Among the writers of that age, a peculiar style called "mosaic" gradually grew up, and eventually became characteristic of neo-Hebraic poetry and humor. For their subjects and the presentation of their thoughts, they habitually made use of biblical phraseology, either as direct quotations or with an application not intended by the original context. In the latter case, well-known sentences were invested with new meanings, and this poetic-biblical phraseology afforded countless opportunities for the exercise of humor, of which neo-Hebraic poetry availed itself freely. The "mosaics" were collected not only from the Bible; the Targum, the Mishna, and the Talmud were rifled of sententious expressions, woven together, and with the license of art placed in unexpected juxtaposition. An example will make clear the method. In Genesis xviii. 29, God answers Abraham's petition in behalf of Sodom with the words: "I will not do it for the sake of forty," meaning, as everybody knows, that forty men would suffice to save the city from destruction. This passage Isaac ben Yehuda ibn Ghayyat audaciously connects with Deuteronomy xxv. 3, where forty is also mentioned, the forty stripes for misdemeanors of various kinds:

"If you see men the path of right forsake, To bring them back you must an effort make. Perhaps, if they but hear of stripes, they'll quake, And say, 'I'll do it not for forty's sake.'"

This "mosaic" style, suggesting startling contrasts and surprising applications of Bible thoughts and words, became a fruitful source of Jewish humor. If a theory of literary descent could be established, an illustration might be found in Heine's rapid transitions from tender sentiment to corroding wit, a modern development of the flashing humor of the "mosaic" style.

The "Song of Songs" naturally became a treasure-house of "mosaic" suggestions for the purposes of neo-Hebraic love poetry, which was dominated, however, by Arab influences. The first poet to introduce the sorrow of unhappy love into neo-Hebraic poetry was Moses ibn Ezra. He was in love with his niece, who probably became the wife of one of his brothers, and died early on giving birth to a son. His affection at first was requited, but his brothers opposed the union, and the poet left Spain, embittered and out of sorts with fate, to find peace and consolation in distant lands. Many of his poems are deeply tinged with gloom and pessimism, and the natural inference is that those in which he praises nature, and wine, and "bacchanalian feasts under leafy canopies with merry minstrelsy of birds" belong to the period of his life preceding its unfortunate turning-point, when love still smiled upon him, and hope was strong.

Some of his poems may serve as typical specimens of the love-poetry of those days:

"With hopeless love my heart is sick, Confession bursts my lips' restraint That thou, my love, dost cast me off, Hath touched me with a death-like taint.

I view the land both near and far, To me it seems a prison vast. Throughout its breadth, where'er I look, My eyes are met by doors locked fast.

And though the world stood open wide, Though angel hosts filled ev'ry space, To me 'twere destitute of charm Didst thou withdraw thy face."

Here is another:

"Perchance in days to come, When men and all things change, They'll marvel at my love, And call it passing strange.

Without I seem most calm, But fires rage within— 'Gainst me, as none before, Thou didst a grievous sin.

What! tell the world my woe! That were exceeding vain. With mocking smile they'd say, 'You know, he is not sane!'"

When his lady-love died, he composed the following elegy:

"In pain she bore the son who her embrace Would never know. Relentless death spread straight His nets for her, and she, scarce animate, Unto her husband signed: I ask this grace, My friend, let not harsh death our love efface; To our babes, its pledges, dedicate Thy faithful care; for vainly they await A mother's smile each childish fear to chase. And to my uncle, prithee, write. Deep pain I brought his heart. Consumed by love's regret He roved, a stranger in his home. I fain Would have him shed a tear, nor love forget. He seeketh consolation's cup, but first His soul with bitterness must quench its thirst."

Moses ibn Ezra's cup of consolation on not a few occasions seems to have been filled to overflowing with wine. In no other way can the joyousness of his drinking-songs be accounted for. The following are characteristic:

"Wine cooleth man in summer's heat, And warmeth him in winter's sleet. My buckler 'tis 'gainst chilling frost, My shield when rays of sun exhaust."

"If men will probe their inmost heart, They must condemn their crafty art: For silver pieces they make bold To ask a drink of liquid gold."

To his mistress, naturally, many a stanza of witty praise and coaxing imagery was devoted:

"My love is like a myrtle tree, When at the dance her hair falls down. Her eyes deal death most pitiless, Yet who would dare on her to frown?"

"Said I to sweetheart: 'Why dost thou resent The homage to thy grace by old men paid?' She answered me with question pertinent: 'Dost thou prefer a widow to a maid?'"

To his love-poems and drinking-songs must be added his poems of friendship, on true friends, life's crowning gift, and false friends, basest of creatures. He has justly been described as the most subjective of neo-Hebraic poets. His blithe delight in love, exhaling from his poems, transfigured his ready humor, which instinctively pierced to the ludicrous element in every object and occurrence: age dyeing its hair, traitorous friendship, the pride of wealth, or separation of lovers.

Yet in the history of synagogue literature this poet goes by the name Ha-Sallach, "penitential poet," on account of his many religious songs, bewailing in elegiac measure the hollowness of life, and the vanity of earthly possessions, and in ardent words advocating humility, repentance, and a contrite heart. The peculiarity of Jewish humor is that it returns to its tragic source.

No mediaeval poet so markedly illustrates this characteristic as the prince of neo-Hebraic poetry, Yehuda Halevi, in whose poems the principle of Jewish national poesy attained its completest expression. They are the idealized reflex of the soul of the Jewish people, its poetic emotions, its "making for righteousness," its patriotic love of race, its capacity for martyrdom. Whatever true and beautiful element had developed in Jewish soul life, since the day when Judah's song first rang out in Zion's accents on Spanish soil, greets us in its noblest garb in his poetry. A modern poet[48] says of him:

"Ay, he was a master singer, Brilliant pole star of his age, Light and beacon to his people! Wondrous mighty was his singing—

Verily a fiery pillar Moving on 'fore Israel's legions, Restless caravan of sorrow, Through the exile's desert plain."

In his early youth the muse of poetry had imprinted a kiss upon Halevi's brow, and the gracious echo of that kiss trembles through all the poet's numbers. Love, too, seems early to have taken up an abode in his susceptible heart, but, as expressed in the poems of his youth, it is not sensuous, earthly love, nor Gabirol's despondency and unselfish grief, nor even the sentiment of Moses ibn Ezra's artistically conceived and technically perfect love-plaint. It is tender, yet passionate, frankly extolling the happiness of requited love, and as naively miserable over separation from his mistress, whom he calls Ophra (fawn). One of his sweetest songs he puts upon her lips:

"Into my eyes he loving looked, My arms about his neck were twined, And in the mirror of my eyes, What but his image did he find?

Upon my dark-hued eyes he pressed His lips with breath of passion rare. The rogue! 'Twas not my eyes he kissed; He kissed his picture mirrored there."

Ophra's "Song of Joy" reminds one of the passion of the "Song of Songs":

"He cometh, O bliss! Fly swiftly, ye winds, Ye odorous breezes, And tell him how long I've waited for this!

O happy that night, When sunk on thy breast, Thy kisses fast falling, And drunken with love, My troth I did plight.

Again my sweet friend Embraceth me close. Yes, heaven doth bless us, And now thou hast won My love without end."

His mistress' charms he describes with attractive grace:

"My sweetheart's dainty lips are red, With ruby's crimson overspread; Her teeth are like a string of pearls; Adown her neck her clust'ring curls In ebon hue vie with the night; And o'er her features dances light.

The twinkling stars enthroned above Are sisters to my dearest love. We men should count it joy complete To lay our service at her feet. But ah! what rapture in her kiss! A forecast 'tis of heav'nly bliss!"

When the hour of parting from Ophra came, the young poet sang:

"And so we twain must part! Oh linger yet, Let me still feed my glance upon thine eyes. Forget not, love, the days of our delight, And I our nights of bliss shall ever prize. In dreams thy shadowy image I shall see, Oh even in my dream be kind to me!"[49]

Yehuda Halevi sang not only of love, but also, in true Oriental fashion, and under the influence of his Arabic models, of wine and friendship. On the other hand, he is entirely original in his epithalamiums, charming descriptions of the felicity of young conjugal life and the sweet blessings of pure love. They are pervaded by the intensity of joy, and full of roguish allusions to the young wife's shamefacedness, arousing the jest and merriment of her guests, and her delicate shrinking in the presence of longed-for happiness. Characteristically enough his admonitions to feed the fire of love are always followed by a sigh for his people's woes:

"You twain will soon be one, And all your longing filled. Ah me! will Israel's hope For freedom e'er be stilled?"

It is altogether probable that these blithesome songs belong to the poet's early life. To a friend who remonstrates with him for his love of wine he replies:

"My years scarce number twenty-one— Wouldst have me now the wine-cup shun?"

which would seem to indicate that love and wine were the pursuits of his youth. One of his prettiest drinking songs is the following:

"My bowl yields exultation— I soar aloft on song-tipped wing, Each draught is inspiration, My lips sip wine, my mouth must sing.

Dear friends are full of horror, Predict a toper's end for me. They ask: 'How long, O sorrow, Wilt thou remain wine's devotee?'

Why should I not sing praise of drinking? The joys of Eden it makes mine. If age will bring no cowardly shrinking, Full many a year will I drink wine."

