadia seems to have become the leader of the Baby
lonian party immediately upon his arrival. Of a militant
nature and powerful personality, his great superiority over
the other participants was evidenced at once, and they
recognized him as the natural champion of their cause.
It was of the utmost importance to create a united front
in Babylonia, and the exilarch was prevailed upon to make
peace with the rebellious faction of the Pumbedita acad
emy. While his appointee, Kohen Tsedek, retained his
income and title, the exilarch, David ben Zakkai, now
recognized Rab Mebasser, the choice of the members of
the academy. The majority of the academy had joined
him from the beginning, and their number probably
increased in consequence of the exilarch's recognition,
only a few adherents remaining faithful to his opponent.
Ben Meir resented the change of mind of his former
partisans. He pleaded with them; he voiced bitter recrimi
nations; but to no avail.
Only a small part of the writings of the contending
parties has been discovered so far, but we get a general
picture of the course of the controversy. The details of the
struggle are too technical to be presented in a popular
essay. What interests us in particular is the part Saadia
played in this fight and the influence it had on his life.
Naturally it was his task to see to it that his old home,
Egypt, should side with the Babylonian authorities. Some
letters of his to his former pupils in Egypt have been pre
served. In two of them he urges these pupils to take steps
so that Passover should be observed in Egypt on the right
days and that they should not eat leaven on the holidays.
The first letter was evidently written towards the end of
the year 921 and included a proclamation by the exilarch
RAB SAADIA GAON 13
and the heads of the academies. This is the letter already
mentioned, in which he tells them that he has not heard
from them directly for six and a half years. In the second
letter, written in the beginning of 922, he emphasizes that
in Babylonia all the scholars stand together and maintain
the same point of view on the calendar question. By that
time unity had been restored in the academies.
A third letter of Saadia to Egypt, in Arabic and evi
dently to the same pupils, is dated Friday, January 3, 922.
They had written that Egyptian Jewry had followed Ben
Meir's calendar. Saadia implores them to change their
attitude and not to cause him further mortification.
The controversy raged for some time and both sides
sent appeals to the Jewries in and outside their countries
for support. Direct communications between Ben Meir
and his opponents seem to have ceased after a while and,
as far as we can judge, unity was restored in Israel after
two years. Babylonia prevailed over Palestine.
Saadia undoubtedly had the lion's share in this triumph.
It brought him at last an adequate position and ended
the years of his restless wanderings. For shortly after his
arrival in Babylonia, he was rewarded for his energetic
stand by an appointment to a high post in one of the
academies.
He signs the first letter to his Egyptian pupils, the one
written towards the end of 921, "Said ben Josef, Ras al-
Kal." Five or six months later, in Tammuz 922, he signs
one of the documents on the controversy as "Saadia ben
Josef, Alluf." Alluf, or Resh Kalla, was a title given to the
first seven members of the academy after the gaon and the
ab-bet-din. Which of the two academies honored itself
by adding this new member to its staff cannot be deter
mined. Thenceforth Saadia was an outstanding member
in a most exclusive group of scholars in one of those ancient
14 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
schools which were reluctant to admit an outsider into
their midst.
After the conclusion of the controversy, Saadia, at the
request of the exilarch, recorded the facts for future genera
tions in a book called Book of Festivals. Only fragments of
this book have been preserved and contribute to the re
construction of this interesting chapter of Jewish history.
We may assume that in the following years Saadia
devoted himself to teaching in the academy and to literary
pursuits. We hear that one of the powerful court-bankers,
Sahl ben Natira, became his pupil.
Two of Saadia's poetical compositions bear his name in
the acrostics, with the title Allufand Resh Kalla respectively,
and must have been composed in the years following his
settlement in Babylonia.
His most comprehensive work against the Karaites was
written in 926. Many other works for which we lack such
indications undoubtedly came from the pen of the inde
fatigable scholar during the years he was a Resh Kalla at
one of the academies.
But Saadia was destined for a much greater distinction.
By his valiant and successful fight against Ben Meir, he had
placed the exilarch under deep obligation. This brought
him, a few years later, the fulfillment of an ambition of
which he might hardly have dared to dream.
The Academy of Sura, founded by Rab in the third
century, which for centuries had enjoyed considerable
privileges over the rival Academy of Pumbedita, had fallen
into a very precarious state. Perhaps it was the fact
that the Academy of Pumbedita, though retaining its name,
had been transferred to Bagdad, the capital of the Cal
iphate. This may have given it new prestige and attracted
the best scholars, even from the rival academy. At any
rate, Sura had declined to such an extent that serious con-
RAB SAADIA GAON 15
sideration was being given to closing the famous seat of
learning and merely maintaining its name by appointing a
member of the Pumbedita school as titular Gaon of Sura,
a gaon in partibus. But the man designated for this distinc
tion, an uncle of the later Gaon Sherira, died before the
plan was carried out. His sudden death was taken as an
omen that this step was wrong. A new gaon, therefore, was
to be appointed who should be able to restore the old
luster of Sura. The exilarch first turned to one of the
scholars of Sura who had been instrumental in terminating
the fight between Rab Mebasser of Pumbedita, the leader
of the opposition, and the exilarch, David ben Zakkai. But
this old scholar, Nissi al-Naharwani, a blind man, did not
feel equal to the arduous task and refused the honor.
Thereupon the exilarch asked his advice as to which of
two other candidates was preferable. One of these was
Tsemah ben Shahin, a descendant of Babylonian scholars.
The other was none other than Saadia. Nissi, though
recognizing the eminence of Saadia, advised against him,
for, although a scholar of outstanding merit, he was difficult
to get along with. His great learning and piety would
never permit Saadia to take personal considerations into
account.
But the exilarch had made up his mind beforehand that
Saadia was the only person who could be expected to
restore the Sura academy to its ancient glory, and he
determined to appoint him. The objection of the wise old
scholar, however, made an impression on him and, before
appointing Saadia, he exacted a formal promise from him
never to oppose him, conspire against him, or join a
counter-exilarch. He claimed later that Saadia accepted
these conditions and confirmed them by an oath. It is to
the credit of David that, in spite of the warning, he made
the choice which in his judgment was the only proper one
in the interests of the academy.
16 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
Saadia must have been deeply gratified with this appoint
ment to the highest and most dignified office to which a
Jewish scholar of that time could aspire. To fill the position
which Rab, the greatest Babylonian leader, the founder of
Jewish learning in that country, had created seven centuries
before, must have given him the greatest satisfaction pos
sible. The appointment was probably unexpected, for he
applied to it the verse, "And Hezekiah rejoiced, and all
the people, because of that which God had prepared for
the people; for the thing was done suddenly" (II Chron.
29.36). The passage occurs in one of the two letters
announcing his election to his friends in Egypt.
Of the first of these letters only the beginning and the
end have been preserved. He asks the Egyptians to turn to
him for any support they may need from the Bagdad
government. He will present their wishes to the court-
bankers, the sons of Netira and of Aaron, who will ask the
ruling powers to grant their requests. He is aware of the
great responsibility that has been placed upon him. He
is anxious to hear from his pupils regularly, for there cannot
be a king without a people and there is no honor for
scholars without pupils.
In this "letter of good tidings' 3 he promises a second
"letter of warning and advice." This one also has "been
discovered in recent times, although not in the Geniza.
Here he speaks of the sessions of the academy over which
he had presided and of the prayers he directed to the Lord
for the remnant of Israel. The letter contains thirty short
paragraphs addressing the readers as "Sons of Israel." He
urges them to watch and reprove one another, to fulfil
every mitsva wholeheartedly. He exhorts them to expect the
redemption every day. He asks them, possibly in view
of the Karaite attacks, to maintain every part of the Oral
Law,
RAB SAADIA GAON 17
For two years Saadia devoted his tremendous energy
and his great gifts to the re-establishment of the Sura
academy and injected new life into the old school. The
relations between the gaon and the exilarch were most
friendly. How the head of the rival school of Pumbedita
felt about the newcomer who outshone him and restored
its old privileges to the Sura academy, we cannot tell. But
we may assume that there were many who envied the
outsider, and some who would have preferred the Sura
school to decay so as to bring about a merger between the
two institutions.
The harmony between Saadia and David ben Zakkai
came to an abrupt end in 930 or thereabouts. As Nissi
had foreseen, the two strong and unbending personalities
were bound to clash sooner or later; and the occasion came
more quickly than expected.
Certain decisions by the exilarch in important civil
matters required endorsement by the two geonim. By
chance, one such decision by David ben Zakkai, with
Saadia's endorsement, has been preserved. A similar case
caused the clash between the two men. About the year 930,
the exilarch was asked to decide on the distribution of an
inheritance, estimated to amount to 70,000 gold pieces, of
which he, possibly in his official capacity, was to receive ten
percent. He rendered his opinion and asked the parties to
submit it to the geonim for their approval. Saadia did not
agree with some points; however, he did not want to raise
any questions and asked the men to submit the document
to his older colleague, the Pumbedita gaon, Rab Kohen
Tsedek, who signed it without hesitation. When it was
returned to him, he tried to avoid a quarrel by saying that
one endorsement was sufficient. But the people insisted
that Re should give the reason for his refusal and, after
being repeatedly adjured to reveal his opinion, he finally
had to explain his objections. The exilarch naturally was
18 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
incensed over this action and sent his son to tell Saadia:
"Don't be a fool; sign the document." The young man
politely urged him to avoid a quarrel. The gaon replied
that one must show no respect to a person in matters of
law. The young man was repeatedly sent to and fro, and
in the end he lost patience and threatened the gaon with
physical force. Thereupon Saadia's adherents unceremo
niously threw the son of the exilarch out of the house.
The exilarch now put the gaon under excommunication
and appointed in his place Joseph ben Jacob ibn Satia,
a more pliable man, a scholar of no consequence, but a
descendant of geonim. Saadia's fighting spirit was now
aroused. He was not a man to yield easily to a powerful
opponent. He in turn excommunicated the exilarch and
appointed the latter's brother, Hasan, or as they called
him in Hebrew, Josiah, as a counter-exilarch. Thus began
the battle between the two headstrong leaders, the issue of
which remained in doubt for several years.
Besides the gaon and the exilarch, a third power had
developed in Bagdad during the tenth century the
court-bankers. Two rich and powerful merchants, Joseph
ben Phineas and Aaron ben Amram, both from the Persian
province Ahwaz, had joined forces and founded a firm
which exerted great power and influence at the court of
the caliph. Arabic sources, which have been investigated
recently by Dr. Walter Fischel, supplement our information
and shed much light on that period. The two bankers are
mentioned for the first time in 908, when they had business
dealings with one of the viziers. In 912 or 913, they were
officially appointed court-bankers and for many years they
carried on large scale operations. Their names occur in the
records till 924, and we are informed that they retained
their position until their deaths. Their clients were mainly
high officials and viziers. One of the latter had deposited
with one of these bankers not less than 160,000 dinars by
RAB SAADIA GAON 19
the time he was deposed. These were public funds which
the vizier had turned over to his own secret account, and
the Caliph al-Muktadir compelled the bankers to return
the money to the royal treasury. The bankers were em
ployed to transfer money from one place to another by
means of letters of credit, thus avoiding the risk of robbery
which the transport of large sums to distant places would
involve. By this method the taxes from the provinces were
transmitted to the capital. Sometimes the bankers had to
make large advances to the payrolls of the army, or for other
urgent needs. They were reimbursed by income from the
taxes. For a period of sixteen years the firm advanced loans
of 10,000 dinars on letters of credit for taxes which were not
yet due, and they received a monthly interest of 2,500
dirhams. Once they were compelled to make an advance
of 150,000 dirhams a month under duress by one of the
viziers.
These bankers were deeply interested in the welfare of
their coreligionists and seem to have been particularly
concerned with the affairs of the academies. It was through
their good offices and international connections that the
contributions collected abroad, in the various communities
of Northern Africa, Spain, and elsewhere, for the sustenance
of the Babylonian schools were transferred to Bagdad. In
all likelihood, they also transmitted the correspondence
between the geonim and these foreign Jewish centers.
We can well imagine that these men, because of their
daily contacts with the highest government officials, had
greater influence and that their opinions carried more
weight than the word of the official head of the Babylonian
Jewry, the exilarch, in spite of the august rank of the latter
at court.
It was the support of these bankers which had enabled
the geonim to succeed in their fight against the previous
exilarch, Ukba, and to have him banished from the cal-
20 - ESSATS W JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
iphate. One of these bankers, Aaron ben Amram, had lent
his support to Ben Meir and procured for him a favorable
decree against the Karaites. He had, at least for some time,
supported him in his calendar scheme. Ben Meir in his
letters repeatedly refers to this support.
By the time Saadia had been elevated to the gaonate,
the two founders of the firm were no longer among the
living. But some years before they passed away, they had
taken into the firm Natira, the son-in-law of Joseph ben
Phineas, the one partner, and the sons of Aaron ben
Amram, the second partner. Natira must have passed away
before his father-in-law and was succeeded by his two sons
who carried on the business with their grandfather. The
sons of Natira and the sons of Aaron enjoyed the same
influence which had been exerted by their father and
grandfather. During the crisis produced by the quarrel
between the gaon and the exilarch, they were divided in
their sympathies.
The sons of Natira were staunch adherents of Saadia.
One of them had been, or still was, his pupil and the
proud owner of copies of Saadia's literary works, while
their partners favored Saadia's opponents. The daughter
of one of the latter was married to a scholarly man, Kalaf
ibn Sarjado (in Hebrew Aaron ben Joseph ha-Kohen).
Kalaf was not a member of the old families from which
the dignitaries of the academy were commonly chosen, but
a newcomer, a member of a rich merchant family whom
the Gaon Mebasser had appointed to a high place in his
academy, perhaps to gain influential support in his fight
against David ben Zakkai. As a matter of fact, Aaron ben
Amram, one of the court-bankers, had sided with him.
Kalaf was a scholar of standing and a man of burning
ambition who was intensely jealous of the foreign scholar
who had attained so high a rank. He spent a fortune to
have Saadia deposed and published a very scurrilous
RAB SAADIA GAON 21
pamphlet against him. An abstract of this pamphlet has
been preserved in a work of a Karaite who gloats over these
undignified squabbles among his Rabbanite opponents.
Because of the division between the partners in the bank,
and because they could not afford to work at cross-purposes
at court, they refrained from using their influence. The
two opponents thus had to carry on their fight without
political support. An Arabic writer tells us that the quarrel
was once considered by the state council, but, since he does
not mention the result, we may assume that the govern
ment also washed its hands of these internal Jewish affairs.
The documents pertaining to this controversy, which
came down to us, are in a very fragmentary form and do
not permit a clear view of its various stages. We are not
even properly informed about the charges of the two sides.
In Kalafs pasquil Saadia is charged with having taken
bribes in law suits which came before him, and it is likely
that the same charge was raised by the other party against
the exilarch. We are told that Saadia appealed to high
officials and bribed them on a Sabbath, as witnessed by
many Jews of Bagdad. In this connection he also was held
responsible for the fact that many Jews suffered corporal
punishment on Sabbaths and Holy Days.
In the beginning it seemed as if Saadia would triumph
over his powerful opponent. He published an intensely
interesting document, his "Open Book" (Sefer ha-Galui}
which unfortunately has been lost; only a few fragments of
it have been recovered in recent years, but these are very
revealing. Of the seven chapters, the third, according to
Saadia's statement, describes the misfortune which befalls
a people ruled by a despot (like the exilarch); the fourth
states that God sends to every generation a sage whom He
inspires and enlightens to lead the people in the right path.
He points to his own providential mission as leader and
defender of the Jewish faith. In the sixth chapter, he gives
22 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
an account of his sufferings at the hands of his unjust
enemies. The final section of the book is meant as a warning
to his opponents, since, as he points out, the Bible teaches
us that the wicked who oppress the innocent are severely
punished.
This book, written in poetic form, was provided with
vowels and accents, a point for which his opponents
attacked him as placing his work on a par with biblical
books. It was by no means merely a polemical pamphlet.
The other chapters of the book deal with general subjects,
and even those mentioned above contain much more than
attacks on the exilarch and his adherents. But Saadia's
tone must have been very sharp. He makes bad puns on
the names of his leading opponents, calling, e. g., Kalaf,
Keleb met, the "dead dog." It is evident that, when he
published this work, Saadia felt sure of the downfall of his
enemies and had faith in his own victory.
His attack called for a rejoinder, and it was Kalaf ben
Sarjado who undertook this task in a scandalous document
which, to quote D. S. Margoliouth, "in virulence and
obscenity exceeds anything of the sort I have ever seen."
As I said before, we owe the preservation of these filthy
charges against the great gaon to a Karaite opponent of
Saadia who did a service to historical research, although
that was far removed from his thoughts. It has been
suggested that he may have garbled the original text. If
he intended to besmirch the memory of the greatest foe
of Karaism, he did not succeed. It is the enemies of Saadia
who appear in a most unfavorable light.
Saadia answered again in a new edition of his "Open
Book" to which he added an Arabic translation and a
lengthy introduction, also in Arabic, wherein he outlines
the contents of the entire work.
For a number of years, Babylonian Jewry was split:
there were two exilarchs and two geonim of Sura, both of
RAB SAADIA GAON 23
whom had their adherents and both of whom claimed to
be the only rightful incumbents of their respective offices.
Such a condition had existed before, and it certainly did
not help to raise the standard of the exilarchate and
gaonate. Nobody could foresee how long this struggle
would last and how it would end, when conditions were
changed by the murder of the Caliph al-Muktadir in a
rebellion in October 932. His brother, Al-Kahir, succeeded
him, but was in turn overthrown by the army which,
after a year and a half, placed the son of a former caliph,
Al-Radi, on the throne in 934.
It seems that the sons of Natira, Saadia's strongest
supporters, lost their influence in the course of these events
and returned to Ahwaz. Now there was no reason why
their former partners should not use their power in the
interest of David ben Zakkai and his devoted adherent,
Kalaf, a member of their family. Hasan, the counter-
exilarch, was banished to a remote province, and Saadia
had to retire and even go into hiding for some time. But
he must have retained many prominent and influential
men among his adherents, while he lived as a private man
in Bagdad, pursuing his literary plans and enriching Jewish
literature with many more important works.
His life was not to end in eclipse. Even in the darkest
hour, he was not without influence and many people looked
up to him as their leader. By a curious trick of fate, it was a
litigation which was to bring about his rehabilitation, just
as a litigation had been the cause of his removal.
Two men decided to have their dispute arbitrated by
judges of their choice: one chose the exilarch, the other
chose Saadia. The exilarch was greatly incensed over this.
In his formal excommunication of Saadia, David ben
Zakkai had declared that anyone who would appear before
the deposed gaon in a litigation, would direct a legal
question to him, or would recognize him in any other way,
24 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
should likewise be excommunicated. He therefore saw in
this choice by one of the litigants a defiance which he
bitterly resented. Accordingly, he had the recalcitrant
apprehended by his guards and badly manhandled. This
proceeding aroused general resentment in Bagdad, since
any man not belonging to the exilarch's jurisdiction had the
right to choose whomever he pleased. A group of notables
approached the banker Bishr ben Aaron, father-in-law of
Kalaf ben Sarjado, and urged him to bring to an end the
long struggle for which his son-in-law was largely respon
sible. Bishr 3 who evidently had retained his influence at
court, was prevailed upon to take the matter up. He
invited the leaders of Jewry to his house, summoned the
exilarch, and told him plainly that the people were tired
of the protracted struggle and that he had to make peace
with Saadia.
We may assume that David, on his part, was tired of the
drawn-out quarrel which evidently, as he must have real
ized, did not strengthen his position. We hear, forinstance,
that his son was once shown scant regard when on a mis
sion from his father to a province under his jurisdiction.
Through his influence at court, the exilarch took bitter
revenge on these opponents who were, perhaps, partisans of
Saadia. Such events must have convinced him that it was
in his own interest to end these internecine fights. Thus
the request of the notables of Bagdad found a willing ear^
Saadia, who was approached next, certainly had been
made to feel that it was to his advantage to come to terms
with his powerful opponent.
Bishr brought the two men to different rooms of his
residence and acted as the go-between to arrange the terms
of reconciliation. When an agreement had been reached
it is noteworthy that neither of them was asked to take
the first step in approaching the other they came for
ward, embraced and made peace with each other. This
RAB SAADIA GAON 25
took place on the Fast of Esther, and Bishr wished to crown
his efforts by having both as his guests at the reading of
the Megilla and at the succeeding Purina festivities. But
they refused and decided that one of them should be the
guest of the other. In the spirit of Purim, the matter was
settled by drawing lots. Saadia, accordingly, was for two
days the exilarch's guest, and the old friendly relations
between them were fully restored.
As far as Saadia's position was concerned, he was rein
stated as gaon of the Sura academy, while Joseph ben
Jacob retained his income and was designated as Saadia's
successor just as had happened previously in the Pum-
bedita academy when David ben Zakkai had made his
peace with Rab Mebasser, and Rab Kohen Tsedek had to
yield his place, retaining his income.
For about five years longer, Saadia adorned the gaonate
of the Sura academy, and gave it new luster. But that was
too short a time to re-establish it permanently. A few years
after Saadia's death, his insignificant successor gave up the
struggle against the rival academy which now was presided
over by Kalaf ben Sarjado, Saadia's bitter opponent, who,
Sherira tells us, had by force and intimidation finally
attained the goal of his ambition. The gates of the Sura acad
emy were closed for half a century, not to be reopened until
about the end of the tenth century. The third gaon, after
its reopening, was Saadia's second son, Dosa (1013-1017).
To return to Saadia, we know very little about his
activity after his restoration to his position. There is only
one interesting and characteristic record: David ben
Zakkai died some time after the reconciliation, and his son
and successor, the man who had threatened Saadia with
physical violence, followed him to the grave seven months
later, leaving a young son of twelve. Saadia took upon him
self the education of the child of his former enemies and
befriended him in every way.
26 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
This is the life story of the great leader of the Sura
academy as far as we can reconstruct it from the documents
discovered in the Geniza and from the all too brief remarks
of the Gaon Sherira who, as a young man, had been an
eyewitness to the events. Fortunately, we have a fuller
account from the pen of another eyewitness, a certain
Nathan ha-Kohen ben Isaac ha-Babli.
There are, however, certain inaccuracies in the latter's
account of the quarrel between David ben Zakkai and the
Pumbedita academy and some contradictions between his
report and that of Sherira. We are therefore not abso
lutely sure that he is correct in all the details. But we are
grateful to him for the picture of the active and eventful
life of the greatest of the geonim a fuller picture than
we have of any other head of these academies. The docu
ments of the Geniza y which have yielded so much informa
tion in the course of the last fifty years, may perhaps in
time clarify some further points.
The space devoted to the interesting life story of Saadia
is justified by the tremendous contributions he made to
many fields of learning. Both quantitatively and qualita
tively, his literary work is astounding. We can place him
side by side with Maimonides. In several fields, the latter
brought to fruition what Saadia Gaon had started; and
without his pioneer work, Maimonides might not have
been able to accomplish what he did. Saadia, moreover,
was more versatile in his activity than the later sage of
Cairo.
Abraham ibn Ezra characterized Saadia aptly as "the
first speaker in every field" among the Jewish mediaeval
scholars, a characterization which is by no means to be
taken merely chronologically. Saadia's work was epoch-
making in the true sense of the word in his work on
Hebrew grammar and exegesis; in his translation of the
Bible into Arabic; in his study of the Hebrew calendar;
RAB SAADIA GAON 27
in his defense of tradition against the onslaughts of the
sectarian Karaites as well as against Hiwi, the sceptic and
early Bible critic of Balk.
Even in the subject of Halaka, to which his predecessors
in the gaonate had devoted their literary and teaching
activity almost exclusively, we find him hewing new paths
and making original contributions of the first order.
To the modern mediaevalist, his first serious effort to
reconcile religious tradition with the philosophy of his time,
is of the greatest interest. It was granted to few scholars to
be pathfinders in so many- subjects, and we cannot but
admire the originality, profundity and lasting quality of the
work accomplished by this genius as these characteristics
are reflected even in the incomplete form in which many
of his important works have come down to us. How he
could find the time, during his full and active life and
during his extended travels, to write so much is hard to
understand, the more so if we remember that he also had
to devote a great deal of time to practical affairs.
To do justice to his important original contributions to
learning would require more space than we have devoted to
the sketch of his life. I must therefore limit myself to a very
brief outline of his literary activity in all fields of Jewish
learning.
Hebrew philology did not exist before Saadia. Only
crude beginnings can be discerned in the work of the
Masorites. Saadia was the first to realize the necessity of
investigating the phenomena of the language in order to
reach a clear understanding of its literature. Only little
of his twelve Books on the Language or the Book on the Elegance
of the Language of the Hebrews has been published, though a
considerable fragment was discovered half a century ago.
Of his dictionary, Agron, which he composed at the age of
20, a few specimens have appeared, aside from the incom-
28 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
plete introduction. We see that this earliest attempt at
writing a Hebrew grammar was comprehensive in its scope
and dealt with many of the linguistic phenomena in a
systematic way.
Naturally, Saadia's philological insight must not be
measured by .comparison with his great successors in Spain.
Its shortcomings are considerable, but his conscious effort
to get behind the formation of the language is remarkable.
His dictionary, again the first in the field, is very brief and
contains also a part arranged by the end letters. One of
its purposes was evidently to serve as an aid to the poet who
wished to arrange his verses with acrostics and rhymes as
Saadia did himself. A short treatise on seventy (actually
ninety) hapax-legomena in the Bible is remarkable as the
earliest tentative trial of comparative linguistics. He
applied the later Hebrew of the Mishna and the Aramaic
to the interpretation of biblical Hebrew.
More important is Saadia's contribution to the under
standing of the Bible. Here the attacks of the Karaites
against the rabbinic interpretation may have given him
the impetus. His lengthy commentary on the first part of
Genesis, on Exodus and Leviticus, which seems to have
been one of his early works, contains linguistic, philo
sophic and halakic discussions as well as attacks on the
Karaites. Only fragments and quotations of this work have
reached us. We know even less about his glosses on the
whole Pentateuch to which he gave the title Garden Flowers
and his Questions and Solutions on the same book.
Of far greater significance is his translation of the Penta
teuch, which was printed in the first Jewish polyglot (Con
stantinople, 1546), together with the Aramaic Targum and
a Persian translation. It became the standard Arabic
translation for the Jews and even the basis of the Arabic
translation of the Samaritans. The Jews of Yemen use it
RAB SAADIA GAON 29
in their services to this day and, at the end of the last
century, they published an edition in Jerusalem. This
monumental work, the first translation from Hebrew
into Arabic, aimed simply to give a clear rendition of
the text. It is a free translation, not a paraphrase, but
it sometimes contains additions of single words and tries to
bring the parts of the verses, and occasionally the verses of
a section, into a syntactic context which enables the reader
to get a picture of the content, although it loses thereby
some of the color of the text.
Under the influence of the Aramaic Targum, the author
itative interpretation of the old synagogue, Saadia avoided
anthropomorphic terms and expressions. It was his purpose
to show that there is nothing in the Bible which is uncertain
and which we do not understand. Therefore he did not
hesitate to render technical words with definite Arabic
terms, although he had no tradition as to their meaning,
He also identified geographical names of the Bible with
Arabic ones which were known to his readers, identifica
tions which often have no real basis. Curiously, he some
times used Arabic words which phonetically resemble the
Hebrew ones, although they do not have the same meaning
in Arabic.
It seems that Saadia wrote this translation in Arabic
characters in order to make the Bible available to Muham- '
medans as well as to Jews, although in general he wrote all
his Arabic works in Hebrew characters, as the Jews were
wont to do in Arabic speaking countries. However, the few
manuscripts of the translation in Arabic characters which
have come down to us, do not contain his original text
but are later revisions by other hands. None of our texts
offers a faithful reproduction of Saadia's version.
The Jews immediately transcribed the work into the
more familiar characters, and the very numerous manu
scripts in this form are closer to the authentic work of the
30 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
gaon. Besides the Pentateuch, we have his translation of
Isaiah, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Daniel, Esther, Lamenta
tions, and perhaps Canticles as well as fragments of Samuel
and Ezekiel. To Esther he added a translation of Megillat
Bene Hashmonai with an introduction. Some of these books
are accompanied by shorter or longer commentaries and
provided with introductions.
To the Minor Prophets he composed a commentary in
the form of questions. His interpretation of the Books of
Kings is mentioned in a book list, but not in the list of his
works. It is curious that Hebrew commentaries on Daniel
and Ezra were published under Saadia's name, though
they are undoubtedly not his work. Perhaps a later man
by the same name is responsible for them.
The calendar was a subject in which Saadia was deeply
interested. In his polemics against the Karaites, he deals
again and again with questions pertaining to the calendar
and, as I have already stated, he carried on a correspond
ence on this subject with the gaon of Pumbedita before
917. The objections of the Karaites to the Jewish method
of calculating the calendar may have given him the impetus
to take up this study and thus he was especially well pre
pared to defend the method of these calculations by the
Babylonian academies against the attack of Ben Meir which
I have discussed at length. A special work dealing with the
calendar is recorded, but since nothing of it has come down
to us, we cannot determine its character. Whether his
Kitab al-Aflak ("Book of the Spheres 35 or "Heavenly Bodies,"
or "Astronomy"), which is recorded in book lists of the
Gerd&i, refers to this subject, also must remain doubtful
Polemical works by the great gaon fill an important
part of his literary activity and are particularly character
istic of his fighting nature. The centuries preceding our
author were filled with religious unrest. Numerous sects
RAB SAADIA GAON 31
arose in the East and, while most of them were of ephemeral
character, they inaugurated a movement which finally led
to the rise of Karaism, a sect which was founded in the
second half of the eighth century and is still in existence.
Like the other movements that preceded it, it was directed
against the authority of official rabbinic Judaism and
threatened to undermine and overthrow it. Curiously, the
earlier geonim, as far as we know, paid no attention what
ever to these opponents, and we have only a single reference
to them in a geonic work of the ninth century.
Saadia was the first to realize the dangers inherent in
the movement, and as a young man of twenty-three he
already wrote against the Karaites. He devoted numerous
works to the subject during the four decades of his literary
activity. That Saadia's attacks on the Karaites made a
deep impression on his opponents may be seen from the
violent abuse they heaped on him down to the nineteenth
century. Poznanski has collected such attacks by forty-nine
Karaite Literary Opponents of Saadia Gaon. His first work was
a criticism of Anan, the founder of Karaism; but only a few
quotations from this book, which he wrote in 905, in all
likelihood in Egypt, have been preserved.
I shall limit myself to those books of which fragments
have been recovered in recent years.
The most comprehensive was probably his Book of
Distinction, which discussed in eight treatises nearly all the
subjects of controversy between Karaites and Rabbanites.
It is not written against any individual and, in contrast
to the rest of his polemical works, is distinguished by its
calm tone. It was composed in 926, after his appointment
as a Resh Kalla of one of the academies.
While these works were written in Arabic, about a third
of a Hebrew polemic by Saadia, in poetic form, Esa Meshali,
has been recovered in the course of the last decade. In
twenty-two chapters of twenty-six stanzas each, the author
32 ESSATS ZAr JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
gives praise to the talmudic authorities and deals with some
of the differences with the Karaites. This book with its
highly complicated technique of poetic composition was
perhaps directed against Ben Asher. Its language is very
difficult and not always clear. It is one of the works against
which a younger contemporary, Salmon 'ben Yeruhim,
wrote a sharp answer in poor Hebrew verses. His book of
the Wars of the Lord was published by Davidson in 1934,
almost exactly a thousand years after its composition. The
editor suggests, with good reason, that Salmon followed this
work with an Arabic treatment of the same subjects in two
books of prose, one about the talmudic literature, which he
called the Book of Shameful Things, the other concerning the
rest of the differences. Against these Saadia wrote two of
his treatises: Refutation of Ibn Sakaweihi and Refutation of the
Unfair Aggressor of both of which fragments have been
published. Thus we know at last who this Ibn Sakaweihi
was. It was the Arabic name of Salmon ben Yeruhirn.
The latter also attacks some statements in Saadia's
Open Book, which, as has been pointed out above, was
directed against the Exilarch David ben Zakkai. In writing
against the gaon, first in Hebrew verse and then in Arabic
prose, Salmon followed Saadia's example in that book.
Limitations of space do not permit me to discuss this most
interesting and most personal of Saadia's writings in greater
detail. Mention need only be made here of Saadia's
reference to his defense of Jewish tradition against the
Karaites and against Hiwi of Balk as especially meritorious
actions.
The polemic against Hiwi, about one-sixth of which was
discovered and published by Dr. Davidson, throws light on
a very curious movement among the Jews of the East in the
second half of the ninth century. Hiwi, in contradistinction
to the Karaites, not only denied the validity of the Talmud,
but also that of the Bible. He wrote his Two Hundred
RAB SAADIA GAON 33
Questions on the Bible with an absolutely destructive tend
ency, pointing to inconsistencies in the biblical narrative.
Deeply influenced by an early Pehlevi work of polemics
against the Bible, he even denied the unity of God, His
omnipotence and omniscience. He claimed that the teach
ings of the Bible led to dualism, like that of the Persian
religion, and to trinity. He believed in the eternity of the
world. He denied free will and the possibility of miracles,
and he objected to circumcision. These heretical ideas
spread widely and were even taught in schools for children.
It was the great merit of Saadia that he put an end to
this movement which disappeared in consequence of the ref
utation which he wrote in verse and with acrostics. Since he
called himself Alluf and Resh Kalla, we see that the book was
written in Babylonia before he became gaon. Many more
polemical works are recorded, but we know them only by
title.
As pointed out above, the heads of the Babylonian
academies had centered their activities for three centuries
on the study of Talmud and rabbinic law. New contribu
tions of fundamental, even epoch-making importance in this
field could only be the work of a genius. Without going
into details, suffice it to state that Saadia was the first to
write an " Introduction" on the methodology of the Talmud,
of which five passages were translated into Hebrew by a
famous Talmudist of the sixteenth century; commented on
the Thirteen Rules of Interpreting the Bible; and composed
a number of halakic compendia in which he, for the first
time, discussed these laws systematically without regard to
their sequence in the talmudic sources. Theretofore, all
the geonic codes had followed the unsystematic order of the
Talmud with only slight deviations. It is hard for us to
realize what courage this new departure required. In some
of his early works in this field he did not even give the
34 ESSATS /A JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
sources for his statements, a procedure in which Maimon-
ides followed his example and for which he was subjected
to violent criticism. Whether such criticism was directed
against Saadia also, and whether it was for this reason that
he followed a different method in some of his codificatory
work, we do not know.
He probably also wrote commentaries on Mishna and
Talmud which, however, dealt mainly with lexicographical
explanations. It goes without saying that, like all the
geonim, he answered questions directed to him from various
countries even as far as distant Spain. In the Jewish
Theological Seminary Library I came across a torn leaf of
an introduction to a series of such questions which have
not reached us.
Saadia's Siddur the Collection of Prayers and Hymns, as he
calls it also partly belongs to the field of law. It was pre
ceded by a short treatise, the Obligation of Prayers, composed
somewhat earlier, which he, or perhaps some copyist, placed
in front of the Siddur. Here he discusses the necessity of
prayer on the basis of Bible, reason and tradition, and
enumerates the various categories of prayer occurring in
the Bible.
The Siddur is not the first in this field. One of his Sura
predecessors, Rab Amram, in the middle of the ninth
century, had composed such a prayerbook, and the com
parison between the two works is enlightening.
Saadia's Siddur is a work of quite different caliber and
shows the pronounced individuality of the author. He
does not merely codify the current customs, but uses his
judgment in selecting the prayers, declares what is proper
and valid, and criticizes and omits what he considers
wrong.
He tells us that it was the lack of uniformity, the corrup
tion of prayers, improper additions and omissions which he
RAB SAADIA GAON 35
had observed in the course of his travels through the various
countries, which induced him to undertake this work. He
differentiates between the individual prayers and those
recited with a quorum of men in the synagogue. His
arrangement is very interesting. He does not hesitate to
deviate from the old custom of the academies and, although
one of his contemporaries raised objections against some of
his changes, we are informed that he exerted a deep in
fluence on the ritual even in Babylonia.
The text of the prayers is naturally Hebrew, but the
rubrics are given in Arabic, briefly and without sources
since he intended it as a handbook for the layman. The
influence of Egypt, the land of his birth, is strongly evident
in Saadia's Siddur, though it was composed in Babylonia.
Only one manuscript has been preserved, and that one is
not complete and does not bear his name. It was identified
by Steinschneider in 1851 and published in 1941 in Jeru
salem through the initiative of the late Israel Davidson, in
collaboration with Professor S. Assaf and Dr. B. I. Joel.
For this edition they consulted thirty-four Geniza frag
ments of the Siddur.
The Siddur includes a selection of later hymns, partly from
his own pen. As an appendix, Davidson collected all the
poetic compositions of a religious character by Saadia as
far as preserved. In~the spirit of the period, Saadia excelled
in the artificial technique which was then considered the
essential of poetic compositions. Rare expressions and
difficult word-formations abound here as in the polemical
treatises in verse form. They often make it hard to under
stand the meaning. While very objectionable to our taste,
they were considered highly poetic in his time. But Saadia
could also write in a prose which compels admiration. His
two Bakkashot reveal him as a true master of Hebrew style
and gained him the praise of so severe a critic as Abraham
ibn Ezra, who, after a sharp condemnation of the early
36 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
payyetanim^ stated that the Gaon Rab Saadia avoided all
these mistakes in his two Bakkashot the like of which no
other author had composed.
Philosophy had occupied Saadia's attention since his
youth, and philosophic discussions occur in his early com
mentary to the Bible and elsewhere in his works. His main
philosophic books were composed towards the end of his
life.
In 931, while he was engaged in the struggle with the
exilarch, he wrote his commentary on the enigmatical
Sepher Tetsira, the "Book of Creation.' 5 He did not consider
it a mystical work but a philosophic attempt to express the
process of the world's generation by the will of the Creator.
The theory current at the time, that its author was the
patriarch Abraham, he accepts with some reservation. The
commentary contains important points of grammar, but is
devoted mainly to philosophic problems.
Two years later he composed his chief work the Book
of Philosophic Doctrines and Religious Belief s, which marks the
beginning of the history of Jewish philosophy. With an
exposition of his point of view he combines a continuous
discussion of ideas opposing his own,
Saadia himself was a rationalist and belonged to the same
school of thought as the Muhammedan school of the ration
alistic Mutazilites. But he often discusses philosophic prob
lems in an independent manner. His main problem is the
relation between Reason and Revelation. To him, as to all
religious thinkers, Scripture is of revealed divine origin.
And this divine Revelation is identical with Reason. Philos
ophy and religion therefore do not contradict but supple
ment one another in making known the truth.
He discusses the problem of creation at great length,
giving a survey and criticism of all the theories as to the
origin of the world known in his time. He defends the
RAB SAADIA GAON 37
theory of creatio ex nihilo. He further discusses the unity of
God, at which point he touches on the doctrine of trinity.
In his chapter on the revelation of law he also defends the
eternity and immutability of the Mosaic law. The other
problems which he discusses in special chapters are: free
dom of the will, the value of obedience to the law, the
immortality of the soul, resurrection, Messianic times,
and reward and punishment in the world to come. He
concludes the book with a lengthy section on ethics.
Saadia's book was the first comprehensive effort to take
up the fundamental problems of Jewish philosophy and has
had a deep influence on all later Jewish writers in this
field. Some of his conceptions occur again even in Maimon-
ides 5 Guide to the Perplexed.
It seems that the author first composed the various sec
tions of the book as independent treatises and only later
combined them into a volume. The two Arabic manu
scripts of Saadia's philosophic work contain different ver
sions of the seventh section, on resurrection. The ninth
section, "Reward and Punishment in the World to Come, 35
was revised by him after the book was published. In the
Jewish Theological Seminary Library, I recently came
across a leaf of this unknown treatise, in which the author
states that he has dealt with the subject in the ninth sec
tion of his Book of Doctrine^ but revises it now, omitting,
however, the interpretation of the biblical passages he
quotes.
The Arabic original of Saadia's philosophic work was not
published until 1880. The Hebrew translation made in
1186 by Judah ibn Tibbon, under the title Emunot veDeot,
was printed in Constantinople, in 1562, and several times
later. It is this Hebrew translation of the book which made
it accessible to wider circles. Of another, more para
phrastic Hebrew version, two sections appeared in the six
teenth century and were reprinted a few times.
38 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
It is with a feeling of deep admiration for the genius of
the great scholar to whose memory this essay is devoted
that I conclude this inadequate appreciation. It is no small
tribute that, a thousand years after the death of a scholar,
we can look back to so rich a harvest of literary work of
permanent value which he left behind.
We pay homage to him for the tremendous contributions
he made to Jewish learning and for the lasting influence he
exerted on all branches of Jewish scholarship.
2
Rabbenu Gershom, Light of the Exile
IT is a curious and hitherto unexplained phenomenon
that Jewish spiritual and intellectual life emerged
suddently, without any recognizable cause, in the tenth
century, appearing simultaneously in Spain, Italy and the
Franco-German empire.
During the first millennium of our era, Palestine origi
nally held the center of the stage. In the third century, the
Babylonian center arose as a mighty rival to the old mother
country. The decline of the once great Palestinian schools
had already set in, and it continued as a result of deterio
rating economic conditions, occasional persecutions and the
abolition, in the year 425, of the quasi-autonomous internal
political organization under the Patriarchate. The opposi
tion of the ruling Church, culminating in forced conversion
under the Byzantine emperor Heraclius in the seventh
century, brought about the final disappearance of the
Palestinian academies. They were never able to regain
their ancient glory even after the Muhammedan conquest
of Palestine had resulted in a great amelioration of condi
tions. Not that the Palestinians did not try; but the galaxy
of heads of the Babylonian academies during the last
century of their flowering, men like Saadia and Samuel
ben Hofni, Sherira and Haya far outshone their Palestinian
colleagues. Until the discoveries of the last half century
even the names of the Palestinian leaders were forgotten.
The Babylonian academies, on the other hand, in spite of
occasional persecutions which caused brief interruptions of
their activity, carried on successfully till the middle of the
eleventh century. In the ninth or tenth century, their
39
40 ESSATS M JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
ancient seats were transferred to Bagdad, the capital of the
Caliphate, and from there they extended their influence
over all the countries which had yielded to the sword of
victorious Islam, i. e., North Africa and Spain, whose
Jewries turned to the Babylonian academies with all their
legal problems.
Only the Jewries of the Christian countries continued to
recognize the Palestinian mother-country, with which they
had been connected all through the period of the Roman
Empire. This relationship was not disturbed by the Mu-
hammedan conquest of Palestine. Jews from Christian
Europe made their pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the Succot
festival to participate in the procession to Mount Olivet
on Hosha'ana Rabba and they turned to the Palestinian
school for advice on religious questions. Only few traces of
this relationship with Palestine on the part of Italian Jewry,
and even fewer for that of the Jews of the Prankish empire,
have come down to us; their correspondence was not carried
on via Egypt where the Cairo treasure-trove the Geniza
has preserved so many important documents of that
period.
Jews of Spain carried on their correspondence with
Babylonia for several centuries; we have ample evidence
of that, but so far as we know there was no active spiritual
life in Spain until the middle of the tenth century. In Italy
such a revival had taken place a little earlier. We hear of
a school and an academy in Venosa, for instance, through
two tumular inscriptions of the ninth century. The Chronicle
of Ahimaats, though replete with legends, and some old
liturgical poems give evidence of somewhat earlier spiritual
life in southern Italy. The oldest literary monuments,
however, do not date before the middle of the tenth
century.
We observe the same phenomenon in the Frankish
empire. Here also, in the tenth century, we suddenly come
RABBENU GERSHOM 41
across a scholar of the highest caliber, one of the great
builders of Judaism in the Western world, Rabbenu Ger-
shom, whose outstanding position has been recognized by
posterity who referred to him with the epithet Meor ha-
Golak, the "Light of the Exile." His unique personality and
colossal achievements compel our admiration even today.
Our information about the history of the Jews in the
neighborhood of the Rhine or, for that matter, of those of
northern Europe during the tenth and eleventh centuries,
is very scanty. Hardly any detailed facts are known to us.
But if we read the contemporary liturgical compositions in
which their poets expressed their feelings and their hopes,
we get a dismal picture of prevailing conditions. The
selihot, the prayers for forgiveness, especially are replete
with cries about the intolerable fate, the continuous oppres
sions and persecutions; they complain of the efforts to force
the Jews into conversion to Christianity. The ten selihot
of Rabbenu Gershom which have been preserved like
those of his contemporary, R. Simon ben Issaac, who lived
in the same city, Mayence give vivid expression to the
troublesome times when "from day to day my suffering
increases, the next day is harder than the one that passed."
"I am tired to bear the yoke of the accursed who says:
'Measure and bring a large gift 5 ." And he continues: "The
oppressing enemy urges Thy possession to forsake its
Hope (its God)."
In another poem he appeals to God to take up the case
of the children of Jacob and to redeem them from the hand
of the oppressor, "for strength is gone, and no money is
left in our pocket." He prays that the Lord might look
down from heaven and take pity and "say c enough' to the
sufferings of Thy chosen ones and restore in Thy grace Thy
city and Thy people." This prayer for restoration naturally
occurs in practically every one of these selihot, as it does in
42 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
Jewish liturgy all through the ages. The sufferings are
always looked upon as punishment for sinfulness, and
repentance is urged upon the community. "When we
learned of their secret counsel we trembled, and we turned
to the Vocation 5 of our forefathers to return to Thee when
we are in danger in our exile. Merciful one, hear our cry
and do not let us perish."
It is not possible to determine which events called forth
these cries of anguish from the soul of the unhappy poet.
We frequently must leave the question open whether they
refer to troubles in their immediate neighborhood or in
some distant place there are some records of persecutions
at Limoges and elsewhere in France at that time. There
is only one seliha which seems to refer to a definite event,
the persecution and expulsion of the Jews from Mayence
in 1012. A brief note in the Annals of Quedlinburg records
this expulsion, ascribing it to the king, i. e., Emperor
Henry II. We have no information whatever about the
cause of this expulsion. It has been conjectured that it had
some connection with the conversion of a clergyman,
Wezelin, to Judaism mentioned in another chronicle among
events of 1005 and 1006. Another hypothesis associates the
expulsion with the effort of the archbishop of Mayence to
found a national German Church under his aegis. But the
dearth of sources does not permit any certainty on this
question.
Whatever the cause, this event seems to be "mirrored in
one of Rabbenu Gershom's elegies. He complains bitterly
of the enemy who rose against the Jews and ordered them
no longer to direct their prayers to our Redeemer, the
Lord of Hosts. When the community indignantly refused
to yield, they turned against it and, after despoiling them
of their property, expelled the unhappy Jews from their
pleasant homes and dispersed them in every direction.
Exhausted and sorrowful, they raised their eyes to their old
RABBENU GERSHOM 43
Refuge. The second half of the seliha is a fervent prayer
for God's intercession in behalf of His unfortunate people.
It was undoubtedly in consequence of the upheaval
connected with this expulsion that the marriage contract
of Rabbenu Gershom with Bona, daughter of R. David,
was lost and was replaced before the Mayence court, in
January, 1013, by a new instrument the wording of which
was preserved by chance in a manuscript formulary now in
Oxford. This document proves that, either the expulsion
of the preceding year was only a partial one, or that per
mission to return to their old homes was granted the Jews
after a short time.
The saddest experience in the life of Rabbenu Gershom,
the apostasy of his only son, was possibly also connected
with the expulsion. In this case, our information is not
derived from an account of the event, but from the record
that, when this son died without having had the opportu
nity to return to the faith of his fathers, the unhappy parent
observed the regular mourning rites for a period of two
weeks in place of the customary seven days. This fact is
mentioned in a discussion of the question whether one
should observe the rites of mourning for a member of the
family who had left the faith.
Rabbenu Gershom, according to a source dating back to
the end of the thirteenth century, was born in Metz. What
ever the reliability of this statement, the city with which
his name and activity were permanently linked was un
questionably Mayence. The Jewish community of that
city is mentioned for the first time in historical records in
connection with a church council held there in about 900,
which decided that whoever killed a Jew or a pagan out
of hatred or cupidity should be punished for murder.
Half a century later we find the first Jewish scholars of
eminence in Mayence: R. Judah ben Meir ha-Kohen,
44 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
called R. Leon or Leontin, the teacher of Rabbenu
Gershom; and R. Meshullam ben Kalonymos, known as a
legal authority and as a famous author of religious poems.
R. Meshullam was probably active in the middle of the
tenth century. Rabbenu Gershom mentions him once in
reply to the question whether it is permissible to interrupt
the solemn *Amida for the holidays by poetic insertions.
Referring to scholarly poets of the past who had composed
such additions, among them R. Kalonymos, he adds "and
of his son, R. Meshullam, I know that he was a great
scholar and is the author of such poems (kerobot) for the
Day of Atonement." The statement does not sound as if
he knew- him personally; when R. Gershom wrote the
responsum, R. Meshullam, it seems, was no longer among
the living.
The tombstone of this R. Meshullam and, more recently,
that of Rabbenu Gershom himself have been found in
Mayence. Unfortunately they do not contain any dates,
since the inscriptions on both stones are incomplete, lacking
their last lines. Moreover, they seem to be of a later date
and to have been made to replace the original monuments
which in all probability had been destroyed during a perse
cution, perhaps that of the first crusade. We may have to
be satisfied with the assumption that Rabbenu Gershom
came to Mayence after the death of R. Meshullam or that
he was still very young at the time of R. Meshullam's
death. The lack of dates for both men makes a more
definite conclusion impossible.
We are equally poorly informed about the dates of the
life of Rabbenu Gershom. Some later sources record the
year of his death, but here we have two differing traditions:
the one places it in the year 1028, the other in 1040. We
may assume that the latter the Hebrew year 4800 is a
round, approximate figure and that the former, 1028, is the
exact date. Accordingly he was born probably around 960.
RABBENU GERSHOM 45
These few facts exhaust all our information about the
life of this great leader of his time. As is the case so fre
quently in the long annals of our history, contemporaries
as well as subsequent generations were deeply concerned
with the opinions, the interpretations and the literary out
put of great scholars, but paid no attention whatever to the
personal life of their revered masters. Every student of
Jewish history is constantly confronted with this dearth of
information about facts which we nowadays deem essential
but which our forefathers considered of no importance.
Even when one turns to the activity of Rabbenu Ger-
shorn, the lack of authentic material makes the biographer's
task a difficult one. Until half a century ago it was generally
assumed that his greatest literary work was a compre
hensive commentary on the whole Talmud which is fre
quently quoted in the Aruk, the great talmudic dictionary
which R. Nathan of Rome compiled during the last
decades of the tenth century. Quotations indicate that this
commentary extended to thirty- two treatises of the Talmud,
ten of which have been preserved and were printed in the
eighteen-eighties in the great Wilna Talmud edition. Half
a century ago, however, Abraham Epstein submitted the
whole body of material to a searching examination and
reached the conclusion that the ascription to the famous
scholar is without scientific basis. Only Italian authorities
had referred to it as Rabbenu Gershom's work; none of the
early German scholars who were acquainted with the
commentaries ever connected them with his name. Two
quotations by Germans on the treatise of Hullin probably
refer to his copy of the Talmud text of which we shall speak
presently. The commentary in question, in some instances,
actually disagrees with readings known to have been found
in Rabbenu Gershom's text.
The work is a product of the school founded by Rabbenu
46 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
Gershom at Mayence. It was composed by the pupils of
one of his successors, R. Isaac ben Juda, a teacher of Rashi
The disciples of R. Isaac attended his lectures and wrote
down his interpretations with various additions of their
own. But many of the explanations probably go back,
directly or indirectly, to the inspiration of the great master,
Rabbenu Gershom himself.
If Rabbenu Gershom did not formulate his explanations
of the Talmud in written form, except perhaps for a few
passages on which he was questioned, he did do a great
deal for the text of the Talmud. We know nothing of the
condition in which this text had reached northern Europe
during the early stages of talmudic study. That its condi
tion was very unsatisfactory we may conclude from the
innumerable instances in which, two generations later,
Rashi found it necessary to point out the correct readings
by stating in his commentary: "We should read thus."
The current texts probably varied greatly from one another.
A reliable text, however, was the first prerequisite for a
proper understanding. Therefore Rabbenu Gershom did
not shirk the tremendous labor of copying the whole of
Mishna and Talmud with his own hand. We know from
a single quotation that the above-mentioned R. Meshullam
had shortly before undertaken the same task for the Mishna
which, it seems, he even vocalized. Why Rabbenu Ger
shom should have considered it necessary to prepare a
standard text anew we cannot tell, but his copy of the
Mishna is quoted twice by Rashi's grandson, R. Samuel
ben Meir, and references to it occur in other works of the
French school.
There are many quotations from the copy of the Talmud
written by Rabbenu Gershom's own hand. Rashi and his
grandson, R. Tarn, refer to it repeatedly, and a little later
we hear of a copy belonging to R. Tarn which had been
RABBENU GERSHOM 47
made from Rabbenu Gershom's autograph. We may be
permitted to conjecture that Rashi, during his student years
in Mayence, when collecting material for his commentary
on the Talmud, had a copy made of Rabbenu Gershom's
codex, which later came into the possession of his grand
son. If this hypothesis is correct, we may assume that
many of the statements of Rashi as to the correct text of
the passages which he interprets go back to this model.
The tosafists, the school founded by Rashi's grandchildren,
several times quote readings of Rabbenu Gershom and
once refer to a copy of the master's autograph as their
source. They evidently had before them the same copy
that was once owned by R. Tarn, probably the source of
all the quotations in the works of the French school. Refer
ences to the readings of Rabbenu Gershom's copy are to
be found even among Italian scholars as late as the end of
the fifteenth century, e. g., in a manuscript of that period,
now at the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary.
