(_ab-beth-din_, or _rosh-yeshibah_)," conferring upon him the right to open schools in various cities, "to train the students in the sciences,"
to keep them under his control, and to inure them to a strict discipline.
In the course of time Talmudic yeshibahs sprang up in all the cities of Poland and Lithuania. The functions of rector, or rosh-yeshibah, were performed either by the local rabbi or by a man especially selected for this post on account of his learning. It seems that the combination of the two offices of rabbi and college president in one person was limited to those communities in which the duties of the spiritual guide of the community were not complex, and admitted of the simultaneous discharge of pedagogic functions. In the large centers, however, where the public responsibilities were regularly divided, the rosh-yeshibah was an independent dignitary, who was clothed with considerable authority.
Similar to the contemporary rectors of Jesuit colleges, the rosh-yeshibah was absolute master within the school walls; he exercised unrestricted control over his pupils, subjecting them to a well-established discipline and dispensing justice among them.
The contemporary chronicler quoted above, Rabbi Nathan Hannover, of Zaslav, in Volhynia, portrays in vivid colors the Jewish school life of Poland and Lithuania in the first half of the seventeenth century.
In no country--quoth Rabbi Nathan[78]--was the study of the Torah so widespread among the Jews as in the Kingdom of Poland.
Every Jewish community maintained a yeshibah, paying its president a large salary, so as to enable him to conduct the inst.i.tution without worry and to devote himself entirely to the pursuit of learning.... Moreover, every Jewish community supported college students (_bahurs_), giving them a certain amount of money per week, so that they might study under the direction of the president. Every one of these bahurs was made to instruct at least two boys, for the purpose of deepening his own studies and gaining some experience in Talmudic discussions.
The [poor] boys obtained their food either from the charity fund or from the public kitchen. A community of fifty Jewish families would support no less than thirty of these young men and boys, one family supplying board for one college student and his two pupils, the former sitting at the family table like one of the sons.... There was scarcely a house in the whole Kingdom of Poland where the Torah was not studied, and where either the head of the family or his son or his son-in-law, or the yeshibah student boarding with him, was not an expert in Jewish learning; frequently all of these could be found under one roof. For this reason every community contained a large number of scholars, a community of fifty families having as many as twenty learned men, who were styled _morenu_[79] or _haber_.[80] They were all excelled by the rosh-yeshibah, all the scholars submitting to his authority and studying under him at the yeshibah.
The program of study in Poland was as follows: The scholastic term during which the young men and the boys were obliged to study under the rosh-yeshibah lasted from the beginning of the month of Iyyar until the middle of Ab [approximately from April until July] in the summer and from the first of the month of Heshvan until the fifteenth of Shebat [October-June] in the winter. Outside of these terms the young men and the boys were free to choose their own place of study. From the beginning of the summer term until Shabuoth and from the beginning of the winter term until Hanukkah all the students of the yeshibah studied with great intensity the Gemara [the Babylonian Talmud]
and the commentaries of Rashi[81] and the Tosafists.[82]
The scholars and young students of the community as well as all interested in the study of the Law a.s.sembled daily at the yeshibah, where the president alone occupied a chair, while the scholars and college students stood around him. Before the appearance of the rosh-yeshibah they would discuss questions of Jewish law, and when he arrived every one laid his difficulties before him, and received an explanation. Thereupon silence was restored, and the rosh-yeshibah delivered his lecture, presenting the new results of his study. At the conclusion of the lecture he arranged a scientific argumentation (_hilluk_), proceeding in the following way: Various contradictions in the Talmud and the commentaries were pointed out, and solutions were proposed. These solutions were, in turn, shown to be contradictory, and other solutions were offered, this process being continued until the subject of discussion was completely elucidated. These exercises continued in summer at least until midday. From the middle of the two scholastic terms until their conclusion the rosh-yeshibah paid less attention to these argumentations, and read instead the religious codes, studying with the mature scholars the _Turim_[83] with commentaries, and with the [younger] students the compendium of Alfasi[84]....