But little is known of the events of the poet's career. History's niggardliness, however, has been compensated for by the prodigality of legend, which has woven many a fanciful tale about his life. Of one fact we are certain: when he had passed his fiftieth year, Yehuda Halevi left his native town, his home, his family, his friends, and disciples, to make a pilgrimage to Palestine, the land wherein his heart had always dwelt. His itinerary can be traced in his songs. They lead us to Egypt, to Zoan, to Damascus. In Tyre silence suddenly falls upon the singer. Did he attain the goal he had set out to reach? Did his eye behold the land of his fathers? Or did death overtake the pilgrim singer before his journey's end? Legend which has beautified his life has transfigured his death. It is said, that struck by a Saracen's horse Yehuda Halevi sank down before the very gates of Jerusalem. With its towers and battlements in sight, and his inspired "Lay of Zion" on his lips, his pure soul winged its flight heavenward.

With the death of Yehuda Halevi, the golden age of neo-Hebraic poetry in Spain came to an end, and the period of the epigones was inaugurated. A note of hesitancy is discernible in their productions, and they acknowledge the superiority of their predecessors in the epithet "fathers of song" applied to them. The most noted of the later writers was Yehuda ben Solomon Charisi. Fortune marked him out to be the critic of the great poetic creations of the brilliant epoch just closed, and his fame rests upon the skill with which he acquitted himself of his difficult task. As for his poetry, it lacks the depth, the glow, the virility, and inspiration of the works of the classical period. He was a restless wanderer, a poet tramp, roving in the Orient, in Africa, and in Europe. His most important work is his divan Tachkemoni, testifying to his powers as a humorist, and especially to his mastery of the Hebrew language, which he uses with dexterity never excelled. The divan touches upon every possible subject: God and nature, human life and suffering, the relations between men, his personal experiences, and his adventures in foreign parts. The first Makamat[50] writer among Jews, he furnished the model for all poems of the kind that followed; their first genuine humorist, he flashes forth his wit like a stream of light suddenly turned on in the dark. That he measured the worth of his productions by the generous meed of praise given by his contemporaries is a venial offense in the time of the troubadours and minnesingers. Charisi was particularly happy in his use of the "mosaic" style, and his short poems and epigrams are most charming. Deep melancholy is a foil to his humor, but as often his writings are disfigured by levity. The following may serve as samples of his versatile muse. The first is addressed to his grey hair:

"Those ravens black that rested Erstwhile upon my head, Within my heart have nested, Since from my hair they fled."

The second is inscribed to love's tears:

"Within my heart I held concealed My love so tender and so true; But overflowing tears revealed What I would fain have hid from view. My heart could evermore repress The woe that tell-tale tears confess."

Charisi is at his best when he gives the rein to his humor. Sparks fly; he stops at no caustic witticism, recoils from no satire; he is malice itself, and puts no restraint upon his levity. The "Flea Song" is a typical illustration of his impish mood:

"You ruthless flea, who desecrate my couch, And draw my blood to sate your appetite, You know not rest, on Sabbath day or feast— Your feast it is when you can pinch and bite.

My friends expound the law: to kill a flea Upon the Sabbath day a sin they call; But I prefer that other law which says, Be sure a murd'rer's malice to forestall."

That Charisi was a boon companion is evident from the following drinking song:

"Here under leafy bowers, Where coolest shades descend, Crowned with a wreath of flowers, Here will we drink, my friend.

Who drinks of wine, he learns That noble spirits' strength But steady increase earns, As years stretch out in length.

A thousand earthly years Are hours in God's sight, A year in heav'n appears A minute in its flight.

I would this lot were mine: To live by heav'nly count, And drink and drink old wine At youth's eternal fount."

Charisi and his Arabic models found many imitators among Spanish Jews. Solomon ibn Sakbel wrote Hebrew Makamat which may be regarded as an attempt at a satire in the form of a romance. The hero, Asher ben Yehuda, a veritable Don Juan, passes through most remarkable adventures.[51] The introductory Makama, describing life with his mistress in the solitude of a forest, is delicious. Tired of his monotonous life, he joins a company of convivial fellows, who pass their time in carousal. While with them, he receives an enigmatic love letter signed by an unknown woman, and he sets out to find her. On his wanderings, oppressed by love's doubts, he chances into a harem, and is threatened with death by its master. It turns out that the pasha is a beautiful woman, the slave of his mysterious lady-love, and she promises him speedy fulfilment of his wishes. Finally, close to the attainment of his end, he discovers that his beauty is a myth, the whole a practical joke perpetrated by his merry companions. So Asher ben Yehuda in quest of his mistress is led from adventure to adventure.

Internal evidence testifies against the genuineness of this romance, but at the same time with it appeared two other mock-heroic poems, "The Book of Diversions" (Sefer Sha'ashuim) by Joseph ibn Sabara, and "The Gift of Judah the Misogynist" (Minchatk Yehuda Soneh ha-Nashim) by Judah ibn Sabbatai, a Cordova physician, whose poems Charisi praised as the "fount of poesy." The plot of his "Gift," a satire on women, is as follows:[52] His dying father exacts from Serach, the hero of the romance, a promise never to marry, women in his sight being the cause of all the evil in the world. Curious as the behest is, it is still more curious that Serach uncomplainingly complies, and most curious of all, that he finds three companions willing to retire with him to a distant island, whence their propaganda for celibacy is to proceed. Scarcely has the news of their arrival spread, when a mass meeting of women is called, and a coalition formed against the misogynists. Korbi, an old hag, engages to make Serach faithless to his principles. He soon has a falling out with his fellow-celibates, and succumbs to the fascinations of a fair young temptress. After the wedding he discovers that his enemies, the women, have substituted for his beautiful bride, a hideous old woman, Blackcoal, the daughter of Owl. She at once assumes the reins of government most energetically, and answers her husband's groan of despair by the following curtain lecture:

"Up! up! the time for sleep is past! And no resistance will I brook! Away with thee, and look to it That thou bringst me what I ask: Gowns of costly stuff, Earrings, chains, and veils; A house with many windows; Mortars, lounges, sieves, Baskets, kettles, pots, Glasses, settles, brooms, Beakers, closets, flasks, Shovels, basins, bowls, Spindle, distaff, blankets, Buckets, ewers, barrels, Skillets, forks, and knives; Vinaigrettes and mirrors; Kerchiefs, turbans, reticules, Crescents, amulets, Rings and jewelled clasps; Girdles, buckles, bodices, Kirtles, caps, and waists; Garments finely spun, Rare byssus from the East. This and more shalt thou procure, No matter at what cost and sacrifice. Thou art affrighted? Thou weepest? My dear, spare all this agitation; Thou'lt suffer more than this. The first year shall pass in strife, The second will see thee a beggar. A prince erstwhile, thou shalt become a slave; Instead of a crown, thou shalt wear a wreath of straw."

Serach in abject despair turns for comfort to his three friends, and it is decided to bring suit for divorce in a general assembly. The women appear at the meeting, and demand that the despiser of their sex be forced to keep his ugly wife. One of the trio of friends proposes that the matter be brought before the king. The poet appends no moral to his tale; he leaves it to his readers to say: "And such must be the fate of all woman-haters!"

Judah Sabbatai was evidently far from being a woman-hater himself, but some of his contemporaries failed to understand the point of his witticisms and ridiculous situations. Yedaya Penini, another poet, looked upon it as a serious production, and in his allegory, "Woman's Friend," destitute of poetic inspiration, but brilliant in dialectics, undertook the defense of the fair sex against the misanthropic aspersions of the woman-hater.

Such works are evidence that we have reached the age of the troubadours and minnesingers, the epoch of the Renaissance, when, under the blue sky of Italy, and the fostering care of the trio of master-poets, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, the first germs of popular poetry were unfolding. The Italian Jews were carried along by the all-pervading spirit of the times, and had a share in the vigorous mental activity about them. Suggestions derived from the work of the Renaissance leaders fell like electric sparks into Jewish literature and science, lighting them up, and bringing them into rapport with the products of the humanistic movement. Provence, the land of song, gave birth to Kalonymos ben Kalonymos, later a resident of Italy, whose work, "Touchstone" (Eben Bochan) is the first true satire in neo-Hebraic poetry. It is a mirror of morals held up before his people, for high and low, rabbis and leaders, poets and scholars, rich and poor, to see their foibles and follies. The satire expresses a humorous, but lofty conception of life, based upon profound morality and sincere faith. It fulfils every requirement of a satire, steering clear of the pitfall caricature, and not obtruding the didactic element. The lesson to be conveyed is involved in, not stated apart from the satire, an emanation from the poet's disposition. His aim is not to ridicule, but to improve, instruct, influence. One of the most amusing chapters is that on woman's superior advantages, which make him bewail his having been born a man:[53]