Most of these quotations refer simply to the Talmud
which Rabbenu Gershom copied, but in several instances
they indicate specifically the Seder of the Talmud to which
they belong. Rashi himself quotes the Seder Teshuot of
Rabbenu Gershom; the Seder Nashim is quoted once, and
the Seder Kodoshim especially is repeatedly mentioned. Evi
dently Rabbenu Gershom copied the Talmud in four
volumes, each Seder by itself. It seems that the text was
accompanied occasionally by short interpretations, which
may have come from the pen of the copyist himself; but
we have only one or two examples of these. Their number
is not sufficient to form an opinion on the character of this
text, especially since most of these quotations are very brief.
It is, of course, not impossible that Rabbenu Gershom
merely transcribed the books in order to have a copy for
his studies in view of the scarcity of manuscripts. But his
pupils would probably have been glad to do that work for
48 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
him and spare his valuable time. Furthermore, he copied
not only Mishna and Talmud but also a Bible with Masora
and other books.
R. Jacob ibn Adoniyya, the editor of the famous first-
printed masoretic Bible (Venice, 1524), printed a marginal
note, derived from one of the manuscripts he consulted, on
a passage in Leviticus (4.35) about the accent found in the
Pentateuch copied and vocalized by Rabbenu Gershom.
Numerous notes of this kind occur on the margins of a
thirteenth-century Pentateuch in Leipzig. Some of these
indicate that the text was accompanied by the Masora.
The annotator indicates whether a reading is supported by
a masoretic note or not. He states that sometimes a letter
was erased or a correction made; we cannot tell, of course,
whether these corrections came from the hand of the master
himself or were added subsequently.
We learn from a curious note in a British Museum
manuscript that Rabbenu Gershom copied the rest of the
Bible as well. The scribe tells that he had copied the two
verses from Chronicles inserted in many texts of Joshua
(between chapter 21, verses 36 and 37), but repented of
his action when he found that the verses were lacking in
Rabbenu Gershom's copy and in another famous codex
(called Sinai). No further references to the rest of his Bible
have been discovered.
Rabbenu Gershom's interest in the text of the Bible
must have been very deep. Besides the text with the small
Masora, he also prepared a copy of the Great Masora which
was in the hands of the scribe of the aforementioned
Leipzig manuscript. The latter refers to it at least ten
times. It is quite possible that Rashi's references to the
Great Masora apply to this copy which he may have con
sulted in Mayence.
If it is unusual to see a scholar, famous mainly as a
RABBENU GERSHOM 49
Talmudist, devoting so much time and effort to textual
studies of Bible and Masora, we are amazed to find that
he even copied with his own hand a more secular work
like the Yosippon. This is a Hebrew abstract and free
retelling of Josephus which probably originated in Italy
in the early Middle Ages. It was the only source for the
history of the Second Commonwealth that the Jews of
these centuries had. Again, the evidence is supplied by a
single manuscript, now in the Library of the Jewish Theo
logical Seminary. Rapoport pointed out more than a cen
tury ago that one of the Selihot of Rabbenu Gershom shows
acquaintance with this book. In one place, where the
Hebrew author of Yosippon states that he omitted most of
the letters sent by Roman rulers to the Jews, he uses the
expression "I was too lazy to incorporate them all." The
copyist of our manuscript, believing this statement which
he found "in the copy of the great rabbi, Rabbenu Ger
shom, in his own handwriting" to be not the author's but
Rabbenu Gershom's, adds therefore at the end of the
paragraph: "Thus did Rabbenu Gershom abridge the
text." It is only due to this erroneous assumption that we
hear of this copy of the Mayence scholar.
The exacting and laborious work of copying must have
occupied him for years; and the fact that this man of
action had the patience for it shows how much stress he
laid on correct, reliable texts. As a matter of fact, R. Tarn
relates that Rabbenu Gershom denounced those who
corrupt the text of the Talmud i. e., take liberties with
it by arbitrary emendations and that he pronounced a
curse against them.
It is noteworthy that Rabbenu Gershom himself did not
compose any larger work. The only original work of his
that we know of is a lost compilation of the laws of trefot,
ritually forbidden meat, of which a number of quotations
50 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
can be collected from rabbinic literature. This could
hardly have been an extensive work. An extract from one
part of the book, preserved in a manuscript of the British
Museum, fills merely a couple of pages.
Of much greater significance are Rabbenu Gershom's
responsa, his answers to questions on civil and ritual law
which came to him from various localities, mostly, in all
probability, from the adjacent communities. The custom
had developed, after the conclusion of the Talmud, to
direct questions on all kinds of problems to a central
authority. Responsa, the answers to such questions, had
played a most important part in the geonic period. Nothing
but responsa have been preserved from most of the earlier
geonim, whose literary activity was restricted to this branch.
We find in these Babylonian responsa the germs of the
various subsequent branches of Jewish literature, such as
commentaries to the Talmud, lexicography, Bible exegesis
and philosophy. Rabbenu Gershom's responsa, of which
a considerable number have been preserved, do not cover
many fields. They are concerned with ritual and, to a
greater extent, with questions of civil law, particularly with
problems of business.
His responsa follow the old pattern that had developed
in the East in the course of centuries. But Rabbenu Ger
shom's responsa have an individual character; they differ,
in some respects, from those of his predecessors and express
his personality. They show, first of all, his mastery of the
Talmud and the independence of his mind. Sometimes,
to be sure, his decisions are based entirely on his interpre
tation of biblical passages; but generally his authority is
the Talmud. It often must have been very difficult to find
a basis for a decision in this vast treasury of Jewish law.
Under the new conditions in Western Europe, new ques
tions had arisen caused by the different economic circum-
RABBENU GERSHOM 51
stances under which the Jews were living; new customs
had come into being; and German Jewry, from the very
beginning, showed more respect for local customs than
did the Jews of any other country.
One of the customs which seem to have been character
istic of Germany was that which is called Maarufia, the
appointment of a Jew of the neighborhood as financial
agent for a knight or a merchant. Rabbenu Gershom speaks
repeatedly of a Maarufia shel Komrim, such an appointment
for a monastery. The position was recognized by some
Jewish communities as a monopoly with which no one had
a right to interfere. In others, this type of business venture
was considered open to competition. In our responsa
several such cases are discussed. In one instance, a man
had paid the community a certain sum of money for an
ordinance binding all members to assure him monopolistic
rights; in another instance, such an agency was in the hands
of a scholarly person who taught in public without remu
neration. In the latter case, merchants who attended the
classes of this scholar were envious of the rich income
derived from this source and wanted to compete with
him. The community forbade the pupils to interfere with
the scholar's business and turned to Rabbenu Gershom
with the question whether it was proper to extend the
prohibition against competition to all members of the
community. The decision was that in this particular case
such a prohibition was justified in order to permit the
agent to devote his time to study and teaching, but that
generally the local custom was to be followed.
Contrary to the decision of a certain local scholar,
Rabbenu Gershom permitted the acceptance, as security for
a loan, of ecclesiastical robes used at services and the
dealing with Christians on their holidays. They are not
idolaters, he states, and, since they have so many holidays,
52 ESSATS tit JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
such a prohibition would seriously interfere with commerce
on which the livelihood of the Jews depended.
Naturally, the problem of interest came up for discussion,
especially in cases where the taking of interest from a
fellow Jew was veiled by the interposition of a non-Jewish
middleman. Another important question dealt with wine
left in the house of a non-Jew or carried by him from one
place to another. The Jews in the Rhine district often made
their living from their vineyards. In all such cases Rabbenu
Gershom tried to alleviate conditions.
The following is another actual case. A Jew had an
oven in which, for compensation, he permitted others to
cook; Christians used it on Fridays and left their dishes
there for Saturday or forced their way in to use it on the
Sabbath. In this situation, the owner was held not respon
sible for the desecration of the Sabbath, but was forbidden
to accept payment for the use of his oven on that day. On
the other hand, a Jew who had bought a horse on a Sabbath
was ordered punished by flaggelation; any profit he might
later derive from the transaction would have to be given
to charity. If the Sabbath observance was lax in the town,
more severe punishment by the community might be
advisable.
A custom, which was common at the time but which
Rabbenu Gershom declared illegal, was for a merchant to
pay a silver mark (zakuK) worth twelve ounces of small
coin (Peshittim) at the Cologne fair and to receive back
thirteen ounces on his return to Mayence or Worms. Only
if the lender received the merchandise for which the money
was borrowed, and if he or his representative brought this
merchandise home at his own risk, was such a transaction
declared permissible.
Several responsa deal with questions of an oath. We
learn that taking an oath at a Torah scroll had been abol-
RABBENU GERSHOM 53
ished, since a false oath of this kind would "cause punish
ment not only for the sinner but also for his family and the
whole world. 55 Instead, it was instituted that the person
appearing before the Jewish court be threatened with
excommunication (niddui) and with curses which would
fall on him if he utter a lie. In some places, people were
reluctant to take an oath and tried to shift it to the other
party. Rabbenu Gershom decided that even an oath
prescribed by the Bible could be shifted; the man who is
sued must either swear that he does not owe anything to
the other party or pay.
Just as the cases here cited throw interesting light on the
commercial activities of the Jews, others illustrate the
uncertainty of conditions in that period. A Jew borrows
money from a neighbor to pay a debt to a Christian; on
his return he finds that during his absence the houses of all
the Jews of his village, including his own and that of his
creditor, have been despoiled; he claims that the money
borrowed would have been lost in any case and he therefore
refuses to pay his debt to his fellow Jew. Rabbenu Gershom
decides that the debt must be paid and, as in another case,
adds that God favored the creditor by saving the amount
he had lent his neighbor. In another instance, when a
feudal lord had taken away from a Jew a piece of his land
and sold it to another Jew, the latter had to return it to
the original owner for the amount paid.
An interesting litigation came about when three Jews
boarded a ship with all their property; the ship foundered
but the people were saved. One of them then hired a man
to rescue his property which was in a box at the bottom of
the river. The box had become filled with water and was
so heavy that it had to be broken open under the river.
Part of his clothes and other merchandise were saved. Dur
ing the night strangers saved and appropriated for them
selves some silver, gold and other property. The next day
54 ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
the Jews bribed the local authorities to order restitution of
their property and then collected whatever they could.
According to local custom, every Christian who was sus
pected of having retained some of this property had to pass
through the ordeal of placing his hand in fire; in one
instance a single combat between the contestants was
ordered. The neighboring communities enacted an ordi
nance that anyone buying any of the salvaged goods was
to return them to their original owner, "as is customary
among all Jewish communities." In spite of this, a Jew
bought some salvaged gold, claiming that property which
a river had carried away was free to anyone. The argumen
tation of Rabbenu Gershom's responsum in this instance is
very instructive. It is based equally on Talmudic law and
on the local ordinance of the non-Jewish authority declar
ing anybody a thief who retained the recovered Jewish
property.
A curious, though not very edifying, picture of contem
porary life is offered by the background of another respon
sum which deals with the question of the re-marriage of an
agunah (a woman the death of whose husband is not abso
lutely proved). Somewhere in France a man had many
customers within a radius of one or two days' journey from
his home town. He would sell them merchandise and give
them credit or lend money on securities. In payment he
sometimes received cattle which his customers had robbed
from their enemies and which they gave him at a low price.
He made many enemies by this practice; people claimed
that his readiness to buy the booty encouraged the knights
to rob them. Repeatedly he and other Jews were captured
and had to be ransomed; once this happened to his children.
In spite of such hazards, he carried on this trade for six
or seven years. Then the kings of France and Burgundy
laid a three-month siege to a city in his neighborhood. (It
has been suggested that the responsum here refers to the
RABBENU GERSHOM 55
siege of Valenciennes in 1006.) With other people of his
home town this man went daily to the besieging army to
buy booty. Towards the end of the unsuccessful siege he
disappeared and various rumors were current about his
capture and death at the hands of his enemies.
There are a few cases dealing with apostates. If a man
dies without leaving any children, his wife, if she wants to
contract a second marriage, has to undergo Halitsa a
biblical ceremony with her convert brother-in-law. A
convert, Rabbenu Gershom decided, does not share in the
inheritance of his father. Yet one who returns to his faith
is to be considered a Jew in every respect and, if he is a
priest (Kohen), is to have all the privileges which he enjoyed
before at the synagogue services.
Two responsa deal with teachers. A man engaged a
teacher to live in his home and instruct his three children
at an annual salary of three litra. The man stated that the
, teacher might earn as much as ten litra, since he would try
to get more pupils for him and would throw business
opportunities his way. It seems that teaching paid so
poorly that the income had to be supplemented by other
activities. In this case, however, none of these prospects
materialized. On the contrary, for the second year the
miserly housewife reduced the salary to two litra. (Rabbenu
Gershom decided that a contract cannot be changed one-
sidedly.) For a period of several months when the children
were ill, the teacher was not paid. The agreement had been
that he was to teach the children the entire Bible. When he
left the house and continued teaching in his own premises he
still received no more than the stipulated pay.
The other responsum begins with the statement that
teachers and scribes must be righteous and trustworthy
and fulfill their tasks religiously; theirs was a godly work
which would find its reward in the world to come. The
compensation in this world evidently was very scanty at
56 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
the time. The teacher, who was a skilled scribe, had copied
books mornings and evenings, probably for sale. Now the
man who had engaged him to teach claimed these books
for himself. Rabbenu Gershom decided that, if it was
stated in the agreement that he was to teach mornings and
evenings during the winter, he would have to fulfill this
condition; if, however, that was not in the contract, it
depended on the local custom. If other teachers in that
locality devoted these hours to their own affairs, then this
teacher, too, was entitled to use his free time for his own
profit, otherwise he was not,
These are some of the cases which came up for decision
before the great master. They are mentioned here because
they illustrate the prevailing conditions. Reading his
decisions, we find that Rabbenu Gershom was thorough
and independent in his judgment and concise in his lan
guage. He gave a clear, logical analysis of each case and of
the sources on which he based his opinion. He rarely
quoted older authorities. Once he spoke of his teacher,
R. Leon, "who" he said, "taught me most of my knowledge
of the Talmud, an outstanding scholar in his generation
whose decision one must not change." In another instance
he stated, "This is my opinion according to what my
masters taught me," or "On these arguments I rely and
on what I have learned, and this is my opinion. 55 Like
his geonic and other predecessors, he often stated, "Thus
they showed me from heaven and this is my opinion."
These and similar phrases, which occur about ten times in
some sixty of his responsa which have been preserved, imply
that the writer possessed a measure of self-confidence and
considered his reasoning quasi-inspired. Sometimes he
added at the end, "and thus is the law." He did not,
however, force his decision on his questioner, but placed
all the proofs and arguments for his opinion before him
and thus enabled him to examine them and reach his own
RABBENU GERSHOM 57
conclusions. He never hesitated to pronounce a clear
decision even where he could not quote a precedent. Often
he took occasion to refute possible counter-arguments which
an opponent might bring forward. His approach to the
involved litigations has rightly been characterized as classi
cal. In the sixteenth century, an oriental scholar, R.
Bezalel Ashkenazi, was still in possession of a collection
of Rabbenu Gershom' s responsa from which he quotes No.
64. But this manuscript has since disappeared.
Rabbenu Gershom repeatedly emphasized in his responsa
the right of the communities to make new enactments
according to the needs of time and place; such enactments
were to be absolutely binding on every member, and
whoever transgressed them was to undergo severe punish
ment. These ordinances were necessary to adapt rabbinic
law to European conditions, and it was in this field that
Rabbenu Gershom acquired the greatest fame. Some of his
enactments were fundamental for Jewish life and were
accepted far and wide as normative. When and how they
were enacted we do not know, nor do we have the texts of
some of his most far-reaching ordinances takkanot, as they
are called. It is not likely that these were his own individual
decisions. In all probability they were accepted by a synod
over which he presided and in which his towering person
ality exerted great influence. Such synods, we know, gath
ered often in the next two centuries. Later generations for
got the participation of others and were satisfied to ascribe
the inauguration of the takkanot to Rabbenu Gershom
alone.
Contrary to biblical and talmudic law, he forbade po
lygamy and took away the right of a man to divorce his
wife against her will. He ordained that, thenceforth, a
divorce should be valid only with the consent of the wife.
In spite of their departure from traditional law, these
58 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
ordinances found general acceptance because they were in
consonance with the prevailing ideas. Plural marriages
had become rare in the course of time and undoubtedly
the influence of the surrounding world made itself felt in
Jewish circles. Polygamy was no longer in keeping with
the respect Judaism always granted to women and it
needed only a prominent and farseeing leader to do away
entirely with customs which had become obsolete. We do
not hear of any opposition to Rabbenu Gershom's funda
mental changes of law; they were readily accepted in all
of Western Europe except Spain, at that time still under
Muhammedan rule. It stands to reason that under the
Moslems the Jews did not object to the Islamic custom of
polygamy. Rabbenu Gershom's ordinances have thus be
come an integral part of Jewish law. Only later on were
exceptions allowed in cases of undue hardship, and then
only by permission of a hundred rabbis.
An important ordinance along a quite different line was
the prohibition against reading somebody else's letters with
out permission. Since generally letters had to be forwarded
by a traveller going to the place of their destination, it was
in many instances a matter of vital importance to the writer
to have the secrecy of his correspondence protected, e. g.,
against competitors in business or enemies and rivals. In
this instance, what could not be accomplished by ordinary
legal method was accomplished by the ordinance forbidding
such unauthorized reading under threat of excommunica
tion. A century ago it still was not unusual to read on an
address: "to N. N. and forbidden under R. G.'s her em to
anybody else."
As mentioned above, conversion during persecutions and
subsequent return to Judaism was not uncommon during
that period. Those who had remained steadfast under the
duress would frequently taunt those who for a time had
yielded. Rabbenu Gershom, whose own son had been a
RABBENU GERSHOM 59
victim of such circumstances, had a deep sympathy for
the mental suffering of such unfortunate people and, there
fore, in one of his enactments called for the excommuni
cation of anyone who would remind a penitent of his former
apostasy.
Besides these most famous and far-reaching enactments,
there is another group of ordinances which have been
preserved in several texts as takkanot of Rabbenu Gershom.
Dr. Finkelstein has rightly described them as a kind of
crude constitution for the German communities. Unfortu
nately, we have no authentic texts of these and there are
considerable differences among the various manuscripts,
all of which were written centuries after the death of
Rabbenu Gershom. We, therefore, cannot be sure whether
they all go back to Rabbenu Gershom or whether they
have been amplified at a later period. We can only men
tion a few of them. The jurisdiction of the local courts was
extended to include transients. The poor were assured their
day in court by a custom that had developed permitting
any member of the community to stop services in the syna
gogue until a day was set for the trial. The methods of
procedure in interrupting the services were now defined
by ordinance. A person who had lost an object, and sus
pected that someone in the community might have infor
mation which would enable him to recover it, could compel
anyone knowing the finder of the object to inform against
him under a her em (excommunication). If someone had
offered his house to the community as a synagogue, he
could not exclude even an enemy from attending services.
An ordinance enacted by agreement of the majority in the
interest of the poor, or for some other purpose, was binding
on all, and the minority could not bring the matter to court
for a legal decision. A tax-assessment for the community
had to be paid or security had to be given before its validity
could be tested in court. If there was a quorum of ten in
60 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
the synagogue and the reader had started the prayers, no
one was permitted to leave and break the quorum.
These and some minor matters make up this group of
ordinances of Rabbenu Gershom. Most of them were
generally accepted immediately, though some were not
known in the following generations. They were re-enacted
and enlarged in the subsequent centuries at various synods
and left a lasting impression on Jewish communal life in
Germany.
Rabbenu Gershom towers over the preceding and follow
ing generations. Only Rashi may be considered his real suc
cessor. His contributions to the intellectual life of the north
European communities by the great school he founded,
and to the communal life by his responsa and even more
by his enactments, cannot be overestimated. The most
competent judge, Rashi, expressed his opinion of the great
master of Mayence in these words: "May the memory of
the righteous and saintly Rabbenu Gershom be for a
blessing; he enlightened the eyes of the exile; we all live
from his instruction and all the members of Jewry in the
Frankish lands and in Italy are the pupils of his pupils."
3
Rashi
HE last century and a half have made us, as Jews,
more conscious of our history than ever before. In
recent decades this awareness has expressed itself
in many ways, among them memorial celebrations for
some of the oustanding personalities of our past. In 1904,
the seven hundredth anniversary of the death of Maimon-
ides and, in 1905, the eight hundredth of that of Rashi were
widely utilized for commemorating the achievements of
these two great men. Again, in 1935, the eight hundredth
anniversary of Maimonides' birth was celebrated far and
wide and received considerable publicity, especially in this
country. In 1940 we commemorated the nine hundredth
anniversary of the birth of Rashi, the greatest t and most
popular commentator of the Bible and the Talmud.
It strikes the observer that in former centuries only very
few were aware of such occasions; as a matter of fact, the
dates of the lives of these and other personalities were of
little interest and hardly known even to scholars, let alone
the mass of people. Perhaps we today talk more of Rashi
and Maimonides themselves, whereas the Jews of earlier
centuries found infinitely more meaning in their works.
Every Talmudist studied the commentaries of Rashi and
the Code of Maimonides as a matter of routine and their
names were household words in wide circles. Nowadays,
outside of small groups of specialists, very few people are
familiar with their works, and it is in order to make wider
circles acquainted with the enormous contributions of these
two giants to the development of Judaism that we endeavor
to illustrate their literary activity and influence by exhi-
61
62 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
bitions and public meetings. For Rashi's commentaries
still retain their importance for a proper understanding of
the basic texts of our rich literature, and one cannot
suppress the wish that these celebrations of his anniversary
would lead to a wider study of his works.
Rashi undoubtedly had greater influence than Maimon-
ides on the Jewish people at large. Maimonides had an
aristocratic disdain for the multitude and was more con
cerned with instructing the elect few. Rashi, on the other
hand, wrote for the people and by his genius succeeded in
opening the closed pages of the intricate rabbinic discus
sions to anyone who cared to learn how to navigate the
stormy "ocean of the Talmud." His incomparable com
mentary on the Pentateuch became the means of initiating
countless generations into rabbinic lore and gave a taste
for a general understanding of that literature to thousands
of people who otherwise would never have known anything
about it. It was the most popular and perhaps the most
valuable textbook in Jewish education. The reading of
"Rashi" in the primary schools was a stepping-stone to the
understanding of the basic elements of rabbinic literature;
and those who, in the struggle for their daily bread, had
neither time nor opportunity for further study were saved
from the opprobrium of being 'amme aratsot.
Before turning to a discussion of Rashi's great literary
achievements, we shall consider the little we know of the
great man's life.
His full name was R. Solomon ben Isaac, and so he
signed some of his responsa. A German authority of the
thirteenth century maintained that Rashi generally signed
his name Shin Tod, i. e. Shelomo Yitshaki, and this abbrev
iation sometimes occurs in our sources. From a letter of
R. Nathan, author of the 'Aruk, and his brothers, who were
the heads- of the Academy of Rome, we learn that Rashi
RASHI 63
signed a letter he sent to them "Shelomo ha-Yitzhaki."
His pupils generally referred to him as ha-Moreh % the
teacher, or Rabbenu, our master.
In the thirteenth century, Raimund Martini, the author
of the famous Pugio Fidei ("Dagger of Faith"), the most
learned work by a Christian against the Jews, erroneously
resolved the abbreviation "Rashi" into R. Solomon Yarhi,
i. e., of Lunel. This interpretation of the abbreviation was
accepted by the great Christian Hebraist, Johannes Buxtorf,
in his Bibliotheca Hebraea (1613), and through his authority
it became common among Christians and was accepted by
some Jewish scholars. It is on this basis that we sometimes
read that Rashi was born in Lunel.
The great critic, R. Abraham ben David, who lived in
Provence during the thirteenth century, called him ha-Rab
ha-Tsarfati, the Rabbi of Northern France, and treated
him with more respect than he did most other scholars.
A thirteenth-century scholar of Provence, R. Asher ben
Saul, as well as an Egyptian contemporary of Maimonides
and the latter's son Abraham, and a Yemenite author of
the fourteenth century, Abraham ben Solomon, quoted
him asR. Solomon Tsarfati, the Frenchman, a name which
otherwise occurs only rarely. Occasionally, he was referred
to as R. Shelomo of Troyes, but the abbreviated form of
his name RASHI is the one most commonly used; it
has replaced his full name for the last six or seven hundred
years, and all his works have been published under it.
We do not know the exa"ct date of Rashi's birth. Tradi
tion has it that, even as "the sun also ariseth and the sun
goeth down 33 (Eccl. 1.5), so Rashi was born in the year of
the death of the great pioneer of Jewish learning and culture
in the Frankish empire Rabbenu Gershom ben Solomon,
the "Light of the Exile." The latter's death occurred,
according to the same tradition, in the year 1040. Some
sources, however, date R. Gershom's death in the year 1028.
64 ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
And as if to tease us, his tombstone, which was discovered
towards the end of the last century and correctly deciphered
two decades ago, no longer shows the date of the death of
the great leader in whose memory it was erected.
Further doubts about the year of Rashi's birth have been
expressed quite recently. Among other reasons it has been
argued that in the short span of sixty-five years he could
not have produced the enormous amount of work that has
been preserved. But since several of the sources which
record the year of his death add expressly that he died at
the age of sixty-five, we may as well stick to the traditional
date of Rashi's birth as 1040.
We are better informed about the date of his death;
several sources record that the great man passed away on
Thursday, the 29th of Tammuz, 4865 (July 13, 1105).
And the fact that literary tradition has preserved this date
is striking evidence that his contemporaries realized the out
standing merit of the scholar; for it is altogether exceptional,
exact dates transmitted by medieval Jewish literary sources
for the lives of scholars being very rare.
These dates and the fact that Rashi was born at Troyes,
the capital of the duchy of Champagne, are about all the
direct information we have about him. There are half a
dozen compilations by Rashi's pupils, but they were inter
ested in transmitting to us the opinions and interpretations
of their great teacher; the "facts" (ma 'asirri) which they
record are his legal decisions, but never incidents of his
life. Only by the way, here and there, do some points of
personal interest occur in these works and in the master's
own writings. With their help a few bare facts of his
biography can be pieced together.
Nothing is known ^.bout his parents. We cannot even
tell whether his father was a scholar. He never refers to
him in his writings; he may have died while his son was
still very young. Twice he mentions a brother of his
RASHI 65
motner R. Simon the Elder, a pupil of Rabbenu Ger-
shom but we do not know where he lived and whether
he exercised any influence on his nephew's education.
It was the merit of my revered teacher. Professor Abra
ham Berliner, whose publications on Rashi have thrown
much light on his personality and work, to have pointed
out for the first time that the city of his birth gave the young
man an opportunity to become familiar with many aspects
of practical life and that he made good use of this oppor
tunity. Rashi's commentaries indicate that he was not a
man of books alone, removed from problems of everyday
life; they show an unusual familiarity with practical
matters which he could not easily have acquired anywhere
but in Troyes. For the capital of the Champagne was a
mercantile and industrial center of importance, an impor
tance which it maintained until the expulsion of the
Jews in 1306. The great fairs arranged twice a year at
Troyes were attended by merchants from France and
Germany, Flanders, England and Italy. From visitors to
these fairs Rashi learned about the city of Venice and its
wonders, where one had to travel by boat from house to
house, or about a great wall in Hungary. Conversations
with seafarers and perhaps inspection of their ships were
helpful for an understanding of EzekiePs prophecy on Tyre
(ch. 27), and it was from them that he learned about
tides. In connection with Tyre he states that the foreign
visitors were not permitted to deal directly with one
another, but had to call in the services of the inhabitants
as brokers; evidently Rashi transferred the experience of
his own day to biblical times. He became familiar with
the Cologne standard of coinage, which was used in
Western Germany, saw tokens without engravings and
learned about the procedure of coining, which, he tells us,
followed certain practices of the blacksmiths. He knew of
soldering and of engraving, of weaving figures into the
66 ESSATS JjV JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
material and of embroidering silk with gold. He evidently
had observed these processes at the workshops of Troyes,
He also speaks of the import from Lucca, Italy, of expensive
taffeta interwoven with silver, of gold buckles and other
jewelry, of belts worn by noble ladies when on horseback,
and of many other items. He mentions buffoons who
appeared during the fairs to entertain the people. What
is of particular interest to us is that he knew of the prepa
ration of parchment, manufactured in the tanneries of
Troyes, which thus made available the indispensable
material for a scholar of his type. Berliner informs us that
owing to the high price of that material the scribes of the
eleventh and twelfth centuries utilized every strip and
corner of the skin. There are two manuscripts in the
Jewish Theological Seminary Library which illustrate that
old custom one is a thirteenth-century copy of Rashi's
commentary on the Prophets.
From his own experience for Rashi earned his liveli
hood as a vinegrower he describes to a son-in-law the
difference between the wine-presses then in use and those
formerly employed. In one of his responsa he apologizes
for the briefness of his letter on the ground that he and his
family were all busy that day with the vintage.
Thus Rashi went through life with his eyes wide open
and was able to utilize the observations he made in his
own day for the interpretation of practical matters in
Bible and Talmud. He frequently gave the equivalent of
these things in the French vernacular in his glosses, about
which we shall have more to say later on.
In Troyes, Rashi could not find any teachers to give
him a deeper understanding of Bible and Talmud; he
therefore decided, after his marriage, to turn to the great
academies which, in the preceding generation, had been
established on the Rhine by the scholars of Lotharingia,
as they are called in Jewish literature.
RASHI 67
In Mayence, R. Judah ha-Kohen, also called R. Leontin,
had opened the first academy in northern Europe (10th
century). Under the leadership of his pupil, the afore
mentioned Rabbenu Gershom, the school quickly grew
and developed; it trained a large circle of prominent
scholars who continued the work of the Mayence academy
and established similar schools in Worms and other cities.
In these academies the study of the Talmud was culti
vated with great zest and devotion. There the interpre
tations of the great master, Rabbenu Gershom, and of other
scholars were eagerly collected by groups of younger
scholars who preserved them in writing. The "Mayence
Commentary 55 (Kuntres Magenta) a product of this
activity enjoyed considerable fame and was excerpted
by Rashi's contemporary, R. Nathan of Rome, in his
*Aruk. In Italy it was ascribed to R. Gershom himself; it
is under his name that the commentary on several treatises
has been preserved and was so printed half a century ago
in the great Wilna Talmud. A similar compilation origi
nated in the Worms academy.
The Jews of the Prankish empire, like their Italian
brethren, had been dependent on the Palestinian acade
mies, and in the tenth and eleventh centuries they still
turned to Palestine for decisions in difficult cases. The
Spanish Jews, on the other hand, looked up to Babylonia
for centuries and received their inspiration from the Baby
lonian center. As Dr. Louis Ginzberg has shown, the
Babylonian Talmud had replaced the Yerushalmi even in
Palestine as the main subject of study; in Europe, so far as
we know, it had been the textbook of the academies
from the very beginning. Somehow Babylonian traditions
also reached northern Europe and were incorporated into
the German commentaries on the Talmud.
These great schools of Mayence and Worms now at
tracted Rashi, and here, he felt, his thirst for knowledge
68 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
could be quenched. It was generally assumed that he first
attended the Worms school; but recently Dr. V. Aptowitzer
has brought forward good reasons for the assumption that
Rashi first directed his steps to the academy of Mayence,
where R. Gershom himself had taught and where promi
nent pupils of his carried on the work of that great master*
R. Jacob ben Yakar, who died in 1064, and R. Isaac ben
Judah were the heads of the academy while Rashi attended
it, and he refers to the former as his "old teacher" and his
"teacher in Bible and Talmud." Incidentally, among
Mayence tombstones recovered in recent years has been
found that of R. Yakar, the father of R. Jacob," but, like
that of Rabbenu Gershom already mentioned, it lacks the
date. The other teacher, R. Isaac ben Judah, was related
to Rashi, as was R. Isaac ha-Levi, the head of the Worms
academy to which he went from Mayence.
We do not know when and at what age Rashi went to
these academies, nor how many years he studied at each*
From a note in one of his letters we learn that from Worms
he went home we do not know whether just for a visit
or for a longer period and later returned to the academy.
He tells us that he had received instruction from his teacher
on a certain point, but that when he came back to Troyes
and studied the subject thoroughly he became convinced
that his master had been wrong; on his return he had an
opportunity to point out his error to him. Even after
Rashi' s final return to Troyes he probably intended to go
back to his school in Worms; for on another occasion he
expressed the hope that, although he had failed to prove
his point by correspondence, when he saw his master again
he would show him that he was correct. It is from such
casual notes that we gather the few facts about Rashi's biog
raphy. *
About his family the sources are very scanty, too. He
had no son, but two or three daughters who were married
RASHI 69
to prominent scholars. One of them, Jochebed, was mar
ried to R. Meir ben Samuel who attended the Mayence
academy together with Rashi. Four sons were born to
them and they all became famous scholars: Isaac, Samuel,
Solomon, and the youngest and the greatest of them, Jacob,
called Rabbenu Tarn. All but Solomon, who was forgotten
until recent times, belonged to the outstanding French
scholars of the following generation; they were the founders
of the great school of Tosafists, who contributed so much
to the interpretation of the Talmud and its practical appli
cation to the changed conditions of European life. Rab
benu Tarn, indeed, outshone his grandfather Rashi himself
as an authority on practical decisions.
Another daughter, Miriam, was married to R. Judah
bar Nathan, a famous commentator on the Talmud, whose
commentary on the last pages of the treatise Makkot is
included in all editions. Large parts of his commentary on
Ketubot, which were heretofore considered as belonging to
a first version of Rashfs own commentary, were shown a
few years ago by Professor J. N. Epstein of the Hebrew
University to be the work of Rashi's son-in-law, R. Judah
bar Nathan; they were collected together with some rem
nants of his commentary on Nedarim. This couple also had
a learned son, Yom-Tob, and a daughter.
Whether Rashi had a third daughter, Rachel, is rather
doubtful. R. Tarn, in a responsum to his cousin, the Yom-
Tob just mentioned, speaks of the divorce of their aunt
Rachel, called Belle-Assez, from Eliezer, called Joselin.
But it is possible, as several scholars assert, that dodah
here does not mean aunt, but cousin, relative. Accordingly,
the information given by Italian authorities of the sixteenth
century that Rashi had three daughters cannot be verified,
and the matter will have to be left in doubt unless new
sources of information come to light. Incidentally, we learn
from this case that among the French scholars it was quiet
70 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
common for a person to have a French name besides the
Hebrew one.
When Rashi returned to Troyes he opened a talmudic
academy of his own, and many students flocked to the
teacher who evidently very quickly succeeded in gaining
recognition and fame. Although he was the rabbi of
Troyes, he did not receive a salary but earned his living
from his vineyard which, as mentioned before, he cultivated
with the help of his family.
Turning now to the literary activity of Rashi, we come to
his commentaries on the Bible and, in the first place, to
that on the Pentateuch. No other Bible commentary ever
had greater success and influence. It is noteworthy that
it is the first edition of Rashi on the Pentateuch which bears
the earliest date for a Hebrew book printed in Italy, namely
February 1475, though the printing of a larger work had
probably started a little earlier. A year later, in 1476,
printing in Spain, too, began with an edition of this com
mentary. And still a third edition preceded the text of the
Hebrew Pentateuch itself, which appeared in print for the
first time in 1482 accompanied by Rashi.
Without entering upon a bibliographical study of the
various editions that have appeared, it may be of interest to
state that the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary
has about fifteen editions of Rashi on the Pentateuch with
out the text and over a hundred and eighty of the Penta
teuch accompanied by Rashi, besides twenty-three editions
of the entire Bible with Rashi. The total number of such
editions is vastly greater; but these figures will give an
idea of the great popularity of the work.
Its popularity was richly deserved. It is a masterpiece
in every respect. Rashi's aim was to offer a literal inter
pretation of the text. Up to his time homiletical inter
pretation based on the Midrashim works that originated
RASHI 71
from the first or second to about the tenth century, mostly
in Palestine had predominated among the Jews* These
books, containing the comments of the great authorities of
Mishna and Talmud, include many a simple explanation,
but these are almost lost in the mass of homiletical inter
pretations. A desire for a proper understanding of the
Bible made itself felt in France at that time, and Rashi had
at least one predecessor there. But it is his great merit to
have succeeded in combining the two methods in masterly
fashion and, with unerring instinct, to have selected such
explanations from the rich storehouse of midrashic literature
as fitted the biblical text best, without forcing its sense. He
was aware of the homiletical character of these works, and
at times expressly stated that there are many haggadic
interpretations which the rabbis collected in various Mid-
rashim; but it was his purpose to give peshat, the literal
explanation of the Bible, and to combine it with "the
haggadah which explains the words of the Bible." He
emphasized that many of the midrashic interpretations
actually offer an exact understanding of the biblical word.
But he fully realized the fundamental difference between
literal and homiletical exegesis, and not infrequently re
jected interpretations which did violence to the text.
This happy blending of the two methods was responsible
for the unique success of Rashi's efforts. His pupils and
successors in the schools of northern France carried the
desire for literalness much farther than the great master
and even criticized his method. Perhaps the best of them,
Rashi's grandson, R. Samuel ben Meir, called Rashbam,
related in his commentary to the Pentateuch that Rashi
had intended to revise his own work and adapt it to the
new literal interpretations which were turning up every
day. Rashbam's own commentary was a high achievement
in this field and has found generous appreciation in modern
times. It certainly was considered an advance over Rashi
72 ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
in his time, but it is dry and lacks the warmth so charac
teristic of Rashi's work. It is sufficient to record that his
commentary had to wait for publication till 1705, when
innumerable editions of Rashi had appeared and a whole
literature had been written about it.
The Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary has
about ninety different printed supercommentaries on
Rashi's Bible commentary, and nearly twenty in manu
script. Among the authors of such supercommentaries we
find some of the most prominent scholars a fact which
again permits us to gauge the influence of this popular
work.
Rashi's commentary is thorough and deals with the
narrative portions in the same way as with the legal ones,
including even minute descriptions of the Tabernacle and
its vessels. Here his practical sense and his observations of
daily life, to which I have referred above, proved most
helpful. He sometimes even added drawings to his expla
nations of Bible and Talmud; which, however, have been
omitted by copyists and printers, and only the indication
"like this," followed by a blank space, has remained in our
texts.
Grammatical studies had made great progress, by the
time Rashi began his literary activity, through the efforts of
the great Spanish scholars; but their works, written in
Arabic, were inaccessible to Western Jewry. Rashi only
knew the first groping steps in this field, the Hebrew
dictionary of Menahem and its criticism by Dunash. He
quoted these frequently, but his fine sense and intuition
led him in many instances to avoid their mistakes so that,
compared with these early Spaniards, Rashi's linguistic
explanations, to which he gave considerable space, repre
sented real progress. A grammarian like Abraham de
Balmes (1523), rated these grammatical notes in Rashi's
commentaries very highly and stated that Rashi revealed
RASHI 73
the true nature of the Hebrew language. His occasional re
marks on the shades of meaning of various synonyms are
still of real value. Many a Jewish scholar in former cen
turies owed his grammatical training to his study of Rashi.
A characteristic of Rashi in all his commentaries is his
use of the vernacular for the interpretation of difficult
words. It has been noted that about 3,000 French words
occur in his works. These words are of the highest value
for the study of old French, for they belong to the very
oldest remnants of that language. There is, so far as I know,
only one French epic dating from Rashi's time. Rashi's
French glosses have therefore been much studied during
the last hundred years; and it is an American scholar, the
late Professor David S. Blondheim, to whom we owe the
most important contribution in this field. Unfortunately
Blondheim died in the midst of his work, which would have
thrown much further light on both French and Hebrew
literature. These glosses, moreover, give evidence of Rashi's
many-sided interests. He mentions the titles of French
dignitaries, such as count, senechal, treasurer, provost,
master of cuisine, etc. In one place he tells us that it was
customary in France to hand a glove to a man as a sign of
appointment to a position of dignity.
Rashi generally followed the Masorah in the interpre
tation of the Bible, and only rarely did he deviate from the
accentsjrf the text. He treated the Targum, the official
Aramaic translation of the Pentateuch and the Prophets,
with the greatest respect, constantly referring to them, for
he considered them of the highest importance for exegesis.
He was not so much concerned with the anthropomor
phisms which the Targumim are at great pains to avoid;
apparently such locutions offered no serious problem to the
people of his time. He occasionally referred to them, how
ever, and once he stated that it was the method of the Bible
to speak of Divinity in human terms in order to facilitate
74 ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
understanding. He paid as much attention to the inter
pretation of the single word as to the context, subject
matter and order of the verses.
Rashi's commentary on the Pentateuch is a truly popular
work. It offers instruction to the scholar and to the layman;
even children can easily follow its simple language. It
earned him the honorary title Parshandata, "the interpreter
of the Torah." His language is quite remarkable; clear
and simple, it avoids all unnecessary phrases, always uses
the right word and displays great felicity in explaining one
Hebrew word by another.
The Rashi commentary on the other parts of the Bible
is not as popular as that on the Pentateuch; the midrashic
interpretations do not occupy quite so prominent a place
and more emphasis is laid on pure literalness. Otherwise
it has the same characteristics. We find here occasional
polemics against Christian interpretations, with which
Rashi evidently was familiar.
There was a flourishing Christian school in Troyes in
Rashi's days. As his relations to his Christian neighbors
seem to have been friendly to judge from various expres
sions in his works which suggest great tolerance towards
Christians he may have heard such interpretations from
the clergymen of Troyes, who probably cultivated the alle
gorical interpretation of the Bible so prevalent at that
time.
We find in the later books a few references to suffering
and persecution of the Jews; and we may be justified in
assuming that these passages, like some of the Selihot he
composed, were written after the first crusade which cast a
gloom over the last decade of Rashi's life. But of that we
shall have to say more later on.
Theological ideas rarely occupied Rashi, but a well-
known saying in his commentary on Psalms (49.11) may
be mentioned: The term mitah 9 death, is there employed
RASHI 75
in reference to scholars, for only their bodies die in this
world; for the foolish and ignorant, however, the Psalmist
uses the term abedah, perishing, indicating that both their
bodies and their souls perish.
Rashi always began with the interpretation of the text,
without any preliminary remarks; in two instances only
did he write short prefaces to the Song of Songs and to
the Book of Zechariah. In the former he points out that a
biblical text has more than one meaning, but ultimately
always retains its plain sense; and although the prophets
speak in allegories, we have to explain them properly
according to context and order of verses. This he proposes
to do for the Song of Songs, though with constant references
to the midrashim. He then goes on to speak of the reason
why King Solomon composed the book in the prophetic
spirit. In the case of Zechariah, the difficulty of the proph
ecy causes him to remark: "The prophecy of Zechariah is
very mysterious, for it contains visions which, like dreams,
require interpretation; but we cannot understand their
real meaning until the teacher of truth (the Messiah) comes.
I shall try to expound every verse in accordance with
, fitting interpretations and the explanation of the Targum"
In the course of the commentary he says (11.13): "I have
seen many interpretations of this prophecy which I cannot
understand." In all his commentaries, Rashi, with his
customary modesty and love of truth, never hesitates to
admit that he does not know the solution to a problem or
does not understand a certain passage.
He is also ready to admit an error without any effort to
defend his original interpretation. Thus he states on one
occasion that he has reconsidered his explanation of a
passage in Ezekiel and now, having gone over the book
once more with one of his pupils, Shemayah, and found
that he had contradicted himself, offers a more acceptable
interpretation. This pupil, Shemayah, who, like one of
76 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
his grandsons and several other persons in his entourage,
occasionally served Rashi as secretary, inserted quite a
number of explanations into his master's works, even during
Rashi's lifetime. Of another pupil the excellent exegete
Joseph Kara Berliner collected over eighty such addi
tions to the commentary on the Pentateuch; in some
instances Kara states expressly that they met with the
approval of the master.
One of the Seminary manuscripts which I have examined
contains a few further brief additions by Kara and one by
Rashi's grandson, R. Samuel ben Meir. Some of these
additions have found their way, without any indication of
their secondary character, into the printed texts of Rashi,
which are marred by many other corruptions.
The necessity for critical editions based on the extant
old manuscripts has therefore long been felt. The first
serious effort in this direction was Dr. Berliner's famous
edition of the commentary on the Pentateuch, in 1866,
Based on a number of manuscripts and early editions, it
represented an enormous improvement over the existing
text. For a second edition, 1905, Berliner consulted many
more manuscripts, though without recording their readings.
During the last decade, Dr. I. Maarsen, Chief Rabbi of the
Hague, started work on a critical edition of the commen
taries on the Prophets and Hagiographa, of which those
on the Minor Prophets, Isaiah and Psalms have already
appeared and that on Job was in press when World War
II broke out. The manuscript of the Jewish Theological
Seminary had been consulted for this edition, as well as the
Seminary copy of the extremely rare first edition of the
commentary on Psalms and Job. But our hope that in
the course of time we may be able to study Rashi's masterly
biblical commentaries in adequate editions was shattered
when the scholarly rabbi fell victim to the Nazi terror.
Rashi occasionally quotes his sources by name; more
RASHI 77
often he refers to them in general terms: "I have found,"
"some say/ 3 "some explain," or similar expressions. Fre
quently we read that he "heard" or, more definitely, that
he "heard [or received a tradition] from his teachers. 35 As
against such explanations by others, he expressly states in
some instances: "I have not heard or found, " or, more
definitely: "I say, 33 "I explain, 33 "it seems to me, 33 etc.,
thus emphasizing his originality on the points at issue.
In one instance (Ez. 42.3) we read in our editions: "I
had neither teacher nor helper in [the interpretation of]
this building [of the Temple of Ezekiel], but [explained it]
as they showed me from heaven. 3 ' (This remark, however,
is not found in any of the eleven manuscripts consulted by
A. J. Levy for his edition, Philadelphia, 1931.) Sometimes
again we find an indefinite "one could say, 33 "one could
explain," "the explanation of this passage is, 33 occasionally
with the addition "according to its context, 33 or "one also
could explain the passage. 33 The latter expression shows
that, at this point, Rashi offers more than one interpretation
of a passage. It is not an unusual phenomenon for him to
give several explanations for a verse, though he generally
introduces such additional interpretations with a simple
formula: "another way." The above-mentioned modern
editions, especially that of Berliner, have made very success
ful efforts to trace most of Rashi 3 s sources and thus enable
us to get a clearer notion of Rashi 3 s original contributions.
But it is not only his new suggestions which make Rashi's
work on the Bible of outstanding importance; his judicious
selection from the works of his predecessors and his restate
ment of their opinions in his own classical diction are
deserving of just as much recognition.
Such recognition Rashi 3 s biblical commentary found
from the very beginning, not only among his co-religionists,
but also among Christian scholars. One of the most famous
Christian exegetes, Nicolas de Lyra, a French Franciscan of
78 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
the first half of the fourteenth century, quoted Rashi
constantly, and this commentary was one of the main
sources used by Luther in his translation. The collaborators
in the King James version of the Bible also -made ample
use of Rashi.
If the commentary on the Pentateuch is the book that
made Rashi famous among wide circles, that on the Talmud
is of no lesser importance. So far as we know, only two or
three parts of the Talmud were ever printed without this
indispensable work.
The widespread influence of the Talmud commentary
may likewise be illustrated by the fact that the Seminary
Library has forty-four editions of the complete Talmud
and some two hundred and fifty individual treatises, and
all but one of them are accompanied by Rashi. Even when
an enterprising publisher decided, half a century ago, to
print a one-volume edition of the Talmud, in small type,
he did not dare omit Rashi. The few Spanish and Portu
guese incunabula, with one exception, also added the
commentary of the French scholar, though they did not
print the Tosafot by Rashi's pupils which appear in all the
Italian, German and Polish editions.
We do not know whether Rashi had already conceived
the plan of the commentary on the Talmud when he went
to the Rhenish academies; but undoubtedly the commen
taries of the Mayence scholars and the direct instruction
received from his teachers there were of a very material
help to him. It has been shown that he generally follows
the interpretation of the teacher under whom he had
studied the part of the Talmud in question, adding diver
gent explanations he had received from one or another
teacher, or found in earlier works, with the introduction:
"some explain," or "another interpretation." Often he states
that either the first or the last interpretation is preferable.
RASHI 79
He collected, during his years of study, all the material
available in the academies, that is, the Mayence and
Worms Kuntresim which may be compared to notebooks
of Talmud students recording the instruction of their
masters. Only thus can we understand -why some serious
errors have been discovered in these early works. Whatever
geonic interpretations were accessible in the Rhenish
schools were carefully copied. At the same time, Rashi
looked for all available material for the text of the Talmud,
which in the course of transmission had suffered corrup
tion and unauthorized additions before it had reached
the academies of Western Europe. Scholars had made free
with the text and had corrected and interpolated it. R.
Gershom, therefore, had with his own hand prepared a
careful copy of this fundamental work and had issued a
prohibition against any change or correction. Rashi natu
rally used this autograph, which probably was considered
normative in the schools. He, however, was not satisfied
with this work, but collated all the other manuscripts he
could procure. His numberless notes on the text in his
commentary, which he introduces with the words "we
should read thus," are undoubtedly based on the authority
of some manuscript or perhaps on a parallel in one of the
Baraita collections. It is unlikely that he often resorted to
mere conjecture to emend this book for which he had such
great respect, as in his modesty he hardly would have
trusted his own judgment without some such authority.
His pupils, on the other hand, permitted themselves
great freedom in the matter of emendation. Rashi's grand
son, R. Tarn, complained bitterly about the rashness of his
elder brother, R. Samuel, whom he otherwise greatly
respected, in changing the readings of the Talmud. He
says that, unlike his grandfather, R. Samuel changed the
texts themselves, whereas Rashi had merely noted his
corrections in his commentary without touching the text.
80 ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
In our editions, Rashi's readings have for the most part
been introduced into the text; often it is only by consulting
manuscripts or the readings collected in Rabbinowicz's
invaluable work that we can determine the readings which
Rashi rejected. Rashi's authority was so great that his
statement on the correctness of a reading was considered
sufficient to change the text of the Talmud, although such
action was contrary to his warnings and objections.
We cannot tell whether Rashi merely collected material
for his work at Mayence and Worms or actually started
there on his great task. Nor do we know in what order he
commented on the various treatises. In two of them his
commentary stops in the middle in our editions and manu
scripts Baba Batra 29b and Makkot 19b. In that on
Makkot, tahor y "pure," is one of the last words, and we
read: "Our master with his pure body, whose soul expired
in purity, did not comment any further; here begins the
commentary of his pupil and son-in-law R. Judah bar
Nathan." But Berliner found in one manuscript merely
"Up to this point is the commentary of the master, from
here on we read the words of the pupil;" and explanations
of his on later passages of these treatises are quoted in
comments of the French school. The commentary on five
treatises printed under Rashi's name has been the subject
of much discussion, and their authenticity has been doubted
with good reason. It is not impossible, as Lipschutz, the
latest comprehensive biographer of Rashi, suggests, that we
have here an early, unrevised version of Rashi's commen
taries, which therefore do not show all the characteristics
and the excellence of the rest of the work. This question
deserves further study.
Rashi worked constantly on the revision of his commen
taries. We have a curious description of his autograph by
a German scholar, written a century after his death. He
relates how Rashi crossed out words, wrote and corrected
RASHI 81
between the lines and made additions on tfi'e margin.
There are a few such references to Rashi's holographs with
author's corrections, but unfortunately not a line from his
own hand has been preserved.
Much has been written in modern times about the
various recensions of Rashi's commentary on the Talmud.
It is claimed that we have for the greater part the third
and final revision. I doubt that he actually rewrote his
books entirely and did not, rather, simply keep on correct
ing and, when the accumulation of such changes made
parts of the book difficult to use, copy these and eventually
add new corrections and revisions. In spite of this, there
are a number of contradictions in different parts of the
commentary due to the fact that he generally followed the
interpretation of the teacher under whom he studied the
particular treatise. Since we do not know the chronology
of his works, it is impossible to state which was his earlier
and which his later opinion.
On the other hand, differences in the interpretation of
biblical passages between the commentary on the Bible and
that on the Talmud can easily be explained. On the Bible
he gives the explanation which he considers correct in the
context. In the commentary on the Talmud, however, he
offers the interpretation of the text in the sense of the
talmudic authority who invokes it.
Rashi's commentary on the Talmud is extremely brief
and to the point. Often he answers a question that might
occur to a student by the insertion of a single word. The
Tosafists, who carried on his work, at times did not realize
this and added discussions which more careful attention
to the wording of his comments would have made unnec
essary. One of the greatest German Talmudists of the last
century, R. Jacob Ettlinger, occasionally calls attention to
such cases. Rashi is interested in establishing the general
methodological rules which the Talmud follows; he is care-
82 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
ful about the chronological succession of the generations of
tannaim and amoraim and tries to interpret points of
archaeology. His attention is generally directed towards
the details. He always finds the points which require
elucidation and expounds them briefly; what is easily
understood he passes over. He never tries to show either
his vast knowledge or his acumen; he keeps his personality
entirely in the background and considers nothing but the
text and the need of the student.
There is a great and basic difference between Rashi and
all his predecessors. They all tried to facilitate the under
standing of the Talmud by giving a brief outline of the
talmudic discussions while adding relatively few expla
nations of details. Rashi, on the other hand, refrained
from doing so. He left it to the student to find the context
and the logical development of the discussion, of which,
however, he never lost sight and to which he occasionally
pointed with a brief remark. His main aim was to give
the necessary help without ever distracting the reader
from the text for any length of time. He thus created an
indispensable and incomparable tool for the study of the
Talmud, which became the basis for practically all work
in this field. The simplicity and lucidity of his interpre
tations a rare gift which he possessed to an unusual
degree made his work as valuable to the scholar as to
the beginner. It has been justly asserted that his commen
tary restored the Talmud to us, that without his masterly
interpretation it would have remained a closed book to the
majority of students, that it was his commentary alone
which made possible the great development of talmudic
knowledge by the northern French scholars. It is the work of
a genius and a master craftsman who, penetrating into the
very structure of the Talmud, enables us to see its growth
and evolution. It is only thanks to Rashi's commentary
that the proper study of the Talmud did not gradually
RASHI 83
cease, as Maimonides had feared. Maimonides tried to
save the subject matter from oblivion by a marvelous
digest, since he saw no real hope for the revival of its study.
Rashi, however, forged a key to the treasure-house of the
Talmud which enabled an easy entrance into it and thus
made it again the cornerstone of Jewish learning and
culture.