Several weeks before the close of the term the rosh-yeshibah would honor the members of his college, both the scholars and the students, by inviting them to conduct the scientific disputations on his behalf, though he himself would partic.i.p.ate in the discussion in order to exercise the mental faculties of all those attending the yeshibah.
Attached to the president of the yeshibah was an inspector, who had the duty of visiting the elementary schools, or heders, daily, and seeing to it that all boys, whether poor or rich, applied themselves to study and did not loiter in the streets.
On Thursdays the pupils had to present themselves before the trustee (_gabbai_) of the Talmud Torah, who examined them in what they had covered during the week. The boy who knew nothing or who did not answer adequately was by order of the trustee turned over to the inspector, who subjected him, in the presence of his fellow-pupils, to severe physical punishment and other painful degradations, that he might firmly resolve to improve in his studies during the following week. On Fridays the heder pupils presented themselves in a body before the rosh-yeshibah himself, to undergo a similar examination. This had a strong deterrent effect upon the boys, and they devoted themselves energetically to their studies.... The scholars, seeing this [the honors showered upon the rosh-yeshibah], coveted the same distinction, that of becoming a rosh-yeshibah in some community. They studied a.s.siduously in consequence.
Prompted originally by self-interest, they gradually came to devote themselves to the Torah from pure, unselfish motives.
By way of contrast to this panegyric upon Polish-Jewish school life, it is only fair that we should quote another contemporary, who severely criticizes the methods of instruction then in vogue at the yeshibahs.
The whole instruction at the yeshibah--writes the well-known preacher Solomon Ephraim of Lenchitza (d. 1619)[85]--reduces itself to mental equilibristics and empty argumentations called hilluk. It is dreadful to contemplate that some venerable rabbi, presiding over a yeshibah, in his anxiety to discover and communicate to others some new interpretation, should offer a perverted explanation of the Talmud, though he himself and every one else be fully aware that the true meaning is different. Can it be G.o.d"s will that we sharpen our minds by fallacies and sophistries, spending our time in vain and teaching the listeners to do likewise? And all this for the mere ambition of pa.s.sing for a great scholar!... I myself have more than once argued with the Talmudic celebrities of our time, showing the need for abolishing the method of pilpul and hilluk, without being able to convince them. This att.i.tude can only be explained by the eagerness of these scholars for honors and rosh-yeshibah posts. These empty quibbles have a particularly pernicious effect on our bahurs, for the reason that the bahur who does not shine in the discussion is looked down upon as incapable, and is practically forced to lay aside his studies, though he might prove to be one of the best, if Bible, Mishnah, Talmud, and the Codes were studied in a regular fashion. I myself have known capable young men who, not having distinguished themselves in pilpul, forfeited the respect of their fellow-students, and stopped studying altogether after their marriage.
Secular studies were not included in the curriculum of the yeshibahs.
The religious codes composed during that period allow the study of "the other sciences" only "on occasion," and only to those who have completely mastered Talmudic and rabbinic literature. Needless to say, no yeshibah student could lay claim to such mastery until the completion of the college course. Moreover, the secular sciences had to be excluded from the yeshibah, for the external reason that the latter was generally located in a sacred place, near the synagogue, where the mere presence of a secular book was regarded as a profanation. Yet it occasionally happened that young men strayed away from the path of the Talmud, and secretly indulged in the study of secular sciences and of Aristotelian philosophy. This fact is attested by the great rabbinical authority of the sixteenth century, Rabbi Solomon Luria. "I myself"--he writes indignantly--"have seen the prayer of Aristotle copied in the prayer-books of the bahurs." This somewhat veiled expression indicates, in all likelihood, that among the books of the yeshibah students "contraband" was occasionally discovered, in the shape of ma.n.u.scripts of philosophic content. Unfortunately we hear nothing more definite as to the way in which the Jewish youth of that period became infatuated with anathematized philosophy. We have reason to a.s.sume, however, that such deviations from the rigorous discipline of rabbinical scholarship were few and far between.