"Truly, God's hand lies heavy on him Who has been created a man: Full many a trial he must patiently bear, And scorn and contumely of every kind. His life is like a field laid waste— Fortunate he is if it lasts not too long! Were I, for instance, a woman, How smooth and pleasant were my course. A circle of intimate friends Would call me gentle, graceful, modest. Comfortably I'd sit with them and sew, With one or two mayhap at the spinning wheel. On moonlight nights Gathered for cozy confidences, About the hearthfire, or in the dark, We'd tell each other what the people say, The gossip of the town, the scandals, Discuss the fashions and the last election. I surely would rise above the average— I would be an artist needlewoman, Broidering on silk and velvet The flowers of the field, And other patterns, copied from models, So rich in color as to make them seem nature— Petals, trees, blossoms, plants, and pots, And castles, pillars, temples, angel heads, And whatever else can be imitated with needle by her Who guides it with art and skill. Sometimes, too, though 'tis not so attractive, I should consent to play the cook— No less important task of woman 'tis To watch the kitchen most carefully. I should not be ruffled By dust and ashes on the hearth, by soot on stoves and pots; Nor would I hesitate to swing the axe And chop the firewood, And not to feed and rake the fire up, Despite the ashy dust that fills the nostrils. My particular delight it would be To taste of all the dishes served. And if some merry, joyous festival approached, Then would I display my taste. I would choose most brilliant gems for ear and hand, For neck and breast, for hair and gown, Most precious stuffs of silk and velvet, Whatever in clothes and jewels would increase my charms. And on the festal day, I would loud rejoice, Sing, and sway myself, and dance with vim. When I reached a maiden's prime, With all my charms at their height, What happiness, were heaven to favor me, Permit me to draw a prize in life's lottery, A youth of handsome mien, brave and true, With heart filled with love for me. If he declared his passion, I would return his love with all my might. Then as his wife, I would live a princess, Reclining on the softest pillows, My beauty heightened by velvet, silk, and tulle, By pearls and golden ornaments, Which he with lavish love would bring to me, To add to his delight and mine."

After enumerating additional advantages enjoyed by the gentler sex, the poet comes to the conclusion that protesting against fate is vain, and closes his chapter thus:

"Well, then, I'll resign myself to fate, And seek consolation in the thought that life comes to an end. Our sages tell us everywhere That for all things we must praise God, With loud rejoicing for all good, In submission for evil fortune. So I will force my lips, However they may resist, to say the olden blessing: My Lord and God accept my thanks That thou has made of me a man."

One of Kalonymos's friends was Immanuel ben Solomon of Rome, called the "Heine of the middle ages," and sometimes the "Jewish Voltaire." Neither comparison is apt. On the one hand, they give him too high a place as a writer, on the other, they do not adequately indicate his characteristic qualities. His most important work, the Mechabberoth, is a collection of disjointed pieces, full of bold witticisms, poetic thoughts, and linguistic charms. It is composed of poems, Makamat, parodies, novels, epigrams, distichs, and sonnets—all essentially humorous. The poet presents things as they are, leaving it to reality to create ridiculous situations. He is witty rather than humorous. Rarely only a spark of kindliness or the glow of poetry transfigures his wit. He is uniformly objective, scintillating, cold, often frivolous, and not always chaste. To produce a comic effect, to make his readers laugh is his sole desire. Friend and admirer of Dante, he attained to a high degree of skill in the sonnet. In neo-Hebraic poetry, his works mark the beginning of a new epoch. Indelicate witticisms and levity, until then sporadic in Jewish literature, were by him introduced as a regular feature. The poetry of the earlier writers had dwelt upon the power of love, their muse was modest and chaste, a "rose of Sharon," a "lily of the valleys." Immanuel's was of coarser fibre; his witty sallies remind one of Italian rather than Hebrew models. A recent critic of Hebrew poetry speaks of his Makamat as a pendant to "Tristan and Isolde,"—in both sensuality triumphs over spirituality. He is at his best in his sonnets, and of these the finest are in poetic prose. Female beauty is an unfailing source of inspiration to him, but of trust in womankind he has none:

"No woman ever faithful hold, Unless she ugly be and old."

The full measure of mockery he poured out upon a deceived husband, and the most cutting sarcasm at his command against an enemy is a comparison to crabbed, ugly women:

"I loathe him with the hot and honest hate That fills a rake 'gainst maids he can not bait, With which an ugly hag her glass reviles, And prostitutes the youths who 'scape their wiles."

His devotion to woman's beauty is altogether in the spirit of his Italian contemporaries. One of his most pleasing sonnets is dedicated to his lady-love's eyes:[54]

"My sweet gazelle! From thy bewitching eyes A glance thrills all my soul with wild delight. Unfathomed depths beam forth a world so bright— With rays of sun its sparkling splendor vies— One look within a mortal deifies. Thy lips, the gates wherethrough dawn wings its flight, Adorn a face suffused with rosy light, Whose radiance puts to shame the vaulted skies. Two brilliant stars are they from heaven sent— Their charm I cannot otherwise explain— By God but for a little instant lent, Who gracious doth their lustrous glory deign, To teach those on pursuit of beauty bent, Beside those eyes all other beauty's vain."

Immanuel's most congenial work, however, is as a satirist. One of his best known poems is a chain of distichs, drawing a comparison between two maidens, Tamar the beautiful, and Beria the homely:

"Tamar raises her eyelids, and stars appear in the sky; Her glance drops to earth, and flowers clothe the knoll whereon she stands. Beria looks up, and basilisks die of terror; Be not amazed; 'tis a sight that would Satan affright. Tamar's divine form human language cannot describe; The gods themselves believe her heaven's offspring. Beria's presence is desirable only in the time of vintage, When the Evil One can be banished by naught but grimaces. Tamar! Had Moses seen thee he had never made the serpent of copper, With thy image he had healed mankind. Beria! Pain seizes me, physic soothes, I catch sight of thee, and it returns with full force. Tamar, with ringlets adorned, greets early the sun, Who quickly hides, ashamed of his bald pate. Beria! were I to meet thee on New Year's Day in the morning, An omen 'twere of an inauspicious year. Tamar smiles, and heals the heart's bleeding wounds; She raises her head, the stars slink out of sight. Beria it were well to transport to heaven, Then surely heaven would take refuge on earth. Tamar resembles the moon in all respects but one— Her resplendent beauty never suffers obscuration. Beria partakes of the nature of the gods; 'tis said, None beholds the gods without most awful repentance. Tamar, were the Virgin like thee, never would the sun Pass out of Virgo to shine in Libra. Beria, dost know why the Messiah tarries to bring deliverance to men? Redemption time has long arrived, but he hides from thee."

With amazement we see the Hebrew muse, so serious aforetimes, participate in truly bacchanalian dances under Immanuel's guidance. It is curious that while, on the one hand, he shrinks from no frivolous utterance or indecent allusion, on the other, he is dominated by deep earnestness and genuine warmth of feeling, when he undertakes to defend or expound the fundamentals of faith. It is characteristic of the trend of his thought that he epitomizes the "Song of Songs" in the sentence: "Love is the pivot of the Torah." By a bold hypothesis it is assumed that in Daniel, his guide in Paradise (in the twenty-eighth canto of his poem), he impersonated and glorified his great friend Dante. If true, this would be an interesting indication of the intimate relations existing between a Jew and a circle devoted to the development of the national genius in literature and language, and the stimulating of the sense of nature and truth in opposition to the fantastic visions and grotesque ideals of the past.

Everywhere, not only in Italy, the Renaissance and the humanistic movement attract Jews. Among early Castilian troubadours there is a Jew, and the last troubadour of Spain again is a Jew. Naturally Italian Jews are more profoundly than others affected by the renascence of science and art. David ben Yehuda, Messer Leon, is the author of an epic, Shebach Nashim ("Praise of Women"), in which occurs an interesting reference to Petrarch's Laura, whom, in opposition to the consensus of opinion among his contemporaries, he considers, not a figment of the imagination, but a woman of flesh and blood. Praise and criticism of women are favorite themes in the poetic polemics of the sixteenth century. For instance, Jacob ben Elias, of Fano, in his "Shields of Heroes," a small collection of songs in stanzas of three verses, ventures to attack the weaker sex, for which Judah Tommo of Porta Leone at once takes up the cudgels in his "Women's Shield." At the same time a genuine song combat broke out between Abraham of Sarteano and Elias of Genzano. The latter is the champion of the purity of womanhood, impugned by the former, who in fifty tercets exposes the wickedness of woman in the most infamous of her sex, from Lilith to Jezebel, from Semiramis to Medea. An anonymous combatant lends force to his strictures by an arraignment of the lax morals of the women of their own time, while a fourth knight of song, evidently intending to conciliate the parties, begins his "New Song," only a fragment of which has reached us, with praise, and ends it with blame, of woman. Such productions, too, are a result of the Renaissance, of its romantic current, which, as it affected Catholicism, did not fail to leave its mark upon the Jews, among whom romanticists must have had many a battle to fight with adherents of traditional views.

Meantime, neo-Hebraic poetry had "fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf." Poetry drooped under the icy breath of rationalism, and vanished into the abyss of the Kabbala. At most we occasionally hear of a polemic poem, a keen-edged epigram. For the rest, there was only a monotonous succession of religious poems, repeating the old formulas, dry bones of habit and tradition, no longer informed with true poetic, religious spirit. Yet the source of love and humor in Jewish poetry had not run dry. It must be admitted that the sentimentalism of the minneservice, peculiar to the middle ages, never took root in Jewish soil. Pale resignation, morbid despair, longing for death, unmanly indulgence in regret, all the paraphernalia of chivalrous love, extolled in every key in the poetry of the middle ages, were foreign to the sane Jewish mind. Women, the object of unreasoning adulation, shared the fate of all sovereign powers: homage worked their ruin. They became accustomed to think that the weal and woe of the world depended upon their constancy or disloyalty. Jews alone were healthy enough to subordinate sexual love to reverence for maternity. Holding an exalted idea of love, they realized that its power extends far beyond the lives of two persons, and affects the well-being of generations unborn. Such love, intellectual love, which Benedict Spinoza was the first to define from a scientific and philosophic point of view, looks far down the vistas of the future, and gives providential thought to the race.