The commentary on the Talmud is gigantic in size, and
there is still a possibility that parts of it may have perished.
Who can tell what wealth of ancient and medieval literature
was lost to us when twenty-four carloads of Jewish books
were consigned to the flames in the market place of Paris
around the year 1240?
Rashi's commentary is a phenomenal piece of work,
which hardly has its equal in any other literature. It has
become almost an institution. We cannot imagine the
study of the Talmud without this indispensable guide.
All of us, like countless generations before us, have been
introduced to it by his help; and, although modern scholar
ship may occasionally interpret the Talmud more scientifi
cally, it recognizes its indebtedness to the genius of Rashi
and still stands on his shoulders.
A little over a century after Rashfs death, a member of
the later Babylonian schools, Daniel ha-Babli of Damascus,
referred to Rashi as the "greatest commentator who enlight
ened the eyes of the people in exile. 5 ' The members of the
Babylonian schools considered themselves the true succes
sors of the geonim and looked with disdain on the results of
Western scholarship; they refused to recognize the great
Code of Maimonides and bitterly attacked it. The praise
of a critic from this circle is therefore a rare recognition of
Rashi's outstanding merit.
It is a curious phenomenon that in the eleventh century,
after the close of the geonic period and the decline of the
Babylonian schools, there arose three contemporaries who
84 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
summed up the work of the five centuries after the con
clusion of the Talmud: Rashi, by his commentary; R.
Nathan of Rome, by his talmudic dictionary; and R. Isaac
Alfasi, of Lucena, Spain, by his great code. Of the three,
all of whom died within a space of four years at the begin
ning of the twelfth century, Rashi was the greatest genius.
There is only one side of talmudic study to which Rashi,
again in contradistinction to his predecessors, paid little
attention in his commentary the practical application
of the talmudic discussions to legal decisions. In his
capacity of rabbi, however, he was naturally deeply con
cerned with questions of Jewish law. Some brief legal
summaries of his are incorporated in the legal compilations
composed by his pupils which go under his name and which
have mostly been published only during the last century.
These books also give us information about Rashi's opinions
and decisions on numerous legal questions. They include
a large number of his responsa, some of which have been
found separately in manuscripts and were also published
during the last century. An edition of the about two hun
dred and sixty responsa of Rashi has been published by Dr.
Israel Elfenbein. Through these letters, which contain
more personal references than all the other, greater writ
ings of our sage, we get a clearer perspective of the beauty
of his character and personality. He corresponded with
his teachers, his colleagues and his pupils. To all of them he
wrote with the same modesty and loving interest. It would
be tempting to discuss these utterances of Rashi in greater
detail, but space permits the mention of only a very few
characteristic points. They show Rashi's independence of
judgment; he does not follow his teachers when his own
study of the sources leads him to different decisions. They
give evidence of his love of peace and of his great tolerance,
which finds expression especially in his dealings with the
RASHI 85
victims of the first crusade. Though French communities
had suffered very little, the crusade had caused the destruc
tion of the ancient Jewish communities of the Rhine, so dear
to Rashi since his student days. Many Jews had embraced
Christianity to save their lives, and most of these returned
to their ancestral religion as soon as circumstances per
mitted. Rashi insisted that these unfortunate persons should
be treated with the utmost consideration, since they had
not given up Judaism of their free will but only to save
their lives and in many instances had been baptized by
force and under direct compulsion. He permitted men of
priestly descent to function in their communities as before,
declared a marriage entered into during the period of
conversion valid and strictly forbade reminding these unfor
tunate victims of their lapses. He was guided in this by
Rabbenu Gershom, whose attitude we know through a
responsum of Rashi.
Time and again we are struck by the ideal relationship
between master and pupils. His teachers address Rashi
with love and admiration as an "honored and great
scholar;" they show their deep concern over his well-being
and inquire after him from every foreign visitor. "The
generation to which such a man belongs is not orphaned,"
one of them writes to him; another asks him to pray for
him. Rashi shows the same loving concern for his own pu
pils, whom he addresses as: "my brother," "my beloved."
I may quote one of his most characteristic utterances:
"It is not my custom," he writes, "to consider myself chief
judge and to pass final decisions; far be it from me to
consider myself a prominent court of law (to decide for
other communities). If I were in your midst, I would vote
with you to permit this matter; but who am I to take for
myself authority elsewhere, a little man like myself whose
importance is slight, an orphan of orphans."
Let us in conclusion compare his modest self-appraisal
86 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
with the remark of a competent judge, one of the great
German scholars of the following generation, R. Eliezer
ben Nathan of Mayence. Speaking of a responsum of
Rashi, he says: "His water we drink, and from his mouth
we live . . . We must try to understand the perfect teaching
of R. Solomon, who searched and explored the Torah and,
so to speak, provided it with handles . . . The words of that
Gaon are straightforward for the learned, correct for those
who know the law; his lips guarded understanding and the
interpretation of the law was asked and requested and
renewed from his mouth; true learning was in his mouth, in
peace and in righteousness he walked, established for the
world one of its three pillars (the truth) and enlarged and
glorified the Torah."
Few facts, as we have seen, are known about Rashi's life,
but as he somewhere remarks: "The true biography of a
man is the record of his deeds."
4
Moses Maimonides
r [I *IHE year 1935 marked the eight hundredth anniversary
HI of the birth of Moses Maimonides of whom it has been
JIL said: "From the time of [the law-giver] Moses to
that of Moses [Maimonides], there arose none like Moses."
He was the greatest genius Judaism has brought forward in
the course of the Middle Ages, and one of the greatest sons
of our people in all times.
In many-sidedness and fertility only that great path
finder in all fields of Jewish learning, the Gaon Saadia, can
be placed beside him; but, while the latter stands at the
beginning of the fruitful development he inaugurated, the
work of Maimonides was its culmination.
There are richer sources for Maimonides' biography than
for that of most mediaeval heroes of Judaism, but there are
many points on which our information is very inadequate.
As I fortunately have access to an unusually large collection
of Maimonides-manuscripts in the Library of the Jewish
Theological Seminary, I shall occasionally take the oppor
tunity to refer to these.
Scion of an illustrious family of scholars, he was born,
the son of the eminent judge of Cordova, R. Maimon, on
the 14th of Nissan March 30, 1135. The boy showed
unusual gifts at an early age and profited greatly from the
instruction of his learned father. But the happy days of
Spain's golden era were waning for the Jews, and Moses
had hardly reached his thirteenth year when the invasion
of the fanatical Almohades put an end to the flourishing
Cordova community and compelled its members, unless
they consented to do lip-service to the Mohammedan
87
88 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
confession, to go into exile. A period of restless wanderings
for Maimon and his family followed. Of this time we have
little information. Ultimately the fame of a great scholar
of Fez, R. Judah ibn Sosan, attracted Maimon and his
sons to settle there. But after some time, conditions in
North Africa became unbearable for the Jews and many
outwardly embraced' Islam. At this juncture a fanatical
scholar, living elsewhere in undisturbed safety, issued a
sharp condemnation of those yielding under compulsion,
though observing Jewish ritual at home; he declared their
private observance to be without any value and even a
desecration. The young Maimonides replied to this man
in his Treatise on Religious Persecution. He refuted the state
ments of the fanatic in his own systematic way, but pointed
out that faithful Jews were in duty bound to leave the
country whenever possible. The treatise was printed twice,
from two different manuscripts; three more manuscripts
in the Jewish Theological Seminary Library throw new light
on this important letter. Maimonides must already have
enjoyed considerable authority at the time he wrote it.
When the persecutions became unbearable and his
teacher, Ibn Sosan, died a martyr's death, Maimonides
decided to leave by ship for Palestine. The trip from Fez
to Acco lasted a month; during a terrific storm the little
ship nearly foundered an experience which made a very
deep impression on him. We have a copy of an autograph
note stating that he would observe the day of this storm
all his life as a fast-day to be spent in solitary contemplation.
Thirty-four years later, when Ibn Tibbon planned to visit
Maimonides, the latter, evidently still remembering his own
sufferings, was concerned about Ibn Tibbon's exposing
himself to the dangers of the voyage over seas.
In the early part of the year 1 165 Moses arrived in Pales
tine, and his brother David joined him there ten days later.
After a five-months' stay in Acco, they visited the holy
MOSES MAIMONIDES 89
places, Jerusalem and Hebron. Shortly afterwards they
went to Egypt and, possibly after a sojourn in Alexandria,
Maimonides settled in Fostat. Whilst his brother supported
the family by trading in jewels, Maimonides devoted him
self exclusively to his manifold studies. He was gifted with
a remarkable memory which, according to his own state
ment as reported by a younger contemporary, enabled him
after a single reading to remember the contents of any
book and to teach it to others: "Unlike many people, I
never suffered in my youth from forgetfulness."
But this happy time was not to last. A few months after
leaving Palestine, he lost his revered father. Then he fell
ill. Later, he seems to have been accused of apostasy and
subsequent return to Judaism. This accusation is recorded
by Arabic writers with many contradictory details. Some
modern scholars have accepted his apostasy as a fact, but
the weight of evidence is strongly against them, and it has
been suggested that the charge was due to the jealousy of
some less successful physicians. Maimonides refers in a
letter to the attacks of informers who threatened his life;
he probably had these accusations in mind.
The hardest blow for Maimonides was the death of his
beloved younger brother in a shipwreck in the Indian
Ocean on one of his business trips. Through this catastrophe
he lost a devoted brother and an apt pupil, together with
the fortune of the family. Eight years after the event He
expressed his sorrow in a touching letter to the Palestinian
judge, Jefet ben Elijah, and mentioned that in consequence
of his loss he had been ill for a full year.
We may assume that soon after his arrival in Egypt,
Maimonides started to lecture on talmudic lore and on the
sciences of astronomy and medicine. He also devoted him
self to the practice of medicine, especially after the heavy
financial reverses to which he refers in the above-mentioned
letter to R. Jefet. In all these fields he soon acquired
90 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
considerable fame, and he became a very influential mem
ber of the Jewish community. We do not know when he
first became a member of the Jewish court and the spiritual
guide of the Jewish community of Fostat, but we hear at
an early period of important enactments made with his
cooperation and at his instigation. He counteracted the
influence of the powerful Karaite community and took an
active interest in the administration of the civil and marital
law as well as in the synagogue services. Numerous deci
sions of his, sometimes with the added endorsements of
prominent members of the rabbinical court, have come
down to us, testifying to his successful efforts to improve
conditions.
When an unworthy person had, through political favor
itism, procured the position of Nagid (the official lay head
of Egyptian Jewry) and oppressed the people, Maimonides
was instrumental in depriving him of his power. At a later
period Maimonides himself became the actual head of
Egyptian Jewry, though we nowhere find that he bore the
title Nagid. This office was filled, however, by his only son,
Abraham, and by his descendants for two centuries.
In accordance with his conviction that a rabbi had no
right to draw a salary for his rabbinical work, he did not
accept any remuneration for the public service to which
he devoted a great part of his time. Owing to his great
fame as the outstanding scholar of his generation, he was
consulted on questions arising not only in Fostat and other
parts of Egypt, but also in foreign countries. He answered
all these inquiries with characteristic, concise clearness
and thoroughness. A large number of his responsa to legal
questions have come down to us. Some are written in
Arabic and others in Hebrew, for he always answered in the
language of the questioner. Recently an excellent edition
of nearly four hundred responsa has been published in
Hebrew, in part original, in part translations; but we are
MOSES MAIMONIDES 91
still waiting for an edition of those transmitted in Arabic
which Dr. B. Halper had practically ready for the press at
the time of his lamented death.
Even stronger evidence of Maimonides 3 outstanding
position is shown by the question directed to him from
Yemen. There, through a change of rule, the position of the
Jews had become very unfavorable and they were sorely
oppressed. A messianic pretender had risen in their midst
and they asked the great leader in Egypt whether they
should trust his promises. Maimonides 5 fkmous Letter to
Yemen comforted them in their perplexity and made such
an impression that thenceforth Yemen Jewry included
Maimonides 3 name in their prayers and added a blessing
for him in the Kaddish. It is to the devotion of the Yemenite
Jews that we owe the preservation of the Arabic originals
of many of his works, as they continued copying them until
recent times. The Seminary Library has about one hundred
manuscripts of parts of his works or commentaries on them
written by Yemenite scribes. Of the unpublished Arabic
original of the Letter to Temen a copy is found in the Jewish
Theological Seminary Library. It is the more important
since it contains a long historical passage about false
messiahs which was omitted in all Hebrew translations.
The late Professor Friedlaender prepared an edition of this
important text and there is hope that it will be published
soon.
In this epistle Maimonides expresses himself very sharply
about Mohammedanism. Its religious teachings compared
to our Torah, he says, are like a statue as compared with
a living man. While he asks to have copies of his letter
spread throughout the country, he implores the addressee
to be very careful that it should remain only among his
coreligionists. If it became known to Mohammedans, it
might involve the author in dire consequences. Though
realizing this danger, Maimonides felt it his duty not to
92 ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
shirk responsibility and to do his share to relieve the mind
of the people who had appealed to him. The Letter to
Yemen was written about 1172.
In the following year he started a movement to redeem
a number of Jewish captives, possibly Yemenites, who had
left the unfriendly shores of their old home. He raised
money in his home and sent a representative to com
munities of another country, hitherto unidentified, with a
letter bearing his autograph signature, asking his coreli
gionists there to follow the generous example of Egyptian
Jewry. The original letter which this representative had
taken with him on his trip was discovered by Doctor
Schechter in the Genizah and is now the property of the
Seminary Library. The wording of the letter shows that
its author held a position of considerable authority.
We know through some thirteenth-century Arabic histo
rians of medicine that Maimonides was considered one of
the most eminent practitioners of his time. A prominent
physician of Bagdad, Abdu'l-Latif, tells us that he went to
Cairo to make the acquaintance of three great men, one of
them being Maimonides, whom he characterizes as a man
of great merits, but tainted by ambition and by excessive
readiness to cater to the great. This must have been a
hasty visitor's fleeting impression, contradicted by the
testimony of other contemporaries and by many utterances
of the sage himself.
Another Arabic author, Ibn Abi Usaibia, who was born
a few years before Maimonides 5 death and was a colleague
of the latter's son at the great Cairo hospital, relates that
in theoretical as well as in practical medicine the Jewish
scholar held the highest rank among the physicians of his
time and that he was very well versed in the sciences and
possessed a deep knowledge of philosophy. He was ap
pointed by Sultan Saladin and afterwards by Saladin's son,
Al-Afdhal, as court physician. Ibn Abi Usaibia quotes the
MOSES MAIMONIDES 93
verses of a Mohammedan judge in honor of Abu Imran
(Maimonides 3 Arabic name). These verses, though written
with true oriental exuberance, still convey an idea of the
unique position held by Maimonides even among non-Jews:
Galen's medicine is only for the body; that of Abu
Imran is suited for body and soul.
If with his knowledge he had made himself the physician
of the century, he would have cured it by his
knowledge from the sickness of ignorance.
If the moon had resorted to his art, it certainly would
have obtained the perfection it lacks.
On the day of full moon he would cure it of its spots,
and from its disease on the day of conjunction.
A third writer, Ibn Al-Kifti, who was an intimate friend
of Maimonides' favorite pupil, Joseph ben Juda, has a
long article about the master in his Dictionary of Scientists.
Although the information is partly confused, Ibn Al-Kifti
adds some valuable points. Thus we learn from him that
Maimonides was invited to become the court physician of
a Frankish king at Ascalon either Richard the Lion-
hearted or King Amalric of Jerusalem but declined the
honor. Saladin's vizier, Al-Fadl al-Baisami, overwhelmed
him with kindness and granted him an annual stipend.
In the year 1190, Maimonides wrote to his pupil, Joseph
ben Juda:
I inform you that I have acquired a very great
reputation among the great, such as the chief kadi,
the emirs, the house of Al-Fadl and others among the
great in the city who do not pay much. As for the
ordinary people, I am placed too high for them to
reach me. This obliges me continually to waste my
day in Cairo visiting the sick; when I return to Fostat
I am too tired for the rest of the day and night to
pursue the study of medical books which I need. For
you know how long and difficult this art is for a con
scientious and exact man who does not want to state
94 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
anything which he cannot support by argument and
without knowing where it has been said and how it
can be demonstrated.
This utterance is very characteristic of the man and the
scientist.
At that time he evidently was not yet the court physician
of Saladin, who died in 1193. For the time of the reign of
Saladin's son, who ascended the throne in 1198, Maimon-
ides gives us a striking description of his daily routine in a
letter to Samuel ibn Tibbon, who wanted to visit him in
order to discuss with him some difficult passages of the
Guide of the Perplexed before completing its translation.
Although anxious to make his acquaintance, Maimonides
advised Ibn Tibbon first to finish the translation. To ex*
plain why the visit would not give them sufficient oppor
tunity for scholarly discussion, he gives the following
account of his regular duties:
I dwell in Fostat and the Sultan resides at Cairo
and the distance between the two places is a double
Sabbath-day's journey (circa 1^ miles). My duties
to the Sultan are heavy. I must visit him early every
morning; if he feels weak or any of his children or the
inmates of his harem are ill, I do not leave Cairo but
spend the greater part of the day in the palace. Also
if one or two of the officials fall ill, I have to attend to
them and thus spend the whole day there.
In brief, I repair to Cairo every day in the early
morning, and even if nothing unusual happens, I do
not return to Fostat till after the noon hour. Then I am
fatigued and hungry and I find the courts of my house
full of people, prominent and common, gentiles, theo
logians and judges, waiting for the time of my return.
I dismount from my animal, wash my hands, and go
forth to them and entreat them to wait for me while
I take a slight refreshment, my only meal in twenty-
four hours. After that I attend to the patients and
MOSES MAIMONIDES 95
prescribe for them. Patients go in and out until night
fall or sometimes, I assure you, until two hours in the
night. I talk to them lying on my back because of
weakness. When the night falls I feel so weak, I cannot
speak any more.
Thus no Israelite can have a private discussion with
me except on the Sabbath. Then they all come to me
after the services and I advise them what to do during
the week; afterwards they study a little till noon and
depart. Some of them come back and study again
until the evening prayers.
This is my regular daily routine. * I have here related
to you only part of what you will see, please God.
This precious letter, which also contains some illumi
nating remarks on correct methods of translating, together
with Maimonides 9 careful judgment on the works of the
Greek and Arabic philosophers, was partly written in
Arabic. Two translations of the most important passages
have been preserved, one frequently printed, the other
known from one manuscript in Breslau. Recently a second
manuscript of this translation was discovered in the Semi
nary Library and both were published together.
How the court physician could find time and strength
for literary activity after such a daily routine is hard to
understand; but we have two important and interesting
medical works which he composed at the request of the
young ruler who complained of various disturbances of
his health and of his nervous system.
The Treatise on Dietetics, one of the most famous of his
medical works, was written shortly after Al-Afdhal had as
cended the throne, and in the thirteenth century it was
translated into Hebrew and twice into Latin. One of the
Latin translations, probably by the eminent physician
Armengaud of Blaise, was printed circa 1477 and reprinted
at least five times during the sixteenth century an evi
dence of its popularity. A manuscript of the Arabic text
96 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
and the first four Latin editions are found in the Seminary
Library. This treatise is of great interest, as it contains
general rules for a healthy life and shows the author's
understanding of human psychology.
The strain of the arduous practise which Maimonides
described in the letter of 1199 five years before his
death proved too much for him, and the last work he
composed likewise for Al-Afdhal informs us that at
that time (probably in 1200, the year when Al-Afdhal was
deposed), he was no longer able to attend his royal patient
personally. The sultan informed him of the various opin
ions of the physicians in attendance and requested him to
express his judgment about them and to give his own advice
as to the mode of life to be followed. Although not satisfied
with some of the methods of the other physicians, Maimon
ides, who, we are informed, was always on good terms with
his colleagues, treated them with respect. He gives the
ruler a detailed regimen for every hour of the day and
prescribes a strict diet. In a curious passage he excuses
himself for recommending the use of wine and song which
the Mohammedan religion forbids. As a physician he has
to state what his calling requires. He points to that which
is useful for the body and warns of the harmful, but he
does not compel obedience; that is left to the free will of
the patient. The non-Mohammedan physician had to be
very careful and pay attention to the court intrigues !
It may be stated in this connection that we know of ten
medical works by Maimonides, all written in Arabic, five
of which have been published in the original by a German
rabbi, Dr. H. Kroner, in the course of the last thirty years.
A hitherto lost treatise, giving the names and use of the
principal drugs in Arabic, Greek, Spanish, Berber, Persian
and sometimes Syriac, has recently been discovered in a
Constantinople manuscript and has been published by Dr.
Meyerhof of Cairo. Of the others, one was translated into
MOSES MAIMONIDES 97
French and German, and one was published in Latin and
also, very incorrectly, in a Hebrew translation. The latter,
his medical aphorisms or the Chapters of Moses, as he called
them, are the most important and the most interesting of
his works in this field. The Latin translation was printed
in 1489; twice again in the fifteenth and once in the
sixteenth century. Through the mediaeval Latin trans
lations Maimonides' work became known to certain great
Christian physicians who considered him an authority in
several fields of medicine and not infrequently quoted his
views. While his works are based on those of the famous
Galen, Maimonides shows a certain originality and critical
ability in his treatment of medicine. (Dr. S. Muntner, a
Jerusalem physician, began in 1940 the publication of
Maimonides 9 Medical Works in their mediaeval Hebrew
translation; two volumes have appeared.)
Maimonides 3 literary activity ceased with his last medical
work which he wrote in the year 1200. A few of his letters
and responsa come perhaps from his last years. But al
though his mind retained its power and clarity to the last
moment, his physical weakness did not permit him to cany
out some of his literary plans. He died on the 20th of
Tebet December 13, 1204, three months before his
seventieth birthday, mourned far and wide by the Jewish
people in whose service he had been active during all his
life and to whom he left an incomparably rich inheritance.
He was buried, according to his last wishes, in Tiberias,
Palestine.
While some of his minor works have already been men
tioned in this short sketch of his life, I shall now turn to the
great books which have made the name ofRambam a house
hold word among his coreligionists. In spite of repeated
attacks by certain opponents of his rationalistic views, his
fame has not been dimmed in these eight centuries.
98 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
So far as we know, he started his literary career in Spain
as a young man, not yet 16. His first work was the Treatise
on Logic, composed at the request of an unnamed scholar
of prominent position. The Arabic original is preserved
only in part; in Moses ibn Tibbon's translation it has been
commented on repeatedly since the fourteenth century,
by Mendelssohn and Heidenheim, amongst others. This
minor treatise was translated twice more: by the Sicilian
physician Ahitub of Palermo and by the Spaniard Joseph
ibn Vives. Thus the three translators represent the Jewish
communities of three countries. All three translations,
together with the fragment of the original, were published
in 1938 by Israel Efros for the American Academy for
Jewish Research.
Another early writing of Maimonides shows his mastery
of astronomy; it is a short Treatise on the Calendar, composed
in 1158, again by request. It was probably written in
Arabic but is extant only in Hebrew. It is an elementary
treatment of the subject with which he deals more compre
hensively in his great Code.
Maimonides was at that time engaged in several larger
works which he never revised and published: a book on the
laws in the Palestinian Talmud, which supplement those of
the Babylonian, and a commentary on the greater part of
the latter. He occasionally refers to these works, and his
son who possessed his manuscripts quotes some of the tal-
mudic interpretations. It is still doubtful whether the
Commentary on Rosh Hashana, published under his name, is
actually his work.
In his twenty-third year he started on his first great work,
the Commentary to the Miskna, which occupied him for the
next decade. The Mishna, the groundwork of post-biblical
Judaism, in which R. Juda the Patriarch, about 200 C. E.,
had summed up the activity of the preceding centuries, had
become the basis of the Talmud which expounded and
MOSES MAIMQNIDES 99
occasionally modified its dicta. Only some parts of the
Mishna had been explained independently by the Baby
lonian geonim and their successors. We know of only one
commentary to the MisKha as a whole, prior to his time,
and that was unknown to Maimonides. His predecessors
in general had limited themselves to an interpretation of
the difficult words of the text, but only rarely had entered
into a discussion of the subject matter. The work of the
youthful Spanish scholar was a much more ambitious
undertaking. He gave an exhaustive explanation of the
whole Mishna in all its aspects.
His explanations of words, based on the tradition of the
schools as well as on personal observation and studies in
the various fields of science, are of lasting value. He pays
special attention to the realia names of animals, plants,
utensils, etc. for which he gives the Arabic equivalents. His
statements about plants, with which the physician naturally
was well acquainted, are of such interest that historians of
botany have not passed them over; his descriptions and
identifications are correct and valuable; it is characteristic
that he noticed the differences in the flora of the countries
in which he dwelt. Recent works in the field of talmudic
archaeology always refer to his explanations and rarely find
them incorrect.
But all this was only of secondary interest to the author;
his main concern was the interpretation of the subject
matter. While he generally follows the interpretation of the
Babylonian Talmud which was considered normative in the
whole of Jewry, there are a number of cases in which his
philological conscience could not reconcile him to forced
talmudic comments and where he went his own way, al
though such instances never concern the legal decision. To
this he also paid special attention and, where the Mishna
records various opinions, he always indicated which of these
are to be accepted in practice.. He rarely "passes over a
100 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
difficulty and he explains the intricacies of the different
laws of purity or the treatises about the sacrifices with the
same thoroughness and mastery as those dealing with the
laws in daily life.
The whole work is preceded by a comprehensive intro
duction to the Mishna, the first of its kind, which shows a
point of view far ahead of his time. Since the laws of
sacrifices and purity were very much neglected by scholars,
he found it advisable to precede the interpretation of the
sections dealing with these subjects with illuminating intro
ductions which for the first time reveal the underlying
principles of the mishnaic legislation, and which in them
selves have been declared sufficient to establish their author
as one of the greatest Talmudists of all time.
His theological and philosophic interests found expression
in excursuses; in the one added to the tenth chapter of
Sanhedrin, the Creed of Judaism is formulated for the first
time in thirteen articles, which found entrance into the
liturgy and have been treated in poetic form in about a
hundred poems. His interpretation of the ethical Chapters
of the Fathers is of particular interest. Here, for example, we
find his vigorous objections to a salaried rabbi. The inter
pretation of this section of the Mishna is preceded by the
famous Eight Chapters a popular exposition of his system
of psychology and ethics. Both his commentary to Abot and
its introduction, as well as his treatise on the Creed, were
translated very early, the last of these several times, and
they became so famous that they were incorporated into
numerous manuscripts and editions of the prayer books.
An inadequate Hebrew translation of the whole work
accompanied the first edition of the Mishna in 1492.
The introductions and excursuses were made accessible
in their Arabic original in 1655 by the great English orien
talist Pococke who had brought manuscripts of the Com
mentary to the Mishna from the East. During the last fifty
MOSES MAIMONIDES 101
years many parts have appeared, mostly as doctoral disser
tations, but only the sixth volume is available in a reliable
scholarly edition. The complete publication of the other
five volumes in proper editions is a crying need. The
Seminary Library has good manuscripts of all the parts,
altogether about twenty-five. Maimonides 5 autographs of
two parts are found in the library of the late Mr. David S.
Sassoon, that of another part in the Bodleian.
In a postscript, Maimonides points to the difficulties of
his task which will be evident to any sensible and fair-
thinking reader.
In addition, [he continues,] I was troubled by the
suffering and exile which God had decreed on me, since
I was driven from one end of the world to the other;
yet perhaps I have received reward for that, since
exile atones for sin. God knows that I have explained
some chapters whilst on my wanderings, and others on
board ship. Besides I have also devoted time to the
study of sciences.
He only mentions these personal matters as an excuse to
the critics and as an explanation for the long time consumed
in the work. The commentary was finished in 1168 at
Fostat, but was continually corrected, and he probably
reissued it in a revised edition; an interesting instance of
his revision I have found in one of our manuscripts.
This Commentary to the Mishna has not been surpassed or
even equalled by any of its successors. It is printed with
most editions of the Talmud; but the very poor translations
have interfered with its popularity.
Immediately upon the completion of this work, Maimon
ides turned to a larger task, the codification of Jewish law.
As a preliminary study, he prepared a summary list of all
precepts occurring in the Bible. The talmudic state
ment that there are six hundred and thirteen biblical
102 fSSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
precepts had given rise to various enumerations which did
not seem acceptable to his critical mind. He began, there
fore, with a characteristic attempt to establish the prin
ciples according to which we are to determine which
precepts may be considered biblical. After this discussion
of principles, the Book of Commandments continues with an
enumeration of the two hundred and forty-eight positive
and three hundred and sixty-five negative precepts and
their derivation from the Bible. This book was published
in our time in the Arabic original from Yemen manuscripts
of which several are found in the Seminary Library. Trans
lated three times into Hebrew at an early period, it was
made the subject of various commentaries, as well as of an
acute criticism by Moses Nahmanides in the thirteenth
century. Nahmanides pointed out that M^imonides'
enumeration was no less arbitrary than that of his prede
cessors. An important manuscript of this criticism in the
Seminary Library contains several passages omitted in the
printed editions.
Having cleared the ground and made sure of including
all biblical precepts, Maimonides undertook the arduous
task of composing his great Code, inserting in the intro
duction the enumeration of the commandments as he had
established them. The Code, which he called Mishne
Tor ah, consists of an introduction and fourteen books; it is
also called Tad ha-Hazaka, "The Strong Hand," Tad (hand)
having in Hebrew the numerical value fourteen. In
order to find a decision quickly without a long search in
the "Sea of the Talmud," he originally started to write
down notes for his private use. He realized the importance
of supplying an authoritative code, which should give final
decisions, omit all differences of opinion and be as free
from mistakes as possible. He determined to supply the
desideratum and for ten consecutive years devoted day and
night to the completion of this gigantic task, which he
MOSES MAIMONIDES 103
brought to an end on November 28, 1180. He wished to
facilitate the study of the Talmud and to provide a reliable
guide which would enable a judge to give a correct decision
quickly, without wasting much time in the study of long
discussions. He omitted all names of the authorities and
simply enumerated them in the chain of tradition stated in
his introduction. His systematic mind rebelled against
books, such as those of his predecessors, who combined
discussions of talmudic arguments with the codification of
laws; "you write either a commentary or a code; each one
is a distinct task in itself." He wanted to provide a work
in which the student who knew his Bible would have the
whole of the Oral Law conveniently arranged.
In times of persecution like the present [he states],
people lack the mental equanimity to devote them
selves to intricate studies, and nearly every one finds
serious difficulties in deriving a clear-cut decision from
the works of the earlier codifiers where the arrangement
is as unsystematic as in the Talmud itself. Still fewer
persons are able to deduce the laws directly from the
talmudic sources.
Maimonides* Code, the greatest of his works, is superior
to those of his predecessors and successors in various
respects. It is the only complete code which comprises the
whole of biblical and post-biblical law, whether applicable
at the present day or obsolete after the destruction of the
Temple and the exile from Palestine. It is arranged in a
more systematic order and in a language which is by far
clearer and better. His prototype is the Mishna and he
follows it in its neo-Hebrew language, avoiding the admix
ture of the talmudic idiom of Aramaic which was found in
all the others. He tries to be as concise as possible and, as
he says in one of his smaller treatises, if he had been able
to put the whole of the Oral Law into one chapter, he
would not have put it into two. His aim to have his work
104 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
accepted as the Code, which everybody would follow, he
accomplished only partially and for a limited time; we may
perhaps say fortunately, for an absolute, final code would
have tended to stop further development and would have
led to petrification of law and life. Against the author's
intention his Mishne Tor ah gave a great impetus to talmudic
studies, in a direction which was far removed from his
aims.
In 1893, Jellinek published a bibliography of Hebrew
works commenting on the Code from its publication down
to his own time. This bibliography enumerated no less
than two hundred and twenty titles, yet is not quite com
plete, and a goodly number of further works have appeared
from that time to the present year. Some of these books
explain the words of Maimonides and supply his sources,
but a great part of them are specimens of their authors'
acumen and try to reconcile the irreconcilable.
Naturally Maimonides' novel procedure of stating con
clusions without the sources, which would have enabled
the Talmudist to check them, gave rise to considerable
differences of opinion. The first book in particular was
not acceptable to those unacquainted with philosophy,
because it contained much that was irrelevant in the
formulation of talmudic law. Included were a brief outline
of the physical universe, as it reflects its Creator, and rules
of diet, the latter finding a place since the knowledge of
God demands healthy senses. In the course of his treatment
of the calendar, Maimonides discussed astronomy in much
greater detail than was needed for his immediate purpose.
He wished his work to be encyclopedic, so that his people
might not be compelled to resort to non-Jewish books.
Maimonides became the subject of numerous attacks;
the critical remarks of his contemporary, R. Abraham ben
David of Posqui&res in Provence, accompany the Code
beginning with the third edition (1509). The Seminary
MOSES MAIMONIDES 105
Library has one of the rare manuscripts of these criticisms
of the great Talmudist.
The lack of sources once disturbed the author himself,
when a visitor asked him about his authority for a certain
statement and he looked in vain in the treatise of the Tal
mud where the subject is discussed. Only after the man
had left did he remember that it was taken up incidentally
in another treatise. He planned to add a supplement giving
such remote sources, but he did not find leisure to carry
out this plan* Perhaps that was the aim of his son's Com
mentary on the Code which is mentioned in a letter to a
friend as not yet finished and revised. Eight leaves from
Abraham Maimuni's autograph in the Seminary Library
seem to be part of the introduction. He quotes there from
several of his father's letters and relates the answer given
to a visiting Talmudist who maintained that the Code could
only be used if explained with the help of the Talmud.
"If it had been my intention to explain the Code through
the Talmud, I would not have composed the Code/ 5 the
author stated on that occasion. Later commentators sup
plied the missing sources as far as they could; but they did
not have access to all the books consulted by the "author,
nor did they realize that with his critical mind he paid far
more attention to the works of the tannaitic literature than
did any of his contemporaries. He frequently accepted the
statements of these authorities, occasionally even against
the Talmud. He followed the authors of the Talmud in
his respect for these early sources.
A Spanish contemporary tells us that in many cases
judges opposed the new work, for it enabled the laymen to
check judicial decisions, since anybody could consult this
well-organized book, written in a clear and easy language.
Especially the heads of the Babylonian school, who felt
themselves the direct successors of the Babylonian geonim,
objected to the work of the Egyptian scholar and raised
106 ESSAVS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
questions against some of his decisions. Parts of Maimon
ides' correspondence with Samuel ben Ali of Bagdad have
come down to us and they are of great interest. The most
important discussion between them dealt not with a legal
matter but with the utterances of Maimonides about res
urrection. The Babylonian scholar, as well as a Spanish con
temporary, protested against these utterances of Maimon
ides on this subject, and he answered them with a special
treatise, the Arabic original of which was considered lost
until a few years ago when the Seminary Library received
an incomplete copy. Later we were fortunate in obtaining
an additional copy, this time complete. On the basis
of these copies and one other,^the treatise was published,
with Samuel ibn Tibbon's Hebrew translation, by Joshua
Finkel for the American Academy for Jewish Research.
The Code was composed between 1170-80, but Maimon
ides continued revising it, partly on account of certain
criticisms which he considered valid, for he kept an open
mind and was never dogmatic in his personal views. He
always welcomed honest criticism which was not provoked
by ulterior motives. In a letter to a group of scholars from
Southern France who had sent him twenty-four questions
on various points of his Code, he expressed his happiness
at having found such able critics. This was a group of great
admirers of Maimonides who turned to him repeatedly.
Their first letter asking about the value of astrology has
been preserved in the manuscript which also includes the
Letter to Temen. His answer, which shows his advance be
yond his time and his freedom from superstition and
pseudo-science, is one of the gems among his minor trea
tises. Incidentally he tells us here that he had read every
book or treatise dealing with astrology, just as he informs
us elsewhere that there v/as nothing written on the subject
of idolatry which he, with his thirst for knowledge, had
left unread*
MOSES MAIMONIDES . 107
About five years after the -completion of the Code,
Maimonides had the good fortune to be visited by a
younger scholar who had emigrated from the western part
of Morocco on account of the persecutions which still
continued in that country. R. Joseph ben Juda, who had
already acquired a certain fame by his literary achieve
ment, became the favorite pupil of the great master with
whom he studied mathematics and astronomy as well as
philosophic subjects. Later, he went to Aleppo, but he
kept up his relations with his beloved teacher and it was at
his urging that Maimonides took up an old plan to write
about prophecy.
About the year 1185, he began the composition of his
great philosophic work, the three books of The Guide of the
Perplexed, which he dedicated to his pupil. He sent it to
him in instalments; in a letter of 1189 or 1190 he included
the end of the first part. The whole book in all likelihood
was finished soon after that, but one of our manuscripts
states that the autograph gave October-November of the
year 1200 as the date of completion. This may be due to
a scribal error &yod having been added by mistake or
the author made a final revision in that year as a result of
the questions directed to him by the translator, Samuel
ibn Tibbon.
In his Code, Maimonides had presented the religious
content of Judaism in its practical aspects; he now supple
mented it in the Guide by a systematic presentation of the
theoretical side, which offered perhaps even greater diffi
culties. The author is first concerned with the pure idea
of God and discusses the biblical passages which speak of
God in anthropomorphic terms. These expressions which
already troubled the old Aramaic translators are to be
understood in an abstract, metaphorical sense. He objects
to all positive attributes to God, because they cannot express
His real essence. It is only possible to conceive His attri-
108 ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
butes in a negative sense or as describing divine action. He
then turns to the philosophic proofs for the existence of God
and discusses the heavenly spheres and the question of
creation. The problem of prophecy, which was the starting
point of his philosophic speculation, is dealt with at the
end of the second part of the Guide. After an interpretation
of EzekieFs vision, a problem which the Talmud only
permits for oral instruction between the master and a
single pupil, he turns to the problem of evil and to God's
providence and omniscience, and concludes with a most
interesting discussion of the aims and purposes of the
Mosaic legislation and the rational reasons for the biblical
commandments. The positive and negative command
ments are to educate us in the fear of God and the percep
tion of God; and these doctrinal truths will lead us to love
Him.
With masterly clearness the author presented the various
theories of the philosophical and theological schools, and
for a long time his book was the main source for our knowl
edge of the Islamic philosophy of the Kalam.
The Guide of the Perplexed is the greatest philosophic book
produced in Judaism. It is an effort to reconcile the Jewish
faith with the ideas of the Aristotelian philosophy. It
quickly became a classic. Two Hebrew translations were
made during the author's lifetime, one by Samuel ibn
Tibbon at the request of the Southern French scholars
whom I mentioned before; the other, much inferior and
more superficial, was composed by the famous poet and
wanderer, Judah al-Harizi. The latter rendering was soon
translated into Latin and was used extensively by the great
Christian schoolmen who, like the great medical writers,
often referred to "the Egyptian Moses." Ibn Tibbon took
his task very seriously and corresponded with the author
about the meaning of some difficult passages. I have quoted
above from this correspondence, part of which is still
MOSES MAIMONIDES 109
unpublished. In this translation by Ibn Tibbon the book
was even more influential than in the Arabic original which
appeared together with a French translation by S. Munk
in 1856-66.
Steinschneider compiled a list of over sixty commentaries
on the book, and at least one other, now in the Seminary
Library, remained unknown to him. The book was trans
lated into many languages and exerted a tremendous influ
ence on Jewish and even on Christian and Mohammedan
thought. In the thirteenth century a Mohammedan wrote
a commentary on some parts of the Guide, while in the
following century Jews taught the book to Mohammedan
students at Fez. (A Mohammedan scholar, it may inciden
tally be mentioned, also wrote a commentary on the first,
philosophical, chapters of the Code). All the later Jewish
philosophers depend on the Guide even where they contra
dict it. Together with the philosophic part of the Code
it gave rise to vigorous controversies all through the thir
teenth century and even later. Down to the eighteenth and
even nineteenth century it gave the first inkling of philo
sophic thought to many a gifted youth. Its influence is
still felt.
I have tried to give an outline, although a very inade
quate one, of the life and the great works of Maimonides.
As to his personality, we have no statement about his
appearance, such as a contemporary gives of his son. The
picture which Ugolini reproduced in the first volume of his
work in 1744, from an old plaque without indicating its
source, has naturally no authority and seems to be a pure
invention. It has been repeated time and again, with
variations, since the last century, and Maimonides 5 appear
ance has accordingly changed.
But we do get a picture of his character and personality
from some of the utterances in his letters. His character was
1 10 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
worthy of the intellectual gifts with which nature had
blessed him. He was charitable, peace-loving and devoted
to truth to a degree rarely found.
He writes to his pupil Joseph ben Juda about his Baby-
Ionian opponents: he understands that the more his fame
spreads, the more they feel the necessity to speak slightingly
of his works in order to maintain their superiority among
the people; even if they feel compelled to declare that he is
irreligious and not a man of good deeds, he is neither
injured nor annoyed. To quote his own words: "Even
when men insult me I do not mind, but answer kindly
with friendly words or remain silent. I shall never fight
on my own behalf, for my dignity and the honor of my
character are too dear to me to engage in a war of words
with the ignorant." He enjoins his pupil to follow in his
footsteps and rather to be cursed than to curse.
In another letter he states:
I never pride myself on not making mistakes; on the
contrary, when I discover one, or if I am convinced
of an error by others, I am ready to change anything
in my writings, in my ways and even in my nature.
I never listen to slander, for I know how statements
are altered and grow when they go from mouth to
mouth. Thank God, even if I hear with my own ears
and know definitely that someone seeks aggrandizement
by slandering me and by treating my statements with
contempt, I take no heed, but forgive him.
When a Bagdad opponent, seeking for honor at his
expense, attacked him virulently, Maimonides requested
Joseph ibn Jabir, one of his local admirers, to ignore the
incident. "All the better if he thinks to gain credit by his
conduct; he may win and I shall certainly not lose.' 5 ;
These utterances show a remarkable moderation and love
of peace, although Maimonides, who possessed a rare
combination of inner modesty and pride, was evidently
MOSES MAIMONIDES 111
fully conscious of his own importance. Maimonides was
an aristocrat who cared for the few chosen ones and
at times ignored the multitude. In the introduction to the
Guide he says: "If I can see no other way except by pleasing
one intelligent man and displeasing ten thousand fools, I
prefer to address myself to the one man and to take no
notice whatever of the condemnation of the multitude."
Maimonides was a man of deep piety who observed the
laws to the smallest detail. He even took a part of his pre
cious time to write a scroll of the Torah with his own hand.
His tolerance can be observed in his communal enact
ments and in his utterances about other religions. Three
times he states in his Code that the pious of all nations have
a share in the world to come.
He took no pleasure in poetry; music and song did not
appeal to him. He objected to the addition of piyyutim to
the prayers and even considered it a waste of time to read
historical works.
He possessed a unique combination of deep philosophic
thought and incomparable mastery of rabbinic literature.
An unusual depth and width of knowledge were combined
with a rare clarity and a systematic sense of organization.
Using his rare gifts to best advantage, Maimonides enriched
our literature by the best commentary to the Mishna, the
best and fullest Code, and an epoch-making philosophic
presentation of Judaism.
I cannot better sum up the importance of Maimonides
than by quoting the words spoken a generation ago by my
lamented friend and colleague, Professor Israel Fried-
laender, at the seven hundredth anniversary of the death
of Maimonides: "The uniqueness of Maimonides, which
made posterity compare him with Moses, the man of God,
lies in the fact that Maimonides, like Moses, took up the
gigantic problem of Judaism in its totality and tried to
solve it in its totality."
5
Moritz Steinschneider
.MONO the small group of eminent scholars who, in the
first half of the nineteenth century, laid the founda-
^u o^. tion for modern Jewish learning, the triad, Leopold
Zunz, Solomon Juda Rapoport and Moritz Steinschneider,
hold first place. The great master, Zunz, who- in his first
publication drew up a comprehensive program for the new
science of Judaism, summed up his own researches on the
development of the Midrash, the liturgy and religious
poetry in his epoch-making works. He also clarified the
share of the Franco-German school in the development of
Judaism and Jewish literature. Rapoport, through his
famous biographies notable for their critical depth, rare
acumen and brilliant scholarship, was first to throw light
on the end of the geonic period and the spread of learning
in the West and to make invaluable contributions to a
scientific study of the Talmud. Steinschneider, like no one
else, mastered the entire field of Jewish literature, especially
that of the Middle Ages, and by his pioneering works placed
research in its various branches on a firm foundation.
Though we still lack adequate biographies of these three
great scholars, much has been written on the former two,
while there has not been even an attempt at a biography
of the third and most erudite of them. The present essay
makes such an attempt, however inadequately, to present
a sketch of the life and work of this unforgettable teacher.
Moritz Steinschneider was born in Prossnitz, Moravia,
on March 30, 1816. Prossnitz was a progressive community
and there was a strong desire among its members for
112
STEINSCHNEIDER 113
modern culture. His father, Jacob Steinschneider (1782-
1856), combined talmudic knowledge with general educa
tion, both of which he had acquired in Prague. His house
was the center for a group of scholars, among them his
brother-in-law, Dr. Gideon Brecher the commentator
on Judah Halevi's Kusari with whom the nephew subse
quently kept up close relations, addressing him as uncle
and friend in one of his publications.
The father's broadmindedness showed itself in the
education he gave to his son. He shocked the community
by sending the boy, at the age of six, to the Christian
school and by having him instructed also in music and
dancing. To counterbalance the prevailing inclination
among the Jews towards onesided intellectualism, he tried
to interest his son in practical matters by taking him to the
workshops of various artisans. It seems that he instilled in
the boy a prejudice against the common run of bahurim
(Talmud students) which kept him apart from his fellow
students when, after the age of thirteen, he entered the
yeshiva of R. Nehemiah Trebitsch. Subsequently (1830),
his teacher was elected rabbi of Nikolsburg, and Stein
schneider followed him there to continue his studies. Two
Hebrew testimonials by Trebitsch, who in 1832 had been
appointed Moravian Landesrabbzner y give evidence of the
unusual industry and application and the extensive tal
mudic knowledge of the pupil as well as of his fine intel
lectual equipment. He calls him his favorite pupil and
friend and expresses the hope that he would retain his
attitude towards his studies and not, as is customary nowa
days, turn to matters of secondary importance and devote
himself to valueless speculation. Was the rabbi aware of
the pupil's interest in secular subjects, or was he expressing
the fear that he might be influenced by current Reformist
tendencies? Trebitsch was a representative of the old school
of Talmudists, bitterly opposed to any trend towards mod-
114 ESSATS IJf JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
ernism and secular education. In Prossnitz, Steinschneider
had received a thorough training in French and Italian,
, the latter through Adolf Bacher (a great-granduncle of the
famous Jewish scholar. Professor W. Bacher) , who at the
time was tutor in a family at Prossnitz. This knowledge
enabled Steinschneider to earn a living, not only during
his stay in Nickolsburg, but also later as a teacher of French
and Italian and as an educator an unusual situation for
a student of ayeshiva.
Trebitsch's fear that his pupil might be diverted to
secular subjects was only too well founded. In 1833,
Steinschneider went to Prague to devote himself to the
study of philosophy, esthetics, pedagogy and modern lan
guages. Philosophy in particular captivated him for the
next two years. He did not, however, neglect his Hebrew
studies; he attended the Talmud lectures of Rabbi J.
Schlesinger and the classes of the Hebraeische Lehramtalt in
Bible and Hebrew language. In 1835, he passed an exam
ination in the latter two subjects with signal success. A
testimonial by the well-known teacher, Wolf Mayer, given
in August 1836, states that he was fully prepared to teach
Bible and Hebrew and praises his biblical knowledge, his
sound method, as well as his ability to express himself in
Hebrew. The famous or notorious Herz Homberg,
imperial Schulrat, testified that he attended his lectures in
"religious morals," exegesis, theoretical and practical
pedagogics and that he passed his examinations "first
class with distinction."
With these certificates, Steinschneider went to Vienna
in 1836 in the hope of entering the Oriental Academy of the
Austrian capital and there obtain a thorough grounding
in the Semitic languages. The reaction prevailing at that
period, however, precluded the admission of a Jewish stu
dent to the academy. In order to receive permission to
stay in Vienna, he had to become a pupil at the Poly-
MORITZ STEINSCHNEIDER 115
technical Institute. He succeeded in realizing his desire
to study Semitic languages by attending the lectures of
Professor Joseph Karle in Hebrew, Syriac and Arabic at
the Catholic Theological Faculty of the university, where
evidently fewer obstacles were placed in the way of the
young and eager student. As in Prague, he devoted much
time to his Jewish studies and faithfully attended the
classes of Rabbi Lazar Horowitz in Talmud and Codes.
His knowledge of Bible, Mishna and Talmud, his skill in
writing and speaking Hebrew and his mastery of other
languages, as well as his diligence and assiduity, deeply
impressed the rabbi, who invited the promising student to
his home. Like Trebitsch, he observed the deep piety of
young Steinschneider, for whom he predicted a great
future as rabbi and preacher. The breadth and compre
hensiveness of Steinschneider's studies showed that his
conception of his future calling was a very high one.
In Vienna, Steinschneider made an acquaintanceship
which was to have a great influence on his whole life.
Leopold Dukes, the literary historian, a man of wide,
though unorganized, knowledge of Jewish literature and of
broad general education, introduced his young friend into
the field of medieval Jewish literature and bibliography to
which he was to devote the greatest part of his life and to
which he was to make such tremendous contributions.
To gain his livelihood during the two and a half years
of his stay in Vienna, he again gave instruction in Italian
and other subjects. He became the tutor of two brothers,
the Counts Lichnowsky, and their sister, the wife of Prince
Richard Khevenhiiller-Metsch. His relations with these
young students were very friendly and they received much
stimulation from their Jewish mentor.
His first publication appeared in Vienna in 1838. It
was a German translation of a versified collection of moral
sentences by Abraham Belais, a curious personality who
116 ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
was for some years rabbi of Tunis and treasurer of the Bey
of Tunis and who later travelled through Palestine and
many parts of Europe. Steinschneider received the munifi
cent sum of 12.30 florins for his translation. Probably the
work had been given to him by the publisher. In the
following year he entered into his account book the receipt
of 23 florins for reading proof of Marpe, probably the
Aramaic grammar by E. I. Bliicher which appeared that
year in Vienna.
It was perhaps the influence of Dukes that made him
eager to become acquainted with the Hebrew treasures
of the Imperial Library. But access to a library was not
an easy matter during those years. He was not even
permitted to make extracts from the catalogue, and the
future bibliographer was not given the opportunity to
enrich his knowledge by delving into the rarities accumu
lated during the centuries, but kept under lock and key
against the scholarly curiosity of a mere Jewish student
who, in addition, happened to be a foreigner.
Since a Moravian Jew was considered a foreigner in the
capital of the empire of which Moravia formed part, he
was not granted permission by the police to extend his
stay after he finished his studies; and thus, in 1839, he
applied for a passport to Berlin. Without awaiting the
answer to his application, he started on his way and, despite
some difficulties, went to Teplitz and Dresden, reaching
Leipzig in the middle of April to learn that he had been
refused the passport. He could neither return nor proceed.
He stayed in Leipzig and used the opportunity to continue
his Arabic studies under the greatest master of the subject,
Professor Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer, with whom he kept
up very friendly relations afterwards. Though Stein
schneider did not remain there long, this teacher, too, was
very greatly impressed by his character, intellect, industry
STEINSCHNEIDER 111
and erudition. A close friendship was formed in Leipzig
with the famous theologian. Professor Franz Delitzsch,
with whom Steinschneider undertook Hebrew and oriental
studies and together with whom he published the Hebrew
text of a Karaite theological work, the Ets Hayyim by Aaron
ben Elija. This edition appeared in 1841 without the name
of Steinschneider as co-editor on the title page, owing,
as he said, to the conditions imposed by Austrian censor
ship. Delitzsch admired the integrity of his friend's char
acter, his cheerfulness even under privations, his inde
fatigable industry and the scrupulous exactness he exercised
in every detail of his researches. Their intimate relation
ship was continued at intervals when Delitzsch came to
Berlin and Prague. Nearly half a century later he wrote to
Steinschneider of the unforgettable days he had spent with
him in his modest bachelor quarters in Berlin.
How extensive and successful Steinschneider's studies in
Arabic literature were is evident from the invitation,
extended to him while in Leipzig, to collaborate on the
second edition of Pierer's Universallexikon (1839-43) for
which he wrote a large number of shorter or longer articles,
mostly on Arabic literature and religion very few dealt
with Jewish subjects. Most of them occur in the first half
of the alphabet. Though in his years of struggle he de
pended on any available source of income, he terminated
his collaboration because his articles were treated by the
editors in a way which went against his scholarly con
science. A Hebrew rendition of the Koran, which he
began in Leipzig, was discontinued when the appearance of
Reckendorf s translation made its publication impractical.
This was the period when Samson Raphael Hirsch, for
the first time, tried to formulate Jewish creed and rabbinic
law from a strictly Orthodox point of view in a way that
would appeal to a modern, well-educated Jew. Stein-
118 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
Schneider, it seems, was deeply stirred by Hirsch's books and
regretted the fact that no scholarly review of them had
appeared. He sent the polemical Erste Mittheilungen aus
Naphtalfs Brief wechsel (Altona, 1838) and the Horeb to the
rabbi of his home town, Hirsch B. Fassel, and asked him
for a frank statement about the new spokesman of Orthodox
Judaism whose point of view had become a vital issue to
him as a rabbinical student. He was anxious to know
whether Hirsch's formulation of rabbinic law could stand
the test of an unbiased critical examination.
In a series of seven letters, Fassel discussed especially
Hirsch's Horeb and pointed out a number of inexactitudes
and errors in the legal statements of the book. He treated
the author with great respect and showed appreciation of
Ms aims and purposes; nevertheless, he found Hirsch too
one-sided and extreme in his acceptance of post-talmudic
additions to Jewish laws. He added, at Steinschneider's
request, an appendix "on the possibility of abolishing
existing Jewish customs from the Orthodox point of view."
Steinschneider published these letters during his stay in
Leipzig under the nom deplume M. S. Charbonah, a Hebrew
translation of his name.