The yeshibahs, providing as they did an academic training, were the nurseries of that intellectual aristocracy which subsequently became so powerful a factor in the life of Polish-Lithuanian Jewry. This numerically considerable cla.s.s of scholars looked down upon the uneducated mult.i.tude. Yet the level of literacy even among the latter was comparatively high. All boys, without exception, attended the heder, where they studied the Hebrew language and the Bible, while many devoted themselves to the Talmud. A different att.i.tude is observable towards female education. Girls remained outside the school, their instruction not being considered obligatory according to the Jewish law. No heders for girls are mentioned in any of the doc.u.ments of the time. Nor did a single woman attain to literary fame among the Jews of Poland and Lithuania. The girls were taught at home to read the prayers, but they were seldom instructed in the Hebrew language, so that the majority of women had but a very imperfect notion of the meaning of the prayers in the original. In consequence, the women began at that time to use the translations of the prayers in the Jewish vernacular, the so-called _Judisch-Deutsch_.
3. THE HIGH-WATER MARK OF RABBINIC LEARNING
The high intellectual level of the Polish Jews was the result of their relative economic prosperity. As for the character of their mental productivity, it was the direct outcome of their social autonomy. The vast system of Kahal self-government enhanced not only the authority of the rabbi, but also that of the learned Talmudist and of every layman familiar with Jewish law. The rabbi discharged, within the limits of his community, the functions of spiritual guide, head of the yeshibah, and inspector of elementary schools, as well as those of legislator and judge. An acquaintance with the vast and complicated Talmudic law was to a certain extent necessary even for the layman who occupied the office of an elder (_parnas_, or _rosh-ha-Kahal_), or was in some way connected with the scheme of Jewish self-government. For the enactments of the Talmud regulated the inner life of the Polish Jews in the same way as they had done formerly in Babylonia, in the time of the autonomous Exilarchs and Gaons. But it must be remembered that, since the times of the Gaons, Jewish law had been considerably amplified, Rabbinic Judaism having been superimposed upon Talmudic Judaism. This ma.s.s of religious lore, which had been acc.u.mulating for centuries, now monopolized the minds of all educated Jews in the empire of Poland, which thus became a second Babylonia. It reigned supreme in the synagogues, the yeshibahs, and the elementary schools. It gave tone to social and domestic life. It spoke through the mouth of the judge, the administrator, and the communal leader. Lastly it determined the content of Jewish literary productivity. Polish-Jewish literature was almost exclusively consecrated to rabbinic law.
The beginnings of Talmudic learning in Poland can be traced back to the first half of the sixteenth century. It had been carried thither from neighboring Bohemia, primarily from the school of the originator of the pilpul method, Jacob Pollack.[86] A pupil of the latter, Rabbi Shalom Shakhna (ab. 1500-1558), is regarded as one of the pioneers of Polish Talmudism. All we know about his fortunes is that he lived and died in Lublin, that in 1541 he was confirmed by a decree of King Sigismund I.
in the office of chief rabbi of Little Poland, and that he stood at the head of the yeshibah which sent forth the rabbinical celebrities of the following generation.[87] It is quite probable that the rabbinical conferences of Lublin, which afterwards led to the formation of the "Council of the Four Lands," owe their inception to the initiative of Rabbi Shakhna. After his death his son Israel succeeded to the post of chief rabbi in Lublin. But it was a pupil of Shakhna, Moses Isserles, known in literature by the abbreviated name of ReMO (1520-1572),[88] who became famous throughout the entire Jewish world.
Moses Isserles, the son of a well-to-do Kahal elder in Cracow, became prominent in the rabbinical world early in life. He occupied the post of a member of the Jewish communal court in his native city, and stood at the head of the yeshibah. This combination of scholarly and practical activities prompted him to delve deep in the existing rabbinical codes, and he found, as a result of his investigation, that they were not exhaustive, and were in need of amplification.