While humor and romanticism everywhere in the middle ages appeared as irreconcilable contrasts, by Jews they were brought into harmonious relationship. When humor was banished from poetry, it took refuge in Jewish-German literature, that spiritual undercurrent produced by the claims of fancy as opposed to the aggressive, all absorbing demands of reason. Not to the high and mighty, but to the lowly in spirit, the little ones of the earth, to women and children, it made its appeal, and from them its influence spread throughout the nation, bringing refreshment and sustenance to weary, starved minds, hope to the oppressed, and consolation to the afflicted. Consolation, indeed, was sorely needed by the Jews on their peregrinations during the middle ages. Sad, inexpressibly sad, was their condition. With fatal exclusiveness they devoted themselves to the study of the Talmud. Secular learning was deprecated; antagonism to science and vagaries characterized their intellectual life; philosophy was formally interdicted; the Hebrew language neglected; all their wealth and force of intellect lavished upon the study of the Law, and even here every faculty—reason, ingenuity, speculation—busied itself only with highly artificial solutions of equally artificial problems, far-fetched complications, and vexatious contradictions invented to be harmonized. Under such grievous circumstances, oppression growing with malice, Jewish minds and hearts were robbed of humor, and the exercise of love was made a difficult task. Is it astonishing that in such days a rabbi in the remote Slavonic East should have issued an injunction restraining his sisters in faith from reading romances on the Sabbath—romances composed by some other rabbi in Provence or Italy five hundred years before?

Sorrow and suffering are not endless. A new day broke for the Jews. The walls of the Ghetto fell, dry bones joined each other for new life, and a fresh spirit passed over the House of Israel. Enervation and decadence were succeeded by regeneration, quickened by the spirit of the times, by the ideas of freedom and equality universally advocated. The forces which culminated in their revival had existed as germs in the preceding century. Silently they had grown, operating through every spiritual medium, poetry, oratory, philosophy, political agitation. In the sunshine of the eighteenth century they finally matured, and at its close the rejuvenation of the Jewish race was an accomplished fact in every European country. Eagerly its sons entered into the new intellectual and literary movements of the nations permitted to enjoy another period of efflorescence, and Jewish humor has conquered a place for itself in modern literature.

Our brief journey through the realm of love and humor must certainly convince us that in sunny days humor rarely, love never, forsook Israel. Our old itinerant preachers (Maggidim), strolling from town to town, were in the habit of closing their sermons with a parable (Mashai), which opened the way to exhortation. The manner of our fathers recommends itself to me, and following in their footsteps, I venture to close my pilgrimage through the ages with a Mashal. It transports us to the sunny Orient, to the little seaport town of Jabneh, about six miles from Jerusalem, in the time immediately succeeding the destruction of the Temple. Thither with a remnant of his disciples, Jochanan ben Zakkai, one of the wisest of our rabbis, fled to escape the misery incident to the downfall of Jerusalem. He knew that the Temple would never again rise from its ashes. He knew as well that the essence of Judaism has no organic connection with the Temple or the Holy City. He foresaw that its mission is to spread abroad among the nations of the earth, and of this future he spoke to the disciples gathered about him in the academy at Jabneh. We can imagine him asking them to define the fundamental principle of Judaism, and receiving a multiplicity of answers, varying with the character and temper of the young missionaries. To one, possibly, Judaism seemed to rest upon faith in God, to another upon the Sabbath, to a third upon the Torah, to a fourth upon the Decalogue. Such views could not have satisfied the spiritual cravings of the aged teacher. When Jochanan ben Zakkai rises to give utterance to his opinion, we feel as though the narrow walls of the academy at Jabneh were miraculously widening out to enclose the world, while the figure of the venerable rabbi grows to the noble proportions of a divine seer, whose piercing eye rends the veil of futurity, and reads the remote verdict of history: "My disciples, my friends, the fundamental principle of Judaism is love!"



THE JEWISH STAGE

Perhaps no people has held so peculiar a position with regard to the drama as the Jews. Little more than two centuries have passed since a Jewish poet ventured to write a drama, and now, if division by race be admissible in literary matters, Jews indisputably rank among the first of those interested in the drama, both in its composition and presentation.

Originally, the Hebrew mind felt no attraction towards the drama. Hebrew poetry attained to neither dramatic nor epic creations, because the all-pervading monotheistic principle of the nation paralyzed the free and easy marshalling of gods and heroes of the Greek drama. Nevertheless, traces of dramatic poetry appear in the oldest literature. The "Song of Songs" by many is regarded as a dramatic idyl in seven scenes, with Shulammith as the heroine, and the king, the ostensible author, as the hero. But this and similar efforts are only faint approaches to dramatic composition, inducing no imitations.

Greek and Roman theatrical representations, the first they knew, must have awakened lively interest in the Jews. It was only after Alexander the Great's triumphal march through the East, and the establishment of Roman supremacy over Judaea, that a foothold was gained in Palestine by the institutions called theatre by the ancients; that is, stadia; circuses for wrestling, fencing, and combats between men and animals; and the stage for tragedies and other plays. To the horror of pious zealots, the Jewish Hellenists, in other words, Jews imbued with the secular culture of the day, built a gymnasium for the wrestling and fencing contests of the Jewish youth of Jerusalem, soon to be further defiled by the circus and the stadium. According to Flavius Josephus, Herod erected a theatre at Jerusalem twenty-eight years before the present era, and in the vicinity of the city, an amphitheatre where Greek players acted, and sang to the accompaniment of the lyre or flute.

The first, and at his time probably the only, Jewish dramatist was the Greek poet Ezekielos (Ezekiel), who flourished in about 150 before the common era. In his play, "The Exodus from Egypt," modelled after Euripides, Moses, as we know him in the Bible, is the hero. Otherwise the play is thoroughly Hellenic, showing the Greek tendency to become didactic and reflective and use the heroes of sacred legend as human types. Besides, two fragments of Jewish-Hellenic dramas, in trimeter verse, have come down to us, the one treating of the unity of God, the other of the serpent in Paradise.

To the mass of the Jewish people, particularly to the expounders and scholars of the Law, theatrical performances seemed a desecration, a sin. A violent struggle ensued between the Beth ha-Midrash and the stage, between the teachers of the Law and lovers of art, between Rabbinism and Hellenism. Mindful of Bible laws inculcating humanity to beasts and men, the rabbis could not fail to deprecate gladiatorial contests, and in their simple-mindedness they must have revolted from the themes of the Greek playwright, dishonesty, violence triumphant, and conjugal infidelity being then as now favorite subjects of dramatic representations. The immorality of the stage was, if possible, more conspicuous in those days than in ours.

This was the point of view assumed by the rabbis in their exhortations to the people, and a conspiracy against King Herod was the result. The plotters one evening appeared at the theatre, but their designs were frustrated by the absence of the king and his suite. The plot betrayed itself, and one of the members of the conspiracy was seized and torn into pieces by the mob. The most uncompromising rabbis pronounced a curse over frequenters of the theatre, and raised abstinence from its pleasures to the dignity of a meritorious action, inasmuch as it was the scene of idolatrous practices, and its habitues violated the admonition contained in the first verse of the psalms. "Cursed be they who visit the theatre and the circus, and despise our laws," one of them exclaims.[55] Another interprets the words of the prophet: "I sat not in the assembly of the mirthful, and was rejoiced," by the prayer: "Lord of the universe, never have I visited a theatre or a circus to enjoy myself in the company of scorners."

Despite rampant antagonism, the stage worked its way into the affection and consideration of the Jewish public, and we hear of Jewish youths devoting themselves to the drama and becoming actors. Only one has come down to us by name: the celebrated Alityros in Rome, the favorite of Emperor Nero and his wife Poppaea. Josephus speaks of him as "a player, and a Jew, well favored by Nero." When the Jewish historian landed at Puteoli, a captive, Alityros presented him to the empress, who secured his liberation. Beyond a doubt, the Jewish beaux esprits of Rome warmly supported the theatre; indeed, Roman satirists levelled their shafts against the zeal displayed in the service of art by Jewish patrons.

A reaction followed. Theatrical representations were pursued by Talmudic Judaism with the same bitter animosity as by Christianity. Not a matter of surprise, if account is taken of the licentiousness of the stage, so depraved as to evoke sharp reproof even from a Cicero, and the hostility of playwrights to Jews and Christians, whom they held up as a butt for the ridicule of the Roman populace. Talmudic literature has preserved several examples of the buffooneries launched against Judaism. Rabbi Abbayu tells the following:[56] A camel covered with a mourning blanket is brought upon the stage, and gives rise to a conversation. "Why is the camel trapped in mourning?" "Because the Jews, who are observing the sabbatical year, abstain from vegetables, and refuse to eat even herbs. They eat only thistles, and the camel is mourning because he is deprived of his favorite food."