The slender volume is preceded by an introduction which
claims to reproduce a discussion between several friends,
among whom the editor seems to be represented by the
letter I\cK\. We find here some highly characteristic ut
terances: Even under the most oppressive circumstances,
teachers and educators and all Jewish scholars belong
to that category should never speak against their inner
convictions. We need not always pay for the truth with
our life; but we must never bargain for our life with an
untruth. He complains of the lack of unity among Jewish
scholars and the consequent impossibility of winning their
collaboration in some of the great tasks which exceed the
powers of any one individual, such as a dictionary of
MORITZ STEINSCHNEILER 1 1 9
literary history or of the Semitic languages. He regrets
that there does not exist a dictionary of the Hebrew Bible
by a Jewish author which can be used by young people.
Empty phrases and a barbaric striving for originality
replace serious scholarly work; collecting and indexing
material are looked down upon as mere mechanical labor.
Before writing on Talmud and Midrash, we must create
a complete index of the subject matter contained in these
books. Popularization will lead to superficiality if it does
not aim to propagate ideas attained by thorough research.
The discussion which started with Hirsch's Horeb returns
to it again and Steinschneider gives expression to his
objection to discussing casuistic law in the German lan
guage. This could be done well only in Hebrew. One must
not try to occidentalize everything. The holy tongue must
remain the international language of Jewish scholarship:
it has been shown in modern times that it is quite possible
to write adequately in Hebrew even on matters of natural
science.
Though Steinschneider was opposed, on the one hand,
to certain liturgical compositions which consisted of a
mosaic of mysticism, legend and casuistry, characterized
by tautology, letter-juggling, silly jingles and linguistic
distortions; he condemned, on the other hand, the removal
of Hebrew from the synagogue service. He had no use
either for manuals of religion dispensing with Hebrew
quotations from the Bible, or for religious instruction with
out teaching the Hebrew language, or for a "periodical for
Jewish theology" which has not even a Hebrew division*
The last was an attack on the periodical of Geiger. "
I have dealt with this little publication at some length
because it shows Steinschneider's deep concern in questions
with which he never dealt again except in casual remarks.
On some of these questions he changed his point of view
later, in the course of the following period, but it is worth-
120 ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
while to learn his attitude on these vital problems during
his formative years. His high appraisal of scholarship, his
emphasis on objective truth and his objection to superficial
popularization are characteristic of his whole life's work.
Steinschneider stayed in Leipzig only six months and
attended two courses: one by Professor M. Becker on the
domestic life of the Greeks, the other on the Koran by
Fleischer.
A university passport from Leipzig now enabled Stein
schneider to reach Berlin, the goal of his yearnings. He
attended the university there during four terms, enjoying
the instruction of such famous masters as Bopp in compar
ative philology (German, Sanscrit and the classical lan
guages); Boeckh in the history of Greek literature; Peter-
mann in the history of Oriental literature and Ethiopic;
and Ritter in the geography of Palestine. He also attended
a term in homiletics and one in Church history under the
convert Neander; the last was the only subject in which
his unusual industry was not praised. Some of the carefully
prepared elaborate notebooks which he preserved give
evidence of his deep interest in his studies. During these
two years he became Leopold Zunz's admiring friend and
also came into intimate contact with Abraham Geiger.
That he had devoted himself during his stay in Berlin with
great industry to Hebrew studies and rabbinic literature
was testified by Zunz, Incidentally, it may be mentioned
that at this time (1841) the first catalogue from his pen
appeared, though anonymously. It was an auction-cata
logue of Hebraica to be sold by the famous antiquarian
bookseller A. Asher.
This first Berlin period brought one fundamental change
in Steinschneider's outlook on Judaism. Among his fellow-
students in Prague one, Abraham Benisch, had conceived
STEINSCHNEIDER 121
a plan to promote the emigration of the Jews from their
"step-fatherland" to Palestine in order to bring about the
liberation of the Austrian Jews from the yoke of intolerance
and oppression. His ideas made a deep impression on
Steinschneider and for the next five or six years occupied
the center of his thoughts. When the two young men had
gone to Vienna they had founded a secret student society
which they had called "Unity." In the residences of Stein
schneider and Albert Lowy or during excursions to the
outskirts of Vienna, Benisch used to propound his scheme
and to discuss it with his fellow members. Steinschneider
evidently was one of the leaders of this movement. When
he came to Leipzig, he interested Julius Fiirst, the editor
of the Orient, in the Palestinian scheme; and in Berlin he
founded a branch of the Vienna society of which he was
the guiding spirit. He encouraged the others in their
interest and urged them to literary activity. The group was
in constant touch with the Vienna branch. Their corre
spondence roused the suspicion of the Austrian police, in
whose archives some data about this group of students have
been preserved. The police had confiscated the corre
spondence of Benisch which included an interesting letter
from the famous French-Jewish statesman Cr&nieux; but
they came to the conclusion that the movement was an
innocent and immature expression of youthful idealism
which would in all likelihood be given up when the young
men came in contact with practical life.
Upon Steinschneider, however, whose letters they must
have found among those confiscated from Benisch, the
Vienna police looked as a suspicious individual who had
to be watched, and they therefore turned to the Berlin
police and informed it of the society which Steinschneider
had founded. A letter of a member of the society, written to
Steinschneider when he was visiting his parents, had been in
tercepted by the Austrian police who concluded from it the
122 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
existence of a secret society with destructive and reformist
tendencies. No less a person than the Austrian chancellor,
Metternich, charged the Austrian ambassador in Berlin to
inquire whether the society did not propagate rebellious
ideas which were dangerous to the state. The chief of the
Berlin police reported the existence of a students society
working against the decay of Judaism, which he considered
entirely harmless. Though Steinschneider had left Berlin
at the time, he still was considered the head of the society,
which consisted of nineteen members whose names have
been preserved by the police. Several of them became well-
known scholars and were always active in Jewish life and
some of them remained intimate friends of Steinschneider
with whom he maintained personal relations for many
years.
The society, the Berlin police report says, aimed at
instructing the Jewish people by articles and periodicals
to insure its continuance and to counteract the increasing
movement towards conversion. In weekly meetings the
members discussed present-day questions; they read papers
and reported on these meetings to those who lived else
where. They had no statutes. Most of the members came
from various parts of Germany, a few from the province of
Posen, one from Warsaw and one from Brody, besides the
two Austrians, Steinschneider and Benisch. The latter had
at that time already gone to London in the interest of his
plan about which he constantly corresponded with Stein
schneider. Steinschneider, during his sojourn in the more
liberal and enlightened atmosphere of Berlin, reached the
conclusion that the plan was unworkable and useless and
in 1842 withdrew from further participation. But it was
only after a severe inner struggle that he changed his
attitude toward the idea of a restoration of a Jewish Pales
tine, as we learn from the fragments of his diary. He later
asserted that only the conditions prevailing in Austria had
STEINSCHNEIDER 123
produced these ideas, and his attitude towards newer Zion-
istic schemes became absolutely antagonistic. He bitterly
condemned Pinsker's Autoemandpation and considered such
trends more dangerous than antisemitism. As he wrote
to his old friend, Lowy, in 1898, Zionism seemed to him,
after those early years, an object of folk-psychiatry which
could be cured only gradually by systematic education.
"For the Messiah humanity perhaps needs the entire period
of our earth's existence." When he added that no docu
ments existed of the early movement with which both
had been associated, he was not aware of the curiosity of
the Austrian police.
Steinschneider's years of wandering were not yet at an
end. Towards the close of the year 1841 y he again went to
Prague, where he earned a scant living by private tutoring.
From 1842 to 1845 he was the principal teacher at an
educational institution for Jewish girls (Lehr- und Erzie-
hungsanstalt fur israelitische Madchen) established by a local
lady. Charlotte Low. He taught the upper class in all but
the technical subjects and delivered Sabbath discourses
which left an excellent impression on the pupils. He also
introduced the confirmation of the girls on their leaving
the institution. Miss Low stated that his great ability and
succtss as a teacher was accorded repeated public recog
nition, that he exerted a marked influence on the moral
and religious attitudes of the girls and that his conduct and
character secured him the love and respect of the pupils,
the gratitude of their parents and the friendship of his
colleagues.
His beloved Jewish studies were given strong stimulation
through his association with the great chief rabbi of Prague,
S. L. Rapoport, and with Zunz, one of the founders of
modern Jewish learning. Rapoport praised his erudition
in the whole field of Jewish literature, his great pedagogic
124 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
ability and his exemplary moral and religious conduct; he
recommended him warmly as an excellent teacher in Bible,
Hebrew language, Talmud and codes, as well as in cognate
fields.
In the same year, 1843, in which he received this testi
monial from Rapoport, he received a German rabbinical
diploma from Hirsch B. Fassel, the rabbi of his home
town, Prossnitz. During a visit there he had preached
twice in the synagogue and had earned the general approval
of his audience. Fassel had examined him in Talmud and
codes and testified to his thorough knowledge of the parts
of the Shulhan Aruk required of a rabbi and his great famili
arity with Talmud and Midrash. He recommended him
as an excellent, learned, strictly religious person, gifted with
great oratorical talent, who was able to act as rabbi in any
community. A few months later, Fassel gave him a formal
Hebrew Hatarat Horaah. In his library which is located
now in the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
Steinschneider preserved a large folio volume by Fassel,
containing a recast of the second division of the Shulhan
Aruk 3 which he probably used to prepare for the examina
tion by Fassel.
David Cassely one of Steinschneider's close Mends among
his fellow students in Berlin who, like him, aimed for the
rabbinate but was to devote his life to Jewish learning, was
approached (1843) by a publisher, Monasch of Krotoshin,
to become the editor of a Jewish encyclopedia. Cassel, who
at that time had a position as tutor in Wollstein, Posen,
immediately turned to his friend in Prague and invited him
to take charge of the field of post-biblical Jewish literature.
Such an ambitious work required careful planning in
general and in detail, and a very lively correspondence
between the two developed in consequence. A lengthy
letter of Steinschneider's with supplementary notes by
MORITZ STEINSCHNEIDER 125
Cassel was published in the Liter aturblatt des Orients for July
and August, and by the end of the year an elaborate Plan
der Real-Encyclop'ddie des Judenthums appeared under the
name of Cassel who states that Steinschneider had at least
as great a share in the contents of this pamphlet of over
fifty pages as he. The purpose of their undertaking was to
further Jewish learning and to propagate general informa
tion about Judaism which, they hoped, would lead to
spiritual and social progress among their coreligionists.
A few months later Cassel returned to Berlin. The corre
spondence between the two continued for over two years.
CasseFs letters show the devotion with which the two threw
themselves into their great scheme which involved an
enormous correspondence with all those who might possibly
contribute to the work. Incidentally, the letters contain
interesting judgments on some of the rabbis and scholars of
the period. In his last letter on the subject, written a few
weeks before Steinschneider's arrival in Berlin, Cassel
informs him that he has sent the specimen articles to the
printer and that as soon as he came to Berlin they would
undertake the final redaction of the first issue. The spec
imen of four pages without a title or other indications,
except for the statement that the "work" would be printed
in a new and better type, contains, besides two very short
articles, a lengthy one on abbreviations signed by both
friends. Cassel's original article on the subject had evi
dently been very thoroughly revised and enlarged by his
co-worker, who reprinted it over thirty years later in the
Archiv fur Stenographie. Why the whole plan was given up
after all these prolonged efforts we do not learn. Perhaps
the publisher, in the last minute, fought shy of the expense
involved. Thus only the ambitious plan and the little
specimen remained of this first scheme for a Jewish encyclo
pedia which was not to be realized until some six decades
later, in the new world.
126 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
During the same period two plans were proposed to
Steinschneider for bringing his years of study to an end and
accepting a more adequate position. Samuel Goldenberg,
editor of the periodical Kerem Hemed which was printed in
Prague, had there made the acquaintance of the young
scholar and experienced teacher and thought that he would
be the right man to fill the vacant position of principal
teacher at the modern school founded by Joseph Perl in
Tarnopol, Galicia. He prevailed on Steinschneider to
write an application and filed it in spite of Steinschneider's
specific instructions not to hand it in until he would author
ize him after having received information on various points.
The school authorities immediately applied to the govern
ment for ratification of Steinschneider's appointment. This
was received; but Steinschneider came to the conclusion
that the position did not offer a desirable sphere of activity
for him and would at best be no more than the first step
to a possible appointment as rabbi after a couple of years.
He declined the position.
Somewhat later Steinschneider met Auguste Auerbach,
the young woman who was to share his life, and now
became anxious to establish himself. For this reason he
applied for the position of censor of Jewish books, after the
death of Carolus Fischer (1844) who had held this position
for 59 years. Fortunately his application was unsuccessful.
The opinion about the various candidates rendered by
Abbot Zeidler, director of philosophic studies and censor
in Prague, considered Steinschneider unfit because he
had not passed through a gymnasium and lacked the proper
philosophic training. He pointed to his refusal of the
position in Tarnopol after the government had confirmed
his election as evidence of fickleness and unsteadiness of
character.
A call to become the director of the Talmud Torah in
Ms birthplace, Prossnitz, at least for a period of two years
STEINSCHNEIDER 127
which shows how highly he was esteemed there did not
attract him.
After the failure of his attempts to find a congenial
position in the Austrian empire, he came to the conclusion
that he would never feel happy in that reactionary state.
Dr. Michael Sachs, one of the few men of wider interests
in the narrow circle of Prague with whom Steinschneider
evidently was intimate during these years, left his position
as preacher, which he had occupied there since 1836, and
went as rabbi to Berlin in 1844. Some of his friends
expected Steinschneider's election as Sachs 5 successor, but
he was not considered for the place and we do not know
whether he himself aspired to the position. He decided to
follow Sachs to Berlin, where the revered master, Leopold
Zunz, and his charming wife, Adelheid, were a powerful
attraction. The hopes he may have placed in Sachs'
friendship were to be disappointed. Away from Prague, the
famous preacher found a larger group of cultured men
which surrounded and admired him and he showed less
interest in the young, sensitive scholar who therefore felt
himself neglected and gradually withdrew. At the same
time, his attitude towards Orthodox Judaism, which he had
accepted thus far, underwent a great change in the more
liberal atmosphere of the Prussian capital. He himself
stated that he now felt repelled by Sachs' Orthodox point
of view, though he was vigorously opposed to the Reformers
as well. In consequence, in his thirtieth year, he gave up the
plan of becoming a rabbi which had been the goal of his
studies all these years.
"Now I enjoy my studies," he writes to his fiancee
(February, 1846), "owing to the fact that I have thrown off
my neck the drudgery of the irksome, large literature of
practical and ceremonial law, Shdhan Aruk and Poskim,
and in consequence can breathe more freely. I see now that
128 ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
a conscientious and pious rabbi cannot be an educated man.
He must become absorbed in a literature which consumes
his entire energy. Still I do not regret that I have been
clinging to the chain so long. I have the right to an opinion,
for I have labored honestly. 53 It would, however, be wrong
to conclude that he had severed all inner relations with
religion. A man who in his last years could write: "Reli
gious development is the true ultimate object of Jewish history 55
must have retained a certain attachment to religion.
Though he gave up, during the following years, the
strict observance to which his teacher and friends had often
referred theretofore, the literature of his people remained
central in all his thinking. He decided to devote his life
to learning and research for its own sake. It was to be a
life dedicated to the study of the Jewish past and to the
clarification of the many fundamental literary problems
which had been neglected up to then.
During his early years in Berlin, Steinschneider was
mainly concerned with the effort to establish himself and
to secure a fixed income which would enable him to marry
his fiancee who felt very unhappy in her position as gov
erness in Prague. But for that he had to wait several long
years. It was an exasperating experience through which
both young people had to pass before they were united in
marriage on June 21, 1849.
Private lessons were his main source of income to provide
for his modest needs. Though he was fond of teaching,
some of his pupils, who were badly prepared and lacked
all idealism and religion, could give him little satisfaction.
The fees for his contributions to various periodicals and
other scholarly work supplemented his revenues. In his first
year in Berlin (1845), he. together with Jellinek, preached
in Leipzig for the High Holidays with great success. His
hope to be invited again for the following Passover did
STEINSCHNEIDER 129
not materialize. In these early years he must have been
a good speaker. Around this time he wrote a Jewish
oratorio, Saul, based on the Bible with some use of the
Aggada, for the composer J. Stern, the director of the choir
of the Reform synagogue. Eventually it brought him five
Louis d'ors (ca. $25).
It is characteristic for the position of the Jews in Berlin
during that period that Steinschneider had to make formal
application to the ministry of education for permission
to visit the general reading room of the Royal Library
(1 846). It took six weeks before the permission was granted.
An academic career appeared the natural choice for a
scholar of Steinschneider's wide learning and broad inter
ests. He was encouraged in this direction by the professor
and director of the Prussian Statistical Bureau, Karl Fried-
rich Wilhelm Dieterici, the father of the well-known orien
talist, who befriended the Jewish scholar. He realized,
however, that as a Jew he had no chance at a university
and no prospect of establishing himself speedily. Instead,
he therefore applied for a teacher's license. After a com
prehensive examination in German, Latin, French, history
and geography, arithmetics and geometry, natural sciences
and pedagogics, after trial-lessons in mathematics and
mathematical geography and after handing in a paper on
Pestalozzi, he received a certificate (March, 1847) permit
ting him to act as teacher or director of a Jewish school.
His examiners were deeply impressed both by his knowl
edge and his ability as a teacher and expressed to him their
satisfaction.
A certificate was not sufficient, however; he had to be
naturalized in order to be permitted to obtain a position
even in a Jewish school. This proved to be a difficult
problem. Steinschneider had taken the first steps long
before, but the matter dragged on and on for several years,
in spite of the wannest recommendations of the Leipzig
130 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
professors, Fleischer and Delitzsch, and other prominent
persons. His petition at last reached the king with a recom
mendation by the ministry, and the decree of his naturali
zation was signed by Frederick William IV on the very eve
of the outbreak of the revolution, on March 18, 1848,
perhaps the last document ever signed by the king.
His friend, A. Horwitz, head of the Jewish community
school for Jewish boys, where Steinschneider had given his
trial lessons for his Rector-Examen, had declared in his
recommendation for the naturalization that he would be
glad to give him a permanent position in his school if he
were a citizen, since there was a great dearth of such
scholarly and pedagogically experienced teachers; but we
hear no more of such a position, although Steinschneider
previously had taught a few hours a week at this school.
Together the two men had published a Spruchbuch filr
Judische Schidm (1847) which was well received.
Even such publications for purely practical purposes,
mainly undertaken as a source of income, were approached
by Steinschneider with scientific seriousness. What was to
be offered to schoolchildren and beginners, he insisted,
should be prepared with the greatest care and exactness in
text and conception. When he was asked (1860) to compile
a primer for the educational institution established in
Bombay by David Sassoon, he gave the subject most careful
consideration, and his Reshith Hallimud, a systematic He
brew primer, represented a great advance over all similar
books published up to that time and shows a quite modern
approach. A primer, in his opinion, should not merely
enable the child to learn reading in an easy and speedy
fashion, but was to be a preparation for a study of the
language itself. It should keep out any examples which
have no meaning; but be selected as far as possible from
the storehouse of the Bible. Stress should be laid on
correct reading with the right accent and the pupil should
STEINSCHNEIDER 131
be gradually led to the study of the Bible itself. He also
emphasized the necessity of getting the children used to
reading without vowels at an early period. It is interesting
that he tells us twelve years later that the reprints of the
early part of the book which he had ordered had mostly
been used by himself in teaching his private pupils. Thus
we learn that this great scholar had spent considerable
time in teaching little children the Hebrew alphabet.
The events of the revolution of March 8, 1848, aroused
Steinschneider's interest in politics and he was among those
who helped in the building of barricades in the streets of
Berlin during the first days. But he abstained from further
active participation. He became the reporter of the Nation-
alzeitung and correspondent of the Prager ^eitung for the
sessions of the "National Assembly." He did not belong
"to the wild democrats who are Jesuits in their own way,"
but favored a liberal government.
In his efforts to obtain an adequate position, he applied 1
in 1847, for the directorship of the Jacobson-School at
Seesen, but refused to accept the call for a trial year. He
corresponded with the Landrabbiner of Hanover, Dr. Samuel
Meyer, concerning the position of Oberlehrer at the Jewish
school of that city (in 1848) for which Zunz, without his
knowledge, had warmly recommended him. Here again
the conditions were not satisfactory and he finally declined
the appointment.
There were times of bitter disillusionment in these years.
He gave expression to it in his correspondence with his
fiancee. "It is all over with Wissenschqft because the hopeful
enthusiasm has sunk into the abyss. Jewish scholarship
has no basis in reality, no institution, no encouragement."
"I must not entirely neglect my scholarly work; it might
perhaps, some day, ease life when I attain pedagogic
activity." "I cannot anymore be so absorbed in my work
132 ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
as not to stop suddenly in the midst of my research and
ask myself c what for? 5 The world will become neither
better nor more sensible through such writings; and I have
overcome the vanity of authorship since I have seen the
judges on the Parnassus I should like to say the parnassim
(presidents of the synagogue) face to face." "Teaching
now is a pleasant change for me, sometimes four successive
hours." "Formerly I considered an hour lost in which I
neither studied nor taught. You will have to answer some
day for the fact that it is not so any longer."
The only relaxation he permitted himself during these
years was his music. Every two or three weeks he played
his flute in a trio with a pianist and a cellist, and about once
a month he played in a duet.
He began to retire from social evenings with his friends,
but when he did visit them his lively talk gave no inkling
of his depression and impatience with the slow progress of
his affairs. He always refrained from giving expression to
his emotional life in his conversation. During his student
days, Adelheid Zunz told one of his intimate friends,
Steinschneider often disavowed his heart and forced on
himself a certain asperity of sentiment in contradiction to
his real self. His friend was mistaken when he added that
at last his intellect had permitted him a freer expression of
his feelings. He remained consistent to the end of his life
in his objection to any trace of sentimentality.
This retirement from purely social intercourse he con
tinued ever after. In his last decade he once remarked that
his untiring industry had demanded sacrifices on his part.
He doubted whether he had gone out three evenings
throughout his later years.
During his early years in Berlin, Steinschneider's friendly
relations with the bookdealer, A. Asher, for whom he had
prepared a catalogue during his student days, proved to
STEINSCHNEIDER 133
be of great benefit to him. In 1847, upon the death of the
great book collector Heimann J. Michael, Asher acquired
the valuable Hebrew library brought together by that well-
to-do scholarly Hamburg merchant. After the greater part
of the catalogue of the famous collection had been printed,
Asher asked Steinschneider to go to Hamburg in order to
compare the Michael manuscripts with the printed list. In
ten or eleven days he went through the more than eight
hundred manuscripts, checked them with the catalogue
and collected the material for his index of authors which
was added to it. In this supplement he incorporated
innumerable corrections and amplifications. In order to
gain some valuable material for his scholarly plans, he
worked through several nights, after an exhausting day's
work, making the best of this opportunity in every way. He
had to devote the last few days of his stay in Hamburg to a
quick checking of the printed books.
It was perhaps this experience that showed Asher the
energy and unusual capacity for work of the young scholar
and caused him to recommend Steinschneider to Dr.
Bandinel, the chief librarian of the great Bodleian Library
at Oxford, for the preparation of a new catalogue of the
printed Hebrew books of this, then the greatest existing,
collection of Hebraica. Asher, through his business, was
in contact with the heads of the great English libraries and
his recommendation carried considerable weight. Stein
schneider was engaged to prepare the catalogue. It was
originally thought that it would be possible to accomplish
the task from a distance, in Berlin, on the basis of the
printed catalogues of the library and those of the Oppen-
heim collection, acquired by Oxford in 1829. The manu
scripts of H. J. Michael, which the Bodleian had pur
chased, included a manuscript catalogue of the Oppenheim
collection which was far superior to the printed ones and
was placed at Steinschneider's disposal. He immediately
134 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
started on his work; but after two years he came to the
conclusion that, in spite of the information on many
dubious points readily provided by the staff of the Bodleian
and by his friend, Joseph Zedner, of the British Museum
(which had acquired the printed books of H. J. Michael), it
would be impossible to prepare a satisfactory catalogue
without inspecting the books themselves. Accordingly
Steinschneider was invited by Bandinel to come to Oxford.
For five years (1850, 1851, 1853, 1855 and 1858) he
spent the summer months in Oxford, working steadily
during the seven hours that the library was open, in order
as far as possible to settle the doubtful points. Between
these visits, sheets filled with new questions continued to
come to the ever-ready hand of the librarian, who fol
lowed the work with the deepest interest. He saw to it
that Steinschneider was charged with the task of following
up the catalogue of the printed books with that of the
Hebrew manuscripts. Steinschneider therefore at once
began to examine the manuscripts together with the printed
books. Many of the results of this examination were incor
porated in the catalogue of the printed books and helped to
make it an unrivalled storehouse of information on the au
thors dealt with. The access to these manuscripts at the
same time convinced Steinschneider that the publication of
his planned Bibliotheca Judaeo-Arabica would be entirely pre
mature, since- it was based on the incomplete and unreliable
information of the printed catalogues without consultation
of the manuscripts themselves. In consequence his plan
was postponed for many decades.
The very extensive correspondence, carried on with
Dr. Bandinel during the thirteen years consumed by the
work on the catalogue, gives evidence of the warm friend
ship that developed between the aged librarian and the
younger scholar. The former retired as a man of eighty,
a few months before his death, just before the final com-
STEINSCHNEIDER 135
pletion of the catalogue in which he had taken so warm
and active an interest. He had full understanding for the
gigantic nature of the task and resented Max Muller's
"very silly" question (in 1857) when the book would be
finished. "He fancies that, because it is only a Catalogue
of our printed Hebrew books, it is like all other Library
Catalogues. He may as well compare Fabricius' Bibliotheca
Graeca with our Catalogues !"
Bandinel took great interest in the printed specimen
pages, discussing every detail. The original arrangement
of the pages, proposed in 1850, was displaced by a new one
two years later and when this was approved the printing
started in Berlin. In that year Bandinel wrote to Stein-
schneider: <C I assure you, I fully appreciate your labours
and the difficulties you have to contend with at the distance
from the Oppenheim Library and with such an inferior
aid as myself." Occasionally Bandinel employed visiting
Jewish scholars, like Edelmann and B. Goldberg, to answer
some of the difficult questions. He asked Steinschneider to
help him in the meantime to fill as far as possible the gaps in
incunabula and other books printed before 1732, up to
which date the catalogue was to include all Hebrew printed
books. He authorized him to purchase for the Bodleian
a selected number of manuscripts from J. H. Schorr and
J. S. Reggio and permitted him to retain them for a long
time in his house for a thorough examination. When Edel
mann brought the Palestinian bookdealer, N. Coronel
a fine, turbaned man to Oxford with a lot of Hebrew
manuscripts, he immediately sent the list to Steinschneider
with the request that he mark those worthwhile and
suggest fair prices for them. He accepted his selection, but
had to raise the prices a little. In reference to purchases
from J. M. Goldberg and Asher, he wrote him: "You have
always acted straightforwardly and fairly and have my
best thanks/'
136 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
Bandinel's relations to the younger man became more
and more intimate and fatherly. He took a deep interest in
Steinschneider's personal affairs and in his family and on
occasion even oifered him financial aid out of his own purse.
We do not have Steinschneider's answers, but the proud
scholar seems not to have taken advantage of the proffered
help. The money paid by the Bodleian, altogether some
1,300 in the course of his employment, must have been
a very great help during these years of struggle.
In spite of the enthusiasm with which Steinschneider
had approached the arduous task of catalogue-making,
he felt himself very much handicapped by the rules im
posed on him for the work which, to complicate matters,
had to be written in Latin. His friend Geiger, to whom
he sent the sheets as they were printed, wrote to him (in
March, 1855): "The book will become indispensable to
the bibliographer; it shows a high degree of workmanship
and suffers only from an embarras de richesse" The author's
answer reveals his struggle with the unwieldy material:
"The embarras de richesse in my Catalogue is due to the
unfortunate arrangement which does not permit the addi
tion of footnotes outside the text, so that my footnotes have
become the real text. The Catalogue is not meant to be a
book, but a work of reference. I have made every effort
to make its arrangement convenient. Ultra posse nemo
obligatwr* Add to it the miserable, awkward, to-me-un-
familiar Latin!"
The accumulation of all possible references to every
author and book from earlier and later writers, frequently
accompanied by the critical remarks of the cataloguer to
which Geiger refers, seems to have been objectionable also
to the authorities of the Bodleian. After the printing had
dragged on from year to year, they became very impatient.
They were displeased with the size of the volume and the
great cost involved and claimed that the amount of ex-
STEINSCHNEIDER 137
traneous data made it hard for the user to find quickly
the desired information. They likewise objected to the
excessive use of uncommon abbreviations and the clumsy
Latin style which, in accordance with German custom/
departed too much from the classical models followed in
England. Its lack of "brevity and perspicuity 55 made it less
useful than had been anticipated.
It was the first draft of the introduction submitted by
Steinschneider which brought this feeling of the curators
to a head. Even the old librarian was disappointed and
wrote him a letter of severe criticism, advising him "not to
introduce anything personal finding fault with others"
into the introduction. Most of the criticism was conveyed
to the author by the famous Syriac scholar, Prof. Payne
Smith, author of the Thesaurus Syriacus, who was designated
by the curators to supervise Steinschneider's catalogue of
the Hebrew manuscripts which was to follow that of the
printed books immediately upon its completion. It seems
that the purpose of the criticism was largely meant to
prevent a repetition of the objectionable features in the
new book. At the same time Smith suggested corrections
for the introduction, which apparently underwent a
thorough revision before it was approved.
Smith's letters were written in the first half of 1860,
while the introduction went to press. In the following
year (February 18, 1861), when the catalogue of the printed
books was about to be published, BandinePs successor,
H. O. Goxe, requested Steinschneider "that you undertake
the sole charge of the Catalogue (of the Hebrew manu
scripts) and proceed with it with all the expedition you
can," and he expressed the hope to have him spend the
coming summer in Oxford,
It is a great pity that we do not have the answers to all
these letters and therefore do not know Steinschneider's
reaction to the criticism and to the repeated invitations to
138 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
take up the cataloguing of the manuscripts. Steinschneider
fell sick in 1861 and was therefore unable to proceed
immediately. Whether he waited for a new invitation,
which did not come, we cannot tell. Ten years later, in a
letter to Coxe of which he kept a draft, he took the oppor
tunity to complain that he had heard indirectly that the
task had been turned over to other hands (Adolph Neu-
bauer). For many years he resented this arrangement
whereby he was prevented from carrying out the plan
for which he had collected so rich a body of material and
to which he had been looking forward for a long time.
When Neubauer's catalogue was in press, he sent him
numerous additions and corrections which the latter incor
porated in his "Additions." But Steinschneider's material
was still not exhausted.
For the first fourteen years of the Berlin period Stein
schneider did not find a suitable position. He gave occa
sional public lectures on general topics for various organi
zations and he preached on the High Holidays (1848-
1853) in the Baruch Auerbach Orphan Asylum with great
success. He participated as an expert in the preparation
of a changed liturgy for the New Synagogue of the Berlin
community (1862-1866) and, in recognition of his services,
received for life a seat in the Old Synagogue. For some
time after the death of Sachs (in 1864), and during the
absence of Rabbi Joseph Aub (in 1869), he occasionally
officiated at weddings in the community. He was invited
to deliver the official address in the synagogue at a general
thanksgiving celebration after the conclusion of the peace
of Vienna (December 18, 1864) and, together with the
famous Lewandowski, to arrange an appropriate program
of selections for the choir. He evidently continued to
cultivate the interest in music implanted in him in his
early years. This had brought him close to Adelheid Zunz
STEINSCHXEIDER 139
during his student years in Berlin. It enabled him, in his
eightieth year, to discuss the old synagogue melodies with
an expert like Eduard Birnbaum whom, according to the
testimony of his young admirer, G. A. Kohut (who was
present at this meeting), he impressed by his knowledge
and understanding of such matters.
For a year and a half (1858-1860) he taught geography
and German at the Jewish girl's school eight hours a
week for the munificent remuneration of about eight dollars
a month. For ten years (1860-1869) he functioned as Jew
ish scholar in the administration of the oath more judaico;
he had to read a prescribed admonition to the witnesses,
occasionally with special additions at the request of the
judge. He used every opportunity to point out the inexpe
dient and unjust character of this special oath, which at
last was abolished by law in 1869. In the meantime, how
ever, this time-consuming activity served him as his main
source of income.
The first regular position he attained (in 1859) was that
of lecturer at the Veitel-Heine-Ephraimsche Lehranstalt, with
an annual salary of three-hundred thaler ($225), a position
which he filled for forty-eight years until the end of his
life. This institution had been founded, in the second half
of the 18th century, as an old-fashioned Bet ha-Midrash by
the court-jeweler of Frederick the Great and bore his name.
It had been modernized in 1856 and was open to all Jewish
and non-Jewish students who, in the opinion of the teachers,
were prepared to follow the lectures to advantage. Stein-
schneider, after the death of Lebrecht (1876), became the
principal teacher and lectured there and in later years
in his home twice a week. His main subject was to be
rabbinic literature ( i. e., works composed after the con
clusion of the Bible in the language developed by the
Jewish scholars out of the Hebrew and Aramaic) and
140 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
the subsidiary branches of knowledge. On these he was to
lecture according to a purely philological and archaeo
logical method. He opened the series with an introduction
to the Jewish literature of the Middle Ages which he pub
lished during the last decade of his life, just as he did with
his lectures on Hebrew manuscripts, on Arabic literature
and on historical literature. Other subjects with which he
dealt were the philosophic, dogmatic and polemical liter
ature of the Jews, with special attention to the Arabs; the
history of the Hebrew language, philology and exegesis;
Halakic literature from the conclusion of the Talmud to
Joseph Caro; biographies of famous Jewish scholars of the
tenth and eleventh centuries; and other topics of similar
nature. In his late years he devoted one weekly lecture to
one of these literary subjects, the other to a philological
interpretation of outstanding philosophical and polemical
works.
He gathered around himself for these lectures a group
of students, mostly pupils of the liberal Hochschuh fur dig
Wissenschqft des jfudentums and the orthodox Rab biner seminar,
who attended his classes very conscientiously and found
them, as well as his interpretations of texts, very stimulating.
Once only, in 1875, did an exciting episode disturb
the quiet circle. When the first report of the Hochschulc
appeared, Steinschneider, in his Hebraische Bibliographic,
recorded its publication with some caustic remarks about
"the new ghetto for Jewish learning" and drew attention
to the fact that while the report speaks of the regular
students and those "from countries of a lower state of
culture" who were permitted to attend, it omits figures for
either group. Thereupon the student body of the institution
directed (1875) a letter to the scholar stating that, in view
of his unjustified sharp attacks and the disdainful terras
applied to their Alma Mater , they felt compelled to say that
to their great regret they could no longer attend his lectures.
STEINSCHNEIDER 141
Steinschneider was evidently annoyed and on the margin
of the letter he remarked that of the six Hochschiller attending
his lectures during the term, three were not worth men
tioning; of the others, one, Dr. Klein, had left for Copen
hagen before the letter was written, M. Lowy, the writer
of the letter, had come back to him after two years, and
Immanuel Loew, who had drafted the letter, returned after
wards to consult him on his researches. From the expression
of thanks to the revered teacher by the latter two in their
publications, we see that the master's resentment did not
prevent him from extending to the rebels his invaluable
scholarly advice and assistance. He also noted that an
article in a German-Jewish weekly making fun of the
rebellion was published without his knowledge.
The lectures at the Veitel-Heine-Ephraim Institute were
strictly scholarly and were attended by students of Ortho
dox and Liberal points of view alike. Dr. Siegmund
Auerbach, later the renowned Orthodox rabbi of Halber-
stadt, was his pupil as well as such men as Ignatz Goldziher,
Joseph Jacobs and Solomon Schechter. I did not come
across any record of the students who took his courses.
During the years I had the privilege to be his pupil, his
classes were attended by Drs. Moses Auerbach, Arthur
Biram, now head of a school in Haifa, Hayyim Brody,
David Herzog, George A. Kohut, Judah L. Magnes of the
Hebrew University, Henry Maker, Isaac Markon, Julian
Morgenstern, Samuel Poznanski, Max Schloessinger, Gott-
hold Weil, now at the Hebrew University, and many others,
Steinschneider liked to state on occasion that several non-
Jewish scholars also had attended the courses of the Bet ha-
Midrash) such as the famous professors of Semitic languages
Georg Hoffmann, H. L. Strack, and Paul de Lagarde, the
well-known antisemite.
From 1869 to the end of his life Steinschneider held the
position of Hilfsarbeiter at the Royal Library in Berlin^
142 ESSATS Iff JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
where, in his late years, he came every Wednesday to work
on the catalogue of the oriental and especially the Hebrew
books. The services he rendered in ever-ready kindness
and selfless devotion, as helper, counsellor and bibliogra
pher, to the members of the staff and to visiting scholars,
were warmly appreciated by his colleagues at the Library.
They found expression in a congratulatory letter on his
ninetieth birthday which was written by the director of the
Library, the world-famous scholar Adolf Harnack, and
signed by forty-five members of the staff.
His work in the Library brought him in contact with
many outstanding non-Jewish scholars in different fields.
Men like H. Diels, Ludwig Stern, Valentin Rose and many
others turned to his incredible erudition for help in the
most complicated problems of medieval and oriental liter
ature and bibliography.
In the same year (1869) in which he received this
appointment at the Library, Steinschneider then a man
of fifty-three at last was given a position which, though
utterly inadequate for a scholar of his rank, provided him
at least with security for the future. He was appointed for
life head of the girls 5 school of the Jewish community. For
this he received a salary of a thousand thalers ($750) with
the obligation to teach up to twelve hours a week. He was
not to accept any other position, whether remunerative or
not, without the permission of the board.
Steinschneider had, since his youth, shown great peda
gogical talent and by this time had gathered rich experience
in the teaching field. He threw himself with his full energy
into the new task to which he devoted the best that was in
him. In his simple way, he treated everybody with equal
friendliness and took the deepest interest in the welfare of
teachers and pupils. He never asked from others what he
was not ready to give himself. In many respects he was
MORITZ STEWSCHWEIDER 143
ahead of his time in his educational theories. Opposed to
all sham and pretense, he refused to draw the attention of
the public to his school by theatricals or other unessential
activities. He laid stress only on the real educational
work to prepare the girls for practical life; to aim for
thoroughness in limited fields rather than for superficial
many-sidedness. To achieve a proper balance between
intellectual and practical education, he took an interest in
the introduction of gymnastic training, wanted the girls to
be able to handle tools and to have understanding for
handicraft and trade. Occasionally he took them to a
printing shop or discussed with them the practical problems
of the home. He tried to develop self-reliance among his
pupils and interest in continuing their own education.
Having laid the greatest possible stress on the study of
German, which he personally taught in the higher classes,
he had the satisfaction of hearing the inspector of schools,
himself director of one of the Berlin high schools, assert that
the best German was spoken in this Jewish school in spite
of the fact that a large proportion of the girls were foreign
born. He especially liked to teach little children, for he
enjoyed watching the young mind awaken.
Thus he, with the depth of his understanding and the
clarity of his intellect, guided the school for twenty-one
years. In 1890, a man of seventy-four, he decided to retire,
partly because of an ear ailment; and the community
pensioned him. He was offered, besides the modest pension
of 3,200 mark ($800), an additional honorary compensation
of 2,000 mark in recognition of his great merits for Jewish
learning. In a highly characteristic letter, he absolutely
refused the additional money. His pension together with
some other income and savings, he said, would be sufficient
to provide him and his wife with their modest requirements.
It had always been his principle, he continued, to take
money only for services rendered and to keep his scholarly
144 ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
'activities and his convictions free from any external con
sideration; nor did he want to bequeath to his children
money he had not earned. The recognition of his work, he
felt, would have the higher meaning the less it was of a
material nature.
Twice Steinschneider refused positions which would
have enabled him to develop a more extensive teaching
activity in the field so dear to him, that of Jewish learning.
In 1871, Professor Moritz Lazarus offered him a place on
the faculty of the newly established Hochschule fur die Wis~
senschqft des Judentums. He had previously objected to the
aims and purposes of this institution, and his curt refusal
stated that he could not teach there without placing him
self in opposition to the statutes of the institution or
renouncing his convictions.
An invitation to a professorship at the Budapest Semi
nary, in 1876, conveyed to him by his old friend, Dr. M.
Kayserling, he answered at greater length, pointing out that
even if he were a younger man he was then sixty years
old objective considerations would prevent his accept
ance. The subjects which he could teach and his conception
of Jewish scholarship would not fit an institution which
held itself aloof from the university. He objected to special
institutions for the training of rabbis and claimed that they
nowadays promoted systematic hypocrisy and scholarly
immaturity. What is scientific in Jewish history and litera
ture does not have to fight shy of the universities and should
be made available to Christians. He rather favored en
dowing chairs at philosophic faculties for unsalaried in
structors (Privatdocenten) in order to induce the government
to establish professorships in this field. This very one-sided
and prejudiced attitude towards the Seminaries prevented
him from accepting these positions. His optimism regard
ing the possibility of creating a place for Jewish learning
MOWTZ STEINSCHNEIDER 145
at German universities, as has happened in England and
America, was entirely unfounded. But we see the proud
independence of the great scholar who did not even for
a moment consider the acceptance of a more adequate and
undoubtedly higher-salaried position if it did not fully
coincide with his principles. Money and titled positions
never played a part in influencing his decisions.
At the age of seventy-four, on his retirement from the
directorate of his school, Steinschneider at last was granted
leisure for his scholarly labors. At an age when most
people retire from all work, he threw himself with un-
diminished ardor into the completion of some of the great
tasks which had occupied him all his life. He now sat at
his desk from the early morning to seven o'clock in the
evening and presented Jewish learning with a continuous
flow of invaluable contributions to its various fields. In
the late afternoon he took a walk with one of his pupils or
his devoted secretary. Once a week he spent a day in
the Library, keeping up the catalogue of new acquisitions.
He always had time, however, for his old friends and his
pupils when they came to consult him on their work or
their private concerns. He suffered much from noise in
his ears and complained that he continuously heard the
musical band of a whole regiment. Otherwise his health
was unimpaired and his vitality unusual, though the
natural discomforts of his advanced age made themselves
more and more felt. When he once was run over by a
carriage and broke his knee, the physicians were astonished
by his quick recovery; he soon was able to go out again. He
jokingly remarked that he had been passed over so often,
why should he not be run over for once? When the all-
inclusive Association of German Rabbis (Rabbinerverbanct)
was being founded, in 1896, he was undergoing an opera
tion for rupture (from which he quickly recovered) . Again
146 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
he could not suppress one of his customary puns and
remarked: ce ln my case the rupture preceded the band
age (VerbancT)', with them the Verb and precedes the
rupture."
On June 11, 1898, his wife, Auguste, passed away after
a few months* illness, shortly before their forty-ninth wed
ding anniversary. The loss of his brilliant and vivacious
companion, the mother of his children, must have left a
deep scar on the personal and emotional life of the aged
scholar. There were no other noteworthy events in the
grand old man's last years. He carried on his scholarly
work, his lecures at the Veitel-Heine-Ephraim Institute
and his cataloguing at the Royal Library, till December,
1906, six weeks before he passed away. He died during
the night of the twenty-third to the twenty-fourth of
January, 1907, ten months after his ninetieth birthday.
His mind was clear to the end, and he was still making
literary plans. As Schechter fittingly remarked: "His
vision never became dimmed and his freshness never dis
appeared until his dying day."
An interviewer once asked Steinschneider in his later
years about the course of his life. "My life it is my
scholarly work" was his only answer; any further infor
mation was refused.
The above outline of the external events of his biography
hardly touches upon the gigantic scholarly work which
made Steinschneider one of the small group of founders of
modern Jewish learning and established his fame as the
most erudite in the entire circle of Jewish luminaries of
the last century. We have to turn now to this real life of
the scholar. An exhaustive appreciation of his innumerable
books and articles, however, cannot be attempted within
the frame of an essay. It would require a bulky volume
and wider knowledge than any single Jewish scholar pos-
STEINSCHNEIDER 147
sesses. Only his outstanding and more extensive contri
butions can be briefly considered here.
The central theme of Steinschneider's researches the
theme he selected at the outset of his scientific career
was the relation of Jewish literature to the other literatures
of the Middle Ages, especially in the fields of science. In
Leipzig, Fleischer's lectures and the collaboration with
Delitzsch stimulated him to investigate the relations be
tween Arabs and Jews. Upon coming to Berlin, he sub
mitted a plan for a work on the general subject: Jewish
Contributions to the Literary History of the Middle Ages
which was to occupy him for nearly six decades. The vast
theme was divided into three parts. The first part, entitled
Bibliotheca Judaeo-Arabica, was practically ready for publi
cation and he approached the Culturverein, of which Zunz
was the president at the time, for a subvention. He received
a grant of a hundred thalers, but the work was to appear
only after fifty-seven years, grown in the meantime from a
slender book to a large volume. He proudly stated in its
introduction that this was the only subvention he ever
received for his scholarly labors.
Before he could realize his plan, the editors of the
great General Encyclopedia of the Sciences and Arts, edited by
Ersch and Gruber a tremendous undertaking of which
167 large quarto volumes appeared in the course of eighty
years without completing the alphabet invited Stein-
schneider to contribute the article "Jewish Literature"
which Zunz and Lebrecht had refused to undertake. It
required the bold daring of youth to approach so enormous
a task. It involved bringing order and method into the
chaos into which the subject had been plunged. Material
had to be gathered from the amorphous volumes of Wolfs
Bibliotheca Hebraea, the books of J. B. de Rossi and other,
less reliable works. The opportunity to show the whole
magnificent phenomenon of Jewish literary development
148 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
as an organic entity attracted Steinschneider very strongly.
He felt It would clarify the problem in his own mind, would
give him a lucid conception of the subject and, incidentally,
would establish his position in the circle of the learned.
The essay was to cover two printed sheets; it soon turned
out, however, that it could not be confined to so narrow a
compass. It grew to seven times the planned size and
occupied the author for three years (1845-1847). It was a
great satisfaction to Steinschneider that the editor of the
encyclopedia decided to accept the lengthy article without
any cutting. It was printed three years later, in 1850.
Subsequently, in 1857, Jewish Literature from the Eighth to
the Eighteenth Century: with an Introduction on Talmud and
Midrash appeared as a book, in English translation by
William Spottiswoode, carefully revised by the author.
The translator had become interested in the essay when
searching for information on the history of mathematics
among the Jews.
For the first time, the literature of eighteen centuries was
thus properly organized according to subjects and periods.
The first period, that of post-biblical literature preceding
the contacts with the Arabs the traditional literature of
Talmud, Midrash and Liturgy was dealt with briefly
in an introductory chapter which was indispensable
for the understanding of the later developments. Here
Zunz's Gottesdienstliche Vortrage served as an invaluable
guide. The second period, from the eighth to the fifteenth
centuries, offers a brief outline of all branches of Jewish
literature, arranged chronologically and according to
countries, with short, often piquant and epigrammatic
remarks and characterizations of the essential contributions
and the intellectual currents in every field. What was
known at the time about the authors and works is briefly
recorded. The third period, from the sixteenth to the
eighteenth centuries down to Mendelssohn's time, is dealt
STEINSCHNEIDER 149
with similarly and is shown to be generally a period of
decay. Secular and religious works are treated with equal
thoroughness.
One does not know what to admire more, whether the
erudition of the author, then thirty years old, or his powers
of organizing the enormous material which had to be
collected from, for the most part, very unsatisfactory
sources. These, as a rule, showed no appreciation whatever
of the value of the individual contributions and of their
interrelationships. As an article of an encyclopedia, Stein-
Schneider's book could only offer a bare outline and could
not do full justice to the requirements of a proper history
of Jewish literature. The hand of the master, however, is
evident at every step and the completeness of the work
for its time is truly amazing.
This publication put its author immediately into the
front rank among the pioneers of Jewish scholarly research.
It was probably in recognition of this achievement that
the University of Leipzig conferred on him, in 1851, the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The English translation,
which has been out of print for more than seventy years,
has, curiously enough, never been reprinted. George A.
Kohut's plan for a new edition, authorized by Stein-
schneider a few months before his death, unfortunately
was not carried out. The Hebrew translation by another
pupil of the author, Henry Maker (1897-1899), contains
only part of the indispensable notes with their important
contributions to research in all fields.
The article "Jewish Typography and Book-Trade,"
which appeared in the following volume of the same
encyclopedia a year later, served as a kind of supplement
to the "Jewish Literature." It was written in cooperation
with David Cassel and is still indispensable, though Stein-
schneider's later works made corrections on many points.
His study of Jewish literature in its entirety enlarged the
150 ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
scope of Steinschneider's original plan which had been
limited to dealing with the contributions of the Jews to the
sciences in the countries under Arabic dominion. He now
realized that European Jewry also had devoted attention
to these fields, although their coreligionists under Muham-
medan influence had excelled in it. After finishing his
gigantic task, he intended to return to this, his favorite
subject. Again external circumstances interfered, as it
happened, to the great advantage of the work.
As stated earlier in this essay, he was invited at this time
to prepare the Catalogue of the Printed Hebrew Books of the
Bodleian Library. Again the task turned out to be much
greater than had been anticipated and, instead of being
completed within a few years, it took thirteen years to
finish the great work which was to establish Steinschneider's
fame for all time. It became the reference book on all
questions of Jewish literature, "the Urim and Thummim
of every Jewish student," to quote Dr. Schechter. Many
years later, Kayserling remembered the celebration of the
bar mitsva of the catalogue by a small circle of friends of
whom, next to the author, Zunz and his wife were the
center. Steinschneider himself tells us that he had put
into this catalogue one fourth of his life and the greater
part of his strength. Twice, sickness had compelled him
to break off his stay in Oxford prematurely. The printing
of the catalogue lasted from 1852 till 1860. For the first
anniversary of his father's death (1857), he published, as a
Specimen, five of the longest and most instructive articles of
the catalogue, and they fill no less than a hundred and five
quarto pages; that on Maimonides covering eighty-two
and that on Saadia seventy columns. A wealth of new
information on these great scholars had been gleaned for
this work from manuscripts as well as from out-of-the-way
printed sources, so that even today, despite all the publica-
STEINSCHNEIDER 151
tions on these scholars which have appeared in connection
with the anniversaries of their birth and death, these
monographs of the master bibliographer and historian of
literature are still indispensable.
The Bodleian catalogue Cat. BodL, or C. B., as it is
generally quoted in literature is a tremendous volume
filling seventeen-hundred and fifty pages of double columns.
It records all Hebrew printed books up to 1732, the year
when Wolf had concluded his bulky repertory of Jewish
literature and when Oppenheim had practically ceased to
collect books. Up to the time indicated, even the desiderata
of the Oxford Library are carefully recorded.
The book begins with a section on anonymous books,
headed by Bible, Talmud and Liturgy, and then lists the
authors in alphabetical order. After each name we find
the most important information on the author and his
unpublished works, and these notes become fuller and fuller
as the work proceeds. Errors of Steinschneider's prede
cessors are corrected; new information gathered from
hitherto inaccessible sources greatly enrich our knowledge*
The wealth of learning, of originality, the combination of
breadth and minuteness of research, evident in these notes
on the biographies of the authors is truly astounding. The
printed works of every author are enumerated with all the
titles and editions that appeared before 1732, and later
ones as far as they were found in the Library. Wherever
necessary, bibliographical notes and references are added
to every item, again frequently correcting earlier mis
takes.
The full index of printers includes the names of type
setters, correctors, maecenases and is an invaluable source
for the history of Hebrew typography, correcting his and
CasseFs previous article on this subject in many points. A
geographical index records over seven hundred Hebrew
names of cities and their modern equivalents. The Bodleian
152 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
catalogue is an unrivalled tool for every serious scholar and
has become the sound foundation of scholarly Hebrew
bibliography. It served the author for all his later works.
Though Steinschneider, to his great disappointment, was
not to describe the unrivalled manuscript collection of the
Bodleian, we are indebted to him for catalogues of several
important, though smaller, continental European collec
tions of manuscripts. While he was working for Oxford,
the authorities of the Leiden University entrusted him, in
1854, with a description of their important little collection
of a hundred and fourteen codices, among which those of
the Karaite sectarians were especially well represented. It
is characteristic of the industry and quick perception of
Steinschneider that he examined all but four of the manu
scripts during a single month's stay in Leiden; the four
which required more detailed study were sent to him to
Berlin. The exhaustive catalogue which appeared in 1858
furnished an accurate, full and lucid account of every
manuscript, the more detailed if the works were little
known.
Like the Bodleian catalogue, this one had to be written
in Latin. More concerned with accuracy than with ele
gance of style, he tried, as always, to be as brief as possible.
He therefore used a great many, frequently uncommon,
abbreviations, which still contribute to the difficulty of
reading his catalogues and books by those not thoroughly
familiar with the subject.
The cataloguing of the greatest and most important
collection of Hebrew manuscripts in Germany, that of
Munich, was entrusted to him in 1862. In the course of
eighty ears he examined the three hundred and sixty
manuscripts, in Berlin, and prepared the catalogue. It
exceeded the space allotted to the volume and had to be
shortened repeatedly before it was printed in 1875, This
MORITZ STEINSCHNEIDER 153
catalogue had the rare good fortune that after twenty years
a new edition became necessary. This time the author was
not so strictly limited and thus was able to incorporate
much of the material excluded from the first edition insofar
as it had not been published in the meantime. It conse
quently became to some extent a new work.
Shortly after the publication of the Munich catalogue,
Steinschneider was asked to describe the three hundred and
fifty manuscripts of the Hamburg Municipal Library. He
examined them there in the course of a month (July, 1876),
again setting a few volumes aside for detailed examination
in Berlin. The Munich collection was characterized by its
varied content, showing the interest of the Jews of the East
and of southern Europe in secular subjects as well as in
Cabala; that of Hamburg, on the other hand, was mainly
limited to the segment of Jewish literature cultivated in
Germany. Apart from some late material of slight worth,
it was rich in old vellum manuscripts of high value.