Isserles was not even satisfied with the thoroughgoing elaboration of Jewish law which had been undertaken by his Palestinian contemporary Joseph Caro. When, in the middle of the sixteenth century, Caro"s comprehensive commentary on the Code _Turim_,[89] ent.i.tled _Beth-Yoseph_ ("House of Joseph"), appeared, Isserles composed a commentary on the same code under the name _Darkhe Moshe_ ("Ways of Moses"), in which he considerably enlarged the legal material collected there, drawing from sources which Caro had left out of consideration.
When, a few years later, the latter published his own code, under the name of _Shulhan Arukh_ ("The Dressed Table"), Isserles called attention to the fact that its author, being a Sephardic Jew, had failed in many cases to utilize the investigations of the rabbinic authorities among the Ashken.a.z.im, and had left out of consideration the local religious customs, or _minhagim_, which were current among various groups of German-Polish Jewry. These omissions were carefully noted and supplied by Isserles. He supplemented the text of the _Shulhan Arukh_ by a large number of new laws, which he had framed on the basis of the above-mentioned popular customs or of the religious and legal practice of the Ashken.a.z.ic rabbis. Caro"s code having been named by the author "The Dressed Table," Isserles gave his supplements thereto the t.i.tle "Table-cloth" (_Mappa_).[90] In this supplemented form the _Shulhan Arukh_ was introduced, as a code of Jewish rabbinic law, into the religious and everyday life of the Polish Jews. The first edition of this combined code of Caro and Isserles appeared in Cracow in 1578, followed by numerous reprints, which testify to the extraordinary popularity of the work.
The _Shulhan Arukh_ became the substructure for the further development of Polish rabbinism. Only very few scholars of consequence had the courage to challenge the authority of this generally acknowledged code of laws. One of these courageous men was the contemporary and correspondent of Isserles, Solomon Luria, known by the abbreviated name of ReSHaL[91] (ab. 1510-1573). Solomon Luria was a native of Posen, whither his grandfather had immigrated from Germany. Endowed with a subtle, a.n.a.lytic mind, Luria was a determined opponent of the new school dialectics (pilpul), taking for his model the old casuistic method of the Tosafists,[92] which consisted in a detailed criticism and an ingenious a.n.a.lysis of the Talmudic texts. In this spirit he began to compose his remarkable commentary on the Talmud (_Yam shel Shelomo_, "Sea of Solomon"[93]), but succeeded in interpreting only a few tractates.
In all his investigations Luria manifested boldness of thought and independence of judgment, without sparing the authorities whenever he believed them to be in the wrong. Of the _Shulhan Arukh_ and its author Luria spoke slightingly, claiming that Joseph Caro had used his sources without the necessary discrimination, and had decided many moot points of law arbitrarily. In consequence of this independence of judgment, Solomon Luria had many enemies in the scholarly world, but he had, on the other hand, many enthusiastic admirers and devoted disciples. In the middle of the sixteenth century he occupied the post of rabbi in the city of Ostrog, in Volhynia. By his Talmudic lectures, which attracted students from the whole region, he made this city the intellectual center of Volhynian and Lithuanian Jewry. The last years of his life he spent in Lublin, where to this day there exists a synagogue which bears his name.
Luria and Isserles were looked upon as the pillars of Polish rabbinism.
Questions of Jewish ritual and law were submitted to them for decision, not only from various parts of their own country but also from Western Europe, from Italy, Germany, and Bohemia. Their replies to these inquiries, or "Responsa" (_Shaaloth u-Teshuboth_), have been gathered in special collections. These two rabbis also carried on a scientific correspondence with each other. As a result of their divergent character and trend of mind, heated discussions frequently took place between them. Thus Luria, in spite of all his sobriety of intellect, gravitated towards the Cabala, while Isserles, with all his rabbinic conservatism, devoted part of his leisure to philosophy. The two scholars rebuked each other for their respective "weaknesses." Luria maintained that the wisdom of the "uncirc.u.mcised Aristotle" could be of no benefit, while Isserles tried to prove that many views of the Cabala were not in accord with the ideas of the Talmud, and that mysticism was more dangerous to faith than a moderate philosophy.