Another time a buffoon appears on the stage with head shaved close. "Why is the clown mourning?" "Because oil is so dear." "Why is oil dear?" "On account of the Jews. On the Sabbath day they consume everything they earn during the week. Not a stick of wood is left to make fire whereby to cook their meals. They are forced to burn their beds for fuel, and sleep on the floor at night. To get rid of the dirt, they use an immense quantity of oil. Therefore, oil is dear, and the clown cannot grease his hair with pomade." Certainly no one will deny that the patrons of the Roman theatre were less critical than a modern audience.

Teachers of the Law had but one answer to make to such attacks—a rigorous injunction against theatre-going. On this subject rabbis and Church Fathers were of one mind. The rabbi's declaration, that he who enters a circus commits murder, is offspring of the same holy zeal that dictates Tertullian's solemn indignation: "In no respect, neither by speaking, nor by seeing, nor by hearing, have we part in the mad antics of the circus, the obscenity of the theatre, or the abominations of the arena." Such expressions prepare one for the passion of another remonstrant who, on a Sabbath, explained to his audience that earthquakes are the signs of God's fierce wrath when He looks down upon earth, and sees theatres and circuses flourish, while His sanctuary lies in ruins.[57]

Anathemas against the stage were vain. One teacher of the Law, in the middle of the second century, went so far as to permit attendance at the circus and the stadium for the very curious reason that the spectator may haply render assistance to the charioteers in the event of an accident on the race track, or may testify to their death at court, and thus enable their widows to marry again. Another pious rabbi expresses the hope that theatres and circuses at Rome at some future time may "be converted into academies of virtue and morality."

Such liberal views were naturally of extremely rare occurrence. Many centuries passed before Jews in general were able to overcome antipathy to the stage and all connected with it. Pagan Rome with its artistic creations was to sink, and the new Christian drama, springing from the ruins of the old theatre, but making the religious its central idea, was to develop and invite imitation before the first germ of interest in dramatic subjects ventured to show itself in Jewish circles. The first Jewish contribution to the drama dates from the ninth century. The story of Haman, arch-enemy of the Jews, was dramatized in celebration of Purim, the Jewish carnival. The central figure was Haman's effigy which was burnt, amid song, music, and general merrymaking, on a small pyre, over which the participants jumped a number of times in gleeful rejoicing over the downfall of their worst enemy—extravagance pardonable in a people which, on every other day of the year, tottered under a load of distress and oppression.

This dramatic effort was only a sporadic phenomenon. Real, uninterrupted participation in dramatic art by Jews cannot be recorded until fully six hundred years later. Meantime the Spanish drama, the first to adapt Bible subjects to the uses of the stage, had reached its highest development. By reason of its choice of subjects it proved so attractive to Jews that scarcely fifty years after the appearance of the first Spanish-Jewish playwright, a Spanish satirist deplores, in cutting verse, the Judaizing of dramatic poetry. In fact, the first original drama in Spanish literature, the celebrated Celestina, is attributed to a Jew, the Marrano Rodrigo da Cota. "Esther," the first distinctly Jewish play in Spanish, was written in 1567 by Solomon Usque in Ferrara in collaboration with Lazaro Graziano. The subject treated centuries before in a roughshod manner naturally suggested itself to a genuine dramatist, who chose it in order to invest it with the dignity conferred by poetic art. This first essay in the domain of the Jewish drama was followed by a succession of dramatic creations by Jews, who, exiled from Spain, cherished the memory of their beloved country, and, carrying to their new homes in Italy and Holland, love for its language and literature, wrote all their works, dramas included, in Spanish after Spanish models. So fruitful was their activity that shortly after the exile we hear of a "Jewish Calderon," the author of more than twenty-two plays, some long held to be the work of Calderon himself, and therefore received with acclamation in Madrid. The real author, whose place in Spanish literature is assured, was Antonio Enriquez di Gomez, a Marrano, burnt in effigy at Seville after his escape from the clutches of the Inquisition. His dramas in part deal with biblical subjects. Samson is obviously the mouthpiece of his own sentiments:

"O God, my God, the time draws quickly nigh! Now let a ray of thy great strength descend! Make firm my hand to execute the deed That alien rule upon our soil shall end!"

Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the Portuguese language usurped the place of Spanish among Jews, and straightway we hear of a Jewish dramatist, Antonio Jose de Silva (1705-1739), one of the most illustrious of Portuguese poets, whose dramas still hold their own on the repertory of the Portuguese stage. He was burnt at the stake, a martyr to his faith, which he solemnly confessed in the hour of his execution: "I am a follower of a faith God-given according to your own teachings. God once loved this religion. I believe He still loves it, but because you maintain that He no longer turns upon it the light of His countenance, you condemn to death those convinced that God has not withdrawn His grace from what He once favored." It is by no means an improbable combination of circumstances that on the evening of the day whereon Antonio Jose de Silva expired at the stake, an operetta written by the victim himself was played at the great theatre of Lisbon in celebration of the auto-da-fe.

Jewish literature as such derived little increase from this poetic activity among Jews. In the period under discussion a single Hebrew drama was produced which can lay claim to somewhat more praise than is the due of mediocrity. Asireh ha-Tikwah, "The Prisoners of Hope," printed in 1673, deserves notice because it was the first drama published in Hebrew, and its author, Joseph Pensa de la Vega, was the last of Spanish, as Antonio de Silva was the last of Portuguese, Jewish poets. The three act play is an allegory, treating of the victory of free-will, represented by a king, over evil inclinations, personified by the handsome lad Cupid. Though imbued with the solemnity of his responsibilities as a ruler, the king is lured from the path of right by various persons and circumstances, chief among them Cupid, his coquettish queen, and his sinful propensities. The opposing good forces are represented by the figures of harmony, Providence, and truth, and they eventually lead the erring wanderer back to the road of salvation. The dramatis personae of this first Hebrew drama are abstractions, devoid of dramatic life, mere allegorical personifications, but the underlying idea is poetic, and the Hebrew style pure, euphonious, and rhythmical. Yet it is impossible to echo the enthusiasm which greeted the work of the seventeen year old author in the Jewish academies of Holland. Twenty-one poets sang its praises in Latin, Hebrew, and Spanish verse. The following couplet may serve as a specimen of their eulogies:

"At length Israel's muse assumes the tragic cothurn, And happily wends her way through the metre's mazes."

Pensa, though the first to publish, was not the first Hebrew dramatist to write. The distinction of priority belongs to Moses Zacuto, who wrote his Hebrew play, Yesod Olam[58] ("The Foundation of the World") a quarter of a century earlier. His subject is the persecution inflicted by idolaters upon Abraham on account of his faith, and the groundwork is the Haggadistic narrative about Abraham's bold opposition to idolatrous practices, and his courage even unto death in the service of the true God. According to Talmudic interpretation a righteous character of this description is one of the corner-stones of the universe. It must be admitted that Zacuto's work is a drama with a purpose. The poet wished to fortify his exiled, harassed people with the inspiration and hope that flow from the contemplation of a strong, bold personality. But the admission does not detract from the genuine merits of the poem. On the other hand, this first dramatic effort naturally is crude, lacking in the poetic forms supplied by highly developed art. Dialogues, prayers, and choruses follow each other without regularity, and in varying metres, not destitute, however, of poetic sentiment and lyric beauties. Often the rhythm rises to a high degree of excellence, even elevation. Like Pensa, Zacuto was the disciple of great masters, and a comparison of either with Lope de Vega and Calderon will reveal the same southern warmth, stilted pathos, exuberance of fancy, wealth of imagery, excessive playing upon words, peculiar turns and phrases, erratic style, and other qualities characteristic of Spanish dramatic poetry in that period.

Another century elapsed before the muse of the Hebrew drama escaped from leading strings. Moses Chayyim Luzzatto (1707-1747) of Padua was a poet of true dramatic gifts, and had he lived at another time he might have attained to absolute greatness of performance. Unluckily, the sentimental, impressionable youth became hopelessly enmeshed in the snares of mysticism. In his seventeenth year he composed a biblical drama, "Samson and the Philistines," the preserved fragments of which are faultless in metre. His next effort was an allegorical drama, Migdal Oz ("Tower of Victory"), the style and moral of which show unmistakable signs of Italian inspiration, derived particularly from Guarini and his Pastor Fido, models not wholly commendable at a time when Maffei's Merope was exerting wholesome influence upon the Italian drama in the direction of simplicity and dignity. Nothing, however, could wean Luzzatto from adherence to Spanish-Italian romanticism. His happiest creation is the dramatic parable, Layesharim Tehillah ("Praise unto the Righteous!"). The poetry of the Bible here celebrates its resurrection. The rhythm and exuberance of the Psalms are reproduced in the tone and color of its language. "All the fragrant flowers of biblical poetry are massed in a single bed. Yet the language is more than a mosaic of biblical phrases. It is an enamel of the most superb and the rarest of elegant expressions in the Bible. The peculiarities of the historical writings are carefully avoided, while all modifications of style peculiar to poetry are gathered together to constitute what may fairly be called a vocabulary of poetic diction."[59]

The allegory Layesharim Tehillah is full of charming traits, but lacks warmth, naturalness, and human interest, the indispensable elements of dramatic action. The first act treats of the iniquity of men who prize deceit beyond virtue, and closes with the retirement of the pious sage to solitude. The second act describes the hopes of the righteous man and his fate, and the third sounds the praise of truth and justice. The thread of the story is slight, and the characters are pale phantoms, instead of warm-blooded men. Yet the work must be pronounced a gem of neo-Hebraic poetry, an earnest of the great creations its author might have produced, if in early youth he had not been caught in the swirling waters, and dragged down into the abysmal depths of Kabbalistic mysticism. Despite his vagaries his poems were full of suggestiveness and stimulation to many of his race, who were inspired to work along the lines laid down by him. He may be considered to have inaugurated another epoch of classical Hebrew literature, interpenetrated with the modern spirit, which the Jewish dramas of his day are vigorously successful in clothing in a Hebrew garb.