In the same year as the Hamburg catalogue (1878), there
appeared the first volume of the Berlin catalogue. It com
prised a hundred and twenty-four numbers, of which
eighty-eight had been catalogued by Steinschneider ten
years earlier. This collection was largely acquired during
the nineteenth century and selected on the basis of expert
advice. The volumes were therefore throughout of consid
erable scientific value, in contradistinction to most other
collections which had been gathered in the course of centu
ries. A second volume (1897) brought the number of
entries to two hundred and fifty-nine. The two volumes of
the Berlin catalogue are the acme of his work in this field
and can serve as models for all time.
Besides the catalogues of public libraries, we have from
his pen several catalogues of collections brought together
by bookdealers who turned to the great master of bibliog
raphy for their description. Among these the full descrip-
154 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
tion of a hundred and forty-six codices from the library of
the scholarly Italian rabbi, M. S. Ghirondi, published for
S. Schonblum in Steinschneider's own clear handwriting,
is of particular importance.
Steinschneider's catalogues always contain a brief ac
count of the history of the pertinent collection and some
appendices offering important texts and detailed contents
of especially valuable codices. Those of the Berlin catalogue
are of unusual importance. The plates, with specimens of
different handwritings, were of great value for the study of
Hebrew palaeography for which the material was at that
time almost entirely lacking. Steinschneider, naturally,
was deeply interested in this neglected branch of study.
His tremendous erudition and enormous industry made
Steinschneider's catalogues repositories of rich and often
unexpected information on every branch of Jewish liter
ature. To him, however, these catalogues were not ultimate
aims, but merely tools and starting points for further re
search by himself and others. In all his work he never lost
sight of the grandiose scheme of his youth to investigate
the relations of the Jews to their surrounding world in
science and literature and, in particular, the points of
contact between Arabic and Jewish literature and culture.
While gathering material about the Jewish translators,
he collected information on the Arabic authors of impor
tance whose works were known to the Jews, thus incidentally
enriching the study of Arabic literature from Hebrew and
other hitherto neglected sources. These studies also con
tributed to an elucidation of the influence of oriental
on occidental literature. His first larger work, which was a
ripe fruit of such investigations, was his comprehensive book:
Al-Farabi y the Life and Work of the Arabic Philosopher with -
Special Regard to the History of Greek Science among the Arabs.
It was published among the Memoir es of the St. Petersburg
MORITZ STEINSCHNEIDER 155
Academy (1869), a volume of over two hundred and sev
enty folio pages. What started him on this investigation
was the, discovery in some Hebrew manuscripts .of a short
account of Platonic philosophy which he traced back to
Al-Farabi.
Shortly after starting on the Bodleian catalogue (1849),
he prepared a prospectus of the work which he had sub
mitted to the Culturverein in Berlin a few years earlier and
which occupied him for the next half century. Its first
part was to be a record of "the Arabic literature of the
Jews 35 ; the second was to give an account of "the Jewish
translators from the Arabic"; the third was to deal with
the religious relations between Islam and Judaism. As it
happened, the task was to be carried out in the reverse
order. The third part was centered around the only
comprehensive criticism of Islam by a Jewish author, Simon
Duran (composed in 1423), which had been printed but
once, and in a careless manner. Steinschneider published
a German translation of that criticism on the basis of a
carefully corrected text (in 1879); it was followed two years
later by the edition of the text itself. But the copious notes
which were to elucidate the subject matter in all its aspects
were never organized for publication, though rich material
for these notes is found among his literary remains. As an
introduction, he collected materials on the polemics be
tween Islam and other religions; this grew into a volume
of over four hundred and fifty pages: Polemical and Apolo
getic Literature in Arabic between Muslims, Christians and Jews
(1877). Jewish polemics against Islam, which is found
almost exclusively in Hebrew texts, is exhaustively treated
in an appendix of some hundred and forty pages. Refer
ences to Arabs and Islam in Talmud and Midrash, in legal
and cabalistic literature and in liturgical compositions
are enumerated, names and epithets given to Arabs and
156 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
Islam in Jewish literature are collected and the subjects of
controversy are indicated.
Right after Steinschneider published these parts of the
third volume of his planned work, an external stimulus
caused him to take up the second. In 1880 the Academic
Frangaise offered a prize for a complete bibliography of the
Hebrew translations of the Middle Ages. The prize was
offered under the influence of Renan, whom Neubauer had
approached in this matter, and was meant to encourage
Steinschneider to carry out this task to which he had paid
so much attention for decades. Four years later he pre
sented a French Memoire containing a full discussion of the
translations in the fields of philosophy, mathematics and
medicine, with an outline of minor subjects. He was
awarded the prize in 1885.
In the meantime the Academic had offered the Prix
Brunei for a treatment of Arabic translations from the
Greek (1882). After an essay submitted by another scholar,
in 1884, had been judged inadequate, Steinschneider ap
proached this task also. Since a considerable portion of the
medieval Hebrew translations were in turn based on Arabic
translations from the Greek, Steinschneider had necessarily
given careful attention to them and had made various
contributions to this field even as he had investigated the
"Arabic translations from the Indian." Thus the theme of
the second prize of the Academic had been close to his
studies and naturally, attracted him after he had handed
in his work on the Hebrew translations. He submitted his
Memoire in 1886 and was granted the prize in the following
year. "The Arabic Translations from the Greek" appeared,
in the author's German translation of the French original,
in eight issues of five different publications during the next
decade. Twenty-four copies of the reprints were combined
with a special title page in 1897 to form a volume of about
four hundred pages.
STEINSCHNEIDER 157
The Hebrew Translations of the Middle Ages and the Jews as
Interpreters: A Contribution to the Literary History of the Middle
Ages, mostly from Manuscript Sources is, as the title indicates,
a much more ambitious undertaking. Excepting the Bod
leian catalogue, it is to be considered Steinschneider's
greatest work. The printing of the volume of over eleven
hundred pages extended over four years; and it appeared
in an edition of three hundred copies, at the author's
expense, in 1893. Steinschneider had condensed his lan
guage to the utmost and had printed the nearly seven
thousand footnotes continuously in unbroken lines. This
achieved his aim of reducing the size of the volume, but
it proved to be a great inconvenience for the reader.
It is impossible to give a popular account of this fruit of
half a century's concentrated research in all possible liter
atures. Hardly anything escaped the indefatigable scholar,
who made use of everything written on his subject, even in
the remotest sources, even in out-of-the-way periodicals, in
every modern language except the Slavic and Hungarian.
The first half of the book gives a brief account of the few
Hebrew encyclopedic works and then deals with the various
branches of philosophy; the second treats of mathematics,
astronomy and medicine, and finally with Varia, viz.,
philology, law, different types of folk-literature and super
stition in scientific garb. In each class the works of the
Greeks, the Arabs, the Jews and the Christians are succes
sively discussed. More than a thousand Hebrew manu
scripts, besides many Arabic and Latin ones, are recorded,
the data about the lives of the translators are collected and
their style and language aptly characterized. Incidentally,
the book contains much information on the scientific He
brew terminology created by the mediaeval translators.
In view of its overwhelming profusion of details and
notes, the book obviously was not intended for continuous
reading; it is again a work of reference, to be consulted for
158 ESSAYS JJV JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
a particular problem which concerns the scholar at the
time. It is a reliable guide to all the mediaeval authors in
its fields of interest, almost never found wanting, a bureau
of information, a universal catalogue, an inexhaustible
mine of knowledge. The material gathered in this work
offers to generations of scholars an abundance of subjects
for original research in the sources. As in the case of many
of Steinschneider's writings, the reading of this book requires
hard work and strict concentration. But the interested
scholar finds in it rich compensation for his efforts. One
wonders how a single man could succeed in so gigantic an
undertaking. Yet how many other important books and
articles came from his pen while he was gathering the
material for this one!
Among the compact general remarks preceding the
book, we find many a characteristic and incisive observa
tion. "No Ghetto exists for the spirit," he remarks in
connection with the many Hebrew translations from the
Latin of the scholastics. "A great knight might boast that
he could neither read not write; among Jews an illiterate
was considered as belonging to the rabble." "Anything may
be said about the Jews that makes them appear con
temptible. To this day historians apply different measure
and weight when speaking of Jews." "I have undertaken
my researches for myself in the first place; there have always
been men who considered research an end in itself, as other
people do with other enjoyments." He disclaimed all
responsibility for eventual excerpts from and popularization
of ins work; what is offered to the "people" is often nothing
more than water poured over bare bones stripped of all
meat. "He who does not work himself can gain nothing
by mere reading (of my book), nor does he deserve it." "I
am writing about Jews, not for them, not pro domo ....
One cannot enlighten antisemites, least of all by history.
To emphasize the culture of the ancient Jews in order to
STEINSCHNEIDER " 159
require justice for those of the present would be treason
against inalienable human rights .... The history of the
daughter-religions is one of incessant murderous attacks
against their own mother; if ever one of them should suc
ceed, the evil-doers will perish with the deed. 33
"Parting from this book," he concludes, "which has
claimed the greater half of a long life, is like taking leave
from life itself; every end makes us realize how puny the
individual is as against the whole of mankind. This very
thought, however, stimulates us to explore the relationship
between the individual and the universe; it teaches us that
the finite is merged in the infinite, not destroyed." This
leave-taking from life was premature; another fourteen
years of incessant, fruitful work were still to follow.
The impression made by this masterpiece was such that
even the Prussian ministry felt compelled to recognize the
merits of the great scholar by conferring on him the
honorary title of "Professor." The diploma was handed to
him privately by Wilmans, the Generaldirektor of the Royal
Library, on February 2, 1894. Any other scholar of such
achievements would have received a full professorship at
one of the great universities decades ago, and would have
been elected member of the Royal Academy. But Stein-
schneider was a Jew and therefore was honored at the age
of seventy-seven with the empty title of professor !
The last chapter of the Hebrew Translations deals with the
translators from Hebrew into other languages and with the
interpreters who, through oral explanations in the vernac
ular, enabled Christian scholars, ignorant of Hebrew, to
prepare Latin translations of Arabic or Hebrew works.
Such collaboration was of frequent occurrence during the
Middle Ages. A decade later he rounded out his work on
the translators by his European Translations from the Arabic
up to the Middle of the Seventeenth Century. It appeared (1904-
1905) among the publications of the Vienna Academy
160 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
which shortly before had elected him to membership and
thus given him another medium of publication for his
tireless pen.
Of his tripartite work, the scheme of which had accom
panied him through almost the whole of his life, the first
part, the Arabic Literature of the Jews, was still unpublished.
When it finally appeared (in 1902), the scanty material
which he had thought ready for publication in 1845 had
grown to fill a volume of over four hundred pages. It deals,
in chronological and geographical order, with the Arabic
literary productions of the Jews of the East and West down
to writers of modern times and discusses the Samaritan-
Arabic works in an appendix. As in the Bodleian cata
logue, the paragraphs devoted to Saadia and Maimonides
are the longest. The life and works of every author are
exhaustively dealt with, as one might have expected, and
the extant manuscripts are fully recorded. The intro
duction contains some general remarks and points to some
of the considerations and conclusions for the history of
culture to be derived from the details with which the book
is concerned. Here again Steinschneider declares that he
does not offer a history of literature for the general reader
but a book of reference for the scholar.
For many years Steinschneider had lectured to his
students at the Veitel-Heine-Ephraim Institute on "An
Introduction to the Arabic Literature of the Jews." While
engaged in the preparation of his Arabic Literature of the
Jews, he decided to publish these lectures in the Jewish
Quarterly Review. They were distributed over five volumes
and were translated into English by his devoted secretary.
Miss Adeline Goldberg. The original lectures were pre*
ceded by an essay, written in English, on the Arabic names
of the Jews. The detailed list of these Arabic names fills
over two hundred of the three hundred and eighty-six
MORITZ STEINSCHNEIDER 161
pages of the volume of which twenty reprints appeared
with a title page a year before the Arabic "Literature
(1901).
Steinschneider's interest was not limited to the Arabic
writings of the Jews; it embraced all the different lan
guages in which the Jews had produced a literature of
their own.
In one of his earliest publications The Foreign Ele
ments in the Neo-Hebrew and their Utilization for Linguistics
(Prague, 1845), a lecture delivered at the first gathering of
orientalists at Dresden he dealt with these foreign ele
ments from the point of view of their interest for the phi
lology and the linguistics of the languages from which they
were derived. The importance of Jewish works in foreign
languages for the history of the culture of the Jews occupied
him during all his life and he often took occasion to discuss
this subject in his writings. He paid special attention to it
in his "General Introduction to the Jewish Literature of the
Middle Ages," where he discussed all of these languages
from Aramaic, Greek and Persian to those of Western
Europe. The latter especially interested him. At his insti
gation, his friend, M. Kayserling, published his Biblioteca
Espanola-Portugueza Judaica. He himself prepared a bibli
ographical list of the Judaeo-German publications up to
1740 on the basis of the manuscript catalogue of the
Oppenheim collection mentioned above (1848-1849; 378
numbers). Upon examining the books themselves in Ox
ford, he found that he had overestimated the reliability of
the catalogue which had served him as source, and he
corrected his list in the Bodleian catalogue. Character
istically, as sharply critical of his own works as of those of
others, he stated that his list was teeming with errors and
deficiencies. He therefore gave up the idea of correcting
and completing it, but he added a list of nearly eighty
162 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
Judaeo-Gennan manuscripts known to him (18641869).
The general remarks about the importance, origin and
growth of this literature, which he had contemplated, were
never written, though he discussed some phases of the
subject in his paper on the "Folk-Literature of the
Jews."
We are also indebted to him for a bibliography of the
Italian literature of the Jews. He published several more
detailed articles in Italian in the 1870s and treated the
subject exhaustively in German in a series of instalments in
three volumes of a German periodical (1898-1900). While
his discussion of Judaeo-German literature, as far as the
printed books are concerned, is a dry bibliographical list,
his "Italian Literature of the Jews" up to the end of the
seventeenth century is a valuable contribution to the history
and culture of the Italian Jews, containing much infor
mation culled from Jewish and non-Jewish sources alike.
For the eighteenth century, he limited his treatment to a
mere bibliographical list. Italian Jewish literature appealed
to Steinschneider because its writers were educated and
cultured persons and their language showed no influence
of the ghetto. The Italian Jews have shown, he states, that
Church and Inquisition can build ghettos and destroy and
mutilate books, but that they cannot shut off the spirit
by imprisoning it within walls.
A very useful record of the literature on the Hebrew
language up to 1850 was compiled as a preparation for a
projected new edition of Gesenius* History of the Hebrew
Language to which it was to serve as an independent appen
dix. The Bibliographical Handbook of the Theoretical and
Practical Literature on Hebrew Linguistics, preceded by a
lengthy introduction on the sources for the bibliography
and history of the Hebrew language, was dedicated to the
memory of the author's mother who had died in the begin-
STEINSCHNEIDER 163
ning of its publication year (1859). The book contained
some sharp attacks on two contemporary Jewish scholars
and involved Steinschneider in a bitter controversy with the
famous orientalist, Johannes Gildemeister, who wrote a
very unfair review of it. Many decades later, Stein
schneider published more than eighty pages of "Additions
and Corrections" (1896).
While these "Additions 55 were going through the press,
Steinschneider organized his accumulated notes on "Chris
tian Hebraists," a record of over four hundred scholars
from the Middle Ages to the end of the eighteenth century
who had devoted their attention to post-biblical Hebrew
literature. Spread over five years of a bibliographical
periodical (1896-1901), this list gives us information on all
contributions by Christians, mostly theologians, to the study
of the later Jewish literature^ a curious chapter in Jewish
bibliography.
Of far greater significance are Steinschneider's contri
butions to the investigation of the Jewish share in the fields
of mathematics and medicine. The fact that much of the
work by Jews is based on Arabic predecessors induced
Steinschneider to devote considerable attention to Arabic
works in these subjects. As a matter of fact, as far as medi
cine is concerned, Steinschneider's contribution to the
Arabic field is greater than to the Jewish. At the same time,
some of his studies on medicine among the Jews, especially
that dealing with the earliest European Jewish author of
the Middle Ages, Sabbatai Donnolo, are of fundamental
importance. Even the lengthy articles about Donnolo,
which extend to about two hundred and forty pages,
contain more about general history of medicine than about
its Jewish representatives. He dedicated this work
to his uncle, Dr. Gideon Brecher, on his seventieth
birthday.
164 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
A translation of Maimonides' famous Treatise on Poi
sons advice for first aid before a physician can be con
sulted is preceded by a bibliographical essay on the
"Toxological Writings of the Arabs." It is followed by
appendices on Indian and Persian sources used by the
Arabs and exceeds in size the annotated translation of
Maimonides.
Most of Steinschneider's contributions to the history of
medicine among the Jews consist of descriptions of medical
manuscripts. The only exception is that part of his Hebrew
Translations which deals with medicine. Here he discusses
not only the Arabic writings of the Jews, but, besides the
direct translations from Arabic and Latin, also a few
Hebrew medical compilations based on non-Jewish prede
cessors. As far as we know, he did not plan an all-em
bracing treatment of this subject, yet no one could have
handled it with equal mastery.
A list of "Jewish Physicians" over two thousand was
published (1914-1915), a few years after Steinschneider's
death, by A. Freimann in his bibliographical periodical.
The list records the period of every physician and the known
sources about his life and work. It is extremely useful for
reference in spite of its incompleteness other scholars
added nearly a thousand names in the following years.
Like all his publications of the kind, this one is a monument
to his untiring industry in the methodical collection of
information on all kinds of subjects over a period of six or
seven decades.
How deeply interested he became in Arabic medicine is
evident from his contributions to the terminology used by
the authors in their original works and in their Latin
translations, corrupted as they often were. His studies in
this particular subject, based on the examination of rare
books and manuscripts in Arabic and Latin, culminated in
his "Heilmittelnamen der Araber," over two thousand
STEINSCHNEIDER 165
pharmacological terms, which fill nearly a hundred and
fifty pages of a series of articles (1897-1899). Yet Stein-
schneider was a layman in this field.
In "Mathematics among the Jews/ 5 on the other hand,
we are indebted to him for an extensive treatment from the
early Middle Ages down to 1840. A series of articles was
begun in a mathematical journal in 1893 and was continued
in various periodicals for fourteen years, till the end of his
life. The concluding instalment was in press at the time
of his death. In these we have the record of a millennium
of Jewish studies in the various branches of mathematics,
in astronomy and astrology, in chronology and the compu
tation of the calendar, written in Hebrew, Arabic, Latin,
and modern languages, dealing to a large extent with
unpublished works. It is a bibliographical compilation,
but the historian of mathematics will find here rich material
and many a helpful hint.
Steinschneider's contributions to the study of Arabic
mathematics are even more extensive. Community of
interest had brought him into contact with the Roman
prince, Don Baldassarre Boncompagni, who had established
a printing press mainly devoted to works dealing with the
history and bibliography of mathematics and who pub
lished, for twenty years, a periodical devoted to his hobby.
Boncompagni provided his friend with tracings and copies
of portions of manuscripts in Rome and Paris which he
needed for his researches and encouraged him to pursue
his studies in this field. Steinschneider published a number
of lengthy papers in the periodical, several in the form of
"Letters to D. B. Boncompagni. 55 They amount to about
five hundred folio pages (1859-1884). His final contribu
tion, "Arabic Mathematicians and Astronomers" (1901-
1908), although not completed, fills over a hundred folio
pages. It was interrupted by his death, the last instalment
being published posthumously. He wrote besides numerous
166 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
studies in German periodicals devoted to mathematical
research.
In the last decade of his life Steinschneider began to
prepare for publication the lectures which he had delivered
for many years to his students at the Veitel-Heine-Eph-
raim Institute. *I have already mentioned his "Intro
duction to the Arabic Literature of the Jews" and his
"General Introduction to the Jewish Literature of the
Middle Ages" (1905), which Elbogen characterized, on
account of its methodological importance, as the scholarly
legacy of the author.
The publication of these lectures was inaugurated by a
volume which marked the first step in the cultivation
of a field never attempted by any predecessor. No one else
was so well prepared to deal with this subject. Stein
schneider expected the Lectures on the Lore of Hebrew Manu
scripts, their Collections and their Catalogues (1897), to be the
first and probably the last of his lectures to appear in print.
He decided to publish them more or less in their original
form, since, in view of his eighty years, it would have
involved too much work to recast them into a handbook.
They were to serve for others as an outline for a future
monograph. Here he dealt with a subject in which great
ignorance had masqueraded in the cloak of erudition for
centuries without a protest; catalogues teemed with amus
ing misunderstandings and misinterpretations. Nowhere
could one find any guidance for the proper description of
Hebrew manuscripts, in itself a very difficult subject. Now,
for the first time, the nestor of Jewish scholars, who had
examined more Hebrew manuscripts than any other con
temporary, gave the rich fruits of his experience in this
modest volume in which the thousands of details are so
well organized that it has become a most useful guide and
instructor for all those interested in the subject.
STEINSCHNEIDER 167
The last of his lectures to be published. The Historical
Literature of the Jews, Part I, "Bibliography of the Hebrew
Works/* also appeared as an independent volume (1905).
The plan for this book, as for many of his other works,
originated at the time when his Jewish Literature made him
survey all its branches. For sixty years he had paid attention
to the historical Jewish writings; since 1865 he had lectured
on the subject twelve times, mostly limiting himself to the
Middle Ages, only rarely and cursorily going down to the
eighteenth century. Steinschneider himself prepared this
book for the press down to the end of the Middle Ages;
he also separated the Hebrew sources from those in other
languages. Dr. A. Freimann completed the volume, al
though the author carefully revised the work of his collab
orator. The two thousand cards covering the non-Hebrew
sources were never published. For the mediaeval works, he
gives not a mere bibliography but a critical account of the
narrative sources and a discussion of their contents. The
book is dedicated to "the tried friend, Miss Adeline Gold*
berg," who for many years assisted him in his work, helped
with proofreading and index-making and in every way did
her best to lighten his tasks for the master whom she
revered like a father. It was the last book he published.
It is probable that he intended to make another one of
these lecture series available to the public. Israel Abra
hams recorded in his necrology that, a few weeks before
Steinschneider's death, the nonagenarian wrote to him
offering a series of articles which were to run in the Jewish
Quarterly Review during the next two years. Even at that
advanced age, he looked forward to years of further
scholarly activity.
It would be easy to continue this description of Stein-
Schneider's work almost indefinitely. I have passed over
the biographical articles which fill over six hundred pages.
168 ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
of the first (and only) volume of his Gesammelte Schriften; I
have not mentioned his Hebraeische Bibliographic, a bi
monthly edited by him for twenty-one years, in which he
reviewed most of the books sent to the editor and to which
he contributed some hundred and twenty articles of a
bibliographical nature, some sixty more extensive reviews
and over three hundred miscellaneous notes of different
size. I left out some series of articles dealing with lighter
subjects, like those on "Purina and Parody" (1881-1884;
1902-1903; over a hundred pages), "Chess among the
Jews" and many others. Suffice it to say that he contributed
to some eighty periodicals, encyclopedias and similar
collections and that his bibliography records some fourteen
hundred items. Joseph Jacobs once figured out that, if one
would put all the books and articles written by Stein-
schneider flat on top of one another, they would be taller
than the author himself. That was about twenty-five years
before Steinschneider's death, and the output of his later
years was very considerable. About four books and a
hundred and fifty articles were added to his bibliography
after his eightieth birthday. Thus it was possible to speak
in this essay of only a very small part of his work. Those
mentioned in the course of this paper would fill a bookshelf
of three and a half feet.
Besides his direct contributions to Jewish learning, Stein-
schneider indirectly furthered research by helping others
by his oral advice and his correspondence. Miss Goldberg
made a list of a thousand persons whose letters to him he
had preserved, and which are now in the Library of the
Jewish Theological Seminary. "His scientific correspond
ence took up a great deal of his time," Joseph Jacobs
records; "he could manage to get more canned learning on
a postal card than any man in Europe." Among his
correspondents we find relatives, friends of his youth, pupils,
MORITZ STEINSCHNEIDER 169
students in general and outstanding scholars who appealed
to the Berlin oracle when they were in need of some infor
mation on a point of mediaeval literature in any of the
spheres of which he was absolute master.
Most of his writings were purely technical and dry. He
avoided every superfluous word and I remember that,
when I was working for a short time at his Gesckichtsliteratur f
he asked me: "Why do you use two words when one would
serve the purpose?" On another occasion, he said that it
was his task to publish as much of his accumulated material
as possible, since others did not have access to all his sources.
Only in the introductions to some of his later books did he
permit himself some general remarks, which showed either
his appreciation of the broader problems involved in the
subjects with which his books dealt or his concern with the
questions of the day. As a rule, he would not permit such
matters to distract him from his concentrated work in
solving literary problems and making his materials avail
able to the small circle of scholars who shared his devotion
to true scholarship.
In his early years he was not averse to belletristic writing.
Under the influence of Ruckert's translations from the
Arabic, he tried his hand at rendering some of the lighter
kind of mediaeval Jewish literature into verse or rhymed
prose, and he dedicated a little volume of such translations,
Manna, to his fiancee. Later on he referred to this dedica
tion of 1847 as the official announcement of his engagement*
Even here he could not resist the temptation to add learned
notes and parallels at the end. He wrote some lighter
articles and verses for various periodicals and newspapers,
mainly in his early years, probably for financial reasons.
Thus we find the serious scholar as collaborator of the
Pesther Tageblatt, Freund's Bild und Leben and even Gerson's
Mode&itung. He also gave to a society of young merchants
170 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
a few lectures about culture (Bildung) and the influence of
trave! 3 on superstition and similar general subjects. Some
of these he published in his late years in a series of popular
lectures of which his friend, the eminent pathologist and
anthropologist. Professor Virchow, was one of the editors.
In earlier decades he had published many of his researches
in the history of medicine in the Arckiv edited by the same
scholar.
In the revealing fragments of a diary from his student
days, which he fortunately preserved, he relates that one
evening (in 1839), on coming home, he burned his belle-
tristic writings and thus broke down the bridge to jour
nalism and frivolous literature. Having atoned by this sacri
fice of his vanity for the youthful offence of wasting time,
he vowed that henceforth his pen would be dedicated
exclusively to serious pursuits and the search of truth.
Frivolity was certainly not one of his faults; on the contrary,
the search for truth and exact knowledge was the charac
teristic, life-long watchword. With inexorable sternness
towards himself and others he strove for objective re
search.
He never tired of fighting shallowness and superficiality,
sham and charlatanery among those working in the field
of Jewish scholarship, and he would never countenance the
suppression of facts for apologetic reasons. In the hundreds
of reviews he wrote, he was the conscience of Jewish scholar
ship, encouraging beginners where he observed serious
effort and condemning superficiality, dilettantism and
pseudo-learning. Fraud he would never forgive and he
therefore took every opportunity to censure an Eljakim
Carmoly, who claimed to have discovered in his manu
scripts new facts which actually were the products of
his imagination. Incidentally, Garmoly had repeatedly and
in an unpardonable manner attacked Zunz, the revered
master. Steinschneider missed no opportunity to chastise
STEINSCHNEIDBR 171
the fabrications and forgeries of this otherwise industrious
and learned man. He calls his French History of Jewish Physi
cians a "rich source of plagiarisms, embellishments, inven
tions and forgeries 55 which had transmitted grave errors
unto the third generation. On Cannoly's death, Stein-
schneider wrote a necrology which began: "On February
15th, the former Rabbi of Brussels, Eljakim Carmoly,
entered into the eternal 'Truth/ after he had denied and
maltreated it by all kinds of forgeries and impudent plagia
risms in numerous books and articles . . . ." He remarked
in one of his lectures that he had been charged with perse
cuting Carmoly beyond the grave. He denied this; he had
nothing personal against Carmoly; for his part Carmoly
could enjoy the best place in Can Eden\ but his forgeries
still mislead scholars and it is for this reason that he still
must protest and warn against him.
Two years before this he had written a necrology of the
bibliographer and philologian, Julius Fiirst, in a similar
ironic and bitter vein. Fiirst had attacked him very rudely
and undeservedly in his student days and had omitted his
name and writings from his Bibliotheca jfudaica. "Reverence
for the irreverent would be misunderstood," said Stein-
schneider, adding ironically "The departed has deserved
well for his introduction of literary industry into Jewish
circles . . . ." He devoted a long appendix to the intro
duction of his Bibliographical Handbook to a sharp polemic
the orientalist Gildemeister of Bonn. The prevailing polem
ical tone among Jewish scholars in the middle of the last
century was anything but dignified and Steinschneider's
sharp pen was ever ready to answer his opponents in kind.
Among his brief necrologies, however, the two on Carmoly
and Fiirst stand by themselves.
Among his pet aversions was also the historian of Juda
ism, Heinrich Gratz. He, too, had attacked Zunz and had
172 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
made ample use of Steinschneider's researches without
giving him credit, stating only occasionally, "the biblio
graphers say." Having no appreciation for the popular,
subjective way in which Gratz wrote his great work, Stein
schneider strongly objected to occasional careless slips.
The two scholars were too different in their whole make-up
and their conception of Judaism to understand and to do
justice to each other.
For many years Steinschneider and Neubauer, assistant
librarian of the Bodleian Library, were bitter enemies and
attacked each other in the sharpest terms. The fact that
Neubauer was charged (1868) with the cataloguing of the
Oxford manuscripts may have influenced Steinschneider's
judgment. When, however, Neubauer, on a mission from
the French Academy, visited the Berlin library in 1877 to
investigate the manuscripts by French authors, Professor
Stern 3 the head of the manuscript department, introduced
the two and they soon found that they had enough in
common to cooperate rather than to fight each other.
Neubauer told me that when they made peace, Stein
schneider then and there said to him that he had in press
an article against him which would have to appear un
changed; but he promised to add a note at the conclusion
announcing the end of their literary feud. We read, in fact,
at the end of a sharp five-page article, "On Criticism and
Method," a footnote saying: "A personal meeting which
recently took place makes me expect confidently that pos
sible future controversies between us will be confined to the
subject matter." The rather cynical Neubauer, who was
much less sensitive than Steinschneider, readily agreed and
the two great bibliographers became fast friends. Stein-
Schneider, in the introduction to his Hebrew Translations of
the Middle Ages, made this statement: "Dr. Adolf Neubauer
has contributed to my work more than all the others put
together" (by giving information on numerous manuscripts
STEINSCHNEIDER 173
in different libraries). Neubauer proudly drew my atten
tion to this passage when he told me the story of their
reconciliation.
Steinschneider had made very important discoveries
among the Judaeo-Arabic manuscripts which he examined
during his stay in Oxford in 1851. The most important of
these was the identification of an incomplete volume, lack
ing author's name or title, as the long lost Siddur of Saadia.
He had various important compositions of the manuscript
transcribed at his own expense, intending to have them
published with an adequate description of the hitherto
unknown manuscript. When he gave the copies to one of
the itinerant publishers who at that period used to print old
texts and peddle them around as a means of earning a
livelihood, he made the condition that the publication
should include his introduction. The publisher, however,
sent back Steinschneider's introduction and refrained from
mentioning his name altogether. The unpleasant affair led
to a break in the old friendship with David Cassel who had
served as intermediary between Steinschneider and the
publisher and had prepared the texts for publication. Stein
schneider, in a four page pamphlet, exposed the action of
the publisher and printed a letter of CassePs expressing
the hope that their long-standing friendship would not be
affected by this unpleasantness. Cassel, however, was mis
taken; thenceforth all connection between the two was
broken off, Cassel no longer read proof of the Bodleian
catalogue as he had done theretofore, and in a work of
CassePs on which he had collaborated and which had been
printed a decade earlier, Steinschneider wrote over the
personal dedication "To my dear friend M. St." the words
"only up to 1856P* (By a slip of the pen he actually
wrote 1865, but such slips were not unusual with Stein
schneider.)
174 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
In all his critical evaluations, Steinschneider aimed at
absolute objectivity, no matter who was involved. Even in
necrologies of friends the personal element was generally
suppressed and an effort made to give a fair appraisal of
the merits of the departed. In his reviews also, praise or
condemnation were pronounced regardless of personal rela
tions. Sometimes his blunt pronouncements wounded a
dear friend without his fully realizing it. For example, a
review of his I heard this from his own mouth made
an end of his forty years' friendship with Dr. Meyer Kayser-
ling. The latter had published a biography of the famous
rabbi and journalist, Ludwig Philippson, founder and
editor of the Allgemeine %eitung des Judentums. He did not
indicate that Philippson also happened to be his father-in-
law. We can easily understand that he overestimated the
importance of his hero. Now Steinschneider did not like
Philippson and was opposed on principle to his entire jour
nalistic activity. Some of his statements may be of interest:
"P. undoubtedly has the dubious merit of having reared
modern journalism, with its lights and shadows, on Jewish
soil, of having promoted an amalgamation of religion and
science, Judaism and politics, community and personalities,
of having given a forum to autodidactic presumption in
preference to expert learning. The "allgemeine" ^eitung, in
the course of half a century, has begotten nearly two hun
dred daughters in all countries, languages and jargons
which tried to draw adherents away from their own mother;
except for a few, they all fell into deserved oblivion .... It
is understood that the abuse of a medium does not make it
objectionable in itself. These remarks are in no way in
tended to find fault with P.'s honesty, the integrity of his
endeavours and their partial success .... I must ener
getically oppose the concluding remark that P. directly or
indirectly promoted, to any degree worth mentioning, 'the
thorough scientific study of Judaism* if scientific is under-
STEINSCHMEIDER 175
stood in the proper sense of the word. The best-known
representatives of learning in the Jewish field say nothing
of any promotion by him, nor does the author of the biog
raphy in his own valuable scholarly writings over a period
of forty years .... It would have been better not to refer
to P.'s attitude to Jewish learning and its representatives. 55
He concludes that "It is a thankless job to add the necessary
shadows to a dazzling picture, but if a respected scholar
appears somewhat blinded, it is the unavoidable duty of a
friend of long standing, who had no relationship to the
person discussed, to adhere to the well-known dictum,
Amicus Plato sed magis arnica veritas." He did not see that
here his own prejudice against journalism and populari
zation was as one-sided as Kayserling's admiration for
Philippson and he could not understand the reaction of
the latter to his review.
A long feud with another former friend, A. E. Harkavy,
was ended when the latter was invited to contribute to the
Jubilee Volume on Steinschneider's eightieth birthday and in
his paper expressed his admiration for the master and
assured him that, in all their bitter controversies, both
equally had been striving to find the truth.
Though Steinschneider carried on many literary con
troversies and did not easily forgive an opponent, there
was one man to whom he always looked up and whom he
considered beyond reproach Leopold Zunz. Zunz was
the fatherly friend whom he revered and worshipped even
though he occasionally, on the basis of new sources, had to
correct some of his statements. An attack on Zunz he re
sented, I think, even more than one against himself. In
preparing a bibliography of the Master of Masters: The
Writings of Dr. L. %unz, the Founder of the Science of Judaism,
Listed jor His Sixty- Third Birthday, he accompanied the entries
with a severe censure of his critics, especially Carmoly and
Philippson. In the dedication he states that Zunz's writings
176 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
and personal information had served him innumerable
times, directly and indirectly, as guides and signposts*
When he reprinted this bibliography for the eightieth birth
day, he omitted these "shards" (Scherben) so as not to
immortalize the names of these critics together with
Zunz.
Zunz had immediately recognized the unusual qualities
of the young student when he came to Berlin in 1839 and
had drawn him to his house. Most of the group of younger
students, all of whom looked up to Zunz as their idol, were
rather afraid of the great man, but Steinschneider soon
became his personal friend as well as the friend of his
gracious wife, Adelheid. He played piano for her and
acquainted her with Italian music and even gave her music
lessons. From her and her husband's letters to Stein
schneider after the latter had gone to Prague, we learn how
intimate their relations had been and how anxious both
were to see their younger friend back in Berlin. Zunz paid
him the great compliment of recommending him to his
publisher for preparing a new edition of Zunz's first impor
tant essay, Something About Rabbinic Literature^ in which he
had given an outline of the work to be done in this field.
But nothing came of this plan. Zunz criticized the short
comings of Steinschneider's early articles in kindly terms,
at the same time encouraging him by recognition and
friendly advice. Repeatedly he expressed the wish for the
younger man's return to Berlin to have his assistance in
his work.
About the same time Geiger wrote to Zunz that "Stein
schneider gives great promise for the future; his articles are
somewhat overloaded and drowned in the accumulation of
petty details; once he learns to organize his material, he
will achieve excellent work." That prophecy of 1841 cer
tainly came true. Though Steinschneider continued to
STEINSCHNEIDER 177
crowd his publications with a profusion of references and
details, they show a remarkable talent for organization.
In spite of fundamental differences in their attitude
towards Judaism, a warm friendship united Steinschneider
and Geiger which was later extended to Geiger's scholarly
son, Ludwig Geiger. Steinschneider furnished Geiger with
valuable material, drawn from manuscripts, for his work on
mediaeval scholars, and he is one of the few to whom Stein
schneider set up a literary monument by a more extended
article after his death.
Only two other friends were thus distinguished, Rapo-
port and Zedner. The personal relations to the former
during his stay in Prague had been temporary, but the
literary relationship between the two continued. The
article gives a warm appreciation of Rapoport's work and
an account of the difficulties of various kinds during the
years of his Prague rabbinate which prevented Rapoport
from fulfilling the great expectations for Jewish scholarship
which had been reposed in him. It shows a warm interest
and keen insight on the part of the younger friend. He
concludes with the statement: "It took the Prague rabbin
ate twenty-seven years to consume a rare genius; this the
history of Jewish literature will inscribe on his tomb."
The most personal of these necrologies is that of the
modest author of the incomparable Catalogue of the Hebrew
Books in the Library of the British Museum, Joseph Zedner. It
is the only biography of this rarely gifted but retiring and
little known scholar. Steinschneider had met him in the
house of the bookseller, A. Asher, where Zedner had acted
as tutor and literary adviser. Through Asher's recom
mendation, he had received an appointment at the British
Museum and there, after the acquisition of the printed
books of the Heimann J Michael library, he had built up
the wonderful Hebrew collection of that great institution.
Though personally not interested in bibliographical details,
178 ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
he had answered Steinschneider's numberless inquiries in
connection with his work on the Bodleian catalogue and
had supplied him with information which he could not
get from the staff of that library in spite of their good will.
The loving picture Steinschneider drew of the unusual
personality is a touching tribute to their warm friendship,
Steinschneider, in fact, had a rare talent for friendship.
Even if in the course of his busy life he could not keep up
a regular correspondence with all the friends of his youth,
a warm attachment remained and most of the friendships
formed during his student days accompanied him through
life. It was so with A. Benish, M. A. Levy, Albert Loewy
of London, the well-known Sanitatsrat, S. Neumann, and
many others. He even kept up friendly relations \vith
David CassePs older brother, Selig, in spite of his conversion
to Christianity and his becoming Paulus. In this case,
however, the old intimacy was no longer evident. The
story is told that when Cassel informed him that the spirit
had overpowered (ubermannf) him, Steinschneider retorted
with one of his quick puns which are untranslatable: Was,
ubermannty uberweibt hat er Dick.
In addition to numerous Jewish friends, Steinschneider,
through his work in cataloguing the treasures of various
libraries as well as his researches in old science and medi
aeval literature, was thrown into close contact with many
non-Jewish scholars, contacts which sometimes ripened in
to friendships. His intimate relations to Dr. Bandinel, the
chief librarian of the Bodleian, have already been discussed.
The famous orientalist and authority on comparative
religion, Professor Max Muller, offered him, on one of his
visits to Oxford, his hospitality until he could procure
adequate quarters. He maintained an intimate corre
spondence with the brilliant Arabist, William Wright. He
also became friendly with the scholarly Prussian ambas-
STEINSCHNEIDER 179
sador to England, von Bunsen, famous for his Egyptological
and biblical studies. In Leiden he became very intimate
with the orientalist Juynboll and friendly with Kuenen and
Dozy. His researches in Greek philosophy among the Arabs
and Jews brought him into contact with scholars like
Valentin Rose, to whose edition of a volume of the Aca
demic Edition of Aristotle's works he contributed the trans
lation of an Arabic text, even as he furnished a translation
from the Hebrew for Brans' edition of Alexander Aphro-
disias 5 commentary on De Anima. He corresponded on
texts of Greek philosophy with Diels, a third member of the
Berlin Academy. There were numerous scholars in other
fields who expressed their gratitude to the modest Jewish,
scholar for rich information. Through Prince Boncompagni
he became acquainted with various Italian and French
students of the history of mathematics.
No German university was liberal enough to honor itself
by offering the eminent scholar a chair for research in the
Jewish past. Any expectations he may have had in this
respect were to be disappointed. His indefatigable, fruitful
activity, however, found warm recognition in Jewish and
non-Jewish circles. The University of Leipzig conferred on
him the degree of Doctor of Philosophy without the usual
formality of requiring the submission of a thesis and an
oral examination (1851). His Jewish Literature evidently
was considered a sufficient specimen eruditionis. After the
appearance of his article on Juda Romano in an Italian
periodical (1870), the Roman Jewish community sent him
a formal vote of thanks with the request that he continue
his researches in the intellectual history of its past. In 1885
and 1886, he received the two prizes by the French Acad
emy for his works on the mediaeval translators. The Ruma
nian Societe Historique Juliu Barasch, founded in memory
of a friend of his student days with whom he had under-
180 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
taken an unpublished German translation of Saadia's philo
sophic work, made him an honorary member in 1887. In
the same year, Columbia College of New York, in connec
tion with its centennial anniversary, conferred on him the
honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. Hebrew Union College
gave him the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity on
his eightieth birthday (1896). He received the honorary
title of "Professor" from the Prussian ministry (1894) and
on August 3, 1903, the Vienna Kaiserliche Akademie der
Wissenschaften elected him to membership. He welcomed
this distinction because it gave him a new medium for his
publications; it would have been more appreciated at an
earlier period of his life. For his ninetieth birthday he
received the congratulatory letter of Harnack signed by
his colleagues on the staff of the Royal Library and the
Seniores scientiarum mathematicarum announced that they
Mauritio Steinschneider, Professor celeberrimo, doctissimo, illus-
trissimo . . . Nonaginta Annis Feliciter Glorioseque Peractis Grat-
ulantur. On the attached leaf the names of forty-four
mathematicians, beginning with Thales and Demokritos
and going down to the end of the nineteenth century, are
printed with their dates. The names of the Berlin admirers
who had the pages printed are not indicated, and Stein-
schneider made no annotations on the sheets.
For his eightieth birthday, at Neubauer's suggestion, two
of his younger pupils, George A. Kohut and Samuel
Poznanski, published a Festschrift which contains thirty
contributions in German, French, Italian and Hebrew.
One of the two non-Jewish contributors refers to his ac
quaintance with the celebrant since the days of his work
on the Bodleian catalogue at Oxford.
Being averse to any public demonstration, Steinschnei-
der avoided any celebration of these anniversaries by leav
ing the city for the days involved. "I vanished without
STEINSCHNEIDER 181
leaving a trace/* he told his admirer, Kohut, who inquired
where he had been on his eightieth birthday. It was an
expression of his deep inner modesty which was char
acteristic of the great scholar. "I desire no title and honors,
no large sphere of activity, nothing but bread and inner
independence. My vanity has become very indifferent to
wounds," he writes to his fiancee in 1 846 as a man of thirty,
and in the following year: "I do not care at all for the
so-called honor, e. g., to be a professor, which imposes
sacrifices and brings no returns. My position in life must
be as free as possible, but it must be integrated with life,
and that requires character, not a mere mask."
This great modesty and unpretentious simplicity, free of
any vanity, were characteristic of the great master during
his whole long life. With true heroism he resisted all
temptations, which were bound to come to a man of his
prominence and fame, to be diverted from his work by
activity in politics or society. He never permitted himself
to be used or abused for any purpose. During a scholarly
career which extended over three generations he never for
a moment lost sight of his aim to bring the intellectual
activity of his people during the Middle Ages to the ken
of modern scholarship and to claim for it its proper share
in the strivings for human progress. With all his power he
fought the old notion that Jewish literature was purely
theological, to be dealt with by theologians; theology was
merely one of its branches, but by no means the most
important one. He often emphasized that he was not a
theologian. It is noteworthy that, despite his objection to
Jewish national movements, he did not hesitate to state
that the Jews are a nation in the original meaning of the
term, united by an ideal fatherland, by a book which
dates back to the most ancient history and by a language
derived from it. They have no cause to deny their race
or to be ashamed of the close ideal bond. It was a great,
182 ESSATS Z7V JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
though somewhat hidden, love for his people which gave
him the impulse to devote himself so exclusively to the
exploration of all the branches of its literature. A child of
the period of rationalism and averse to any kind of mysti
cism, he still was the first to make invaluable contributions
to the literature of Cabala. Only against the legal literature
did he seem to feel a certain dislike, perhaps because he
had devoted so much time to its practical study in his youth.
Unequalled in erudition and creative power, he was a
supreme master of the whole mediaeval Jewish literature
and of general literature as far as it had any relation to
it. The most universal Jewish scholar of the last century,
unique and incomparable in the manysidedness of his
scientific researches and in the mastery of foreign languages,
his range was as vast as his learning was deep. Pure
intellectuality prevails in his writings and absolute veracity
and rare justice were the mottos of his work. He was
impartial in his judgment of men, of things and of subjects.
Most of his work was dry and was meant for a small
circle of serious and devoted scholars. His great book on
Hebrew Translations was published in only" three hundred
copies; that was characteristic of Steinschneider, But be
hind the amazingly industrious scholar was a man of rich
and deep sentiment, a man who was greatly interested in
the events of the day, in world politics and especially in
everything that affected the Jews. "How can your Jewish
bankers grant a credit to the Czar?" was the first question
he directed to the French bibliographer, Moise Schwab,
when he visited him. And then they turned to a discussion
of Zionism which both opposed. In this connection a
remark of his from an earlier period may be recorded: "For
a long time now there exists for me no Jewish question, but
only a human question. 55
It was indeed surprising when one came with a certain
awe and trepidation to the very simple and old-fashioned
STEINSCHNEIDER 183
study out of which for decades such streams of learned
publications had issued to see the same friendly reception
accorded by this giant of learning to insignificant young
students, to scholars of reputation or to old friends. He
knew how to put his visitors quickly at ease and to chat
with them amiably with his ever-ready wit. His everyday
conversation was stimulating and animated and shewed
how far his knowledge and his interests went beyond his
special sphere. This apparently crusty scholar, who guarded
every moment for his research, readily gave of his precious
time to his young pupils and took an abiding interest in
their scholarly as well as in their personal concerns. He
gave them fatherly advice based on the manifold experi
ences of a long life and the rare wisdom of his keen intellect*
Those of his pupils in whom he recognized true zeal and
promise for Jewish learning had free access to his home and
were treated as friends. Some of them he even helped out
of financial difficulties from his own moderate means. It
was for his kind and noble personality as much as for his
invaluable instruction that these younger men loved and
revered him, looked up to him like a father and cherished,
long after his death, the memory of the hours spent with
the great teacher. By his sharp polemics he made many
enemies, but the number of his friends and admirers was
infinitely larger. By word and example he taught his
students method and thoroughness. He made them realize
that before the time comes for comprehensive general
surveys, an infinite amount of detailed research will have
to be done. The bricks will have to be prepared before
the majestic structure of Jewish literature through the ages
can be successfully erected. It was the greatness of Stein-
Schneider that he devoted an unusually long life to estab
lishing a massive, sound foundation for such a future
building that he shirked no difficulty, no menial tasks
to gather the bricks. At the same time, he never lost sight
184 ESSATS JJV JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
of the ultimate structure for which they were intended.
His erudition, his acumen, his power of combination, which
he applied to every subject, created a long series of works
which will always serve as examples of scholarly objectivity,
integrity of research free of tendenciousness and a striving
for truth for truth's sake. This, too, is part of the rich
heritage which Steinschneider left to Jewish scholarship.
David Hoffmann
Judaism in Germany in the middle of
Ithe nineteenth century was in desperate straits. The
vigorous Reform movement was making constant
inroads into its ranks, and it lacked the leadership of men
possessing the ability and training to fight the tendencies
of the Reformers. It was only when two great leaders arose
who took up the cause of Orthodoxy and, equipped with all
the weapons of modern thought along with a mastery of the
ancient tradition, threw themselves into the controversy,
that a change came about. These two men, Samson Raph
ael Hirsch and Israel Hildesheimer, though quite dissimilar
in their attitude towards the questions of the day, were great
personalities. Both had been thoroughly steeped in Bible
and Talmud before acquiring the scientific method taught
to students at the universities. Both were endowed with keen
minds and unusual energy. Hirsch was of a philosophic
turn of mind; Hildesheimer was a man of action. Hirsch
was a man of unbending character who would never com
promise; Hildesheimer was a practical man who, though
never yielding on any question involving his principles,
would try to carry his point without acrimony. While
Hirsch attempted to give a philosophical basis to Ortho
doxy, Hildesheimer aimed to spread it by training teachers
who would propagate his principles in their congregations*
Consequently, while Hirsch's great works became the
gospel of the Jews of southern Germany who shared his
uncompromising attitude, the seminary founded by Hildes-
185
186 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
heimer exerted greater influence in strengthening Ortho
doxy, not only in all parts of the country, but also beyond
its borders.
Hildesheimer was a great talmudic authority, and in the
rabbinical school which he established in Eisenstadt, Hung
ary, he instructed his pupils in the talmudic sources. At
the same time, he trained his students in the elements of
general culture: in mathematics, the classical languages
and other subjects which in his opinion were indispensable
to a rabbi. In Hungary he found himself in an untenable
position, being attacked by both Reformers and Hasidim.
The latter, in that country, refused to realize that in modern
times it was necessary to combine a general education
with proficiency in the Talmud. When Hildesheimer
finally gave up the struggle and left Hungary to accept a
call to Berlin, many of the well-trained talmudic students
whom he had gathered around himself followed him to his
new sphere of activity and attended his shiurim in Berlin.
Hungary, however, had left its mark on Hildesheimer. For,
though a native of Halberstadt, Germany, he had been
deeply influenced by the pilpulistic method of interpreting
the Talmud which prevailed in Hungary, and he conse
quently modified the more direct approach which had been
prevalent in the last great rabbinic schools of Germany, in
Altona, Fuerth and elsewhere, and which he had acquired
in his youth.
In Berlin he became more convinced than ever of the
necessity of establishing a modern school for rabbis, where
the young men would find guidance in meeting the per
plexing problems raised by their studies at the universities,
and be trained in the various branches of Jewish learning
in conformity with their background of Western culture.
Looking about for a faculty for the newly-founded Rab
binical Seminary for Orthodox Judaism, Hildesheimer
DAVID HOFFMANN 187
immediately invited Dr. David Hoffmann, one of the most
gifted of his former students at the Eisenstadt^&jfe##, who
had joined him in Berlin.
The personal life of this great scholar was not eventful.
He was born on the first of Kislev, 5604 (November 24,
1843), in Verbo, Czechoslovakia, the son of R. Moshe
Juda, the dayyan of that city, who died when his son was
only five years old. Hoffmann revered his father as a saint
and maintained that he himself never attained his father's
pre-eminence as a talmudic scholar. The boy began to
study the Bible at the age of three, Rashi at four, and
Talmud at five. By his tenth year there was nothing more
he could learn in his home town. He once told me that,
at that age, he could deliver a talmudic discourse as well
as the local rabbi and did not see in what respect the latter
was superior to him. The Verbo community then sent the
prodigy to a neighboring yeshwa. When Hoffmann was
twelve, Rabbi Samuel Sommer accepted the rabbinate of
Verbo, and it was he whom Hoffmann considered his first
real teacher; he followed him when he left for Papa. Rabbi
Sommer must have realized his pupil's unusual gifts at
that early period, for he had him instructed in secular
subjects at his own expense.
When ill health compelled the rabbi to close bisyeshiva,
Hoffmann went to theyeshiva of the eminent Rabbi Moses
Schick at St. Georgen, which he attended for a year (about
1859). This great talmudic authority grew very fond of
his young pupil and took him into his home. The influence
he exerted on the grateful boy was evident to Hoffmann's
last days. He always followed his teacher's practices as he
had observed them in his daily life and frequently quoted
his opinions. In 1860 he went to Eisenstadt to enter the
rabbinical school which Dr. Hildesheimer had founded and
188 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
there he also continued his secular studies. Thence he
went to Pressburg, in 1863, and became the pupil of R.
Abraham Samuel Benjamin Schreiber, the Ketab Safer.
After graduating from the Evangelical Gymnasium of that
city, in 1865, Hoffmann went to the University of Vienna
and came in contact with the Jewish scholars of that city.
Once, at a lecture there, he pointed out that the Midrash
Tanhuma understood a Mishna in a sense opposed to the
explanation of the Babylonian Talmud. Because of this
remark, Isaac Hirsch Weiss asked him why he generally
objected to such independent interpretations. His answer
was that, though the Midrash had the right to disagree
with the Amoraim, this did not justify us in taking the
same liberty. Evidently the young man was already, at
that time, combining acute critical observations with
rugged adherence to the traditional point of view. Dr.
Solomon Schechter, however, told me that Hoffmann did
not leave in Vienna the reputation of assuming so unyield
ing an attitude.
In order to help support his mother, Hoffmann inter
rupted his studies at the university to accept a position as
teacher at the Lehrer-Praeparanden-Anstalt at Hochberg,
Bavaria. He was to spend the following fifty-five years or
so in Germany. The stay in Hochberg, near Wiirzburg,
brought him into contact with the famous rabbi of the
latter city, Rabbi Seligmann Bar Bamberger, and his circle.
Here he became acquainted with the German method of
studying the Talmud which was very different from that
current in Hungary. Their thoroughness and exactness in
evolving the plain meaning of the text, while giving
constant attention to the application of this meaning to the
practical legal decisions, deeply influenced him and he
gradually developed a way of study of his own by blending
the methods of his Hungarian teachers, including Dr.