Isserles was right. The philosophy with which he occupied himself could scarcely be destructive of Orthodoxy. This is shown by his large work _Torath ha-`Olah_ ("The Law of the Burnt-Offering," 1570),[94] which represents a weird mixture of religious and philosophic discussions on themes borrowed from Maimonides" "Guide of the Perplexed," interspersed with speculations about the various cla.s.ses of angels or the architecture of the Jerusalem temple, its vessels and order of sacrifices. The author professes to detect in all the details of the temple service a profound symbolism. Notwithstanding the strange plan of the book there are many chapters in it that show the intimate familiarity of Isserles with the philosophic literature of the Sephardim, a remarkable record for an Ashken.a.z.ic rabbi of the sixteenth century.
The intimate connection between rabbinic learning and Jewish life stood out in bold relief from the moment the "Council of the Four Lands" began to discharge its regular functions. The Council had frequent occasion to decide, for practical purposes, complicated questions appertaining to domestic, civil, and criminal law, or relating to legal procedure and religious practice, and the rabbis who partic.i.p.ated in these conferences as legal experts were forced to accomplish a large amount of concrete, tangible work for themselves and their colleagues. Questions of law and ritual were everywhere a.s.siduously investigated and elaborated, with that subtle a.n.a.lysis peculiar to the Jewish mind, which pursues every idea to its remotest consequences and its most trifling details.
The subject as well as the method of investigation depended, as a rule, on the social position of the investigator. The rabbis of higher rank, who took an active part in the Kahal administration, and partic.i.p.ated in the meetings of the Councils, either of the Crown or of Lithuania, paid particular attention to the practical application of Talmudic law. One of the oldest scholars of this category during the period under discussion was Mordecai Jaffe (died 1612), a native of Bohemia, who occupied the post of rabbi successively in Grodno, Lublin, Kremenetz, Prague, and Posen. Towards the end of the sixteenth century he presided a number of times over the conferences of the "Council of the Four Lands." Though a pupil of Moses Isserles, Jaffe did not consider the _Shulhan Arukh_ as supplemented by his teacher the last word in codification. He objected to the fact that its juridical conclusions were formulated dogmatically, without sufficient motivation.
For this reason he undertook the composition of a new and more elaborate code of laws, arranged in the accepted order of the four books of the _Turim_,[95] which is known as _Lebushim_, or "Raiments."[96] The method of Mordecai Jaffe differs from that of Joseph Caro and Isserles in the wealth of the scientific discussions which accompany every legal clause.
At first Jaffe"s code created a split in the rabbinical world, and threatened to weaken the authority of the _Shulhan Arukh_. In the end, however, the latter prevailed, and was acknowledged as the only authoritative guide for the religious and juridical practice of Judaism.
Apart from his code, Mordecai Jaffe wrote, under the same general t.i.tle _Lebushim_, five more volumes, containing Bible commentaries, synagogue sermons, and annotations to Maimonides" "Guide," as well as Cabalistic speculations.
Jaffe"s successor as leading rabbi and president of the "Council of the Four Lands" was, in all likelihood, Joshua Falk Cohen (died 1616), Rabbi of Lublin and subsequently rector of the Talmudic yeshibah in Lemberg.
He attained to fame through his commentary to the _Hoshen Mishpat_, the part of Caro"s code dealing with civil law,[97] which he called _Sepher Merath `Enam_, "A Book of the Enlightenment of the Eyes"[98]
(abbreviated to SeM`A). He also framed, at the instance of the Waad, a large part of the above-mentioned regulations of 1607,[99] which were issued for the purpose of establishing piety and good morals more firmly among the Jews of Poland.