In the popular literature in Jewish-German growing up almost unnoticed beside classical Hebrew literature, we find popular plays, comedies, chiefly farces for the Purim carnival. The first of them, "The Sale of Joseph" (Mekirath Yoseph, 1710), treats the biblical narrative in the form and spirit of the German farcical clown dialogues, Pickelhering (Merry-Andrew), borrowed from the latter, being Potiphar's servant and counsellor. No dramatic or poetic value of any kind attaches to the play. It is as trivial as any of its models, the German clown comedies, and possesses interest only as an index to the taste of the public, which surely received it with delight. Strangely enough the principal scene between Joseph and Selicha, Potiphar's wife, is highly discreet. In a monologue, she gives passionate utterance to her love. Then Joseph appears, and she addresses him thus:

"Be welcome, Joseph, dearest one, My slave who all my heart has won! I beg of thee grant my request! So oft have I to thee confessed, My love for thee is passing great. In vain for answering love I wait. Have not so tyrannous a mind, Be not so churlish, so unkind— I bear thee such affection, see, Why wilt thou not give love to me?"

Joseph answers:

"I owe my lady what she asks, Yet this is not among my tasks. I pray, my mistress, change thy mind; Thou canst so many like me find. How could I dare transgress my state, And my great trust so violate? My lord hath charged me with his house, Excepting only his dear spouse; Yet she, it seems, needs watching too. Now, mistress, fare thee well, adieu!"

Selicha then says:

"O heaven now what shall I do? He'll list not to my vows so true. Come, Pickelhering, tell me quick, What I shall do his love to prick? I'll die if I no means can find To bend his humor to my mind. I'll give thee gold, thou mayst depend, If thou'lt but help me to my end."

Pickelhering appears, and says:

"My lady, here I am, thy slave, My wisest counsel thou shalt have. Thou must lay violent hand on him, And say: 'Unless thou'lt grant my whim, I'll drive thee hence from out my court, And with thy woes I'll have my sport, Nor will I stay thy punishment, Till drop by drop thy blood is spent.' Perhaps he will amend his way, If thou such cruel words wilt say."

Selicha follows his advice, but being thwarted, again appeals to Pickelhering, who says:

"My lady fair, pray hark to me, My counsel now shall fruitful be. A garbled story shalt thou tell The king, and say: 'Hear what befell: Thy servant Joseph did presume To enter in my private room, When no one was about the house Who could protect thy helpless spouse. See here his mantle left behind. Seize him, my lord, the miscreant find.'"

Potiphar appears, Selicha tells her tale, and Pickelhering is sent in quest of Joseph, who steps upon the scene to be greeted by his master's far from gentle reproaches:

"Thou gallowsbird, thou good-for-naught! Thou whom so true and good I thought! 'Twere just to take thy life from thee. But no! still harsher this decree: In dungeon chained shalt thou repine, Where neither sun nor moon can shine. Forever there bewail thy lot unheard; Now leave my sight, begone, thou gallowsbird.'"

This ends the scene. Of course, at the last, Joseph escapes his doom, and, to the great joy of the sympathetic public, is raised to high dignities and honors.

This farce was presented at Frankfort-on-the-Main by Jewish students of the city, aided by some from Hamburg and Prague, with extravagant display of scenery. Tradition ascribes the authorship to a certain Beermann.

"Ahasverus" is of similar coarse character, so coarse, indeed, that the directors of the Frankfort Jewish community, exercising their rights as literary censors, forbade its performance, and had the printed copies burnt. A somewhat more refined comedy is Acta Esther et Achashverosh, published at Prague in 1720, and enacted there by the pupils of the celebrated rabbi David Oppenheim, "on a regular stage with drums and other instruments." "The Deeds of King David and Goliath," and a travesty, "Haman's Will and Death" also belong to the category of Purim farces.

By an abrupt transition we pass from their consideration to the Hebrew classical drama modelled after the pattern of Moses Chayyim Luzzatto's. Greatest attention was bestowed upon historical dramas, notably those on the trials and fortunes of Marranos, the favorite subjects treated by David Franco Mendez, Samuel Romanelli, and others. Although their language is an almost pure classical Hebrew, the plot is conceived wholly in the spirit of modern times. At the end of the eighteenth century, a large number of writers turned to Bible heroes and heroines for dramatic uses, and since then Jewish interest in the drama has never flagged. The luxuriant fruitfulness of these late Jewish playwrights, standing in the sunlight of modern days, fully compensates for the sterility of the Jewish dramatic muse during the centuries of darkness.

The first Jewish dramatist to use German was Benedict David Arnstein, of Vienna, author of a large number of plays, comedies and melodramas, some of which have been put upon the boards of the Vienna imperial theatre (Burgtheater). He was succeeded by L. M. Bueschenthal, whose drama, "King Solomon's Seal," was performed at the royal theatre of Berlin. Since his time poets of Jewish race have enriched dramatic literature in all its departments. Their works belong to general literature, and need not be individualized in this essay.

In the province of dramatic music, too, Jews have made a prominent position for themselves. It suffices to mention Meyerbeer and Offenbach, representatives of two widely divergent departments of the art. Again, to assert the prominence of Jews as actors is uttering a truism. Adolf Jellinek, one of the closest students of the racial characteristics of Jews, thinks that they are singularly well equipped for the theatrical profession by reason of their marked subjectivity, which always induces objective, disinterested devotion to a purpose, and their cosmopolitanism, which enables them to transport themselves with ease into a new world of thought.[60] "It is natural that a race whose religious, literary, and linguistic development in hundreds of instances proves unique talent to adapt itself with marvellous facility to the intellectual life of various countries and nations, should bring forth individuals gifted with power to project themselves into a character created by art, and impersonate it with admirable accuracy in the smallest detail. What the race as a whole has for centuries been doing spontaneously and by virtue of innate characteristics, can surely be done with greater perfection by some of its members under the consciously accepted guidance of the laws of art." Many Jewish race peculiarities—quick perception, vivacity, declamatory pathos, perfervid imagination—are prime qualifications for the actor's career, and such names as Bogumil Davison, Adolf Sonnenthal, Rachel Felix, and Sarah Bernhardt abundantly illustrate the general proposition.

Strenuous efforts to ascertain the name of the first Jewish actor in Germany have been unavailing. Possibly it was the unnamed artist for whom, at his brother's instance, Lessing interceded at the Mannheim national theatre.

Legion is the name of the Jewish artists of this century who have attained to prominence in every department of the dramatic art, in every country, even the remotest, on the globe. Travellers in Russia tell of the crowds that evening after evening flock to the Jewish-German theatres at Odessa, Kiev, and Warsaw. The plays performed are adaptations of the best dramatic works of all modern nations. We outside of Russia have been made acquainted with the character of these performances by the melodrama "Shulammith," enacted at various theatres by a Jewish-German opera bouffe company from Warsaw, and the writer once—can he ever forget it?—saw "Hamlet" played by jargon actors. When Hamlet offers advice to Ophelia in the words: "Get thee to a nunnery!" she promptly retorts: Mit Eizes bin ich versehen, mein Prinz! (With good advice I am well supplied, my lord!).

The actor recalled by the recent centennial celebration of the first performance of "The Magic Flute" must have been among the first Jews to adopt the stage as a profession. The first presentation, at once establishing the success of the opera, took place at Prague. According to the Prager Neue Zeitung an incident connected with that original performance was of greater interest than the opera itself: "On the tenth of last month, the new piece, 'The Magic Flute,' was produced. I hastened to the theatre, and found that the part of Sarastro was taken by a well-formed young man with a caressing voice who, as I was told to my great surprise, was a Jew—yes, a Jew. He was visibly embarrassed when he first appeared, proving that he was a human being subject to the ordinary laws of nature and to the average mortal's weaknesses. Noticing his stage-fright, the audience tried to encourage him by applause. It succeeded, for he sang and spoke his lines with grace and dignity. At the end he was called out and applauded vigorously. In short, I found the Prague public very different from its reputation with us. It knows how to appreciate merit even when possessed by an Israelite, and I am inclined to think that it criticises harshly only when there is just reason for complaint. Hartung, the Jewish actor, will soon appear in other roles, and doubtless will justify the applause of the public."

To return, in conclusion, to the classical drama in Hebrew. Though patterned after the best classical models, and enriched by the noble creations of S. L. Romanelli, M. E. Letteris, the translator of Faust, A. Gottloeber, and others, Hebrew dramas belong to the large class of plays for the closet, unsuited for the stage. This dramatic literature contains not only original creations; the masterpieces of all literatures—the works of Shakespere, Racine, Moliere, Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing—have been put into the language of the prophets and the psalmists, and, infected by the vigor of their thought, the ancient tongue has been re-animated with the vitality of undying youth.