Hildesheimer, and the Wiirzburg circle. In Wiirzburg,
DAVID HOFFMANN 189
too, he became a frequent visitor at the home of a well-
known businessman and Talmud scholar, R. Jona Rosen-
baum at Zell, a pupil of the famous R. Mendel Kargau of
Fiirth, whose work, Giddule Tahara, he had edited after
the author's death in 1845. Rosenbaum kept up his tal-
mudic studies and was an intimate friend of the Wurz-
burger Raw, as Bainberger was called. A few years later
Hoffman married his daughter, Zerline, who became the
devoted companion of his life and who was to survive
him many years. She made it her life's task to take care of
all practical problems and permit him to pursue undis
turbed his lifework as teacher and scholar.
About two years later, in 1869, when Dr. Hildesheimer
was called to Berlin, Hoffmann followed him to the
Prussian capital to continue his studies at the university
and attend the talmudic lectures of his great master. In
1871 he was offered a position as teacher at the school
founded by Rabbi S. R. Hirsch in Frankfort, and he settled
there for some time. In 1873, when Hildesheimer founded
his Seminary, Hoffmann was appointed immediately to
teach Talmud and Codes to the younger students, while the
rector himself instructed the upper class in these subjects.
Hoffmann was destined to teach the same subjects for the
next forty-eight years, in addition to lecturing on the
Pentateuch and giving a few other courses of which I
shall speak later.
The rest of his life, insofar as it was not touched by the
wars of 1866, 1870-71, 1914-19, and their repercussions,
was uneventful and devoted to the quiet pursuits of a
teacher and scholar. To fulfill a promise he had made to
Ms father-in-law, that never a day would pass without his
giving some time to the study of the Talmud, he accepted
in 1874 the position of lecturer at the Shass-Hevra. Here
his daily shiur was attended by a group of scholarly bafale
battim and a number of his students. He covered the
190 ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
Talmud several times. The last siyyum for the complete
Talmud was celebrated on Purim, 1908. It happened once
that, on closing his eyes during a lecture to consider a
difficult question raised by one of those present, he fell
asleep for a moment. Though nobody noticed this momen
tary lapse, he felt mortified and decided that he must take
a rest before the shiur^ which he read in the early afternoon.
He called this his "preparation" and used the expression
as an excuse when anybody wanted to see him at that time.
In the Shass-Hevra he read the text with Rashi's commen
tary and, where necessary, with Tosafot, laying emphasis
only on the peshat, the plain meaning. His instruction at
the Seminary was of a higher order. Here the Tosqfot were
studied very intensively and he drew on all the parallel
passages to clarify the subject to the last degree. He added
frequently remarks showing the students the true way to a
critical understanding of the Talmud and to research in
this field. He required careful preparation on the part of
the students and he would occasionally make sarcastic
remarks to those who came ill-prepared to an examination
(hazard). His manifold duties did not leave him much
time for preparation, but thanks to his wonderful memory
he had a complete grasp of every passage of the Talmud.
I remember that once, when he expected a learned visitor,
he did prepare a shiur (in Ketubot). In half an hour he
looked over some ten leaves in the bulky compilation of
R. Bezalel Ashkenazi, and I was struck by his mastery of
the text and his quick perception which enabled him to
follow at so rapid a pace all the different interpretations
collected in that book.
In teaching Codes he would go back to first sources; but
he realized that the time at the disposal of the Seminary
was not sufficient to cover the entire ground even for the
sections he taught. He therefore prepared an abstract of
all the codifiers, to the latest important collections of
DAVID HOFFMANN 191
responsa, and dictated this to the students, always adding
the injunction that they were never to make decisions on
the basis of this dictation without first looking up the
original sources. This compilation on various parts of the
Shulhan Aruk was arranged with the clarity, the excellent
organization of the material and the emphasis on the
essential so characteristic of Hoffmann. It was superior to
all modern works of the kind, so far as it went, and it is
unfortunate that this abstract has remained unpublished.
Hoffmann was a splendid teacher of Talmud and Codes,
but fell short as a lecturer on the Pentateuch and other
subjectSj since he read his manuscript too rapidly for his
students to follow his arguments and take notes. He always
prepared more material than he could possibly cover
during a term, and his hurried reading was an attempt to
give his students as much as was humanly possible.
In 1895, when his revered master, Dr. Hildesheimer,
had to give up his teaching owing to his advanced age,
Hoffmann took over the instruction of the upper class
and continued to instruct it up to June, 1921. When
Hildesheimer passed away, in 1899, the general wish was
for Hoffmann to succeed the great leader as the head of the
institution he had been serving so successfully for over a
quarter of a century. But Hoffmann was somewhat reluc
tant to take over this heavy burden and responsibility;
he favored the appointment of the prominent Rabbi of
Halberstadt, Dr. Siegmund Auerbach. His friends and
colleagues, however, prevailed upon him and he was
appointed acting rector in 1899, an appointment which
was made permanent in 1902. Under his stewardship the
institution continued to develop as a rallying point for
Orthodox Judaism in Germany.
The great merits of his scholarly and educational activ
ities were accorded public recognition on his seventy-fifth
birthday, in 1918, when the German government conferred
192 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
on him the title of Professor, a distinction granted to only
a handful of Jewish scholars.
It was characteristic of Germany that this great scholar
was twice refused naturalization when he applied for it:
in the Bismarkian era, some years after his appointment at
the Seminary, and again in 1900 after he had become
rector of the institution. Hoffmann bitterly resented this
refusal by the police commissioner of Berlin and was
indignant over the antisemitic attitude implied in this
action.
In his last year he suffered from increasing weakness;
the climbing of stairs became a great strain for him. To
spare him, a door was broken through from his apartment
to the adjoining lecture hall of the Seminary. During the
last months of his life the students came there for the daily
prayers to enable him to carry on his practice of attending
services every morning. I was privileged to participate in
these services on his last Yom Kippur and Succot and to
see his joy in having his grandson sitting before him.
When we were departing from Berlin, it was early in the
morning, and he happened to be in that synagogue; he
came out during the repetition of the Eighteen Benedic
tions, blessed his children and grandchildren, but would not
say a word to us, even at this last farewell, in order not to
interrupt the prayers. That was characteristic of his mi
nute observance of every law. Four weeks later he passed
away in his sleep, on the 19th of Heshvan November
20, 1921.
I was present, shortly before our departure, at what was
probably his last session with the Bet Din of the congre
gation Adass Yisroel on which he had served gratis, first
as a member and then as its head. A complicated question
was to be discussed and the other members had studied
the subject and set forth the results of their investigations.
But he was able to draw their attention to several important
DAVID HOFFMANN 193
sources that had escaped them, giving them the exact
references to the numbers of the responsa without consult
ing the volumes, since he found it hard to take the heavy
tomes from the shelves.
His mental vigor and his memory remained unimpaired
to the last day, and only an hour before his death he made
a note on the margin of the small octavo Talmud which he
had used exclusively for his studies for half a century. A
fellow student in the early days in Berlin had sold it to him
at a reasonable price. As he found out later, it had been
bought on credit from a bookseller at a higher price and
sold to him as a not very scrupulous means of obtaining
ready cash. Only on his seventieth birthday did he come
into the possession of the great Vilna Talmud edition which
the Shass-Hevra presented to him.
Deeply religious and meticulously observant of all Jewish
laws, he was very exacting towards himself and yet lenient
towards others. In his mode of life he has been justly
compared with the saintly, medieval German scholars, the
Haside Ashkenaz.
When Herzl started the Zionist movement, Hoffmann
felt very sympathetic towards it though his official position
did not permit him to express himself publicly. The Semi
nary was dependent on the support of the Orthodox, and
the teachers had to be very careful in all their utterances
not to give offense to some extreme fanatics of Frankfort
and other parts of southern Germany. But in a letter to
one of his sons who had written to him in an unfriendly
vein about the movement, he gave expression to his sym
pathy with Zionism which, so he wrote, meant giving up
the aping of foreign religious customs and the denial of
Judaism. Even if they were not observant now, he said,
the Zionists would vote with the conservatives against organ
and modern prayer books in the Synagogue. Though he
considered their ultimate aim a Utopia, he felt that they
194 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
would join the Orthodox in the work of Palestinian coloni
zation and of spreading the love of Judaism among wider
circles. We ought to leave the fight against Zionism, he
asserted, to those who remove references to Jerusalem from
the prayer book and who have their children baptized.
Hoffmann was compelled to shift for himself at a very
early age and this gave his mind a practical turn. He dis
played a lively interest in the political affairs of the day
and always read the financial page of the newspaper. He
was quite handy with tools and in his younger years he
would himself make necessary repairs in the house; he
rather enjoyed such diversions from his intellectual work.
His personal needs were more than modest; he liked to
speak of the time when the middle part of a herring was
a delectable dish to be indulged in only on the Sabbath.
Only twice in his life, as a young student, had he gone to
the theater; his only recreation was an occasional walk,
and he had to be coaxed to indulge even in this.
His industry was prodigious; otherwise he would never
have been able to accomplish so much literary work in
addition to his extensive teaching program. In the system
atic regularity of his life he turned every minute to good
account. Once he started on one of his books or papers,
he followed the principle nulla dies sine linea, not to let a
single day pass without devoting some time to his work.
Sometimes he would jump up from the table at mealtime,
while waiting for the next course, to snatch a few minutes
for writing. During such periods of literary preoccupation,
he did not permit visitors to encroach on his time beyond
what was absolutely necessary. He was, however, genuinely
fond of people, friendly to everybody and would occasion
ally entertain a large gathering with his ready wit and keen
sense of humor, relating good stories or singing Jewish
folksongs.
The long academic vacations did not exist for him. As
DAVID HOFFMANN 195
a rule he tore himself away from his studies for only a few
weeks and, as soon as he returned, took up his lectures at
the Shass-Hevra and announced a Ferien Schiur for those of
the Seminary students who had remained in Berlin.
Dr. Hoffmann loved his teaching, which he considered
his most important activity. He never considered the
number of lectures allotted to him too large. He was always
ready to add an extra lecture on some special subject as a
privatissimum, to be attended voluntarily by those of the
students who were interested. He started the two hours of
his Talmud Shiur in the early morning, in the summer at
half past seven, right after the services in the Seminary
synagogue and a frugal breakfast; then there followed an
hour of Codes and, twice or three times a week, as a fourth
hour, his lectures on the Pentateuch and other subjects.
He repeatedly told me in later years that he wished to be
pensioned so that he might have more time for his literary
work. But this did not mean that he wished to give up his
teaching; he merely wanted to be relieved of the adminis
trative work connected with the rectorate, a desire which
we can the better understand if we consider that he had to
attend to all official matters personally, without the help
of a secretary. In the last years his colleagues spared him
the greater part of such work.
Hoffmann had a beautiful voice and he often read the
prayers at the early Sabbath services in the Shass-Hevra,
where he always functioned as reader for the Musaf prayer
on the holidays. He was also an accomplished reader of the
Torah. He preached occasionally on the High Holidays in
the Shass-Hevra. Though he followed the old method of
maggidut, his sermons were modern and found hearty
appreciation.
His childlike simplicity struck everyone who came in
contact with him and won him every heart. This simplicity
also found expression in his lucid style and his clear presen-
196 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
tation of any subject he chose to write on, even of those
dealing with the most complicated problems. Although he
was conscious of the value of his contributions to Jewish
learning and of his mastery of the field of rabbinic literature,
modesty was his outstanding characteristic. He was entirely
free from any ambition, except that of serving the cause of
Judaism to the best of his abilities.
Hoffmann was of a very retiring nature, reluctant to give
expression to his innermost feelings. Many might have
thought him cold and lacking in personal sympathy, and
yet their worries might have caused him sleepless nights.
Students might consider him distant and not realize how
glad he was to discuss with them any scholarly or personal
problem if they but approached him. He might have
appeared severe because he was always engrossed in his
studies, while as a matter of fact he was of an unusually
mild disposition. He would never utter a harsh judgment
against anybody nor would he allow people to indulge in
gossip in his presence. I had the rare good fortune, as a
young student, to live for a year in his home and thus had
the opportunity to see his inherent kindness hidden behind
the external, serious appearance. I think that in the last
years of his life the relationship of his young students to
the revered and beloved master became more intimate.
The range of his knowledge was very wide and by no
means limited to the subjects of his teaching and to his main
scholarly activity. We are surprised, when looking through
his bibliography, to see what books he reviewed. Many of
them were far removed from his special field, and yet he
never limited himself to empty phrases but always had
something worthwhile to say about them.
He had a genius for mathematics even to the point of
once arriving at a new and interesting solution of a problem
which a professor at the University of Berlin had assigned
to his advanced students. His solution greatly impressed
DAVID HOFFMANN 197
the professor when it was shown him. In one of his note*
books, among his researches in tannaitic literature, I came
across thirty or forty pages of complicated mathematical
calculations dealing with the problem of squaring the circle.
He also enjoyed playing chess and liked watching the game,
but he could not refrain from interfering when he noticed
that a good move escaped one of the players.
His scholarly method was thoroughly scientific and mod
ern. He was a master of textual criticism, adhering rather
to the old critical canon that the difficult wording was more
likely to be correct than the easier reading which obviates
the difficulties. His researches have pointed new directions
and are indeed epoch-making for the critical study of
tannaitic literature. No scientific study of this literature is
possible without starting from the foundations which he
laid. His fine critical mind and his rare acumen were most
fruitful and led him to unexpected results which were
generally accepted. For Hoffmann was not only critical
towards his texts and his predecessors, but equally so
towards himself. He could never be dazzled by a clever
hypothesis. All his works show sound method and careful
attention to every point involved and they therefore contain
lasting contributions to Jewish learning. To these we shall
now turn.
One of the fields in which Dr. Hoffmann's works were
of outstanding significance was the study of the Pentateuch.
Scientific research on the book which is the foundation
stone of Judaism had been left entirely to the Protestant
theologians. They approached the Jewish Scriptures with
very little reverence; they subjected it to hypercritical
investigation, which cut the books into several, in their
opinion irreconcilable, sources; and they permitted their
prejudices and their acumen to play havoc with the faith
of many Jewish students. These could nowhere find an
198 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
answer to the dazzling hypotheses of higher criticism which
were paraded as the irrefutable results of modern science.
Dr. Solomon Schechter once pointed out that higher criti
cism was actually higher antisemitism. But this was not
clear to the young men three-quarters of a century ago.
An interpretation of the Pentateuch, in accordance with
modern scholarship, but with proper regard to Jewish
tradition, was a crying need which was widely felt but from
which the handful of Jewish scholars shied away. Hoff
mann was the first and most outstanding scholar who
successfully tried to fight the opponents with their own
weapons.
In appointing Dr. Hoffmann as teacher of the Pentateuch
at the Berlin Seminary, Dr. Hildesheimer felt that he was
fulfilling the obligation of the new institution to equip the
future rabbis with the ability to answer the constant attacks
on the authenticity of our holiest book. Even a man like
Samson Raphael Hirsch, who in his own writings avoided
this subject, asked Hoffmann during the first year of his
incumbency whether he paid attention to biblical criticism
in his lectures, and, glad to learn that this was the case,
strongly encouraged him to continue along these lines.
From the beginning of his activity as teacher at the Semi
nary, Hoffmann devoted special lectures to this field.
Characteristically, he would begin with the book of Leviti
cus, since olden times the first book of instruction for the
young. To this book he always paid special attention and
in nine of the first twenty-five years his Pentateuch lectures
were devoted to it. In the second year he took up Deuter
onomy with an evidently elaborate introduction. He paid
less attention to the other books. None of the books was
apparently interpreted completely.
The first report (1874) of the newly established institu
tion, was accompanied by a scientific study from his pen, a
thorough discussion of the meaning of ratfn mnDD in
DAVID HOFFMANN 199
connection with the 'Omer sacrifice and the Feast of Weeks.
In fifty-six quarto pages, he refuted the views of the ancient
Jewish sectarians and of some contemporary Christian
scholars and concluded with the evidence for the correctness
of the traditional explanation. In the following years he
published shorter biblical studies in Jewish periodicals,
some of them collected in Abhandlungen ilber die Pentateuch-
ischen Gesetze, I, 1878. Another long paper, "The Highest
Court in Jerusalem, 5 * published with the report of the
Seminary in 1878, dealt with both biblical and talmudic
problems. The author revised it seven years later for
inclusion in a second part of the Abhandlungen^ but this part
never appeared. A longer paper, on "The Age of the Day
of Atonement," took issue with various Jewish and non-
Jewish critics.
Of much greater importance were his articles against
the greatest of the Bible critics of the time, Julius Well-
hausen. In a series of articles, covering a hundred pages,
he took up various chapters of the famous Prolegomena of
that eminent theologian and showed up the weakness of
many of his arguments (1879-1880). A quarter of a cen
tury later (in 1904) Hoffmann once more went over this
ground and published his objections to Wellhausen's theo
ries in book form as The Principal Arguments against the
Graf-Wellhausen Hypothesis. It is perhaps the most important
criticism against the validity of Wellhausen's dating of the
various supposed components of the Pentateuch. Though
Hoffmann was absolutely convinced of the unity of the
Pentateuch, he approached the problem in these investi
gations from the critic's point of view and laid bare Well
hausen's inconsistencies and the deficiencies of his argu
ments. Hoffmann's aim in this work was entirely negative.
He did not try to replace the theory he refuted with a
positive one of his own, since he did not believe in the
modern approach to Pentateuchal criticism.
200 ESSATS /A* JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
In Wohlgemuth's Jeschurun he published, in 1914-1919,
a series of studies, "Problems of Pentateuchal Exegesis,"
on selected passages of Genesis and the first half of Exodus,
in which he was mainly concerned with the refutation of
the arguments against the unity of the Pentateuch.
The ten studies on Genesis are included, partly in shorter
form, in a more comprehensive treatment of the critical
problems of that book and appeared in the second instal
ment of his The Principal Arguments against the Gr of -Well-
hausen Hypothesis (1916). He promised to continue his
studies also on the other parts of the Pentateuch and the
book of Joshua. But, except for the above-mentioned six
articles on Exodus in Jeschurun, nothing of these was written.
Since these two parts of the book appeared originally as
appendices to the Annual Reports of the Seminary, they did
not receive much attention among non-Jewish Bible schol
ars. The author was only concerned with undoing the
harm and destroying the influence of the modern theories
on the Pentateuch in Jewish and, particularly, religious
Jewish circles. It is nevertheless very regrettable that
his strictures against Wellhausen did not find a wider
circulation. The clear arguments of the author and his
very acute observations still deserve the full attention of
those interested in the problems of the Bible. A translation
of the book into Hebrew, by Eliezer Barishansky (Jeru
salem, 1928), may have this desirable result.
The efforts to refute the Christian criticisms of the Penta
teuch occupy considerable space in Hoffmann's more com
prehensive works in this field, namely, his commentaries
on Leviticus and Deuteronomy. But here the chief aim is
a positive one, to give the reader a clear and constructive
interpretation of these books, with special emphasis on their
legal portions. The commentary on Leviticus (1905-1906)
devotes nearly 900 pages to the thorough interpretation of
this, from the legal point of view the most important, part
DAVID HOFFMANN 201
of the Pentateuch. The clear translation and explanation
of the various sections is always preceded by elaborate intro
ductions. In these, into which some of his earlier papers
are incorporated, the unity and authenticity of the biblical
passages is defended against the critical onslaughts of the
modern science of the Bible and, at the same time, the
reader is offered a lucid presentation of the structure and
contents of each part. Hoffmann made use of the wealth of
information contained in traditional literature which is
completely neglected by the non-Jewish commentators, who
deny the continuity of Judaism and consider the post-
exilic literature as a new creation of the rabbis of the
talmudic period. Hoffmann showed convincingly how
much this traditional literature contributes to the correct
understanding of many a biblical law, since many of these
traditions are as old as the biblical literature itself. Time
and again he refutes the results of Christian Bible scholar
ship and shows the errors of its theories.
Christian Bible scholars have produced frequently worth*
less hypotheses. They have locked for parallels in anthro
pology for the explanation of biblical laws which are
satisfactorily interpreted in the rabbinic sources to which
they had no access and which they, therefore, simply
declared worthless utterances of rabbinic sophistry an
easy method of avoiding difficult studies. Hoffmann's
commentary, on the other hand, is an important link in
the chain of Jewish interpretations of our Bible, prepared*
as it was, after consulting the ancient versions, the classical
works of the Middle Ages as well as the few modern efforts
to contribute to a proper understanding of Scriptures. It
is a monumental work, and an orientalist of the rank of
Joseph Halevy declared that, since Rashi, no such thorough
commentary on Leviticus has been produced by rabbinic
scholarship
In his general preliminary remarks, the author gives a
202 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
clear exposition of the orthodox Jewish attitude with which
he approaches his text. This attitude is one which he
shares with all his Jewish predecessors, who had no reason
or occasion to specify their views, since these were accepted
in their times by all their coreligionists. Objections have
been raised against this confession of faith which perhaps
contributed to prevent the spread of so learned and impor
tant a work in non-Jewish circles. But Hoffmann's sole aim
was to help his own people to gain a better understanding
of their Bible and he did not make any effort to reach
others.
I know of only one review of the book by a Protestant
Bible scholar. Professor B. Baentsch. He wrote in 1908, two
years after the publication of the second volume, but he
only knew of the first. A perusal of the eight columns of
this review is instructive. The reviewer, it begins, read
the preface and the preliminary remarks about the author's
dogmatic point of view and his belief in the Mosaic author
ship of the Pentateuch with a slight feeling of ghostly
horror. He excuses himself for proceeding in spite of that
because, he confesses, he had derived a certain amount of
new information from this commentary and he thinks it
would be quite useful if biblical scholarship would not pass
the book by, but be reminded by it of various shortcomings
of modern criticism and exegesis. He admits that the
author, in his discussion of modern criticism, proceeds with
acumen and skill and succeeds in invalidating some argu
ments and showing that some proposed textual emendations
are untenable. He praises various points of the work,
especially the application of the traditional halaka to the
interpretation of the laws, the conscientious weighing of all
aspects when different interpretations of a passage are
possible; the decision in such cases seems always well
founded. But he criticizes the efforts at harmonization of
the text as well as the symbolical interpretation of sacrifices,
DAVID HOFFMANN 203
of laws of purity and similar matters. This is actually the
weakest part of the book, and here the author follows
Samson Raphael Hirsch. Considering the gulf that divides
the reviewer from the author, the former's judgment is
distinctly favorable.
Before leaving the book, I want to mention one highly
characteristic remark of the author in the preface. As to
his interpretations of the difficult phenomena of the book,
he states that, if his apology appears weak and insufficient,
it is due to his own inadequacy; whenever, on the other
hand, his argument will be found strong and convincing,
it is only the truth of the revealed Torah which speaks for
itself and is victorious. In the former case, he hopes that
his commentary will stimulate others, gifted with richer
mental equipment, to obtain better results.
Hoffman had contemplated continuing his work soon
with the publication of a commentary on Deuteronomy.
But the first volume of this appeared seven years later, in
1913. In the meantime, he had edited the tannaitic inter
pretations on that book contained in an unpublished
Yemenite compilation, the Midrash ha-Gadol. This text
served to correct the Sifre> the tannaitic Midrash on Deu
teronomy, in numerous passages and made available a
great amount of other tannaitic material on the book which
had not been known theretofore. Since his own com
mentary laid such stress on the ancient traditional inter
pretation, he considered this an indispensable preliminary
task. The commentary itself has the same characteristics
as its predecessor. It covers the first twenty-one chapters.
World War I interrupted the work, which was resumed
after peace was re-established. Up to the last weeks of
Hoffmann's life, the author worked on its completion. At
the time of his death, one hundred and sixty pages were
printed and the manuscript of six more pages was ready.
It was his custom not to complete his works, but to prepare
204 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
enough of the manuscript for a signature, that is, sixteen
pages, and give it to the printer. The press of his friend,
Itzkowski, was only a few doors away from his home, and
its owner was a regular attendant of his Talmud lectures
in the Shass-Hevra. Thus, there was no difficulty in pub
lishing the fragment of the second volume, which reaches
to the end of chapter 31. The commentaries on the song
and the last blessing of Moses, which had never been treated
by Hoffmann in his lectures, were still to be written, and
the comprehensive introduction to Deuteronomy, which
had been composed in 1878, was to be completely recast
with due attention to the later literature. This second
half of the second volume, which was to be of the same
size as the first half, was missing. The completed part was
published shortly after Hoffmann's death, in 1922, by his
oldest son. Dr. Moses Hoffmann.
From the works on the Bible, we turn to those in the
other most important field cultivated by Dr. Hoffmann,
the talmudic literature.
Hoffmann started his literary activity with his Mar
Samuel^ Rector of the Jewish Academy of Nahardea in Babylonia,
an excellent and interestingly written biography of that
great Babylonian scholar of the third century. The modern
title of the position held by the Amor a is a curious concession
to the times. This treatise was submitted as a doctoral
thesis to the University of Tubingen, and on the basis of
it the author received his doctor's diploma on December 17,
1870. In the same and the following year, it was published
in a Jewish weekly and appeared in book form in 1873.
This contribution to the historical research of the tal
mudic period was one of the first to be written by a partisan
of Orthodoxy. Though generally acclaimed, it aroused an
tagonism in certain circles. These circles objected to any
human approach to the worthies of. the past, to any treat-
DAVID HOFFMANN 205
ment which tried to present them as human beings with
human emotions, whose actions and opinions were influ
enced by their character and their environment. These
objections found expression in an unpublished corre
spondence between a relative of Dr. Hoffmann's 3 Rabbi
Hile Wechsler, a saintly hyper-orthodox South-German
Talmudist, and Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch of Frankfort,
the great representative of uncompromising Orthodoxy.
While the latter approved Hoffmann's efforts to come to
grips with Protestant Bible criticism, he considered such
an historical approach to the heroes of the talmudic period
not only dangerous, but directly irreligious. When Wechs-
ler's private appeal to the author was of no avail, he sent
the book and his correspondence to the Frankfort champion
of Orthodoxy. The latter pronounced the book plainly
heretical and a denial of the fundamental truth of Judaism
as he understood it. He advised his correspondent to show
up the sentences which proved the charge without taking
the trouble to refute details. The author should be made
to realize his lack of maturity and to promise to abstain
from any publication for the next ten or, at least, five
years.
Hirsch objected to quotations from the works of Frankel,
Graetz, Rappoport and similar scholars, who, in his
opinion, contradicted the tenets of traditional Judaism.
By quoting them the author had attracted the attention of
his pupils to their works. He had warned Hildesheimer
repeatedly, Hirsch wrote, that if he would open a "critical"
Rabbinical Seminary, with immature teachers, he would
cause a greater HUM ha-Shem than Frankel had with the
Breslau Seminary. Hirsch had bitterly attacked Frankel
and Graetz some two decades earlier. Both correspondents
recognized the strict personal piety of Hoffmann, which,
however, could not excuse this work. The planned public
attack did not materialize, but the correspondence was
206 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
sent to Hoffmann whose copy of these letters is before me.
It must have been a great shock for him to read those
utterances of men whom he respected highly.
Hoffmann thereupon wrote to the Chief Rabbi of
England, Dr. Nathan Adler, whom he had met some time
before, and asked his opinion whether the book in any
way contradicted the principles of Orthodox Judaism and
whether the Orthodox point of view of the author were not
evident to the unbiased reader; also he hoped to hear that
the publication of such writings would not be injurious to
Orthodox Judaism even if they quote anti-Jewish works.
As was to be expected, he received a very encouraging
reply from Adler. His revered teacher. Dr. Hildesheimer,
also staunchly upheld his great pupil; on the margin of his
copy of Mar Samuel^ which I own, he added some sharp
remarks against Wechsler's criticism which he found to be
based on misunderstanding.
For some reason, the attacks on the book were not pub
lished, but it seemed to me interesting to refer to them
since they showed what difficulties the newly-established
Seminary had to contend with from the side of extreme
Orthodoxy which it was meant to serve. The attitude of
certain circles, especially in Frankfurt, caused the institu
tion difficulties for many years.
During the first decade of his activity at the Seminary,
Hoffmann occasionally gave public lectures on subjects
drawn from talmudic literature, such as his biographies of
Simon ben Shetah, Rabbi Joshua ben Hananya, the mem*
bers of the royal family of Adiabene in Babylonia who had
accepted Judaism, or the synagogues in antiquity. He also
wrote some reviews on books in his fields of interest.
In 1882 he gave, for the first time, his lecture on the
"Introduction to the Mishna" which I heard in 1897.
He mapped out an ambitious plan for this subject. Of the
DAVID HOFFMANN 207
two parts into which he divided it, the first dealt with the
origin of the Mishna of Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi; the second
was to treat of its later history.
He started with a general discussion of the Oral Law
and its relation to the Written Law. He then took up the
rabbinic enactments, the geserot and takkanot of the old
authorities and the minhagim, the two forms of oral tradi
tion, the Midrash deriving the laws from Scripture, and
the abstract Halaka. Finally he discussed the tannaim, the
teachers of the first two centuries, who transmitted the
Mishna to their successors. A discussion of the controversies
of the tannaim, which was to conclude this part, was never
written, nor was the second part, which was to deal with
the Mishna in Babylonia and Palestine, the treatment of
the Mishna in the two Talmudim by the amoraim, the
sages of the Talmud; the relationship of the Tosefta to the
Mishna was also to have been taken up in this connection.
The exegesis of the Mishna in post-talmudic times was
to have been followed by remarks on the criticism of the
Mishna. Though he repeated this lecture from time to
time and added references to more recent literature, he
never went any farther in working out his theme.
In 1881 he had started a series of critical studies on the
Mishna in the Magazin fur die Wissenschaft des Judentums.
Out of these grew his pioneering investigation on The
First Mishna and the Controversies of the Tannaim (1882).
Here, he demonstrated that some of the earliest parts of
the Mishna can be traced back to the beginnings of the
Common Era and showed that there are entire passages
in our Mishna which had been composed before the
destruction of the Temple and been incorporated with
slight modifications by the final redactor at the beginning
of the third century. He tested his results by an analysis
of the treatise Abot and then showed that, often, contro
versies of later authorities in the Mishna were based on
208 ESSATS ZY JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
different traditions of statements made by their prede
cessors.
It is out of place here to follow these acute investigations
in detail. Suffice it to state that the main results of Hoff
mann's research have been generally accepted and that
they represent very important progress beyond his prede
cessors in the critical examination of this fundamental
source of rabbinic literature.
The complicated problem of the relationship between
Mishna and Tosefta was never made the subject of a com
plete study -by Hoffmann; he did examine, in one of his
above-mentioned critical studies, a series of short Toseftas
quoted in the Babylonian Talmud with the formula Tna
or Tni aloh, which some early methodologists had declared
to be the real Tosefta. Hoffmann had copied all these,
about two hundred and fifty passages, and submitted them
to a searching investigation, throwing much new light on
the subject.
The last of his critical studies he devoted to the Tan-
naitic Midrashim. Here he gave, for the first time, a brief
exposition of the ideas which he fully elaborated four years
later, in 1887, in his famous Contributions to an Introduction
to the Halakic Midrashim. Since 1885 he frequently read
one of these Midrashim in class, though sometimes only
for one term and only for one or two hours a week. His
research in this field led to his most important and original
contribution to the critical investigation of talmudic
literature.
The phenomenon, that in these Midrashim we frequently
find teachings which are in disagreement with the accepted
legal decisions as incorporated in the Mishna and in other
sources, had been noticed before. Geiger, especially, had
based on it some of his theories about the existence of an
old halaka which had been overthrown by the later authori
ties. Hoffmann pointed out that these Midrashim came
DAVID HOFFMANN 209
from two contemporary schools which differed fundamen
tally in certain rules and methods of interpretation those
of R. Akiba and R. Ishmael, two of the great tannaim of
the first half of the second century. Both developed their
exegesis of the legal sections of the Pentateuch in inde
pendent Midrashim on Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and
Deuteronomy, which showed marked differences in their
interpretations and their derivation of the Oral from the
Written Law. They frequently disagreed not so much in
their results as in their derivations of the laws from the
biblical texts.
Once there existed two sets of Midrashim on the four
books, but, curiously, the Midrash of R. Ishmael has been
preserved for Exodus and Numbers, that of R. Akiba for
Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Hoffmann proved the exist
ence of the lost parts of both sets and pointed to some
remnants of these which are to be found in talmudic liter
ature and were still known to mediaeval scholars. Some
parts of R. IshmaePs Midrashim were inserted in those of
R. Akiba's school.
It is impossible in this essay to give a fuller account of
the great discoveries incorporated in the ninety-two pages
of this work which is full of information compressed into
the smallest possible space. David Kaufmann said of this
book that Hoffmann often hid his most significant discov
eries in his footnotes.
His most important result, that there once existed two
independent sets of Midrashim to the four later books of
the Pentateuch, was to find a most unexpected verification.
A year after the publication of the work, Israel Lewy, that
great critic of talmudic literature whose treatise on the
Mishna of Abba Saul had been Hoffmann's only prede
cessor in a searching investigation of the Mishna, discovered
large extracts from the Mekllta of R. Simon (a Midrash on
Exodus from the Akiba school) in the Midrash ha-Gadol
210 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
on Exodus, a hitherto unknown midrashic compilation
irom Yemen. Hoffmann himself found, in another volume
of the same work, remnants of the Sifre utta, of the Akiba
Midrash on Numbers and of the Midrash of R. Ishmael on
Deuteronomy. Subsequently, Schechter discovered a few
fragments of the Mekilta of R. Simon, the Sifre %uta, and the
Mekilta of R. Ishmael on Deuteronomy among the fragments
of the Cairo Geniza, and Hoffmann published the Mekilta of
R. Simon in a rabbinical monthly in 1901-1903 and later,
with use of Geniza fragments put at his disposal by Schech
ter, as a volume in 1905. In 1908-9, he edited the tannaitic
Midrash on Deuteronomy as it is found in the Midrash
ha-Gadol, a combination of our Sifre with the lost Mekilta
of R. Ishmael, again he could use for the latter some frag
ments of the original turned over to him by Schechter. He
also had copied the remnants of Sifre %utta from the Yemen
ite compilation; but since one of his pupils started with an
edition of these fragments, he desisted from editing it. It
was later edited by Horowitz. The discovery of the Mekilta
cfR. Ishmael on Deuteronomy was announced by Hoffmann
In 1889; he published some specimens with an introduction
in the following year and in 1897, and he supplemented
the statements of his Hebrew introductions with special
papers, written after his edition of the two texts, in which
he modified his results in some details. His general con
clusions had been fully verified by the new discoveries.
All the researches of Hoffmann in the tannaitic literature
showed a combination of great learning, remarkable
acumen and sound modern scientific method together
with an untiring industry. At the outset, he had collected
all the quotations from the works of R. Akiba and R.
Ishmael in talmudic and midrashic literature, whether
transmitted with the name of the authorities or anony
mously, copying them in full so as to have the basic material
at hand for his critical examination. His work is a remark-
DAVID HOFFMANN 211
able example of unbiased critical examination and reveals
how much our understanding of the whole talmudic and
midrashic literature stands to gain from the application of
similar methods. In detail his work has been carried
farther by later scholars, but no literary investigation of our
tannaitic works is possible without due attention to his
pioneering researches.
At the request of the Mekitze Nirdamim Society, Hoff
mann undertook an edition of the whole of the Midrash
ha-Gadol on Exodus, a large part of which he had excerpted
for his Mekilta of Rabbi Simon. About half of the book was
published, the first instalment in 1913; the second, though
printed in 1915, was issued only in 1921, after the end of the
world war. But then, at the age of 78, he was not in a
position to continue his work. It will have to be completed
by other hands. In his notes, he showed that he was
familiar with the midrashic literature as well as with the
talmudic, and though a specialist like Dr. Ginzberg was
able to trace a few of the sources which had escaped him,
Hoffmann's edition, based on four manuscripts, remains an
excellent piece of work.
Speaking of his contribution to these studies, we must
not pass over his translation of parts of the Mishna. His
translation of Nezikin was published in 1893-98, and seven
parts of his Taharot appeared in 1910-16. These were
followed by another part published posthumously in 1922.
Only two complete treatises and the beginning of the third
were prepared by him; the rest of the volume was completed
by two of his pupils. His translation was strictly literal,
though occasionally a few words were added in brackets to
make the sense clearer.
The real value of the work is the excellent commentary
which elucidates the text in masterly fashion, interpreting
the etymology of the various terms and their sense in their
212 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
context, pointing to the biblical basis of the contradictory"
opinions of the tannaim and adding everything the reader
may require for a proper understanding of the text. After
the volume on Nezikin was finished, he wrote a short
introduction to all its treatises. For the much more difficult
order of Taharot, he added preliminary remarks to every
treatise, summing up the complicated subject matter in
masterly fashion and enabling the student to find his way
in a field so foreign to most modern scholars. His commen
tary is filled with important information gathered from the
work of all his predecessors with critical appraisal and cast
in the shortest possible form. The work is of equal value
to the scholar and to the lay reader who ventures into the
study of the Mishna, which at that time was still indulged
in by many Male battim as a religious duty.
In his commentary to the Mishna, as in various other
studies and in reviews, Hoffmann made valuable contri
butions to talmudic lexicography, for which his knowledge
of the classical languages, as well as of Semitics, served him
in good stead. He used the Samaritan Targum, the Peshitto$
and the Arabic dictionary to solve difficult lexicographical
problems. He read in these occasionally to find parallels
and explanations for passages of rabbinic literature. His
interpretations of difficult words are often unexpected and
revealing. To give one example: A passage of the Sifre
enumerates the various good qualities for which a man
might be appointed judge; two of these seem surprising:
This man lent me money; this man is a relative of mine.
Hoffmann found a corrupt foreign word in the Midrash
ha-Gadol; and as a result he emended Helleniston (a student
of Greek) in place of hilvani mamon (he lent me money) and
suggested the translation "poet" and "good preacher," for
kero bi> in place of "my relative/' An index at the end of the
volumes of his Mishna commentary that for Nezikin
was the first publication of mine lists these linguistic
DAVID HOFFMANN 213
remarks. A collection of all of them would form a useful
contribution to neo-Hebrew lexicography.
Similarly, his occasional critical remarks on passages of
the tannaitic and talmudic literature are of the highest
value; but they are mostly spread over the pages of various
periodicals and footnotes to his books and articles. They
all give further evidence of his immense learning, his sure
method and his great acumen. But it is not possible to say
more about these subjects here.
Through the influence of one of his colleagues, Dr.
Hirsch Hildesheimer, the gifted son of the founder of the
Seminary, Hoffmann was prevailed upon to use his vast
stores of knowledge for the defense of his people against
the antisemitic attacks which, in the 1880s, took a new and
vicious turn. Hildesheimer, the editor of one of the German
Jewish weeklies, the Judische Presse, played a very prominent
part in the apologetic activity during that period.
In 1883, there appeared the Judenspiegel by Dr. Justus, a
pseudonym for the convert, Aaron Briman, who had been
a Talmudist of some standing. He had started his literary
career with a Hebrew work on a talmudic subject and
subsequently had become converted, first to Protestantism
and later to Catholicism. This unprincipled fellow, with
a prison record, had forged quotations from Talmud and
Shulhan Aruk in order to place the Jews in a very unfavorable
light. A German daily had printed extracts from the
Judenspiegel , and its editor was brought to court on the
charge of inciting classes of the population against each
other and imperilling public peace. An instructor of
the Monster Academy, Dr. Ecker, asked by the court for
an expert opinion, published The Judenspiegel in the Light
of Truth, a pamphlet which gave scholarly sanction to the
lying attacks of "Justus."
In the following year, another antisemitic pamphlet was
214 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
brought to court at Bonn, and the famous orientalist of the
university of that city. Dr. Johannes Gildemeister, was
called as an expert; his Gutachten also contained bitter
attacks on the Shulhan Aruk. Against these various publica
tions, Hoffmann wrote a series of twenty articles in the
Judische Presse in 1884 which appeared in book form in
1885 and, in a much enlarged second edition, in 1894.
The Shulhan Aruk and the Rabbis about the Relations of the Jews
to the non-Jews was intended, in the first place, for those
Jews whom these pamphlets might have confused in their
attitude towards the Jewish codes which they knew only
through these attacks; it was intended, in the second place,
for Christian theologians and orientalists whom it would
enable to check the references and form a fair judgment
of the works containing the condemned opinions. The
aim was accomplished and the book played an important
part in the defense against antisemitic attacks in the fol
lowing years.
One of the outstanding theologians, the Leiden professor,
A. Kuenen, with whom Hoffmann had had scientific dis
cussions on other topics, wrote to him that the book had
entirely convinced him of the truth of its main thesis and
given him valuable information on many details. Every
page, he said, gives evidence of the admirable erudition
and acumen which the author applied with happy results.
Only a man who had devoted his whole life to the study of
the extensive rabbinic literature was able to discover the
errors which, in special cases, might become a danger in
practical life. He referred to Hoffmann's statement that
divine laws cannot be cast aside by the faithful, but have
to be interpreted to make them applicable; he liked the
clear way in which the author had shown how such inter
pretive activity had been successfully carried on.
Hoffmann exposed a series of falsifications in Justus's
Judenspiegel and compiled a genuine "mirror of Judaism/'
DAVID HOFFMANN 215
in 111 paragraphs, to show the real attitude of the Jewish
authorities towards the relationship of the Jews to their
Christian neighbors. He laid as much emphasis on this
positive side as on the criticism of the errors of his oppon
ents. One of the main points of contention was the claim
that the term Akum y an abbreviation for "those who wor
ship the stars and the zodiac/* always refers to Chris
tians, since, in one instance^ an "akum with a cross"
occurs.
Against this charge, Hoffmann showed that the term
Akum was created by Christian censorship and introduced,
in the sixteenth century, by a convert who compiled a
Canon Purificationis for Hebrew books. It is never found in
the earliest editions of the Shulhan Aruk published during
its author's lifetime, and thus the "akurn with the
cross 35 is an evidence of the ignorance and thoughtless
ness of Christian censors, not of the intolerance of the
Jews.
At the age of 70, Hoffmann was called upon to write
an opinion for the court concerning the blasphemies in a
bitter attack against the God of the Jews by another in
famous antisemite, Theodor Fritzsche. For several months,
he worked day and night, often till three in the morning^
on his very elaborate expert opinion of which only a few
chapters have been published. The Leipzig court, having
received five such opinions from Jewish and Christian
scholars which partly contradicted one another, turned
them over to Professor Rudolf Kittel, who was to render
a final recommendation to the court. Kittel did not have
the unbiased attitude of a Kuenen and, by an artificial
construction, differentiated between the God of the Penta
teuch and that worshipped by Jews and Christians at
present. In additional notes to some of the published parts
of Ms own opinion, Hoffmann called attention to the
prejudiced and one-sided interpretations which had caused
216 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
Kittel's criticism of his statements. Written on the eve of
World War I, this case was a prelude to the "new" Ger
many that was to arise two decades later,
Hoffmann's activities in fighting antisemitism were of
great practical value and made the name of the retiring
scholar known among wider circles; nevertheless, they did
not play a large part in his life. The same applies to his
polemics against Reform. Reviewing a voluminous work,
The Dietary Laws, by Rabbi A. Wiener, Hoffmann wrote
a series of twelve articles in the Judische Presse in 1895 and
republished them fifteen years later in revised form in a
jubilee volume for an Orthodox rabbi, since the subject had
retained its relevancy. Wiener had absolutely denied the
validity of the Oral Law and Hoffmann took the oppor
tunity to formulate the arguments for the authority and
authenticity of the Torah ske-be'al Pe. He traced the de
scent of the theories of the modern'Reform rabbi to those
of the ancient sect of the Sadducees and later the Karaites
and describes it as a neo-Sadducean attitude. He was
mainly concerned with the fundamental principles involved
and devoted little space to errors in detail. This paper is
perhaps the best formulation and defense of the traditional
point of view in respect to the Oral Law.
Another controversy in which Hoffmann took part con
cerned a new Reform prayer book by the Oberrat der
Israelitm of Baden, the official representative body of the
Jews of that duchy. This prayer book had caused an
uproar among the traditional Jews of Baden, and their
indignation decided the Oberrat to publish a lengthy memo
rial in defense of the changes made in the ancient Jewish
prayer book. The defense was prepared by one of its
members, Dr. Steckelmacher.
At the request of the Society for the Preservation of Tra
ditional Judaism in Baden, Hoffmann wrote an "Epistle"
DAVID HOFFMANN 217
addressed to this Society, to enlighten them about the
reform of the siddur. After some general remarks, he turned
to the important points of dogma with which the new-
edition had tampered: the omission of the laws of sacrifice,
the dogma of resurrection, and the messianic hopes and the
promise of the restoration of Israel.
The tone of these controversial treatises which deal with
the fundamental attitude towards the great principles of
traditional Judaism, so close to the writer's heart, is, as
can be readily understood, quite sharp though always
dignified. But the arguments are clearly formulated so as
to strengthen the adherents of Jewish tradition in their
views. They are important contributions to the contro
versies between Reform and Orthodoxy and naturally
give evidence of the great learning and the mature thought
of Orthodoxy's outstanding leader.
Hoffmann considered the subjects important enough"to
interrupt his scholarly work for their sake in order to raise
Ms voice against those who endeavored to destroy the
principles which he had spent his whole life upholding and
instilling into the minds of his pupils. His works in this
field of Jewish polemics show the scholar in his relation to
the religious life of his time; he felt he had to leave his
ivory tower to strengthen the adherents of the Torah
against those whom he considered its detractors.
Actually, Hoffmann's official duties did not permit ham
to turn away from the problems of the present. As teacher
of Codes at the Seminary and head of the Bet Din of the
Orthodox community of Berlin, the Adass Yisroel, he had
to render religious decisions continually. Besides, the
large number of his former students, as well as many
scholars in Germany and even in Russia, frequently turned
to him, especially in his later years, as the greatest living
talmudic authority in Germany. Some of the inquiries of
218 ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
former pupils were very simple and required only brief
answers not involving serious study. When, however,
complex questions were involved, he would sometimes
spend every free minute for weeks looking up all the
authorities and studying the matter from the first sources
to the latest responsa. In 1892 his oldest son gave him a
large folio ledger to preserve such responsa and other
results of his research in a more permanent form. He
filled four such large volumes one of which was unfor
tunately stolen after his death with answers to legal
questions and halakic derashot which he delivered twice a
year in the synagogue in place of his revered master,
Dr. Hildesheimer, and at the opening of every term in the
Seminary. He also entered therein critical discussions of
talmudic passages and similar matters. He himself did not
intend to publish them; but, in his introduction to this
collection, he expressed the wish that his son, who had
given the impetus for this collection of his hiddushim and
responsa, would organize and publish the material after
his death. He gave the collection the title Melamed le-Hoil
and wrote a very characteristic preface. He pointed out
that the old method of acute discussion of talmudic prob
lems to stimulate the student had its full justification as
much as the modern method of critical science. Only very
few of those who had abandoned the old-fashioned study
of the Talmud and restricted themselves to mere criticism
had been successful in their endeavors.
He himself, he wrote, had done much work in critical
study of the literary problems of talmudic literature, had
published an interpretation of a seder of the Mishna and
had tried to interpret the Torah scientifically, in the spirit
of our tradition; but at the same time, he had always
cultivated the love of his youth, the method of his revered
teachers, the talmudic pilpuL In his discussions of the
topics, however, he often combined the older method with
DAVID HOFFMANN 219
critical remarks on the subject. Even if it was customary
in pilpul to ride roughshod over the laws of logic, there was
no harm in that, since there was now greater need than
ever to stimulate the students to incisive thinking. This
was the more desirable since the study of the Talmud was
so neglected, especially in Germany, and the scholarly
young Talmudists could find rabbinical positions only in
small communities, while the important and large con
gregations merely looked for a talented speaker, even if
he be utterly ignorant.
Hoffmann would enter into his notebook critical remarks,
legal responsa and pilpul, as each came to hand. He would
also copy in it responsa of scholars of the previous genera
tion which he had in his possession. (He entered especially
a number of responsa of R. Mendel Kargau, the teacher
of his father-in-law, which had come into his hands after
the latter's death.) He expressed the hope, again in the
introduction mentioned above, that his children and
descendants would study these notebooks.
He concludes this statement with a very striking, almost
prophetic observation. Most of his other publications were
written in German; who could tell whether they would
not perish and be forgotten shortly; a Hebrew book, how
ever, would remain and preserve his name for the future.
He prays that he be granted life and strength to translate
his other works into Hebrew. That would give him the
greatest satisfaction. This remarkable statement may have
been written in 1892, when its author was forty-eight years
old. His son, Moses, began carrying out his wish and in
1926, 1927 and 1932 published a selection of his responsa,
including some by Kargau and others, arranged in the
order of the Skulhan Aruk. The third volume also contains
an appendix of scientific notes and remarks on the
Talmud and its commentators, clothed equally in the
form of responsa, following classical precedent in this
220 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
respect. But the bulk of this work still remains unpub
lished.
Hoffmann's responsa deal frequently with problems
caused by the modern conditions of life and social changes.
They are based on his unusual mastery of the first sources
and the opinions of the early authorities, but they are
replete with references to the great Talmudists of his own
century. His decisions are always well founded and pay
proper regard to the spirit of the time and the special
situations, but they naturally do so entirely in the tradi
tional spirit. Especially in the third volume, dealing with
questions on marriage law, one meets occasional references
to the confusion brought into Jewish family life by the
Reformers.
It would be out of place here to go into further details,
but it may not be without interest to refer to one responsum
published by the author himself in German. The question
had arisen whether women were to be permitted to par
ticipate in elections in the Jewish communities. Hoffmann
decided that they may be given the active right to vote,
but should be denied the passive right of being elected to
the boards of the community. He defended this decision
against the objections of a Dutch rabbi who would not
permit them to participate in any way, even in an
election.
I have endeavored to sketch in broad outline the con
tributions of Dr. Hoffmann to various fields of Jewish
learning. It is impossible to exhaust the subject within
the limits of an essay. A glance through the bibliography
of his writings included hi the Jubilee Volume published for
his seventieth birthday in 1913 shows a considerable num
ber of articles and reviews dealing with subjects which
seem remote from the main fields of his studies. Looking
DAVID HOFFMANN 221
through the bibliography, we realize the manysided-
ness of the eminent Talmudist who actually was at home
in almost every branch of Jewish literature. Incidentally,
it may be observed that a few of his reviews were
signed I. T. Ish Tikva, the_ Hebrew translation of his
name.
In spite of his numerous duties, Hoffmann was the
editor of learned periodicals. In 1876-1893 he published,
together with his friend and colleague, Dr. Berliner, the
Magazinfiir die Wissenschaft des Judentums and in 1884-1895
the Israelitische Monatsschrift, a scholarly monthly supple
ment to the weekly Judische Presse. In both he wrote
numerous original contributions and reviews. In the
Magazin he occasionally added comments of his own to
papers of his collaborators, and I know of one instance in
which the contributor resented this to such an extent that
he did not continue his article. On the other hand, the
enthusiasm for Halevy's Dorot Harishonim induced a later
editor of the Israelitische Monattsschrift to add to the first
Instalment of Hoffmann's review of that work, the heading
"A Masterpiece"; this heading, which he considered an
exaggeration, did not appear again in the sequeL
To sum up the picture of the life and work of Professor
David Hoffmann, I may state that his was a rarely har
monious personality. His whole life was a complete unit,
free of dissonance. In spite of early privations and ines
capable blows of fate, his was a distinctly happy life, A
continuous rise in accomplishment found its end in a peace
ful death, a Mitat Neshika, as our sages call it. His deep-
rooted piety guided him through the severest trials and
he always remained true to himself. His modem method
of scientific thinking and research, and his thorough
acquaintance with the literature of Bible criticism never
222 ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
interfered with his faith. There was no division between
different departments of his mind and soul as we sometimes
observe in our days. The old and the new were beautifully
blended in him. David Hoffmann may serve as an example
of unassuming piety and wholehearted devotion to the
cause of Judaism and Jewish learning.
7
Mayer Sulzberger
-AVER SULZBERGER was one of the foremost leaders
and one of the most outstanding personalities of
.American Jewry at the turn of the twentieth
century.
Sulzberger was born in Heidelsheim, Baden, June 22,
1 843. His father was hazzan and teacher in that community.
In consequence of the anti-Jewish movement in the wake
of the revolution of 1848, in which the Jews of Heidelsheim
had had to suffer, the Sulzberger family decided to emigrate
to America. Mayer Sulzberger retained a vivid recollection
of the events preceding this step, when the cry, Die Juden
milssen aus dem Wold, and the Hep! Hep! of the mob, made
life uncertain and when Prussian soldiers who came to
suppress the uprising were stationed in his father's house
and befriended the children. In 1849, the family came to
America and at once settled in Philadelphia. Here the
studious youth passed through the public school and the
Central High School, from which he graduated in 1859, just
after he had reached the age of sixteen. At the same time
he received his Hebrew education from his father who laid
the foundation for his knowledge of Bible and post-biblical
Jewish literature in which he remained deeply interested
all his life. Since he was too young to begin his studies for
the legal career for which his father had destined him, he
spent two years in business, gaining experience and insight
which proved invaluable in later life.
In 1862 he entered the law office of Moses A. Dropsie,
under whom he studied, and was introduced to the practice
of law. He was admitted to the bar in 1865 and, after
223
224 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
being associated with Mr. Dropsie for another ten years,
opened an office for himself in 1876. He became one of the
leading lawyers of Philadelphia, enjoying a very lucrative
practice. In 1894, he was elected judge in the Court of
Common Pleas on the Republican ticket. When he came
up for re-election, in 1904, his reputation was such as to
bring about his nomination by both parties without any
opposition. He became the President Judge of this court
from which he retired in 1915 at the age of seventy-two.
His public career, however, did not end with his retirement.
In the last year of his life he was a member of the committee
to revise the constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsyl
vania. He attended the meetings of that body as far as his
health permitted him to do so and threw himself with
youthful enthusiasm into this work which greatly appealed
to him and engrossed his attention.