A more scholastic and less practical tendency is noticeable in the labors of Joshua Falk"s contemporary, Mer of Lublin (1554-1616), known by the abbreviated name of MaHaRaM.[100] He was active as rabbi in Cracow, Lemberg, and Lublin, delivered Talmudic discourses before large audiences, wrote ingenious, casuistic commentaries to the most important treatises of the Talmud (ent.i.tled _Mer `Ene Hahamim_, "Enlightening the Eyes of the Wise"), and was busy replying to the numerous inquiries addressed to him by scholars from all parts (_Shaaloth u-Teshuboth Maharam_). Laying particular stress on subtle a.n.a.lysis, Rabbi Mer of Lublin looked down upon the codifiers and systematic writers of the cla.s.s to which Isserles and Jaffe belonged. The trifling minuteness of his investigations may be ill.u.s.trated by the fact that he considered it necessary to write a special "opinion" about the question whether a woman is guilty of conjugal infidelity, if she is convicted of having had relations with the devil, the latter having visited her first in the shape of her husband and afterwards in the disguise of a Polish n.o.bleman.
In the domain of dialectics Rabbi Mer found a successful rival in the person of Samuel Edels, known by the abbreviated name of MaHaRSHO[101]
(died 1631), who occupied the post of rabbi in Posen, Lublin, and Ostrog. In his comprehensive expositions to all the sections of the Talmudic Halakha (_Hiddushe Halakhoth_, "Novel Expositions of the Halakha"), he endeavored princ.i.p.ally to exercise the thinking faculties and the memory of his students by an ingenious comparison of texts and by other scholastic intricacies. The dialectic commentary of Edels became one of the most important handbooks for the study of the Talmud in the heders and yeshibahs, and is frequently used there in our own days. His commentary on the Talmudic Haggada is strewn over with Cabalistic and religio-philosophic ideas of the conservative Jewish thinkers of the Middle Ages.
In the middle of the seventeenth century the authority of the _Shulhan Arukh_, as edited by Isserles, had been so firmly established in Poland that this code was studied and expounded with even greater zeal than the Talmud. Joel Sirkis (died 1640) delivered lectures on Jewish Law on the basis of the _Turim_ and the _Shulhan Arukh_. He wrote a commentary to the former under the name of _Beth Hadash_ ("New House," abbreviated to BaH), and published a large number of opinions on questions of religious law. He held the Cabala in esteem, while condemning philosophy violently. His younger contemporaries devoted themselves exclusively to the exposition of the _Shulhan Arukh_, particularly to the section called _Yore De`a_,[102] dealing with the Jewish ritual, such as the religious customs of the home, the dietary laws, etc. Two elaborate commentaries to the _Yore De`a_ appeared in 1646, the one composed by David Halevi, rabbi in Lemberg and Ostrog, under the t.i.tle _Ture Zahab_,[103] and the other written by the famous Vilna scholar Sabbatai Kohen, under the name _Sifthe Kohen_ ("Lips of the Priest").[104] These two commentaries, known by their abbreviated t.i.tles of TaZ and ShaK, have since that time been published together with the text of the _Shulhan Arukh_.
This literary productivity was largely stimulated by the rapid growth of Jewish typography in Poland. The first Jewish book printed in that country is the Pentateuch (Cracow, 1530). In the second half of the sixteenth century two large printing-presses, those of Cracow and Lublin, were active in publishing a vast number of old and new books from the domain of Talmudic, Rabbinic, and popular-didactic literature.
In 1566 King Sigismund Augustus granted Benedict Levita, of Cracow, the monopoly of importing into Poland Jewish books from abroad. Again, in 1578, Stephen Batory bestowed on a certain Kalman the right of printing Jewish books in Lublin, owing to the difficulty of importing them from abroad. One of the causes of this intensified typographic activity in Poland was the papal censorship of the Talmud, which was established in Italy in 1564. From that time the printing-offices of Cracow and Lublin competed successfully with the technically perfected printing-presses of Venice and Prague, and the Polish book-market, as a result, was more and more dominated by local editions.