THE JEW'S QUEST IN AFRICA

Citizens of ancient Greece conversing during the entr'actes of a first performance at the national theatre of Olympia were almost sure to ask each other, after the new play had been discussed: "What news from Africa?" Through Aristotle the proverb has come down to us: "Africa always brings us something new." Hence the question: Quid novi ex Africa?[61]

If ever two old rabbis in the Beth ha-Midrash at Cyrene stole a chat in the intervals of their lectures, the same question probably passed between them. For, Africa has always claimed the interest of the cultured. Jewish-German legend books place the scenes of their most mysterious myths in the "Dark Continent," and I remember distinctly how we youngsters on Sabbath afternoons used to crowd round our dear old grandmother, who, great bowed spectacles on her nose, would read to us from "Yosippon." On many such occasions an unruly listener, with a view to hurrying the distribution of the "Sabbathfruit," would endanger the stability of the dish by vigorous tugging at the table-cloth, and elicit the reproof suggested by our reading: "You are a veritable Sambation!"—Aristotle, Pliny, Olympia, Cyrene, "Yosippon," and grandam—all unite to whet our appetite for African novelties.

Never has interest in the subject been more active than in our generation, and the question, "What is the quest of the Jews in Africa?" might be applied literally to the achievements of individual Jewish travellers. But our inquiry shall not be into the fortunes of African explorers of Jewish extraction; not into Emin Pasha's journey to Wadelai and Magungo; not into the advisability of colonizing Russian Jews in Africa; nor even into the role played by a part of northern Africa in the development of Jewish literature and culture: briefly, "The Jew's quest in Africa" is for the remnants of the ten lost tribes.

For more than eight hundred years, Israel, entrenched on his own soil, bade defiance to every enemy. After the death of Solomon (978 B. C. E.), the kingdom was divided, its power declining in consequence. The world-monarchy Assyria became an adversary to be feared after Ahaz, king of Judah, invited it to assist him against Pekah. Tiglath-Pileser conquered a part of the kingdom of Israel, and, in about the middle of the eighth century, carried off its subjects captive into Assyria. In the reign of Hosea, Shalmaneser finished what his predecessor had begun (722), utterly destroying the kingdom of the north in the two hundred and fifty-eighth year of its independence. Before the catastrophe, a part of its inhabitants had emigrated to Arabia, so that there were properly speaking only nine tribes, called by their prophets, chief among them Hosea and Amos, Ephraim from the most powerful member of the confederacy. Another part went to Adiabene, a district on the boundary between Assyria and Media, and thence scattered in all directions through the kingdom of the Medes and Persians.

The prophets of the exile still hope for their return. Isaiah says:[62] "The Lord will put forth His hand again the second time to acquire the remnant of his people, which shall remain, from Asshur, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Chamath, and from the islands of the sea. And he will lift up an ensign unto the nations, and will assemble the outcasts of Israel; and the dispersed of Judah will he collect together from the four corners of the earth.... Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not assail Ephraim.... And the Lord will utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea.... And there shall be a highway for the remnant of his people, which shall remain from Asshur, like as it was to Israel on the day that they came up out of the land of Egypt." In Jeremiah[63] we read: "Behold I will bring them from the north country, and I will gather them from the farthest ends of the earth ... for I am become a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my first-born." Referring to this passage, the Talmud maintains that the prophet Jeremiah led the lost tribes back to Palestine.

The second Isaiah[64] says "to the prisoners, Go forth; to those that are in darkness, Show yourselves." "Ye shall be gathered up one by one.... And it shall come to pass on that day that the great cornet shall be blown, and then shall come those that are lost in the land of Asshur, and those who are outcasts in the land of Egypt, and they shall prostrate themselves before the Lord on the holy mount at Jerusalem."

And Ezekiel:[65] "Thou son of man, take unto thyself one stick of wood, and write upon it, 'For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions'; then take another stick, and write upon it, 'For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions': and join them one to the other unto thee as one stick; and they shall become one in thy hand."

These prophetical passages show that at the time of the establishment of the second commonwealth the new homes of the ten tribes were accurately known. After that, for more than five hundred years, history is silent on the subject. From frequent allusions in the prophetical writings, we may gather that efforts were made to re-unite Judah and the tribes of Israel, and it seems highly probable that they were successful, such of the ten tribes as had not adopted the idolatrous practices of the heathen returning with the exiles of Judah. In the Samaritan book of Joshua, it is put down that many out of the tribes of Israel migrated to the north of Palestine at the time when Zerubbabel and Ezra brought the train of Babylonian exiles to Jerusalem.

In Talmudic literature we occasionally run across a slight reference to the ten tribes, as, for instance, Mar Sutra's statement that they journeyed to Iberia, at that time synonymous with Spain, though the rabbi probably had northern Africa in mind. Another passage relates that the Babylonian scholars decided that no one could tell whether he was descended from Reuben or from Simon, the presumption in their mind evidently being that the ten tribes had become amalgamated with Judah and Benjamin. If they are right, if from the time of Jeremiah to the Syrian domination, a slow process of assimilation was incorporating the scattered of the ten tribes into the returned remnant of Judah and Benjamin, then the ten lost tribes have no existence, and we are dealing with a myth. But the question is still mooted. The prophets and the rabbis continually dwell upon the hope of reunion. The Pesikta is the first authority to locate the exile home of the ten tribes on the Sambation. A peculiarly interesting conversation on the future of the ten tribes between two learned doctors of the Law, Rabbi Akiba and Rabbi Eliezer, has been preserved. Rabbi Eliezer maintains: "The Eternal has removed the ten tribes from their soil, and cast them forth into another land, as irrevocably as this day goes never to return." Rabbi Akiba, the enthusiastic nationalist, thinks very differently: "No, day sinks, and passes into night only to rise again in renewed brilliance. So the ten tribes, lost in darkness, will reappear in refulgent light."

It is not unlikely that Akiba's journeys, extending into Africa, and undertaken to bring about the restoration of the independence of Judaea, had as their subsidiary, unavowed purpose, the discovery of the ten lost tribes. The "Dark Continent" played no unimportant role in Talmudic writings, special interest attaching to their narratives of the African adventures of Alexander the Great.[66] On one occasion, it is said, the wise men of Africa appeared in a body before the king, and offered him gifts of gold. He refused them, being desirous only of becoming acquainted with the customs, statutes, and law, of the land. They, therefore, gave him an account of a lawsuit which was exciting much attention at the time: A man had bought a field from his friend and neighbor, and while digging it up, had found a treasure which he refused to keep, as he considered it the property of the original owner of the field. The latter maintained that he had sold the land and all on and within it, and, therefore, had no claim upon the treasure. The doctors of the law put an end to the dispute by the decision that the son of the one contestant was to take to wife the daughter of the other, the treasure to be their marriage portion. Alexander marvelled greatly at this decision. "With us," he said, "the government would have had the litigants killed, and would have confiscated the treasure." Hereupon one of the wise men exclaimed: "Does the sun shine in your land? Have you dumb beasts where you live? If so, surely it is for them that God sends down the rain, and lets the sun shine!"

In biblical literature, too, frequent mention is made of Africa. The first explorer of the "Dark Continent" was the patriarch Abraham, who journeyed from Ur of the Chaldees through Mesopotamia, across the deserts and mountains of Asia, to Zoan, the metropolis of ancient Egypt. When Moses fled from before Pharaoh, he found refuge, according to a Talmudic legend, in the Soudan, where he became ruler of the land for forty years, and later on, Egypt was the asylum for the greater number of Jewish rebels and fugitives. As early as the reign of King Solomon, ships freighted with silver sailed to Africa, and Jewish sailors in part manned the Phoenician vessels despatched to the coasts of the Red Sea to be loaded with the gold dust of Africa, whose usual name in Hebrew was Ophir, meaning gold dust. In the Talmud Africa is generally spoken of as "the South," owing to its lying south of Palestine. One of its proverbs runs thus: "He who would be wise, must go to the South." The story of Alexander the Great and the African lawyers is probably a sample of the wisdom lauded. Nor were the doctors of the Talmud ignorant of the physical features of the country. A scoffer asked, "Why have Africans such broad feet." "Because they live on marshy soil, and must go barefoot," was the ready answer given by Hillel the Great.

In the course of a discussion about the appearance of the cherubim, Akiba pointed out that in Africa a little child is called "cherub." Thence he inferred that the faces of cherubim resembled those of little children. On his travels in Africa, the same rabbi was appealed to by a mighty negro king: "See, I am black, and my wife is black. How is it that my children are white?" Akiba asked him whether there were pictures in his palace. "Yes," answered the monarch, "my sleeping chamber is adorned with pictures of white men." "That solves the puzzle," said Akiba. Evidently civilization had taken root in Africa more than eighteen hundred years ago.