The example of his father and the great influence of his
revered master and friend, the Reverend Mr. Isaac Leeser,
led Sulzberger at an early period to take an active part in
the Jewish communal life of his beloved home city which
he always refused to leave, however tempting might be the
offers made to him at various times to settle elsewhere. It
is not my intention to enumerate all the local and national
institutions with which Judge Sulzberger was connected,
such as the Jewish Hospital in the foundation of which his
father had had a most prominent part, the Young Men's
Hebrew Association of which he was the first president,
the Baron de Hirsch Fund of which he was a trustee from
its inception, and many others. When the American Jewish
Committee was established, in 1906, it was only natural
that Judge Sulzberger, with his wide vision and statesman
ship, should be chosen its president, a position he held for
several years. In this capacity he addressed the Committee
on Foreign Affairs of the United States House of Represent
atives on the question of the Russian passport in a memor-
MAYER SULZBERGER 225
able speech which had much to do with the success of the
movement to abrogate the Russian treaty.
While every institution could count on his wholehearted
support and cooperation, his efforts were largely concen
trated on the furtherance of Jewish education. He was
secretary of the Maimonides College (the first rabbinical
college in this country), took a leading part in the reorgan
ization of the Jewish Theological Seminary, was trustee of
Gratz College and of Dropsie College. His inspiration
was potent in all these institutions of learning.
His personal influence was most pronounced in the
Jewish Publication Society where, as chairman of the
Publication Committee, he more than anybody else helped
to shape its policies. He was to a large extent responsible
for the splendid work this Society has done.
When the American Jewish Historical Society was
founded, Judge Sulzberger naturally was one of the original
members and from the second year of its existence until
his death belonged to its council. He contributed to its
sixth meeting a paper on Jacob Henry and the Gratz
family, probably based on the interesting collection of
Judeo-German letters which he presented in 1915 to the
Historical Society. While this paper was not published, he
contributed to the Publications of that Society an admirable
necrology on his friend, Joseph Jacobs, with a fine appreci
ation and a full bibliography of his many-sided literary
activities. Another necrology he devoted to his lifelong
associate in public activities, William B. Hackenburg. His
deep interest in the Historical Society, however, cannot by
any means be gauged by these few contributions; it was
due to the fact that he fully realized the enormous impor
tance of a careful study of the history of the Jews in our
own country based on the original sources.
Sulzberger's literary activity began with his collaboration
in Leeser's Occident, to which he contributed, among other
226 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
things, a partial translation of Maimonides' Guide of the
Perplexed and of de Rossi's dictionary of Jewish authors.
True to a promise made to his dying teacher, he edited
this periodical for one year after Leeser's death. The wide
range and great significance of the articles which he himself
contributed to this volume have been pointed out in Dr.
Solomon Solis-Cohen's remarkable address delivered at the
memorial meeting and included in his volume, Judaism
and Science. In that address copious extracts from these
articles are given. It is to be hoped that a collective volume
will make these and some other papers of the brilliant
judge more accessible. Unfortunately, their number is not
very large, since his very active life gave Sulzberger but
scant leisure for literary work. They consist mostly of public
addresses which this master-orator was called upon to
deliver. In many instances, however, he spoke extempo
raneously, since he could offer original ideas on any subject
in the attractive garb of the choicest English. As Joseph
Jacobs once remarked, he never met a man with as rich an
English vocabulary at his command as Mayer Sulzberger.
While he wrote little, he was an omnivorous reader in vari
ous languages and on the greatest variety of subjects. It is
interesting to come across an article of his in the Revue des
Etudes Juives occasioned by a paper of Bacher on a passage
of the Midrash. From an out-of-the-way book on the Jews
of China, Sulzberger throws new light on the passage in
question. Similarly, we learn from an article by Brann, in
the Monatsschrift, on the descendants of Maimonides, that
Sulzberger sent him additional information from a manu
script in his possession correcting some of Brann's state
ments. We thus get an idea of the attention with which he
followed even the publications of the technical journals of
Jewish learning in which one might hardly have expected
him to be interested.
How vitally he was concerned with Jewish studies became
MAYER SULZBERGER 227
evident when, in the last two decades of his life, he special
ized in an independent and very original study of various
aspects of biblical antiquities. Four most stimulating
volumes are the result of this labor of love: The Am-Haare^
the Ancient Hebrew Parliament, a chapter in the constitutional
history of Ancient Israel (Philadelphia, 1909); The Polity of
the Ancient Hebrews (ibid.,1912); The Ancient Hebrew Law of
Homicide (ibid., 1915); and The Status of Labor in Ancient
Israel (ibid., 1923). In these books he considered difficult
problems of biblical law and constitution from a new angle.
He brought the keen mind of the expert lawyer and experi
enced statesman to bear on these questions. He cross-
examined his texts as he was wont to do with his witnesses
in his legal practice and read between the lines as he did
with the evidence in court proceedings. His results are
often striking and surprising and reveal to us the unusual
mental equipment and the penetrating method of the
author. They manifest a vigor and freshness of mind which
would never permit the reader to suspect the age of the
writer.
While his own learned writings mainly date from the
later years of his life, he always was eager to stimulate and
encourage all Jewish scholarly work, particularly in this
country. He realized at an early period that for a healthy
development of Jewish scholarship in America a great
library was indispensable. He therefore began to bring
together a most remarkable collection of rare books and
manuscripts, which became the nucleus of the present
Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary. He directly
and indirectly influenced the growth of Jewish libraries of
other institutions, especially that of the Dropsie College,
so that he may rightly be called the father of Jewish
libraries in this country. He presented his splendid law
library to his court when he resigned from the bench.
Judge Sulzberger's long and active life left a rich harvest
228 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
which the coming generations of American Jewry will
gather. His powerful personality and his mighty intellect
left a strong impress not only on his home community
but on the whole of American Jewry. He always upheld
traditional Judaism as transmitted to him by his father
and his teacher, Isaac Leeser. He lent his voice to the
oppressed and always stood for justice tempered by mercy,
for he had uncommon insight into human nature and could
find the good in every human being. His rare sense of
humor illuminated his speech and the sparkle of his wit
made every conversation with him a delight. With the
quickness of a flash he could grasp any problem and throw
new light on it from the rich store of his knowledge and
his experience. He was fully alive to the advance of modern
civilization, but at the same time extremely conservative
in his personal habits. It is curious, for example, that this
extremely busy man always wrote his letters and papers
and even the preliminary material for his books in longhand,
not even availing himself of the convenience of a fountain
pen. His beautiful library was a Mecca for many visitors
in the most varied walks of life.
It was touching to observe how patiently he often listened
to the abstruse exposition of some scholar from Eastern
Europe who might be uncouth in appearance as well as in
method of argumentation. Sulzberger's broadmindedness
was one of his outstanding characteristics.
He died in Philadelphia on April 20, 1923. To those of
us who were privileged to come into closer association with
him and to enjoy his personal friendship, the memory of
Judge Sulzberger's radiant personality will forever remain
a source of inspiration.
8
Solomon Schechter
REMARK once made by Adolf Jellinek to an English
visitor, that the date of Schechter's arrival in Eng
land should be marked as epoch-making for Jewish
learning in that country, applies with even greater force to
his arrival in America. Here, however, his activity and in
fluence were not limited to the fields of scholarship. A
brilliant exponent of Historical Judaism, he gave it a power
ful impetus in this country by the school he established and
greatly extended its influence. Only a later generation
will be able to gauge objectively the degree to which
Schechter's conception of Judaism has moulded American
Jewish life.
Solomon Schechter was born in Focsani, Roumania,
probably in December (rOBrfl), 1850. He received his
early education from his father, who had emigrated from
Lukasch, Russia, and exercised the function of a shohet in
Focsani. Dr. Schechter was fond of speaking of this
self-denying, saintly and scholarly man. The respect he
felt for him proved a blessing to the son even in the
periods of greatest storm and stress. He felt that it was his
father's influence which had kept him within the fold of
conservative Judaism.
The unusually gifted boy, who learned to read Hebrew
at the age of three and knew the Pentateuch at five, was to
devote his life from his early youth to the study of the Torah.
At the age of ten he began to attend the jfes&oz in Piatra, a
nearby town, and when about thirteen years old he was
sent to one of the greatest talmudic authorities of the time,
R. Joseph Saul Nathanson, of Lemberg. After a year of
229
230 ESSATS. IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
assiduous study, he returned home with a highly compli
mentary certificate from his great teacher for his zeal and
for the originality displayed in his studies, the more remark
able when we consider the boy's age. In 1875, he went to
Vienna. His first contact with European culture naturally
made a very deep impression on the mind of the young
Talmudist. The upheaval which such contacts produce
in young men of this type may be observed even at the
present time. It is impossible to estimate how great a loss
Judaism is suffering through the numerous defections from
its ranks caused by the sudden removal of its most gifted
sons from the Eastern ghetto into the university life of the
West. It requires great inner strength to withstand the
influence of the new surroundings and to continue to value
the heritage of the Jewish past so little esteemed in those
circles.
Schechter ascribed his escape from the dangers of the new
environment to his respect for his father and to the friend
ship of two men in Vienna, Adolf Jellinek and particularly
Meir Friedmann. Jellinek recognized at once the unusual
gifts of the new arrival and did everything in his power to
help him in his struggle for a living. He charged him with
cataloguing his library and procured stipends for him.
What was even more appreciated, he favored him with his
personal friendship; Schechter never forgot the stimulating
discussions carried on with him during long walks through
the streets of Vienna. One of the prize essays, "The Library
of R. Bezallel Ashkenazi, traced from his Responsa and his
Novellae," announced by Dr. Schechter for the students of
the Jewish Theological Seminary for the scholastic year
1915-1916, goes back to a suggestion received from Jellinek
at that time. During his stay in Vienna, Schechter was a
regular pupil of the Beth ha-Midrash, a modernized talmud-
ical high school in which Jellinek took great interest. Here
he enjoyed the instruction of Meir Friedmann and Isaac
SOLOMON SCHECHTER 231
Hirsch Weiss, the two scholars who, in different ways,
showed a happy blending of old-time talmudic scholarship
with modern methods. Weiss, who had devoted himself
to the presentation of the historical development of the
halaka or, rather, the halakists, wished his pupil to follow
in his footsteps; but it was Friedmann, with his lovable
personality and depth of feeling, who gained the deeper
influence over Schechter. Friedmann had shown his mastery
in his editions of the oldest midrashim and their inter
pretation in the true spirit of their authors. As a teacher of
Midrash he was unsurpassed. Along this line Schechter
followed him in his first great book, to the displeasure of
Weiss, who did not fully appreciate the value of such
editorial work and whose own editions were therefore not
his highest accomplishments. Friedmann, who entrusted
the instruction of his sons to Schechter, was, I think, in
Schechter's own opinion, the man who had exercised the
greatest influence on him, and Schechter always remained
fondly attached to him. From Weiss, who liked to exercise
rabbinical functions, from which Friedmann refrained,
Schechter received the rabbinical diploma when he left
Vienna for Germany, in 1879. The document bears testi
mony, not only to Schechter's unusual acquaintance with
Bible, Talmud and Midrash, as well as later Jewish liter
ature, but also refers expressly to his high moral character,
which shrank from all hypocrisy and disdained all sham.
His old friends accompanied Schechter with their good
wishes and their fatherly care. I had the opportunity to
read a touching letter written by Weiss in answer to the
first letter his pupil sent him from his new place of residence.
A father could hardly have shown more solicitude for the
welfare of his son than this master displayed for his pupil.
He expected him to make new friends easily, for Schechter
had always possessed this gift. But he advised him partic
ularly to cultivate the friendship of Dr. P. F. Frankl, whose
232 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
acceptance of the rabbinate of the Berlin community had
been the real reason for Schechter 5 s leaving Vienna. Since
he had followed this old friend to his new sphere of activity,
Schechter needed no advice on that score; his deep feeling
of friendship for Frankl did not end even with the latter 5 s
death,
In Berlin, Schechter came in contact with all the great
scholars of the city. The only one who had a lasting influ
ence on him was Israel Lewy, one of the foremost talmudic
critics, whose method he followed in the introduction to
his Abot de-Rabbi Nathan. He also enjoyed the instruction
of the great Steinschneider and, although in later years he
showed a certain aversion to bibliographical research of
which Steinschneider was the foremost exponent, he
expressed his indebtedness to the great bibliographer in his
first article in the Beth Talmud and paid him a fine tribute
in his Seminary Addresses.
Due to his friend Frankl, Schechter 5 s years of study were
brought to a close and he began to make use of the enor
mous store of learning he had accumulated. In 1882, Claude
G. Montefiore, who was studying in Berlin, wished to con
tinue in England the studies he had auspiciously started in
Germany. Strangely enough, it was not possible to find a
proper teacher in the country that harbors the greatest
treasures of the Jewish past. It was necessary to import one,
and at Frankl's recommendation of Schechter as the man he
was looking for, Montefiore invited him to go with him to
England. Thus Schechter joined the small band of Jewish
scholars that had immigrated to England Adolf Neu-
bauer, Michael Friedlaender, and S. M. Schiller-Szinessy
and soon secured access to the wonderful collections of
the British Museum. Of these he had heard legends current
in his native place, as he tells us in the first volume of his
Studies in Judaism. His studies had only sharpened his
curiosity about them. To his rambles among the manu-
SOLOMON SCHECHTER 235
scripts of the Museum and the Bodleian Library .we owe
the discovery of Saadia's commentary on the rules of inter
pretation and the testaments of the two sons of Rabbi
Asher ben Yehiel which strongly appealed to a mind like
Schechter's who was constantly seeking the soul in the
scholar.
In London, Schechter finished his first great book, an
exhaustive edition of the Abot de-Rabbi Nathan, an important
and interesting talmudic book of ethical content, which was
included in all the Talmud editions but the text of which
had suffered very much at the hands of ignorant copyists.
Here for the first time a Hebrew text was published on the
basis of all extant manuscripts and with the painstaking
conscientiousness one was used to see applied to Greek and
Latin texts but which was almost a novum in Hebraicis. The
learned author had discovered a second version of the book
and he published this for the first time side by side with
the well-known text. He had read through numberless
volumes, both in print and in manuscript, to collect quo
tations which in soine way might help to elucidate the
difficulties of the text, and all the wealth of his own knowl
edge and acumen were brought to bear on the inter
pretation of the book. Even after text and commentary
were printed, the author was not yet satisfied; he continued
his labors, the results of which he incorporated into appen
dices. The publication of this volume, in 1887, put
Schechter in the front rank of Jewish scholars, and for over
fifty years Abot de-Rabbi Nathan has been quoted only
according to Schechter's edition (which recently was
republished in New York).
In the same year his essay on "The Chassidim" appeared*
translated by Montefiore from the German original. Many
years later it was retranslated into German and from that
into Roumanian. For the first time, a sympathetic picture
of the Hasidic movement had been painted showing the
234 ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
underlying beauty of many of its teachings as well as the
idealism of its founders and early representatives. The
essay marked an epoch in Schechter's development. He
had now entirely passed his Sturm und Drangperiode and
could do justice to the associations ohis early youth, which
on his first contact with Western life had become so repul
sive to him. As a matter of fact, the respect for his father,
a devoted adherent of Hasidism, had much to do with this
defense of the movement. Ten years earlier, under the
fresh influence of the great change he had undergone,
Schechter had published a biting and very clever satire on
hasidic life in the form of letters by Hasidim. This first
article of Schechter's, written in Hebrew, had appeared in
a periodical anonymously, but he always felt that he owed
an apology to his father for having ridiculed what the latter
held in such veneration. The result was the essay on the
Hasidim which now appears as the first of his "Studies."
In London Schechter for a time was connected with Jews*
College, at that time under the presidency of Dr. Michael
Friedlaender, one of the most modest and saintly of Jewish
scholars who always manifested the warmest friendship for
Schechter. In his house Schechter also met Mathilde Roth,
who, as his wife, was to exercise so great an influence on
his life, and without whose constant and unselfish care,
which removed every obstacle from his path at the cost of
the greatest personal sacrifices, he never could have done
his work as he did.
That he did not neglect the primary object of his coming
to England was testified to abundantly by Montefiore, in
1892, in the introduction to his Hibbert Lectures, his first
important scientific publication. In 1890, Schechter was
appointed Lecturer in Rabbinics at Cambridge University,
and here his influence soon asserted itself, not only among
the Jewish students, who always were welcome and felt at
home in his house, but also in the circle of the Cambridge
SOLOMON SCHECHTER 235
scholars, whatever their specialty. Here he became the
intimate friend of the famous folklorist, Sir James Gteorge
Frazer, of W. W. Buckland, the Regius Professor of Law,
of the Icelandic scholar Eiriker Magnusson, and many
others who found it profitable to discuss with him compli
cated questions connected with their own subjects. These
ties of friendship persisted even after Schechter came to the
United States. Whenever he returned to England he was
greeted with the greatest enthusiasm by his numerous
friends.
In 1893 a travelling scholarship enabled Schechter to visit
the great Jewish collections of Italy and to gather material
in two fields: the history of the biblical canon and the
textual criticism of the treatise Abot in which he had been
interested since his work on Abot de-Rabbi Nathan had
brought him face to face with its problems. In Cambridge,
Dr. Charles Taylor had naturally kindled this interest in
the treatise to which he had himself devoted many years
of labor. The material on Abot collected by Dr. Schechter
is being prepared for publication by one of his former
pupils, Rabbi Jacob Kohn, whom he had entrusted with
this task some time before his death. But his notes dealing
with the history of the canon have not been utilized yet.
Though he did not, at the outset, exploit the material
which attracted him, the Italian trip brought some impor
tant literary discoveries in the line of midrashic literature,
such as the Aggadath Shir ha-Shirim. It is to be hoped that
more of the material collected by him may in time become
accessible. About the same time, Schechter was engaged in
editing a voluminous Midrash on the Pentateuch, which
had reached Europe from Yemen a few years previously
and which for the first time had been utilized by Schechter
to whom Mr. Montefiore had presented a copy of it for
his Abot de-Rabbi Nathan. His uncommon mastery of the
whole of the midrash literature, with its most obscure
236 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
quotations, enabled Schechter to discern at once that this
Yemen compilation had made use of many an unknown
midrash and also offered important variations in the texts
of the known books. In 1902, after ten years' work, the
first volume of the Midrash ha-Gadol appeared, on the eve
of the editor's departure to the United States. The notes
and references to this interesting book show once more the
master of Midrash, who could trace the great majority of
the sources of the compiler even though the latter had
combined the various texts into a more or less continuous
work without any mention of the origin of the sentences.
As Schechter states in the preface, he had read the proofs of
this volume partly in some German city, partly in Rome,
in Cairo, and in Jerusalem; that is to say, not only the visit
to the Italian libraries had fallen into the period of printing
this Midrash, but also the great turning point in his life
the discovery of the Geniza.
The existence of the Centra at Cairo had been known
before, and from time to time dealers in antiquities had
stealthily abstracted old parchments from their centuries-
old resting place and sold them to European or American
collectors and tourists. Dr. Schechter himself told me the
story of his visit to his friends, Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson,
who had just returned from a trip to the East and showed
him some old Hebrew leaves which the learned ladies had
acquired on their journey. One of these leaves attracted
his special attention, and he at once conceived the idea that
it contained a piece of the original of Ben Sira, in which he
had long been especially interested, as is shown by an
article published a few years previously, enumerating all
the Hebrew quotations from this book occurring in Jewish
literature. To test the correctness of his idea he had to go
home, for the ladies, being strict Presbyterians, had no copy
of the Apocrypha in their house. I need not dwell on the
SOLOMON SCHECHTER 237
universal stir produced by the discovery of the original of
the book looked upon as part of the Bible by the Christian
world. It had a sequel quite unique in the annals of Jewish
science. Dr. Schechter was enabled not through Jewish
liberality, it should be added parenthetically to start
immediately for Egypt in order to search the Centra at first
hand for further parts of Ben Sira. With his wonderfully
magnetic personality, he succeeded far beyond all expec
tation and was permitted by the Jewish community of
Cairo to take with him all the treasures he unearthed.
Together with Dr. Taylor, who had made it possible for
Dr. Schechter to go to Egypt, he presented the priceless
treasures to the university whose teaching staff he adorned.
From that time on his scientific activity was centered on
the fragments he had discovered. One must have seen him
in the midst of these dusty, crumpled bits of paper to
realize fully the amount of learning and quickness of
perception required to separate documents of one class
from another and bring some kind of order into that chaos.
It may be said without exaggeration that hardly any other
single scholar has enlarged our knowledge of our past to the
same degree as Dr. Schechter. He has changed our entire
view of conditions in Babylonia, Palestine and Egypt in the
tenth and eleventh centuries. Various Geniza publications
in the Jewish Quarterly Review, his Saadyana and other writ
ings will always remain first-class sources of Jewish history.
By no stretch of the imagination can the importance of the
discovery of the Gemza be overestimated or the further
discoveries be foretold that may be made in this collection
which, unfortunately, but for casual visits of foreign schol
ars, has been lying idle since Dr. Schechter left Cambridge.
Besides his volume of Ben Sira, published in collaboration
with Taylor, the publication of the Document? of Jewish
Sectaries has made the greatest impression. The former
brought him public recognition in the professorship of
238 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
Hebrew at the University of London, without his applica
tion for the post, and in the honorary Doctor's degree by
Cambridge University; the second was similarly recognized
by Harvard. It is characteristic of Schechter, and deserves
the greatest credit, that he at once recognized the impor
tance of this puzzling and enigmatical sectarian text which,
in so rich a collection of unknown fragments, would have
been neglected by almost every other scholar.
Between the two publications, a most important change
had taken place in Schechter's life. He had given up the
pleasant associations, the intimate friendships, and the
quiet life of Cambridge University, to devote his great pow
ers to his own people. The change was largely prompted
also by the desire to bring up his children in Jewish sur
roundings. It was mainly through the efforts of some of the
most farsighted leaders of American Jewry that Dr. Schech-
ter was invited to take charge of the reorganized Jewish
Theological Seminary. Having come to New York on
April 17, 1902, he threw himself into his work with all his
youthful enthusiasm, with all the resources of his rich per
sonality. The Seminary became the center of all his
thoughts; he absolutely identified himself with it to the
exclusion of anything else and looked at every question
from the angle of the Seminary. How would this or that
fact or action influence the institution to which his loyalty
so completely belonged, was the test he constantly applied.
And the thought of it occupied him not only in office hours
or during the scholastic term; it accompanied him on his
vacations and on his travels; it even took precedence over
his scientific work. Outside of the terrible world war, from
which he suffered mental agonies, nothing gave him so
much concern as the many problems connected with the
maintenance of the institution the building up of which he
considered the crowning achievement of his life.
SOLOMON SCHECHTER 239
Rabbinic Theology was one of the favorite subjects
taught by Doctor Schechter at the Seminary, while formerly
it had received but scant attention in similar institutions. I
cannot speak from personal knowledge about Dr. Schechter
as a teacher, but I know how carefully he prepared all his
lectures, how much conscientious labor he bestowed upon
them. For him lectures were on a plane with his literary
activity; his scientific conscience would not permit him to
discuss a topic in the classroom unless he had satisfied
himself that he had covered all the sources on the subject.
This does not of course mean that he would incorporate
them all in his lectures. Only the results of his researches
were put before the students. I often saw him going over
the entire haggadic literature in order to mark the passages
dealing with a theological point he was going to take up
with his class. These passages he then had copied out and
put on large sheets. He studied this source material with
the greatest care to select the most important and striking
passages and to bring the whole into systematic order. In
the same way he went through the talmudic passages and
the entire bodies of codes and all the different rites for
his lectures on liturgy.
Painstaking accuracy was one of Dr. Schechter's charac
teristics. While his deep erudition and his marvelous
memory would have enabled him to speak on many sub
jects with very little preparation, while his brilliancy would
have allowed him to hold the attention of his students
and to instruct them under all circumstances, he would
rather not lecture at all than speak without what he
considered adequate preparation. And yet I fancy that it
was not so much the solid foundation of all his statements
but the way he expressed them, the remarkable personality
of the master, which so strongly influenced his pupils and
made an everlasting impression on all those who came un
der his sway. He never tried to show off by artificially
240 ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
swelling the number of his references and by dragging in
learned notes. His ideal was to convert the results of his
painstaking investigation into clear and easy language,
obliterating even in his lectures as much as possible the
labor which had preceded the writing. This accuracy he
wished to implant in his pupils as well, and he always used
to recommend that the beginner start by editing a text,
for in such work the most minute exactness is required and
thus an excellent schooling is given for scientific work.
As a teacher Dr. Schechter had gained a great deal of
experience in Cambridge, where it often was his task to
introduce Christian theologians with inadequate prepara
tion into the mysteries of rabbinic literature. There he had
had occasion to find out how matters, which to most teach
ers might seem too evident to require commenting upon,
were causing considerable trouble to some of the students.
As a result of his Cambridge experience, Dr. Schechter had
learned to have consideration even for the ignorant begin
ners, and he often showed much more patience with them
than one might have expected from a scholar of his emi
nence and temper.
He was free of scholarly haugntiness and would give his
friendship to men of affairs as readily as to the learned, but
his objection to sham culture and education was inveterate.
He had no use for what he called the "encyclopedic igno
rance" of the "highly uneducated" who tried to impress
people with their superficial knowledge. In the Seminary
he used every occasion to emphasize the need of thorough
Jewish learning for the rabbi and he looked forward, to use
his own words, to the time when even in this country we
would have a sprinkling at least of learned men among our
rabbis who would now and then favor us with real contribu
tions to scholarship. That this was not the only aim of
rabbinical training he fully realized, and many of the
Seminary's alumni can testify to the warm personal interest
SOLOMON SCHECHTER 241
he took in the success of their practical duties. But he felt
that the limited time at his disposal was needed to give his
pupils a Jewish scientific foundation on which they could
build afterwards, while the experience of life would teach
them the rest. The Seminary therefore had to underscore
the vital importance of scholarly attainments and to raise
the standard of Jewish knowledge.
Dr. Schechter's relations to his pupils were by no means
limited to the classroom. He took a genuine interest in
their well being and did his best to free them from material
cares. He always liked to see them in his home and was
ready to listen to their troubles and wishes. Through that
especial gift of his to make friends with the young and his
remarkable understanding of youth with its advantages
and shortcomings, there developed a beautiful attitude
of real friendship between him and some of his pupils which
started in their student days and continued ever after.
There were many who looked up to him as to a father and,
like a father, he was always ready to take a charitable view
of the students and to let mercy prevail over justice. When a
student had given serious cause for complaint, Dr. Schechter
often took his side and tried to excuse him* It was very
hard for him to be rigorous and usually he decided at the
last moment to be lenient once more. The students appreci
ated his great kindness and reciprocated with love and
admiration, and even after they had left the Seminary they
always turned to him for help and advice in the difficulties
which confronted them in their communal work.
In his activity in this country Dr. Schechter combined to
an astonishing degree true scholarship and wholehearted
interest in practical Judaism. If we look upon his work as
a whole, we find that it was eminently constructive. He
was very clever in polemics, and a happy phrase was always
at his disposal in writing, as it was in his conversation. Dr.
Schechter rightly maintained that the best apology for
242 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
Judaism was a clear historical analysis of its teachings, and
he never thought that much good could be accomplished
by controversial pamphlets. When a book or an utterance
annoyed him, he was wont to sit down and write a review
or an answer in caustic style and full of irony; but later he
would revise it again and again until all polemical bitter
ness would be removed, or else he would suppress it alto
gether. Thus I know of two reviews of his, one of which
was already set up in type, which he withheld from pub
lication after having come in personal contact with the
authors whose books he had reviewed. With his broad sym
pathies he could understand the other side, if he wanted
to, and he did not wish to jeopardize his activities by
personal controversies to which such criticism might have
led.
In his masterly Aspects of Rabbinic Theology, he carefully
abstained from refuting or even mentioning the innumer
able false conceptions set forth by Jewish and non-Jewish
writers as teachings of the rabbis. His book, with its clear
exposition of the rabbinic views of various theological
concepts, is certainly the more effective for it. Of his
literary activity, his Studies in Judaism and his Aspects of
Rabbinic Theology made him well known to the educated
public. He shows in these works a wonderful combination
of most thorough scientific research with an admirably
lucid presentation, in a style entirely his own, which no
where suggests to the reader that the author not only was
not born an Englishman but became acquainted with
English as a mature man. The casual reader cannot surmise
what painstaking work lies behind the elegant, character
istic sentences, or what untiring research was required to
establish the facts offered to the public without claim to
original investigation, with the air almost that they may
be found in any iiandbook. I shall never forget the number
of books he consulted for the essay on Safed, the responsa
SOLOMON SCHECHTER 243
volumes searched from cover to cover for some stray refer
ence that might possibly occur there, but often did not, and
his happiness in finding the statutes of the Safed saints in a
newly-acquired manuscript of the Seminary Library. Dr.
Schechter, like no other modern Jewish scholar, could put
his own rich personality in the place of the mediaeval
author who attracted his interest, be he a Talmudist pure
and simple, a "liberal" philosopher, or, horribile dictu, a
cabalist. For him the rationalistic prejudice against the
mystic did not exist. A man did not need the excuse that
he had, besides cabalistic writings, also a medical or
mathematical work to his credit. It is largely due to Dr.
Schechter that historical justice has been done to the Jewish
saints and mystics of the Middle Ages.
It would be entirely wrong to consider Dr. Schechter a dry
scholar who spent his time among his books, removed from
the questions of the day. Although in England, in his offi
cial activity, he was out of direct touch with the affairs of
the community, his interest in all matters Jewish was very
strong. In accordance with his nature, he was in opposition
to the ruling powers in Jewry. Opposition to the customary
and the mechanical routine of organization with its dead
ening effects was one of his characteristic traits. His "Epis
tles to the Jews of England" manifest his interest in that
Jewry. In America his position brought him face to face
with the problems of our time and compelled him to
address the public regularly at the commencements of the
Seminary, occasions which a man like Schechter would
naturally utilize to give expression to his own views on the
burning questions of the day in his characteristic fashion.
By a stroke of good fortune, he himself, a few months before
his death, carried out a plan that had occupied him since
the end of the first decade after the reorganization of the
Seminary that of publishing a collection of his Seminary
Addresses and Other Papers, giving permanent form to the
244 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
addresses he had prepared with Infinite care and setting
forth his views on the most important problems of present-
day Jewry. The volume, ending with his last public ad
dress, therefore is of great value for an understanding of the
ideas for which he had assiduously labored.
In characterizing Schechter's scientific work, one finds
great difficulty in stating which branch was his specialty.
The progress of biblical science he had always followed
with keen interest, if frequently with serious doubts as to
the correctness of the results accepted by the modern
school. He had occasion but rarely to occupy himself with
these questions in his books, but the introduction to his
Ben Sira registers his protest against the prevailing school
of thought and offers documentary evidence. Such evi
dence again characteristic of our time has been taken
into consideration by non-Jewish scholars abroad, while
most Jewish scholars fight shy of biblical studies.
Schechter had been, since his early youth, a master of
talmudic studies and for many years taught the Palestinian
Talmud in the Seminary. His last two years were devoted
to the preparation of an exhaustive treatise on Jewish
charities, a subject with which he was better equipped to
deal than anyone else. (Alas, it was not destined to be
written by him!) He intended to give special attention to
the halakic aspects of Jewish philanthropy. He was occu
pied in the last weeks of his life with reviewing the relevant
talmudic passages and the early commentaries upon them.
The enactment passed in the middle of the second century
by the rabbinic authorities at Usha concerning tithes, of
which the Babylonian and the Palestinian Tahnuds give
diametrically different accounts, was the last scientific
subject he discussed with me. He kept track of the modern
scientific literature on talmudic subjects and complained,
shortly before his death, that a recent dissertation on the
SOLOMON SCHECHTER 245
laws of Hazaka, a new acquisition of the Seminary library,
had not been brought to his attention. His article, "Tal
mud," in the extra volume of Hasting's Dictionary of the
Bible may be mentioned in this connection as a masterpiece
of lucid presentation of a difficult subject.
To liturgy also he refers only rarely in his publications
outside of his treatment of its theological aspects. Never
theless, he was very deeply interested in this branch of
Jewish study, lectured on it in the Seminary and intended
to write a comprehensive review of all the recent publica
tions in this field.
I have spoken already of his marvelous acquaintance
with the whole midrashic literature. If the discovery of the
Gertiza had not intervened. Dr. Schechter would probably
have finished the edition of the five volumes of the Midrash
ha-Gadol and would have contributed much to the study of
the history of that branch of literature.
While his work on theology has always attracted great
interest, Schechter himself had to be urged by outsiders to
put his material on the subject into shape. His clear
insight into the theological concepts of the rabbis has always
been admired, but somehow Schechter seemed to prefer to
devote his leisure to other matters. Still, the reception
accorded to his Aspects made him think of a second volume
for the discussion of some other problems of rabbinic
theology, but the plan never went beyond his casual
thought.
What made him most popular were his historical or, to
be more definite, his biographical essays. He possessed the
remarkable ability of putting before the reader the histor
ical setting as a frame for the picture drawn by him with
incomparable skill. It made no difference whether he
wished to portray an individual or a body of scholars or
saints. It is very much to be regretted that we do not have
more of these masterly sketches from the hand of this
246 ESSATS /JV JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
literary artist, which incidentally throw much light on the
conditions prevailing in various periods. His interest in
Jewish history was most comprehensive; perhaps he was
more attracted by the pious Jews of mediaeval Germany
than by those of Spain with their secular culture. He took
very little interest in the Jewish Historical Society of Eng
land, objecting to "provincial Judaism" on principle, and
he was very glad when the American Jewish Historical
Society, whose corresponding member he was since 1896,
widened its scope to include the whole of Jewish history.
Dr. Schechter's great interest_in the questions of practical
Jewish life was most clearly evidenced in the establishment
of the United Synagogue and the immense importance
attributed to it by its founder. "This will be the greatest
bequest which I shall leave to American Israel," he wrote
to Dr. Cyrus Adler years before his idea was translated into
action. To this institution he devoted his wholehearted
interest and solicitude in the last years of his life, for in the
United Synagogue he saw a powerful instrument for the
propagation and perpetuation of historical Judaism, of
which he was the foremost exponent in this country.
He worked all his life for the ideal of Conservative
Judaism. His ideal found expression in the phrase "Catho
lic Israel" which he coined, representing Jewish traditions
as they had developed from Sinai to the present day. This
position of Dr. Schechter's was the result of his scientific
conviction as well as of his fervent religiosity. The latter
found striking expression when Dr. Schechter took the
place of the Bcfal Tefillah to read the Neilah prayer in the
Seminary synagogue. All those present could feel the
religious enthusiasm of his soul as he recited his favorite
prayers and everyone was under his spell as he stood there
before us. He was very fond of the tune of Neilah and he
liked to sing the Tisgadal in that niggun all year round
SOLOMON SCHECHTER 247
when he was in a particularly happy mood. An interesting
selection indeed for a favorite song ! Perhaps this was some
what akin to his unusual understanding of the mediaeval
mystics and the Hasidim who found in him so warm a
defender and expounder.
The aim which Dr. Schechter had put before himself for
his old age was to settle in Palestine and to devote his last
years to a quiet life in the land of our forefathers, occupying
himself again mainly with talmudic studies to which his
youth had been given. This was by no means the result of
his Zionist affiliations; he had discussed this plan with his
fiancee before his marriage and always liked to think of it.
For a man with such an ideal it was only natural to join a
movement which tended towards the re-establishment of a
home for our people in Eretz Yisrael; but with him it was
very much a religious matter, as he clearly pointed out in
his statement when he publicly declared his allegiance to
Zionism.
In conclusion, a few words must be said about Schechter
the man who, "higher than any of the people from the
shoulder and upward," attracted attention in any gathering
in which he appeared. His striking head, with the beautiful
blue eyes which looked so straight and piercingly at every
body, expressed the man's personality. His magnetism,
his happy flashes of humor, brought everyone under his
spell. The brilliant expressions of his genius, uttered as
unexpectedly as lightning, often made his friends wish for
a Boswell to collect his utterances. His breadth of mind
made possible a circle of friends and admirers unusually
large and diversified. Nothing was foreign to the interests
of this man, who had read the masterpieces of every liter
ature but did not refrain from indulging freely in the lighter
novel to rest his mind. When his interest in a subject was
roused, he sought all possible information upon it by read
ing almost everything written on it. For a time Japan was
248 ESSATS IV JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
the center of his reading appetite. In certain phases of
American history he always showed deep interest. He ever
appreciated it if his friends drew his attention to a book
worth reading on the Civil War or on Lincoln; on both
subjects few people have read more extensively than he.
This unusually wide reading enabled him, in writing as in
conversation, to illustrate his statements by apt quotations
from all kinds of sources. He was a master in the use of such
quotations and very fond of them; sometimes he even put
his own words in the mouth of an indefinite somebody. He
found common ground for conversation with everyone, and
it was very touching to observe Dr. Schechter among chil
dren. Whatever their age, they all looked to him as a friend
and he made it his business to cultivate their friendship.
Perhaps he always attracted children because he was him
self childlike in many respects.
I may be permitted to give a personal reminiscence of
my first meeting with Dr. Schechter, when in 1898 I came
to England as a young student to collate the manuscripts
of a book, Seder Olam, in which I understood Dr. Schechter
to be interested. Having with some difficulty made an
appointment with him for a certain Sunday, I came to his
home in Cambridge, a total stranger, without any letter of
introduction, and asked him whether he could give me some
material for the book in question. He told me he had given
up the idea of editing the book, though he had made copies
of some important manuscripts with his own hand and had
begun to write notes on the text. Without hesitation he
presented all his material, the result of considerable work,
to the young stranger of whom he knew nothing. I always
thought this a remarkable expression of generosity, charac
teristic of his impulsive nature, which would form a pre
dilection or an aversion in a moment and be guided by it
in his actions. In the same measure, he had his prejudices
which he was wont to express in even stronger language
SOLOMON SCHECHTER 249
than they were felt. A violent diatribe by Schechter against
a person did not preclude his otherwise having great
respect for the man's character or abilities. His friends
knew how much to deduct when Schechter relieved his
feelings by such an explosion. In personal relations he went
to extremes; a person was wholly good or wholly bad, he
was no friend of lukewarm feelings. If he felt that he had
offended a friend, he would try at once to straighten the
matter again, and never was Schechter more human than
in such moments of reconciliation.
Considering Schechter's life as a whole, we may with
out hesitation say that it was happy in personal experi
ence as it was in achievements. His sudden, unexpected
death (on November 19, 1915), without antecedent suffer
ing which his impetuous temperament could ill have borne,
formed a fitting climax.
I have tried to give a few glimpses of this powerful person
ality; but a writer of quite different gifts is required to do
justice to the departed master. I was favored with his
intimate friendship for many a year and our relations will
always be a cherished and sacred memory to me. To quote
one of his old Cambridge friends,
He was one of the few the very few men I have
known who were real leaders of thought, enlighteners
of the world.
We who were privileged to be his friends could not find
a better expression of what we felt when he was taken from
us than the words of a lifelong friend, Sir James G. Frazer,
of Cambridge, who at the news of his death, wrote, in a
private letter, the following tribute to his beloved confrere;
In him we have lost one of our truest friends and one
of the finest and most remarkable men we have ever
known. It would be difficult to say whether he was
more admirable for the brilliance of his intellect and
250 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
the readiness of his wit, or for the warmth of his affection
and the generosity and nobility of his character, but
I think it was the latter qualities even more than his
genius which endeared him to his friends. It was a
wonderful combination of intellectual and moral excel
lence, and the longer and the more intimately one
knew him the more deeply did one feel the impression
of his greatness and goodness. I reckon it among the
good fortunes of my life to have had the privilege and
honor of his friendship, and I am sure that very many
who knew him must feel as I do. His memory the
memory of his intellectual honesty, his generous enthu
siasm for everything that was noble and beautiful, and
his unmeasured contempt for everything that was base
and ignoble the memory of this will abide with us
and be an inspiration to us to the end of our lives.
9
The Jewish Scholarship of
Joseph Jacobs
"OSEPH JACOBS* scholarly gifts were so varied and
manifold as to constitute a rare combination in one
person. This wonderfully talented man would have
been an ornament in a chair of English literature or of
folklore at some great university, and it is a pity that
circumstances did not permit him to concentrate his un
usual abilities in either of these fields. While his greatest
powers were shown in the subjects mentioned, I wish to
dwell on his achievements in the field of Jewish scholarship
in which I am better able to appreciate his merits. To
some extent this was only a by-path in the intellectual
journeying of the versatile man, but he himself stated in
the dedication of his essays that his Jewish studies "have
engaged his deepest thought and sincerest feelings."
His interest was chiefly centered in Jewish history, and
for several years it was his ambition to write a work on this
subject which was to give a picture of the political and
social position of the Jews, omitting the literary history
which fills so large a place in all our books of this kind.
For the purpose of this history, for which he thought he
had found the key in the Church legislation of the Middle
Ages, Jacobs began to compile, in chronological arrange
ment, "Annals of Jewish History," which he hoped would
be completed and published some day by a pupil of his.
Jacobs drew largely on secondary sources, not going back
to the originals from lack of time. For, like Neubauer and
others, he maintained that there was still so much to be
251
252 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
done in the field of Jewish history and literature that it was
more important to make the materials accessible rather
than spend too much time on minute details. In his
historical conception Jacobs was entirely free from all
prejudice; at times it even seemed that, in order not to
show any Jewish bias, he went too far in his effort to under
stand and defend the Church and its representatives in their
treatment of the Jews.
His most important contributions were in all likelihood
in the field of the early history of the English Jews. He had
been one of those most active in rousing interest in that
subject; he had taken a prominent part in the arrangement
of the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition of 1887, for which
he and Lucien Wolf compiled a very useful bibliography.
For the history down to 1206, his Jews of Angevin England
offers an almost complete collection of the sources gathered
with the greatest industry from printed and, to a consider
able extent, from manuscript material. This he made
interesting by his ingenious remarks, of which the appen
dices in particular bear striking evidence. From unpub
lished sources he also reconstructed the "London Jewry"
of the time of the expulsion, tracing by a novel method
of his own the location of many of the houses owned at that
time by Jews. In the early volumes of the Jewish Quarterly
Review and the Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of
England, many original and stimulating contributions of his
are found, and his pioneer work in this field will always be
gratefully remembered.
He gave a remarkable exhibition, during his trip through
the Spanish archives, of his ability to discover the essential
point at a glance and of his working capacity. As the result
of twenty-eight working days, he brought back a record of
over 1,700 single records and 19 copies of important docu
ments which threw new light on the conditions of the Jews
in Spain, These are incorporated in his Sources of Spanish-
JOSEPH JACOBS 253
Jewish History, which remains an indispensable source book
even now, after the great addition to our knowledge re
sulting from the important publications of Fritz Baer.
Jacobs showed in his "Glossary of Jewish Terms/ 5 in the
Jewish Yearbooks he published in London, evidence of his
wide reading and his practical sense of what is useful and
needed; he never carried out his intention to enlarge and
publish it in book form, but the headings are probably all
included in the Jewish Encyclopedia. Here his wonderful
versatility, which enabled him to take up any subject at
short notice and present it in a comprehensive, interesting
and mostly original form (take for instance his History of
Geographical Discovery), was of the greatest assistance to
him and to the whole undertaking. Not to speak of the
archaeological articles in which he had always been inter
ested he had coined the term institutional archaeology
I will only mention two articles of the last volume which
were entirely outside of the sphere of Jacobs' studies. Under
"Triennial Cycle 53 he put before us in a clear form, illus
trated by a very clever diagram, the results of Buechler's
complicated investigation; under "Typography 55 he gath
ered in very small compass a lot of information from various
not readily accessible sources, adding some observations of
his own, e. g., the statistical tables on the contents of He
brew literature. I think it was to his work in preparing this
article that I owe my acquaintance with Joseph Jacobs
which soon grew into a warm friendship.
Statistics was one of Jacobs 5 pet subjects, and his Studies
in Jewish Statistics, Social, Vital and Anthropometric was perhaps
the first modern efiort in this field which dealt with the
subject comprehensively in all its different aspects. Various
articles in the Jewish Encyclopedia and elsewhere contain
valuable contributions to this branch of knowledge.
Even in his books on general subjects, Jacobs liked to
discuss matters of Jewish interest; thus, in his remarkable
254 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
introduction to Aesop, one of his best books, he has a
chapter on the Indian origin of Proverbs 30, reprinted
in his Studies on Biblical Archaeology, and one on the fables in
the Talmud in which, through the clever change of the
last letter, he turns the fables of the Kobsim (washermen)
into those of the Greek fabulist Kybisses.
We learn from his valuable bibliography, The Jewish
Question, that he was the author of the famous articles in the
Times, in January, 1882, for the first time denouncing the
Russian persecution of the Jews, which brought about the
Mansion House Meeting.
These brief notes are not meant to exhaust the labor of
Joseph Jacobs in the field of Judaism; they are only the very
inadequate tribute of a friend who had the privilege of close
association with Jacobs for the last ten years of his life and
who often had occasion to be thankful to him for his ever
ready help and advice. For years we used to talk over the
scientific questions which occupied us. We discussed at
length his ambitious "European Ideals," which were to
remain a mere outline, and our last meetings were devoted
to the various chapters of his book on the Jewish Contribu
tions to Civilization: An Estimate [1919], of which I saw all
but the concluding chapter in almost final form.
I know of no one who was more ready to put the full
store of his encyclopedic knowledge at the disposal of any
body who wanted it and who was freer from all egotism
and self-consciousness. He was a man of a beautiful, sweet
disposition, of an unusual modesty which never gave the
outsider an idea of his eminence in many respects, a staunch
friend and one who bore malice to no one, not even if
attacked. His name will live in the annals of Jewish
scholarship.
10
Henry Maker
IT is not easy to give an account of the life of a scholar
like Henry Malter. There are no high lights in the
story of his life, no great events of general interest. He
was a quiet, unostentatious devotee of Jewish learning who
shunned publicity. He was permeated with lofty idealism
and fervent devotion to learning. It would require a
literary artist to write an adequate sketch of the silent
martyrdom undergone by this sensitive personality in his
struggle with the needs of daily life. In such trials he had
numberless predecessors in many generations of Jewish
scholars. But he felt that he was deprived of the compen
sation they received through the general recognition of their
labors in the vineyard of the Torah. In our country, we
are too much concerned with the problem of economic
adjustment to give proper attention to those who spend
their lives in the unprofitable business of reconstructing
our people's past and in trying to bring the spiritual
treasures of former generations nearer to our contem
poraries. We have not yet learned to appreciate spiritual
values in their proper perspective and we lack laymen
with a background of Jewish learning who share to some
extent the interests of the scholar and follow his efforts
with sympathetic understanding. The Jewish scholar is a
lonely man in the United States, and there are few places
where he can find companionship and encouragement,
Dr. Malter suffered from this loneliness, yet he could not
get himself to associate with men whose materialistic view
of life prevented them from appreciating that intellectual
aspect of Judaism which was so dear to him.
255
256 ESSArS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
There is no record of Dr. Maker's early life, though he
occasionally referred to the hardships of his student years.
Of his early childhood we have a very characteristic account
from his own pen in a Hebrew autobiography of which,
unfortunately, only two short chapters were written*
Consequently, we can give only a brief outline of the years
preceding his arrival in this country.
Maker was born in a small village, Banse, near Zabno,
Galicia. His autobiography gives a vivid sketch of the life
there. It is characteristic of his early surroundings that he
was not quite sure of the year of his birth, his father adding
or subtracting a few years in order to excite his ambition
for progress in his Hebrew studies, or to boast to others of
his accomplishments. The probable date of his birth was
March 23 (Shushan Purim) 1864.
He devoted his youth to talmudic studies under the
guidance of his scholarly father and early acquired a
mastery of this vast literature. But these studies did not
satisfy the very gifted young man to whom articles in the
Hebrew weekly, Ha-Maggid, had brought the tidings of
other fields of Jewish learning and of the combination of
Jewish studies with modern culture. Since this paper was
published in Lyck, he directed his steps to that small town
in Eastern Prussia, which he reached after great hardships,
walking much of the way.
Further wanderings led him to Berlin, where he lived
for over a decade, adapting himself completely to Western
standards, though originally many of the German customs
seemed very strange to him. He earned his living by
teaching Hebrew, meanwhile acquiring the secular educa
tion which enabled him to qualify for admission to the
university in 1889. At the same time, he continued his
Jewish studies and enlarged their scope under Stein-
schneider at the Veitel-Heine-Ephraimsche Lehranstdt, 1890-
1898. He came very close to the famous master, whose
HENRT MALTER 257
favorite pupils he and Poznanski became at this period.
The influence of Steinschneider very largely shaped Maker's
scientific career. At his suggestion, the latter selected as the
subject of his doctoral dissertation a philosophic treatise by
the famous Mohammedan theologian Al-Gazzali in He
brew translation. He tried to reconstruct the lost Arabic
original on the basis of other works by the same writer, and
in this first essay displayed his thorough familiarity with
Arabic philosophic literature, as well as with the mediaeval
Hebrew terminology of the translators. He received his
doctor's degree from the University of Heidelberg, in 1894,
and his rabbinical diploma, in 1898, from the Lehranstaltjur
die Wissenschqft des Judentums, which he had attended for
five years. At the latter institution it was Martin Schreiner
who particularly attracted the young scholar, as he shared
his interest in mediaeval philosophy.
During his student years, Malter, although of a retiring
nature and of a pessimistic frame of mind, gained the
respect and friendship of the best and most serious of his
fellow students. The bonds between him and such men as
Samuel Poznanski, David Neumark and especially Micah
Joseph Berdyczewsky lasted throughout their lives.
Malter took a deep interest in the publishing society
Ahiasaph, which at that time printed its publications in
Berlin, and for this society he translated one of Stein-
schneider's chief works, his Jewish Literature. In this book,
Steinschneider had for the first time given an outline of the
vast literary pursuits of the Jewish people in its thousand
years of dispersion, classifying it by periods and subjects.
In the Hebrew translation by Malter the book became
accessible to much larger circles and exerted a great
influence. Maker's translation is remarkable for his He
brew style which showed his pronounced purism, avoiding
Germanisms and foreign words as far as possible and
replacing them largely with terms he had gathered from
258 ESSATS JjV JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
mediaeval literature which had been forgotten by modern
writers. He also frequently coined new terms which have
since been generally accepted. The basis of his work was
an authorized English translation which had appeared
forty years earlier; but he added notes, taking account of
the progress made in the various fields since that time.
Steinschneider's longer notes were left for an appendix
which never appeared, though in 1908 and 1909 Maker
translated and supplemented these additional notes in
collaboration with the present writer. If he had been
informed beforehand that the book would be reprinted
in 1923, we should probably possess this standard work in
a complete and up-to-date edition. It is to be hoped that,
with the new Interest in Hebrew publications, a publisher
will be found for these additions to his work on which he
spent much time and effort.
A common devotion to our great teacher ripened in
Maker and the present writer the plan for an edition
of Steinschneider's collected works, the first volume
of which appeared after Maker's death. It contains a
fine, comprehensive sketch of the master from Maker's
pen.
Maker's writings show a wide range and a remarkable
versatility. His interest in bibliography found an early
expression in his contribution to Glassberg's book on
Circumcision (1896). Later (1899), at Steinschneider's
suggestion, he was charged with the very difficult task of
cataloguing the books and manuscripts left by the well-
known bookdealer, Fischel Hirsch. The collection included
many fragments of very rare, and even unknown, books
and leaves of manuscripts, the identification of which
required an unusually wide acquaintance with obscure
branches of Jewish literature. It was probably his extensive
bibliographical knowledge which led to Maker's appoint
ment as librarian of the then recently-established communal
HENRY MATTER 259
library of the Berlin community, a position which he held
only one year.
In January, 1900, Maker was appointed Instructor in
Mediaeval Philosophy and Arabic at the Hebrew Union
College, Cincinnati, and in September of the same year he
married Bertha Freund, of Saaz, Bohemia. He remained
in Cincinnati till 1907. During these years he taught not
only the subjects for which he was appointed, but also
Bible, Mishna, Talmud, Shulhan Aruk and Ethiopia For
a while he also filled the office of rabbi of Shearith Israel
Congregation. Malter did not feel happy in his new
surroundings and resented the attacks on the works of the
Jewish past made by writers who, in his opinion, were not
competent to deal with such matters. Though hardly an
admirer of the Shulhan Aruk himself, we find him defending
it against aspersions in one of the Jewish weeklies. As a
convinced nationalist, he could not reconcile himself to the
philosophy of Reform Judaism and he tried to expound
his personal views on this question in a series of articles in
the Hebrew Union College Journal^ 1902-03, under the
characteristic title "Backward, then Forward." In this
series, he tried to show that, without the idea of Jewish
nationalism and culture, Judaism could not endure as a
religion pure and simple. Neither Orthodoxy nor much
less Reform would be able to carry on the old struggle
for survival successfully. The final article which was to
give the author's own solution of the inner Jewish problem
was not permitted to appear.
Being at variance with the leaders of the institution as
to the fundamentals of the theology of Reform Judaism
which the Hebrew Union College represented, Malter
could not long remain a member of its faculty. In 1907, he
resigned and came to New York where he devoted himself
to literary work, collaborating for a while on J. D. Eisen-
stein's Hebrew encyclopedia, to which he contributed a
260 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
number of articles, including a comprehensive one on
Aristotle in Jewish literature.
Two years later (1909), Dropsie College was opened and
Professor Maker was given the chair of Talmudic Litera
ture, which he filled to the time of his death, April VI 925.
His teaching was by no means limited to the interpretation
of the Talmud and to the discussion of literary and intro
ductory questions connected with it. Besides interpreting
chapters of the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmud and
various Midrashim, we find him reading the chief philo
sophic works of the Judeo-Arabic period. At the same time
he lectured on bibliography, on mediaeval Jewish literature
in general, as well as on its various branches, such as
talmudic, halakic, philosophical, ethical, historical, exe-
getical, poetical and liturgical.
With the conscientiousness which was characteristic of
Maker in everything he did, he took his teaching very
seriously and tried to give his students the best possible
training. Where only incorrect texts were available, he
did not hesitate to procure manuscripts, in order to be able
to get as close to the exact wording as possible and to
introduce his students into the secrets of textual criticism.
He had great pedagogic gifts and I have heard him praised
by his pupils, particularly as a most excellent teacher of
Talmud. He paid attention to philological accuracy as well
as to clear understanding of the subject matter and never
left a passage until every aspect had been clarified.
The same painstaking exactness characterized all his
literary work from the very beginning. Before writing on
any topic he made himself familiar with the entire litera
ture, no matter whether he was working on an article for
an encyclopedia, a review, or an original paper.
His favorite subject was Judeo-Arabic philosophy. He
started a series of articles on the influence of Arabic
philosophy on Judaism, of which only the general intro-
HENRY MALTER 261
duction and the article "Al-Kindi" have appeared (Ha-
Shiloah, VI, 38-52, and XV, 99-115). In his dissertation
he announced the plan of publishing the most important
work of the Arabic philosopher Gazzali, The Intentions of
the Philosophers, in the Arabic original, utilizing the various
Hebrew translations for fixing the text. He had procured
photographs of the two Arabic manuscripts, but I do not
know whether he proceeded far with the actual work.
The book which was to crown his labor in this field was
to be an adequate edition of Judah ibn Tibbon's Hebrew
translation of Saadia's great philosophic work, Emunot we-
Deot, which tried to reconcile Judaism with Arabic phi
losophy. He had prepared a very elaborate commentary on
this book, some twenty years before, and had revised the
text on the basis of the Arabic original. He realized, how
ever, the necessity of obtaining access to the manuscripts
of the Hebrew translation in order to be sure to put the
text before us in the form in which it had actually come
from the hands of the translator and in which it had made
its mark on Jewish literature. Having chosen this task, he
never lost sight of it, even while he was engaged on other
commissions given him by various bodies. In the last year
of his life he finally had his material collected and felt free
to revise his earlier work and to prepare the edition of
which he had always dreamt. He told me a few days before
his premature death at the age of sixty-one that he
had covered 240 of the 320 pages of the Arabic text, when a
malignant disease began to sap his vitality. While suffering
unbearable pain, he managed to go over another sixty
pages, and only twenty were awaiting final revision when
his power of resistance was broken. He died on April 4,
1925. Near the goal of his dreams, a cruel fate wrested the
pen out of his hand; and his last thoughts were undoubtedly
of this and other projected works which he had to leave
unpublished.
262 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
The most important of Maker's published works is his
exhaustive volume, Saadia Gaon, His Life and Works, opening
the Morris Loeb Series issued by the Jewish Publication
Society. This volume is regarded by many critics as the
best and most scholarly biography of a Jewish worthy we
possess in the English language. Here the originally scanty
material on the life and personality of the greatest gaon,
later greatly enriched by the new material found in the
Geniza, was subjected to searching criticism in copious foot
notes. On the basis of this body of information an inter
esting and well-written sketch of Saadia's life was made.
The works of the many-sided scholar are classified and
described in the second part of the volume. Their influence
on later generations is illustrated in a special chapter,
showing how they spread to all lands of the Diaspora.
The bibliography of these works is discussed separately in
a third part of the book, covering over a hundred pages.
Here the author, with uncommon thoroughness, compiled
a large corpus of references from the widely scattered
literature of the subject, so that the comprehensiveness of
his work is amazing even to the specialist. He bestowed a
great deal of care on the literary form of his presentation
and, in spite of his 660 footnotes, Malter succeeded in
producing an attractive and readable volume.
Another of Maker's special interests was Shem Tob
Palquera, a later philosopher of less originality, but in many
ways an interesting personality, who lived in southern
France in the thirteenth century and whom Malter re
garded as a representative of the wide culture of his country
and period. He appealed to the scholar also as an excellent
stylist. Malter sketched the life and activity of this "enthusi
astic champion of learning and enlightenment," in a very
interesting essay (Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, I,
151-81), and published his "Treatise on Dreams" with a
lengthy introduction (ibid., 451-501). Several notes to
HEWRT MALTER 263
this text developed into short essays, such as "Dreams as
a Cause of Literary Compositions" (in the Studies in Jewish
Literature in Honor of K. Kohler). One of his students, at his
suggestion, selected another work of Palquera as a thesis,
while Maker himself intended to edit a third of the smaller
unpublished writings of the same philosopher-
During his last seven years, Malter was engaged in the
task of establishing, on the basis of all the extant manu
scripts, the correct text of the treatise Ta c anit of the Baby
lonian Talmud. His text, and English translation, appeared
posthumously in 1928 in the Schiff Library of the Jewish
Classics. But the full significance of his tremendous work
became manifest only when his complete notes were pub
lished with all the various readings and his critical remarks.
The American Academy for Jewish Research, of which he
was the secretary, published it in 1930 as Volume I of its
special publications under the title: The Treatise Tctanit of
the Babylonian Talmud critically edited on the basis of twenty-four
manuscripts, quotations by old authorities and early editions y and
provided with notes containing the critical apparatus as well as
discussions and explanations of the text. This work of patient
labor and critical acumen, which led him back to the
talmudic studies of his youth, for the first time shows what
liberties the copyists took with the wording of their Talmud
texts and what critical method is required in order to fix
the original version.
Malter contributed many articles to the Jewish Quarterly
Review and to various German and Hebrew scientific
journals and popular periodicals.
One may dwell, in conclusion, upon the personality of
this remarkable scholar. He was most painstaking in his
work and shirked no labor in order to reach reliable results.
He was very regular and systematic in his working hours
as in his habits of life, and this made it possible for him to
accomplish so much. His scholarship was of a very high
264 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
order. He always tried to give his best and to present the
results of his researches in pleasing form. While he disliked
to rewrite what he had written, he took great pains to
formulate his sentences properly before putting them on
paper. His style was lucid and even elegant. He wrote
German and English equally well, but his fine Hebrew style
was more characteristic than either.
Maker had a pronounced sense for the aesthetic and laid
great stress on proper appearance. Of delicate constitution,
he rarely enjoyed perfect health. He was a lonely man who
did not make friends very easily and, being an intellectual
aristocrat, had a high standard for those he considered
worthy of his friendship. In many respects he was a man
of strong convictions, with a pronounced feeling for justice.
On the other hand, he also had strong prejudices which he
took no trouble to hide. "I regard it as worthy of little
men," he says in one of his articles, "to advocate the
golden mean, this travelling in the middle of the road,
which as eveiybody knows is reserved for beasts of burden,
when the pavement on either side is intended for men."
He never left people in doubt as to which side he favored.
It was not easy for him to adapt himself to his surroundings.
His nature was not a very happy one, but in a congenial
circle he would show the whole charm of his attractive
personality. With a whimsically ironical, yet good-hu
mored smile, he would give amusing characterizations of
persons as well as of books and events and he could be a
most entertaining conversationalist. To those to whom he
gave his wholehearted friendship this was a rare and highly
appreciated gift, and they could count on him in every
respect. Altogether he was a marked individuality who
exerted a strong influence on the scholars, and the few
laymen who cared for scholarship, with whom he came in
contact.
11
Max Leopold Margolis
-AX LEOPOLD MARGOUS was born on October 15,
1866, in Meretz, Government of Vilna, a descend-
ant of a family of rabbis and scholars who were
proud to count R. Lipmann Heller among their forefathers.
His father, R. Isaac Margolis, was a man.of unusual attain
ments. He had devoted his youth exclusively to the study of
the Talmud, but, instead of looking for a rabbinical posi
tion, he first tried his luck as a businessman. Failing in this,
he was later compelled to accept the professional rabbinate
and made a name for himself by some apologetic pamphlets
in defense of the Talmud and Shulhan Aruk, as well as by a
volume of tales from the Talmud written in simple and
attractive Hebrew style. But his interests were not entirely
limited to ancient Jewish literature. Self-taught, he
acquired a knowledge of the classical languages, mathe
matics and science, and some of his contributions to Hebrew
periodicals gave evidence of broad knowledge.
The son received his earliest instruction from his father.
When, at the age of five, he was brought to a heder in the
customary way, the experiment did not work. The little
boy stayed for only an hour and, calling the melamed an
'Am ha-AretZy he walked home, to have his father continue
his education personally. The gifted youngster somehow
attracted the attention of the Greek-Orthodox priest of the
village, who taught him Russian, arithmetic and other
elementary subjects.
By the age of eleven the boy had already learned to read
the weekly portion from the Sepher Torah as well as the
265
266 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
prophetic lessons and the Book of Esther; he also was on
the way towards becoming an expert Torah-scribe. As a
matter of fact, once, when he was about seven years old,
his father having been called up to the Torah, the young
lad trailed after him and insisted on reading thcparaska; in
order to avoid disorder, he was placed on a footstool and
he actually read from the Scroll. His eagerness for study,
however, did not prevent him from taking an active part
in boyish games. His home town was situated on the
Niemen, and Max enjoyed swimming in the river in the
summer and skating on it in the winter; he became an
expert in both arts. The thoroughness and strong will
power so characteristic of the man were evident in his
early youth, as was his brusque way of speaking his mind,
which, as we have seen, he already showed in the heder.
Strong-willed as he was, he decided, after having attained
the age of bar mitsva, to leave the little town which offered
so few possibilities for satisfying his thirst for knowledge.
He ran away from home. The attempt was naturally
unsuccessful, but his father thereupon decided to send him
to Berlin to his father-in-law, David Bernstein. After a few
weeks the boy returned home. The father now tried to
transmit to his ambitious son the knowledge he had himself
acquired with such great difficulty, and for the next few
years he took entire charge of the boy's education. When
he went to Warsaw, where he gave private instruction, he
took Max with him. Thus Max was there at the time of the
first pogrom, in December, 1881. The anxious days spent
in a cellar under the protection of gentile friends left an
indelible impression on the boy's mind, so that under no
conditions did he ever want to go back to Russia.
During those years his father not only continued his
Hebrew instruction, but also taught him the rudiments of
Latin, Greek and mathematics. His brother Elias, to whom
I am indebted for the information on Max Margolis' early
MAX LEOPOLD MARGOUS 267
history, had a Hebrew textbook on trigonometry and loga
rithms prepared by his father for Max's instruction.
The father realized that this training could not lead to a
rounded-out education such as this ambitious and preco
cious lad required. In 1885, when Max had reached the
age of seventeen, his father again took him to Berlin, had
him matriculated in the Leibnitz Gymnasium and left
him in the house of his grandfather where Max now felt
happier than on his previous visit. In the Gymnasium,
Max distinguished himself in Greek, Latin and mathe
matics and, during the last three years of his stay there, was
considered the best student of Greek. He always retained
a special predilection for that language, as is evident from
so many of his later publications. At the same time he
kept up his Hebrew studies and corresponded with his
father in the holy tongue. There are still extant two con
gratulatory poems with an acrostic, upon his grandfather's
birthday, written in his clear and beautiful hand which
was quite remarkable. His Hebrew knowledge stood him
in good stead, as it enabled him to earn his expenses by
giving Hebrew lessons. Among his pupils were three sons
of the well-known Cassierer family in Berlin, with whom he
always kept up friendly relations in later years.
A year after his father had brought Max to Berlin, he
with his family visited him there on his way to New York;
it was the last time that Max was to see his father, who died
at the age of forty-five, only a year after he had made a
new home for himself and had become the rabbi of the
Kalvarier Schul in New York. Max remained in Berlin to
complete his course at the Gymnasium from which he
graduated after only four years of study, in 1889 clear
evidence of the excellence of the preparation he had
received from his father. The years of his attendance at
the Leibnitz Gymnasium left an indelible impress on Max
Margolis* entire life. Here he acquired the mastery of
268 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
Greek and Latin, and also the sure method which was so
characteristic of his whole scientific activity. In his bio
graphical note at the end of his doctoral dissertation, he
stated that he was imbued with German culture when,
after finishing school, he decided to follow his family to the
New World.
In the fall of 1889, he entered Columbia University,
studying Semitics under Professor Gottheil, Latin under
Professor Peck and Philosophy under Professors Butler and
CatelL In 1890, he attained the degree of M. A. and in
1891 that of Doctor of Philosophy for a dissertation written
in excellent Latin. His subject was a discussion of the value
of Rashi's commentary for the preparation of a critical
edition of the text of the Talmud. He chose the treatise of
Erubin, probably because for this treatise he had access to
the very rare first edition, Pesaro 1514, and to readings from
other important texts incorporated in the notes of the
Variae Lectiones of Rabbinovicz. In the introduction he
emphasizes the necessity for a critical edition of the tal-
mudic text and the inadequacy of the then recent specimen
published by Friedmann. He discusses the early efforts to
correct the text by conjecture and intuition and states that
it is time to stop building from the top and to begin by
laying the proper foundation. Turning to his special
subject, he gives a list of Rashi manuscripts known to him
and then shows in detail how Rashi's commentary may be
used to evolve the underlying talmudic text which ante
dates the existing manuscripts considerably. His treatment
is a model of such work and shows the young man to have
mastered all the intricacies of the complicated problems
of textual criticism and to have a special flair for that kind
of research. He tries to establish the relationship of the
various Rashi texts to one another and to the manuscripts of
the Talmud as far as their readings were gathered by
Rabbinovicz.
MAX LEOPOLD MARGOLIS 269
After his graduation, Doctor Margolis was given a
fellowship in Semitics by his Alma Mater for a year, during
which he published a description of The Columbia Col
lege Manuscript of Meghilla, establishing its relationship
to the other Talmud manuscripts on the basis of a minute
collation of several leaves.
He wrote, many years later, that he haa then conceived
the ambitious plan of a critical edition of the Talmud
"based not only on the direct evidence of the manuscripts,
but also on such secondary sources as the gaonic responsa,
Nissim, Hananel, Alfasi, the Aruk, Rashi, and so on." He
goes on, however, "Not only did America prove to be the
wrong place for such an undertaking, but the circumstances
were not lacking to lead me away from my proposed plan
into entirely different work." The task of preparing a
Manual of the Aramaic language of the Babylonian Talmud with
Chrestomathy and Glossary, which was entrusted to him by
the Berlin theologian and orientalist, Professor Strack, in
1894, was dropped after a time, when Margolis realized
that in this country he could not have access to the helps
indispensable for giving satisfactory texts for his selections
in a chrestomathy. Only thirteen years later, when he had
gone to Europe after giving up his position at the Hebrew
Union College, did he once more turn to the first field of
his studies. Then, after careful perusal of all the Talmud
codices found in German libraries, he wrote his grammar
which is based entirely on passages compared with the
manuscripts and thus reliable in every detail, not to speak
of the texts of the chrestomathy. Even for the paradigms
he did not choose, as is customary, a certain verbal root
and give it in every form no matter whether it occurs in
the Talmud or not, but he selected only forms of verbs
which are actually found there. Thus we are always on
safe ground in this short but comprehensive grammatical
treatise, which includes the first attempt at a systematic
270 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
presentation of the syntax, lacking in the works of all his
predecessors. While engaged in the preparation of this
work, he wrote an appeal in a Baltimore weekly that the
only complete Talmud manuscript be made accessible
through photographic reproduction. In this appeal he
informs us of his old comprehensive plan.
But I have anticipated. In 1892 Margolis was appointed
instructor in Hebrew and Biblical Exegesis at the Hebrew
Union College; and he later became Assistant Professor.
The young instructor found the elementary Hebrew gram
mars unsuitable for the classroom, as they did not suffi
ciently reflect the recent advances of research in that field,
and he therefore published, in 1893, An Elementary Text
Book of Hebrew Accidence based on the most recent and
authoritative works. Even here he gave some results of his
own research. The little book is characterized by a con
ciseness of statement which prevails in most of his publica
tions. His Notes on Semitic Grammar published during this
period, 1894-96, shows his fine philological sense and his
thorough familiarity with the grammatical phenomena of
the various Semitic languages. That he also had become
interested in theological questions in his new surroundings
is evidenced by his paper on "The Theology of the Old
Prayerbook," published in the Tear book of the Central Con
ference of American Rabbis, 1897. In the same place there
appeared in 1903 his "The Theological Aspect of Reformed
Judaism." The radical attitude expressed in this paper
was not maintained by the author in his later years.
In 1897 he left Cincinnati to accept a call to the Univer
sity of California as Assistant Professor of Semitic languages.
In the following year he became Associate Professor, He
remained there till 1905.
During that period he was engaged in a most important
plan to revise the Hebrew and Aramaic equivalents in the
concordance of the Septuagint, several specimens of which
MAX LEOPOLD MARGOLIS 271
he published in 1905 and 1906. It was his intention to
arrange these equivalents in such a way that it would be
possible to reconstruct the original text underlying the
Septuagint with absolute certainty, or, as he expressed it,
"in place of the brilliant but uncertain guesses [it would
lead to] results which may be predicted with almost mathe
matical accuracy."
This plan of Doctor Margolis 5 was received with general
approval by the most eminent scholars in the field, and in
1908 men like Adolf Deissmann, Driver, Kautzsch, Nestle
and Strack issued an appeal to raise a fund to enable
Margolis, whom they state to be "admirably qualified to
execute the work," to devote two years to its execution.
After careful examination they enthusiastically endorsed
the plan as "of the utmost importance, both for the scientific
study of the Old Testament and also for checking the
unscientific and hazardous use often made of the Septu
agint. It will be a work that can never become antiquated,
but will simply be indispensable to every student of the
Old Testament."
In September, 1905, Margolis returned to the Hebrew
Union College as Professor of Biblical Exegesis. In March,
1907, he resigned because of a controversy on Zionism
between him and Doctor Kaufmann Kohler, then President
of the College. After his resignation, Margolis left the
United States for an extended European trip, visiting
libraries and meeting many scholars. He used this oppor
tunity to prepare the material for his Manual of the Aramaic
Language of the Babylonian Talmud, which he wrote in Eng
lish and German, and which appeared in both languages in
1910; but of this I have already spoken.
In 1908, an agreement was reached between the Jewish
Publication Society and the Central Conference of Ameri
can Rabbis to cooperate in bringing out a new revised
English translation of the Bible. The board appointed
272 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
by the two bodies immediately and unanimously chose
Margolis as editor-in-chief and secretary to the editorial
board, for he had by that time made for himself a name
as one of the foremost Jewish scholars in the biblical field.
Naturally, he had to carry the lion's share of the work
which covered a period of seven years. The notes on the
whole Bible which he prepared for this translation form a
gigantic work and are a most useful aid for textual criti
cism and exegesis of the Bible. They have been published
only in typewritten form for private circulation. Attention
was paid by him to the ancient versions, to talmudic and
midrashic allusions and to all available Jewish commen
tators from the Middle Ages to modern times, as well as
to the important non-Jewish commentaries.
The Dropsie College had been opened in the meantime,
in 1909, and Margolis was appointed Professor of Biblical
Philology, a chair which he held with distinction from that
date until his death.
In an institution of higher learning like Dropsie College,
which does not train rabbis but is devoted to general
scholarly education, a wide scope is granted to the prefer
ences of the individual professors; the courses, accordingly,
give a clear indication of their particular interests, though
due attention is naturally paid to the wishes and the
ability of their special students. Looking at Doctor Mar
golis' courses from this point of view, we notice his great
interest in every aspect of grammatical study, from the
Masora and the earliest Jewish writings in this field to the
most modern publications. Courses extending over several
years must have given his pupils a rare training in the whole
of Hebrew and Aramaic grammar. Some twenty years
previously, Dr. Margolis had undertaken to write a scien
tific Hebrew grammar for the Grundriss published by the
Gesellschaft zur Forderung der Wissenschaft des Juden-
tums. He started on this work and intended to take it up
MAX LEOPOLD MARGOLIS 273
seriously after his edition of the Septuagint on Joshua
should have appeared. Courses in the Greek and Coptic
languages were to introduce his students to the ancient
versions in these languages. Topographical studies in Pales
tinian geography embraced tannaitic literature and Eu-
sebius* Onomasticon.
Aside from the interpretation of the books of the Bible,
Margolis lectured on Ben Sira and the Fourth Book of
Ezra, which he planned to edit for the Classics Series of the
Jewish Publication Society. A general course which he
gave on the technique of editing texts must have been
illuminating. The first course he ever announced, "Scope
and Methodology of Biblical Philology," an abstract of
which is the first article in the New Series of the Jewish
Quarterly Review, was meant to be elaborated into a compre
hensive volume in the style of Bockh one of the many
plans which, alas, were not destined to be executed.
Naturally the master's interests also found expression in
the theses of many of his pupils; thus three of them, dealing
with the language of the Bible translations of Aquila,
Symmachus and Theodotion, are connected with his work
on the Septuagint-Concordance; one, on the pronunciation
of Hebrew according to the transliterations in the Hexapla,
goes back to the studies which led him to the Greek Joshua
and of which I shall speak later, while his work on that
book caused him to have the Aldine Joshua as well as the
variants of the Hebrew manuscripts of Joshua subjected to
a critical inquiry. A subject like "The Relationship be
tween God and Israel in the Bible," on the other hand,
shows that he readily permitted some pronounced interests
of his students to have free play.
We can see how widely Margolis 5 eminence in his field
was recognized from the fact that in 1914 he was appointed
by the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis as editor
of its Journal a task which he gave up in 1922 in order
274 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
to take over the editorship of the Journal of the American
Oriental Society. For the academic year 1924-5 he was
appointed Annual Professor at the American School of
Oriental Research in Jerusalem, serving at the same time
as one of the first visiting professors at the newly established
Hebrew University.
His stay in Jerusalem gave him the long-desired oppor
tunity to visit the scenes of biblical history, to obtain first
hand acquaintance with the new excavations and to watch
the growth of the new Jewish center in Palestine, in which
he fervently believed.
But his stay in the Holy Land, to which he had looked
forward with so much hope and anticipatiqn, was to be
marred by a tragedy. He lost there one of his two young
sons, and this misfortune left an indelible scar on the rest
of his life.
Although I first met Doctor Margolis in 1906, I saw him
more frequently after I became a member of the Publica
tion Committee of the Jewish Publication Society, about
1916. He had then been a member of that Committee for
many years. The monthly meetings, which he attended most
conscientiously, gave me an opportunity to appreciate his
critical judgment, his vast learning and his deep interest
in anything Jewish. He frequently reported on manu
scripts which he had read for the Society, and these were
by no means limited to scholarly books. He read novels,
dramas and other manuscripts, and his caustic criticism
was always the result of careful thought. We especially
turned to him in anything that concerned the Bible.
Hand in hand with the preparation of the new Bible
translation, the Publication Society planned a popular
commentary on the Bible, intended primarily for the
teacher, the inquiring pupil and the general reader, which
was to be both reliable and Jewish.
In 1908 Margolis published his commentary on Micah
MAX LEOPOLD MARGOLIS 275
as a specimen for this series. After the completion and the
publication of the Bible translation, this plan was taken up
again, and in 1920 an announcement was published by a
committee of which Margolis was the secretary. He was
to be editor-in-chief of the series, and he undertook person
ally to comment on the first two books of the Pentateuch.
He began this task, but the lack of means at that time
prevented the Society from proceeding with the plan.
Toa nother series of popular books on the Bible, connected
with the new translation, Margolis contributed two little
volumes: The Story of the Bible Translations (1917), and
The Hebrew Scriptures in the Making (1922). These books,
while strictly popular, are based on an exhaustive study of
aU the questions involved.
Another undertaking of the Publication Society was to
bring us into more intimate association. An offer was made
to the Society to finance a one-volume History of the Jewish
People, and Margolis and I were asked to write it. Margolis
was to carry the main burden of this task. He did the
writing of the bookj using my notes for the talmudic and
mediaeval periods. He frequently came to New York to
discuss various problems in connection with this work.
While our opinions naturally differed on many points,
no difficulty or misunderstanding ever arose, and both of
us enjoyed the collaboration which brought us closer to
one another. I learned to admire his sound judgment, his
untiring industry and his unusual powers of concentrating
on his work. Besides all his other duties, he would generally
devote eight hours a day to the History, which progressed
very rapidly, in spite of the fact that the year he spent in
Palestine fell within that period. Although the biblical
period was his main field, and he enjoyed the opportunity
to present his view of biblical history in comprehensive
fashion, he showed a thorough acquaintance with the later
periods of Jewish history and literature as well. The
276 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
arrangement of the chronological tables at the end of the
volume, placing the events in different countries in parallel
columns, gives evidence of his practical and methodical
mind.
During all that time he never neglected his work on the
Septuagint. In connection with his plan for a revision of
the Hebrew equivalents of the Septuagint Concordance,
he made all kinds of observations on the methods of the
translators as well as on the changes in transmission due
to revisors and copyists. His Studien im griechischen Alien
Testament (1907) sum up in sixty pages a great many of his
results under various topics. It seems that in the course of
these studies he began to examine the transliterations,
mostly proper names, found in the Septuagint. He gathered
about twelve hundred and, in 1910, according to his own
statement, they were almost ready for publication.
In the course of these researches he observed that the
numerous proper names in the Greek Joshua offered a key
for grouping the manuscripts of the Septuagint. He then
began to concentrate his studies on this book, and Dropsie
College readily provided him with the necessary photo
graphs of Greek Joshua manuscripts. Originally he in
tended to publish an edition of a small group of manu
scripts showing a particular recension. "The K Text of
Joshua" (1911), was meant to be preparatory to this larger
work. Professor G. F. Moore said: "As a specimen of
text-critical study, it would be difficult to praise this work
beyond its desert." But in time his plan expanded to a
critical and final edition of The Book of Joshua in Greek,
According to the Critically Restored Text, with an Apparatus
Containing the Variants of the Principal Recensions and of the
Individual Witnesses. A specimen containing chapter VI,
1-12, appeared in the Israel Abrahams Memorial Volume in
1927. The printing of the text with its various types and
sigla proved an almost impossible task, and it was found
MAX LEOPOLD MARGOUS 277
advisable to reproduce the author's manuscript by a
photographic process. Margolis thereupon recopied in his
beautiful, clear handwriting the 400-500 quarto pages of
his text with the full apparatus. It is difficult to describe
the complicated arrangement of the pages with their eight
to nine separate groups of variants and notes under the
text. In order to appreciate Margolis 3 'work one has to
see this masterpiece of calligraphy, testifying to his inex
haustible patience, industry, methodical planning and
meticulous execution.
While heretofore all the editors of the Septuagint were
satisfied to reproduce one of the old manuscripts, usually
the Vaticanus or the Alexandrinus, and to add to it the variants
in other sources, Margolis realized that the task of an editor
is to establish as nearly as possible the original text. His
researches showed him that of all the available codices, the
Vaticanus comes closest to the original; but his edition is no
longer a reproduction of this one codex, but a very much
revised and improved text. The readings are arranged
according to the principal recensions: the Egyptian,
Syrian, Palestinian and ConstantinopoKtan, as well as of a
mixed group, while his own notes explain some of the
differences and sum up the bearing of the Septuagint on the
Hebrew text of the book.
I may mention, in passing, that aside from Greek manu
scripts his remarkable linguistic equipment permitted
Margolis to refer, at first hand, in his apparatus to the
translations from the Greek into Syriac, Ethiopic, Coptic
and Bohairic. What an amount of minute collation of
photographs, demanding the greatest exactitude and most
infinite patience, was required in preparing this magnum
opus is very difficult to realize, even for those who have
worked on critical editions; but Margolis never shirked any
labor that would lead to exact results. For a mere review
of a new edition of an important Greek manuscript of Ben
278 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHT
Sira he took the trouble to check all the references to this
manuscript in the large Septuagint of Holmes and Parsons
and to compare them with the new edition.
Some time before his death, the first part of his Joshua
appeared under the auspices of the Kohut Foundation.
Three more issues appeared till 1938; the continuation was
interrupted by the war. The transcription of the text had
been entirely finished long ago, and at the time of his death
Margolis was engaged in the preparation of the elaborate
prolegomena. Two days before illness compelled him to
stop his work which he was never to resume, he wrote to
me about the present status of the book which he hoped to
finish in the course of the year.
In connection with the work on Joshua, and in order to
simplify his introduction, Margolis prepared an exhaustive
paper of about 200-300 pages, as far as I recollect, on the
lost Codex of the Dutch scholar, Masius, and the latter's
work on Joshua. On the recommendation of the late
Professor Moore, this volume was accepted for publication
in the Harvard Theological Series. But Margolis was not
fortunate enough to see even a beginning of its printing.
When his work on Joshua was approaching completion,
new plans occupied his fertile mind, and in a paper read
before the American Academy for Jewish Research he
proposed a cooperative edition of the Masoretic text,
according to scientific principles. Many an unfinished work
and many a plan died with him ! Only some of his smaller
publications the by-products of his larger schemes
and the first issues of his life-work give some idea of his
great power and his tremendous learning.
His untimely death, April 2, 1932, removed from our
midst one of the few outstanding Jewish scholars and one
of the greatest philologians and students of the Bible, He
was an inspiring teacher who brought out the best in his
pupils and gave them rare training in method and true
MAX LEOPOLD MARGOUS 279
scholarship. He permitted no sham or superficiality. His
criticism was always severe, but based on careful deliber
ation.
I have spoken at length about the great achievements of
Margolis as a scholar. I can only mention in conclusion
that much could be said about Margolis as a man and as
a Jew. His ardent belief in Zionism, for which he brought
great sacrifices, k well known. Anything pertaining to the
fate of the Jews concerned him personally. Margolis was
by no means a scholar who, secluded in the four walls of
his study, lived merely in the past; the complicated prob
lems of present-day life were of great interest to him. There
was no topic which one could not discuss with him and to
which he could not contribute out of his lucid mind and
the rich store of his information.
12
Israel Friedlaender the Scholar
1 SHALL try in this brief sketch of Dr. Friedlaender's
scientific activity to point out his accomplishments in
Jewish and oriental learning of which many, who
appreciate his public activities, are not fully aware. He
was one of the greatest Arabists in this country, thoroughly
familiar not only withthe Arabic language but with Arabic
thought and culture, an excellent Hebrew philologian, a
Bible exegete with original ideas, an historian of deep in
sight and remarkable powers of presentation, a teacher
of mediaeval Jewish philosophy, a gifted publicist and
objective reviewer, a rare linguist and a master of style in
Hebrew, German and English, both in writing and in
speaking.
When Israel Friedlaender came to Berlin, in his eight
eenth year, he intended to acquaint himself with the ad
vances of Western education and culture, but he was so
thoroughly imbued with Jewish learning through the educa
tion he had received at home and so familiar with Jewish
literature as it had developed in Russia and Poland that
from the very beginning he could give as well as receive.
He found that some of the Hebrew and Russian writers
had much to offer even to the Western Jews, and his
exceptional gift for languages and style made him especially
fit to act as mediator. In 1898 he translated from Russian
into German Dubnow's Jewish History, an essay on the
philosophy of history, now familiar to most of us in Miss
Szold's English re-translation. Friedlaender was a student
at the time and he signed the book only with his initials.
280
ISRAEL FRIEDLAENDER 281
Seven years later his translation of S. M. Dubnow's Die
Grundlagen des National judentums made another work of the
same writer accessible to the German reading public. An
English lecture included in his collected essays presents the
substance of Dubnow's "Theory of Jewish Nationalism" to
the English reader.
But much more than by Dubnow, Friedlaender was
influenced by the ideas of Ahad Ha'Am, a writer upon
whom he always looked with special admiration and rever
ence. His German translation of Ahad Ha'Am's Hebrew
essays introduced this Jewish thinker to the Western world.
A few separate essays were received with so much interest
that, in 1904, he undertook the publication of a considerable
volume which had the distinction of appearing in a second
edition in 1913, together with a second volume translated
by another hand. Since then an English translation has
appeared too, but I think we are justified in stating that
it is due to Dr. Friedlaender that Ahad Ha' Am and his
theories became so well known among the Western Jews
who do not read Hebrew.
Friedlaender frequently returned to this favorite author
of his, and tried to popularize Ahad Ha'Am's ideas. He
delivered a public lecture on him at the Jewish Theological
Seminary in 1906 which is now included in his collected
essays. These German translations of Friedlaender show
his remarkable skill in rendering the words of the Hebrew
and Russian writers into such an excellent, idiomatic
German that the reader would never guess the translator
had acquired this language only two or three years previ
ously.
When Friedlaender came to Berlin with the intention of
acquiring the rabbinical degree at the Seminary, he began
at the same time to study Semitic languages at the Univer
sity of Berlin, and in order to get the Doctor's degree he
went a few years later to Strasbourg University where he
282 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
enjoyed the instruction of the greatest master in Semitic
studies, Theodor Noldeke. The latter soon became very
fond of his unusually gifted pupil and greatly encouraged
him in his work. Friedlaender became so deeply interested
in his subject that he decided to change his career and to
devote himself wholly to Semitics, with a natural preference
for subjects which had some bearing on Jewish matters.
For his Doctor's dissertation he selected an investigation of
the Arabic language of Maimonides. His researches led
him to the conclusion that the common idea of a special
Judeo-Arabic dialect had no real foundation. Maimonides,
he showed, wrote the same Arabic as his most cultured
Mohammedan contemporaries, only that he was more free
from the literary influence of the language of the Koran,
which restricted the Mohammedans in their literary expres
sion. Accordingly, he maintained that Maimonides' works
represent the Arabic of his time in a purer form than the
works of Mohammedan writers possibly could. While the
Hebrew of Maimonides, as of all Judeo-Spanish writers, is
not free from Arabisms, no traces of Hebraic influence can
be discovered in his Arabic style. This Friedlaender pointed
out in the introduction to the first part of his Der Sprach-
gebrauch des Maimonides, his first scientific production, con
taining an Arabic-German dictionary of all the words not
found or insufficiently supported by evidence in the ordi
nary Arabic dictionaries. This book is far superior to the
common run of doctoral dissertations and exhibits the
author's thorough equipment in Arabic philology as well
as his great industry and exactness. It showed the orien
talists the importance of the Judeo-Arabic texts for their
field of studies; it was received very favorably by competent
critics and proved to be a great help to succeeding editors
of Maimonidean texts. The grammatical part, for which
Friedlaender collected very rich materials, was unfortu
nately never worked out, and only a few gleanings of it can
ISRAEL FWEDLAENDER 283
be found in the introduction to Friedlaender's Selections
from the Arabic Writings of Maimonides^ which appeared in
1909 in the Semitic Study Series.
Maimonides remained the favorite subject of Fried-
laender's studies. In 1904, a year after his arrival in this
country, he delivered a public lecture on the seven hun
dredth anniversary of the death of this great thinker.
Besides this general essay, which was translated into Ger
man, his Past and Present also includes a lecture on "Mai
monides as an Exegete" and a paper on "Maimonides as a
Master of Style. 35 He published in different periodicals
several responsa of Maimonides in the Arabic original with
interesting notes and introductions. These were taken
chiefly from manuscripts of the Geniza* From the same
source he published a letter congratulating Maimonides,
probably on his appointment as Nagid, L e. y the official
head of Egyptian Jewry. This letter makes an interesting
contribution to the characterizations of the philosopher.
For several years, Friedlaender labored on an edition of a
larger text of Maimonides which, at the time of his death,
was nearly ready for publication. He intended to edit the
famous letter to Yemen (on the question whether they
should believe in a man who claimed to be the Messiah)
from the manuscript of the Arabic original in the Library
of the Jewish Theological Seminary and the three extant
Hebrew translations of it. In the Arabic text Friedlaender
found a lengthy historical statement on some false mes-
siahs which all the translators curiously had omitted.
Together with this he wanted to publish two other cog
nate treatises of Maimonides on "Resurrection" and
on "Conversion under Compulsion 55 as well as a few
Arabic letters found in our manuscript. In this connection
the edition of some further Judeo-Arabic texts from Geniza
manuscripts may be mentioned. The most interesting of
them is the fragment of a curious "Mohammedan Book on
284 ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
Augury in Hebrew Characters," an almost unique specimen
of the fusion of Islam with Judaism, which aptly illustrates
the fact that popular superstition does not hesitate to trans
gress confessional barriers. Two others represent halakic
treatises by Samuel ibn Hofni and Isaac bar Ruben. Many
more such texts were copied by Friedlaender for inclu
sion in the Schechter Studies. Friedlaender accompanied
these as well as some of the responsa of Maimonides with
an excellent Hebrew translation of his own.
When Friedlaender made up his mind to follow a univer
sity career and to become a Semitic scholar, he selected
Arabic as his main field. He could not, of course, limit
himself to Jewish studies, but had to devote himself to
Mohammedan history and literature as well. Wellhausen
had just started his fundamental researches into early
Arabic history and had shown how the different schools of
tradition had influenced the Arabic historians. These inves
tigations seem to have greatly attracted Friedlaender, who
treated the same subject from different angles. In his
Probevortrag preceding his admission as lecturer (Privat-
docenf) at Strasbourg University, he discussed the tendency
of the various historical constructions of the Mohammedan
sources and showed that there were religious reasons for
their falsifications. The murder, for example, of the third
khalif, Othman, by some of Mohammed's most trusted
companions whom the prophet had promised a place in
Paradise, deeply hurt the religious feelings of orthodox
Moslems. They maintained that, since the act was abso
lutely against all religious prescriptions, it could not have
been committed by such pious men. They accordingly
shifted the blame to an enigmatic person, Abdallah ben
Saba, a converted Jew reputed to be the founder of the
Shiitic heresy. In his inaugural lecture on "The Messianic
Idea in Islam," Friedlaender pointed to the strong influence
of Jewish Messianism and the Christian heterodox doctrine
ISRAEL FRIEDLAENDER 285
of Docetism on the development of the Mohammedan
heresies. To the study of these heresies and especially that
of the Shiites, Friedlaender devoted considerable time. He
based his researches on the manuscript account of a promi
nent Mohammedan theologian of the llth century Ibn
Hazm. This and other investigations were interrupted by
his acceptance of Doctor Schechter's call to the Jewish
Theological Seminary. But Friedlaender never gave them
up and, during his repeated visits to England, continued
them in the British Museum.
The large use which Friedlaender made of manu
scripts even for texts of which printed editions are available,
like Shahrastani, is a characteristic indication of his pains
taking exactness in scholarly work. Before Friedlaender
had a chance to publish this work, the text of Ibn Hazm
was printed in Cairo. The rich material on the Shiites
which Friedlaender had collected appeared in 1909 as a
reprint from volumes 28-29 of the Journal of the American
Oriental Society. The first portion contains an English ren
dering of the parts of Ibn Hazm's book relating to this
subject. He corrected the printed text in many instances
from the manuscripts he had consulted. The second part
gives the commentary, with considerable cognate material
gathered from other sources. This work did not possess
the finished form which he always liked to give to his
literary productions. The material had grown much under
his hands and recasting would have entailed more time
than he could devote to the subject. In order to make the
results of his investigations accessible he finally decided,
distasteful as it was to him, to publish it in this fragmentary
form. The work found the warmest approval among com
petent scholars like Noldeke and Goldziher and caused a
scientific body in far-away India, the Indian Research
Society of Calcutta, to appoint its author to corresponding
membership.
286 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
His occupation with these Mohammedan heresies sug
gested to Friedlaender close relations with similar Jewish
movements in Arabic speaking countries; and considerable
reading in Jewish sources on earlier and later sects, down
to the movement of Shabbetai Zebi, convinced him of the
existence of such influences. His "Jewish-Arabic Studies,"
which he published in the first three volumes of the new
series of the Jewish Quarterly Review, are mainly devoted to
this subject and throw light on many of the strange theories
which we meet in our Hebrew sources. To Abdallah ben
Saba, the founder of Shiitism, and his Jewish origin, Fried
laender devoted a monograph in which he pointed out the
Jewish elements and influences in Shiitism which most of
the modern scholars who had studied the subject, and tried
to explain it from Persian or other sources, had not realized.
Here Wellhausen had been his predecessor, but Fried
laender with his thorough acquaintance with Jewish liter
ature could in many points correct Wellhausen, prove his
thesis more convincingly and adduce more striking evidence
of the correlation between the Shiites and Jews. He espe
cially pointed to relations with the theology of the Falashas,
but he emphasized from the outset that he could not very
well reach satisfactory results and had to leave many ques
tions and problems open.
Once more Friedlaender returned to his Strasbourg stud
ies in his book Die Chadhirlegende und der Alexanderroman, in
which he discussed some complicated problems of folklore
and literary history. His investigations extending to stories
of Alexander the Great in Greek, Syriac, Arabic, Persian
and Ethiopic, include a fascinating chapter on the traces of
the. Alexander stories in the Babylonian Talmud.
When World War I brought the problem of the Jews
of Russia and Poland once more to the foreground of gen
eral interest, the need for reliable information, in order to
understand their situation and to take the right steps for
ISRAEL FRIEDLAENDER 287
their protection, induced Friedlaender to write, in 1915, a
book offering a bird's-eye view of their history and their
culture. It is based on a series of lectures he had delivered
in Dropsie College and presents in a popular form a com
prehensive picture of the history of the Jews in Eastern
Europe. His description of their spiritual development
helps the westerner to appreciate their mental outlook.
This was the first book to treat of this subject in English
and filled a distinct gap. It was translated into German.
A popular edition of this book, the third, appeared in 1920.
At the same time he undertook an English translation of
Dubnow's comprehensive History of the Jews in Russia and
Poland from the Earliest Times until the Present Day, the first
volume of which appeared in 1916, while the text of the
third volume was issued for private circulation before the
Versailles Conference in 1919. This final volume appeared
in 1920, completed by an elaborate index making the rich
information contained in the work easily accessible for
reference. When approaching this task, Friedlaender found
that he could not limit himself to a mere translation, but
that the Russian original had to be recast to a considerable
extent in order to make it acceptable to the American
public.
Friedlaender's historical studies maintained a close rela
tionship with the present, as he was always earnestly
concerned with the well-being of his people. His last pub
lished book, Past and Present, a selection from his Jewish
essays, contains many of his contributions to the discussion
of Jewish problems of the day, especially of American
Jewry. Here we find the best thought of the mature, sym
pathetic observer who since his youth had carefully fol
lowed the Jewish problems on two continents with rare
understanding and who was at least as much concerned
with the spiritual and national revival of his people as he
was with his scientific pursuits. It is obvious from his
288 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
contributions to the study of the Bible, with which the
volume opens, that "biblical science with its bewildering
divergence of opinion" did not overmuch appeal to him,
and that he was too conscientious a scholar to accept its
critical dicta uncritically. Ignorabimus, he was convinced,
must remain the answer to many of the mooted problems
of biblical criticism and he did not feel a call to add new
hypotheses to the large number of those propounded by
the biblical students of our generation. Altogether, he felt
that we are much more Talmud Jews than Bible Jews. The
later literature attracted him more as a subject of study,
much as he loved the Bible (indeed, he knew the Hebrew
original by heart and had actually every word of it at his
fingertips). There was one task, however, which Dr. Fried-
laender eagerly hoped to accomplish some day a com
mentary on Isaiah and perhaps on some other prophetical
books. He felt that a modern interpretation from a Jewish
point of view, in contradiction to recent work in this
field, would constitute a contribution of real value.
In estimating the scientific work of Dr. Friedlaender we
must admire his many-sidedness and brilliance as well as
the minute exactness of his research. He had an unfailing
eye for the essential and was quick to grasp a problem m
its entirety. He intuitively formed a mental picture which
enabled him to put all the details in their proper place and
proportion. He understood how to make his presentation
clear and interesting, however complicated and foreign to
the reader the subject matter might be. His striving for
accomplished literary form was never permitted to interfere
with the scientific accuracy of his research. As a character
istic, one may point here to the elaborate indices which he
added to some of his later books and on which he spent as
much time and effort as he did on the clearness of his
presentation.
Dr. Friedlaender can serve us as a model of the true.
ISRAEL FRIEDLAENDER 289
objective scholar who combined to a remarkable degree
thoroughness and lucidity. The rare blending of the East
and the West which did not cause the slightest break in his
personality made his collaboration so precious in our coun
try and in our time of transition, and makes us feel his loss
the more poignantly. We can realize how much he would
have contributed to our life and to our knowledge if he had
been granted a longer life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bibliography
1. SAADIA
First published in Rab Saadia Gaon: Studies in his Honor, edited
by Louis Finkelstein, New York, 1944, 53-95, with footnotes
which are omitted here.
The standard biography of Saadia is that by H. Malter,
Saadia Gaon: his Life and Work, Philadelphia, 1921; reprinted
1942.
Several collective volumes have been published in connection
with the millennium of Saadia's death: J. L. Fishman (editor),
Rav Saadya Gaon (Hebrew), Jerusalem, 1943; American Academy
for Jewish Research, Texts and Studies, /, Saadia Anniversary
Volume, New York, 1943, including A. Freimann, "A Saadia
Bibliography, 1920-1942," as a supplement to Maker; Edwin
J. Rosenthal (editor), Saadya Studies, Manchester, 1943; as well
as special Saadia numbers in the Jewish Quarterly Review (New
Series), Bitzaron, Hadoar, a. o.
2. RABBENU GERSHOM, LIGHT OF THE EXILE
Unpublished.
Naphtali ben Samuel [Simhoni], "Rabbenu Gershom Meor
ha-Gola," in Hashiloah, 28 (1913), 14-22, 119-128, 201-212
(Hebrew).
A. Epstein, "Der Gerschom Meor ha-Golah zugeschriebene
Talmud-Gommentar," in Festschrift turn acht&gsten Geburtstag
Moritz Steinschneider s, Leipzig, 1896, 115-143.
3. RASHI
First published in American Academy for Jewish Research,
Texts and Studies, II, Rashi Anniversary Volume, New York, 1941,
9-30.
293
294 ESSATS Of JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
The fullest biography of Rashi is still that by E. M. Lipschiitz,
Rabbi Shelomo Titzkaki, Warsaw, 1912 (Hebrew). Other volumes
published in connection with the nine-hundredth anniversary
of Rashi's birth are: J. L. Fishraan (editor), Sefer Rashi, Jeru
salem, 1941 (Hebrew); Rashi numbers in Bitzaron, Hadoar, a. o.,
and several smaller volumes and essays.
4. MAIMONIDES
First published in Octocentennial Series, II, New York, 1935;
reprinted in Studies in Jewish History and Booklore, New York, 1944,
26-47.
Published in connection with the Octocentennial of Mai
monides 5 birth: S. Zeitlin, Maimonides, A Biography, New York,
1935; A. Heschel, Maimonides, Eine Biographic, Berlin, 1935; J. L.
Fishman (editor), Rabbenu Moshe ben Maimon, Jerusalem, 1935
(Hebrew); I. Epstein (editor), Moses Maimonides, Anglo-Jewish
Papers in Connection with the Eighth Centenary of his Birth, London,
1935; S. W, Baron (editor), Essays on Maimonides. An Octocenten
nial Volume, New York, 1941; as well as special Maimonides
numbers in Ha-Aretz, Jewish Quarterly Review, Monatsschrift fur
Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums, Moznayim, Revue des
Etudes Juives, Tarbiz, a. o., and numerous essays.
W. Bacher, M. Brann, D. Simonsen, J. Guttmann (editors),
Moses Ben Maimon, Sein Leben, seine Werke und sein Einfluss, I-II,
Leipzig, 1908-1914, is the most important of the earlier publica
tions.
5. MORITZ STEINSCHNEIDER
Unpublished,
As sources for this essay I used in the first place the documents
which Miss Goldberg, Steinschneider's devoted secretary, had
turned over to the Jewish Theological Seminary together with
Steinschneider's correspondence. Some of the most important
of these I have published as "Steinschneideriana II" in Jewish
Studies in Memory of George A. Kohut, New York, 1935, and as an
appendix to "Zunz's Letters to Steinschneider," in Proceedings of
the American Academy for Jewish Research, V, New York, 1934.
BIBLIOGRAPHT 295
Among the others, the most valuable is a Cassa Buck for the
years 1832-1870, in which, in brief form, all expenses and income
for every year are summed up. There is also a complete record
of all the cases of "Jewish Oaths" sworn before Steinschneider.
It was impossible to go through the entire enormous correspond*
ence, but I read the letters of the bookseller A. Asher of Auer-
bach, David Cassel and M. A. Levy, his two closest friends, Julius
Fiirst, Joseph Zedner of the British Museum, Bandinel and
Coxe of the Bodleian Library, the correspondence with A.
Geiger Ludwig Geiger had returned the letters addressed to
his father after the latter's death and a few others. Most re
vealing were the letters to his fianc6e. Quotations from these
letters are not always indicated by quotation marks, as they had
to be translated very freely, on account of Steinschneider' s diffi
cult and condensed language, and often had to be shortened.
The autobiographical sketch in Wurzbach, Biographisches Lexi-
kon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich, XXVIII, Vienna, 1878, is an in
valuable source for the first sixty years of his life. The editor's
letters to Steinschneider prove the latter's authorship of this
biography. The only effort at a biography of Steinschneider,
G. A. Kohut's Moritz Steinschneider. A Tribute on his Eighty-Fourth
Birthday, Part I, New York, 1900, unfortunately does not go be
yond the year 1845. See also Kohut's Tribute Written on the
Occasion of his 90th Birthday, New York, 1906, and his "Stein-
schneideriana," in A. S. Freidus Memorial Volume, New York, 1929.
For the Zionist episode see N. M. Gelber, J^ur Vorgeschichte
des Zionismus, Vienna, 1927, 202-212, 305-309; S. W. Baron,
"Abraham Benisch's Project for Jewish Colonization in Palestine
(1842)," in Jewish Studies in Memory of George A. Kohut, New York,
1935. See also S. Spiegel's review of the Jewish Studies in Opinion
for April, 1936, 32.
A collection of cuttings and reprints, mostly containing trib
utes in connection with his ninetieth birthday, necrologies and
articles published on the hundredth anniversary of his birth were
very helpful. There are among them articles by I. Abrahams
and E. N. Adler, W. Bacher, A. Biram, R. Brainin, I. Elbogen,
D. Herzog, Joseph Jacobs, H. Maker, J. Pagel, J. Pollak, S'
296 ESSAYS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
Schechter, A. Z. Schwarz, a. o. An article by Adeline Goldberg,
"Steinschneider als Schulmann" and a "Nachwort" by L. Geiger
in the Allgemeine ^eitung des Judentums, vol. 80, 1916, were espe
cially instructive. A fuller estimate of Steinschneider by Geiger
in the Berliner Tageblatt, March 27, 1916, to which he refers, was
unfortunately inaccessible to me. If Miss Goldberg had been
able, as was her intention, to send me certain papers which she
had retained when she turned over the correspondence to the
Seminary, it might have been possible to find some additional
valuable information.
The exhaustive "Bibliography of the Writings of Professor
Dr. Moritz Steinschneider compiled by George Alexander
Kohut" fills 34 very closely printed pages in the Festschrift for
Steinschneider's eightieth birthday. Additions for the last eleven
years of his life were published by Miss Goldberg in three instal
ments in the ^eitschrift fur Hebraische Bibliographic, 1901, 1905
and 1909; see also F. H. Garrison, "Bibliographic der Arbeiten
Moritz Steinschneiders zur Geschichte der Medizin und der
Naturwissenschaften," in SudhofPs Archiv fur Geschichte der
Medizin, 25, 1932 (552 items); see also his "Moritz Steinschneider
as a Contributor to the History and Bibliography of Medical
Literature," in Emanuel Libman Anniversary Volumes, New York,
1932.
6. DAVID HOFFMANN
Unpublished.
L. Ginzberg, Students, Scholars and Saints, Philadelphia, 1928,
252-262; E. M. Lipschutz in E. Barischanski's translation of
Hoffmann's Rayot Makhriot neged Wellhausen, Jerusalem, 1928,
VII-XV; J. Neubauer, "Die Bedeutung David Hoffmanns fur
die Bibelwissenschaft," in Jeschurun, IX, 1922, 347-376; Ch.
Tschernowitz, Maseket ^ikhronot, New York, 1945, 244-264; J.
Wohlgemuth, Jeschurun, IX, 1922, 1-19; O. Wolfsberg, Sinai, VII,
Jerusalem, 1944, 74-81; L. Fischer, "Bibliographic der Schriften
und Aufsatze des Dr. D. Hoffmann," in Hoffmann Festschrift,
Berlin, 1914.
As sources I used some personal papers of Hoffmann, the
BIBLIOGRAPHY 297
copy in his own hand of the correspondence between R. Hile
Wechsler and S. R. Hirsch and a number of letters, some of
which were put at my disposal by my brother-in-law, Mr.
Mendel Hoffmann.
7. MAYER SULZBERGER
First published in Publications of the American Jewish Historical
Society, No. 29J1925), 188-193.
8. SOLOMON SCHECHTER
Partly published in Publications of the American Jewish Historical
Society, No. 25 (1917), 177-192, and partly in Memorial Adresses
on Doctor Solomon Schechter, New York, 1917, 2-6; reprinted in
Studies in Jewish History and Booklore, 377-395.
N. Bentwich, Solomon Schechter. A Biography, Philadelphia, 1938;
A. S. Oko, Solomon Schechter. A Bibliography, Cambridge, England,
1938; Appendix I, 79-86, lists "Studies and Appreciations."
9. THE JEWISH SCHOLARSHIP OF JOSEPH JACOBS
First published in The American Hebrew, February 11, 1916,
382; reprinted in Studies in Jewish History and Booklore, 396-399.
Mayer Suizberger, "Joseph Jacobs," in Publications of the Ameri
can Jewish Historical Society, No. 25 (1917); I. Zangwill a. o. in
Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, VIII, Lon
don, 1918, 129-152.
10. HENRY MALTER
First published in the American Jewish Tear Book, 36 (1926),
261-272; reprinted in Studies in Jewish History and Booklore, 409-17.
11. MAX LEOPOLD MARGOLIS
First published in Proceedings of the Rabbinical Assembly of Amer
ica, IV (1933), 368-380; reprinted in Studies in Jewish History
and Booklore, 418-430.
298 ESSATS IN JEWISH BIOGRAPHY
Cyrus Adler in American Jewish Year Book, 35 (1933), 139-144;
R. Gottheil, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 52 (1932),
105-109.
12. FRIEDLAENDER THE SCHOLAR
First published in The Menorah Journal, VI (1920), 344-350,
as one of three papers on Friedlaender; reprinted in Studies in
Jewish History and Booklore, 400-408.
Boaz Cohen, Israel Friedlaender ', A Bibliography of his Writings
With an Appreciation, New York, 1936. On p. 12, note 3, the
more important articles on Friedlaender are listed.
10604