To return to the lost tribes: No land on the globe has been considered too small, none too distant, for their asylum. The first country to suggest itself was the one closest to Palestine, Arabia, the bridge between Asia and Africa. In the first centuries of this era, two great kingdoms, Yathrib and Chaibar, flourished there, and it is altogether probable that Jews were constantly emigrating thither. As early as the time of Alexander the Great, thousands were transported to Arabia, particularly to Yemen, where entire tribes accepted the Jewish faith. Recent research has made us familiar with the kingdom of Tabba (500) and the Himyarites. Their inscriptions and the royal monuments of the old African-Jewish population prove that Jewish immigrants must have been numerous here, as in southern Arabia. When Mohammed unfurled the banner of the Prophet, and began his march through the desert, his followers counted not a few Jews. In similar numbers they spread to northern Africa, where, towards the end of the first thousand years of the Christian era, they boasted large communities, and played a prominent role in Jewish literature, as is attested by the important contributions to Jewish law, grammar, poetry, and medicine, by such men as Isaac Israeli, Chananel, Jacob ben Nissim, Dunash ben Labrat, Yehuda Chayyug, and later, Isaac Alfassi. When this north-African Jewish literature was at its zenith, interest in the whereabouts of the ten tribes revived, first mention of them being made in the last quarter of the ninth century. One day there appeared in the academy at Kairwan an adventurer calling himself Eldad, and representing himself to be a member of the tribe of Dan. Marvellous tales he told the wondering rabbis of his own adventures, which read like a Jewish Odyssey, and of the independent government established by Jews in Africa, of which he claimed to be a subject. Upon its borders, he reported, live the Levitical singers, the descendants of Moses, who, in the days of Babylonish captivity, hung their harps upon the willows, refusing to sing the songs of Zion upon the soil of the stranger, and willing to sacrifice limb and life rather than yield to the importunities of their oppressors. A cloud had enveloped and raised them aloft, bearing them to the land of Chavila (Ethiopia). To protect them from their enemies, their refuge in a trice was girdled by the famous Sambation, a stream, not of waters, but of rapidly whirling stones and sand, tumultuously flowing during six days, and resting on the Sabbath, when the country was secured against foreign invasion by a dense cloud of dust. With their neighbors, the sons of Moses have intercourse only from the banks of the stream, which it is impossible to pass.[67]

This clever fellow, who had travelled far and wide, and knew men and customs, gave an account also of a shipwreck which he had survived, and of his miraculous escape from cannibals, who devoured his companions, but, finding him too lean for their taste, threw him into a dungeon. Homer's Odyssey involuntarily suggests itself to the reader. In Spain we lose trace of the singular adventurer, who must have produced no little excitement in the Jewish world of his day.

Search for the ten tribes had now re-established itself as a subject of perennial interest. In the hope of the fulfilment of the biblical promise: "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until he comes to Shiloh," even the most famous Jewish traveller of the middle ages, Benjamin of Tudela, did not disdain to follow up the "traces of salvation." Nor has interest waned in our generation. Whenever we hear of a Jewish community whose settlement in its home is tinged with mystery, we straightway seek to establish its connection with the ten lost tribes. They have been placed in Armenia, Syria, and Mesopotamia, where the Nestorian Christians, calling themselves sons of Israel, live to the number of two hundred thousand, observing the dietary laws and the Sabbath, and offering up sacrifices. They have been sought in Afghanistan, India, and Western Asia, the land of the "Beni Israel," with Jewish features, Jewish names, such as Solomon, David, and Benjamin, and Jewish laws, such as that of the Levirate marriage. One chain of hills in their country bears the name "Solomon's Mountains," another "Amram Chain," and the most warlike tribe is called Ephraim, while the chief tenet of their law is "eye for eye, tooth for tooth." Search for the lost has been carried still further, to the coast of China, to the settlements of Cochin and Malabar, where white and black Jews write their law upon scrolls of red goatskin.

Westward the quest has reached America: Manasseh ben Israel and Mordecai Noah, the latter of whom hoped to establish a Jewish commonwealth at Ararat near Buffalo, in the beginning of this century, believed that they had discovered traces of the lost tribes among the Indians. The Spaniards in Mexico identified them with the red men of Anahuac and Yucatan, a theory suggested probably by the resemblance between the Jewish and the Indian aquiline nose. These would-be ethnologists obviously did not take into account the Mongolian descent of the Indian tribes and their pre-historic migration from Asia to America across Behring Strait.

Europe has not escaped the imputation of being the refuge of the lost tribes. When Alfonso XI. expelled the Saracens from Toledo, the Jews of the city asked permission to remain on the plea that they were not descendants of the murderers of Jesus, but of those ten tribes whom Nebuchadnezzar had sent to Tarshish as colonists. The petition was granted, and their explanation filed among the royal archives at Toledo.

The English have taken absorbing interest in the fate of the lost tribes, maintaining by most elaborate arguments their identity with the inhabitants of Scandinavia and England. The English people have always had a strong biblical bias. To this day they live in the Bible, and are flattered by the hypothesis that the Anglo-Saxons and kindred tribes, who crossed over to Britain under Hengist and Horsa in the fifth century, were direct descendants of Abraham, their very name Sakkasuna, that is, sons of Isaac, vouching for the truth of the theory. The radical falseness of the etymology is patent. The gist of their argument is that the tribe of Dan settled near the source of the Jordan, becoming the maritime member of the Israelitish confederacy, and calling forth from Deborah the rebuke that the sons of Dan tarried in ships when the land stood in need of defenders. And now comes the most extravagant of the vagaries of the etymological reasoner: he suggests a connection between Dan, Danube, Danai, and Danes, and so establishes the English nation's descent from the tribes of Israel.

In the third decade of this century, when Shalmaneser's obelisk was found with the inscription "Tribute of Jehu, son of Omri," English investigators, seeking to connect it with the Cimbric Chersonese in Jutland, at once took it for "Yehu ibn Umry." An Irish legend has it that Princess Tephi came to Ireland from the East, and married King Heremon, or Fergus, of Scotland. In her suite was the prophet Ollam Folla, and his scribe Bereg. The princess was the daughter of Zedekiah, the prophet none other than Jeremiah, and the scribe, as a matter of course, Baruch. The usefulness of this fine-spun analogy becomes apparent when we recall that Queen Victoria boasts descent from Fergus of Scotland, and so is furnished with a line of descent which would justify pride if it rested on fact instead of fancy. On the other hand, imagine the dismay of Heinrich von Treitschke, Saxon par excellence, were it proved that he is a son of the ten lost tribes!

"Salvation is of the Jews!" is the motto of a considerable movement connected with the lost tribes in England and America. More than thirty weekly and monthly journals are discharging a volley of eloquence in the propaganda of the new doctrine, and lecturers and societies keep interest in it alive. An apostolic believer in the Israelitish descent of the British has recently turned up in the person of a bishop, and the identity of the ancient and the modern people has been raised to the dignity of a dogma of the Christian Church by a sect which, according to a recent utterance of an Indianapolis preacher, holds the close advent of Judgment Day. Yet the ten lost tribes may be a myth!

One thing seems certain: If scattered remnants do exist here and there, they must be sought in Africa, in that part, moreover, most accessible to travellers, that is to say, Abyssinia, situated in the central portion of the great, high tableland of eastern Africa between the basin of the Nile and the shores of the Red and the Arabian Sea—a tremendous, rocky, fortress-like plateau, intersected closely with a network of river-beds, the Switzerland of Africa, as many please to call it. Alexander the Great colonized many thousands of Jews in Egypt on the southern and northern coasts of the Mediterranean, and in south-eastern Africa. Thence they penetrated into the interior of Abyssinia, where they founded a mighty kingdom extending to the river Sobat. Abyssinian legends have another version of the history of this realm. It is said that the Queen of Sheba bore King Solomon a son, named Menelek, whom he sent to Abyssinia with a numerous retinue to found an independent kingdom. In point of fact, Judaism seems to have been the dominant religion in Abyssinia until 340 of the Christian era, and the Golah of Cush (the exiles in Abyssinia) is frequently referred to in mediaeval Hebrew literature.

The Jewish kingdom flourished until a great revolution broke out in the ninth century under Queen Judith (Sague), who conquered Axum, and reigned over Abyssinia for forty years. The Jewish ascendancy lasted three hundred and fifty years. Rueppell,[68] a noted African explorer, gives the names of Jewish dynasties from the ninth to the thirteenth century. In the wars of the latter and the following century, the Jews lost their kingdom, keeping only the province of Semen, guarded by inaccessible mountains. Benjamin of Tudela describes it as "a land full of mountains, upon whose rocky summits they have perched their towns and castles, holding independent sway to the mortal terror of their neighbors." Combats, persecutions, and banishments lasted until the end of the eighteenth century. Anarchy reigned, overwhelming Gideon and Judith, the last of the Jewish dynasty, and proving equally fatal to the Christian empire, whose Negus Theodore likewise traced his descent from Solomon. So, after a thousand years of mutual hostility, the two ancient native dynasties, claiming descent from David and Solomon, perished together, but the memory of the Jewish princes has not died out in the land.

The Abyssinian Jews are called Falashas, the exiled.[69] They live secluded in the province west of Takazzeh, and their number is estimated by some travellers to be two hundred and fifty thousand, while my friend Dr. Edward Glaser judges them to be only twenty-five thousand strong. Into the dreary wastes inhabited by these people, German and English missionaries have found their way to spread among them the blessings of Christianity. The purity of these blessings may be inferred from the names of the missionaries: Flad, Schiller, Brandeis, Stern, and Rosenbaum.