4. SECULAR SCIENCES, PHILOSOPHY, CABALA, AND APOLOGETICS
The Talmudic and Rabbinic science of law, absorbing as it did the best mental energies of Polish Jewry, left but little room for the other branches of literary endeavor. Among the daring "swimmers in the Talmudic ocean," contending for mastery in erudition and dialectic skill, there were but few with deeper spiritual longings who evinced an interest in questions of philosophy and natural science. The only exceptions were the physicians, who, on account of their profession, received a secular education at the universities of that period.
Originally the Jewish physicians of Poland were natives either of Spain, whence they had been expelled in 1492, or of Italy, being in the latter case graduates of the Catholic University of Padua. Several of these foreign medical men became the body-physicians of Polish kings, such as Isaac Hispa.n.u.s under John Albrecht and Alexander; Solomon Ashken.a.z.i (who subsequently was physician and diplomat at the court of the Turkish Sultan Selim II.) under King Sigismund Augustus; Solomon Calahora under Stephen Batory, and others. But as early as the first part of the sixteenth century these foreigners were rivaled by native Jewish physicians, who traveled from Poland to Padua for the special purpose of receiving a medical training. Such was, for example, the case in 1530 with Moses Fishel, of Cracow, who was at once rabbi and physician. These trips to Italy became very frequent in the second part of the sixteenth century, and the number of Polish Jewish students in Padua was on the increase down to the eighteenth century. It is characteristic that the Christian Poles studying in Padua refused to enter their Jewish compatriots upon their "national register," in order, as is stated in their statutes, "not to mar the memory of so many celebrated men by the name of an infidel" (1654). In the university registers the Jewish students appeared as _Hebraei Poloni_.
As for religious philosophy, which was then on the wane in Western Europe, it formed in Poland merely the object of amateurish exercises on the part of several representatives of Rabbinic learning. Moses Isserles and Mordecai Jaffe commented, as was pointed out above, on the "Guide"
of Maimonides in a superficial manner, fighting shy of its inconvenient rationalistic deductions. The favorite book of the theologians of that period was _Ikkarim_ ("Principles"), the system of dogmatic Judaism formulated by the conservative Sephardic thinker Joseph Albo.
Commentaries to this book were written by Jacob Koppelman, of Brest-Kuyavsk[105] (_Ohel Ya`kob_, "Tent of Jacob,"[106] Cracow, 1599), and Gedaliah Lifs.h.i.tz, of Lublin (_Etz Shathul_, "Planted Tree,"[107]
1618). The former, a lover of mathematics, loaded his commentary with geometrical and astronomical arguments, being of the opinion that it was possible in this way to prove scientifically the existence of G.o.d and the correlation of all phenomena. The latter was more inclined towards metaphysics and morals. How far this commentator was from grasping the true meaning of the original may be seen from his annotations to the introductory theses of the book. Commenting on the pa.s.sage in which Albo states that "the happiness of man depends on the perfection of his thought and conduct," Lifs.h.i.tz makes the following observation: "By human happiness is understood the _life beyond the grave_, for the goal of man in this world consists only in the attainment of eternal bliss after death."
In this way the Polish rabbis fashioned philosophy after their own pattern, and thereby rendered it "harmless." Free research was impossible, and perhaps not unattended by danger in an environment where tradition reigned supreme. The Chief Rabbi of Cracow, the above-mentioned Joel Sirkis, expressed the view that philosophy was the mother of all heresies, and that it was the "harlot" of which the wise king had said, "None that go unto her return again" (Proverbs ii. 19).
He who becomes infatuated with philosophy and neglects the secret wisdom of the Cabala is liable, in Sirkis" opinion, to excommunication, and has no place among the faithful. The well-known mathematician and philosopher Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (called in abbreviated form "YaSHaR of Candia"[108]) who spent nearly four years in Poland and Lithuania (1620-1624), arraigns the Polish Jews for their opposition to the secular sciences:
Behold--he says in Biblical phraseology[109]--darkness covereth the earth, and the ignorant are numerous. For the breadth of thy land is full of yeshibahs and houses of Talmud study.... [The Jews of Poland] are opposed to the sciences,... saying, The Lord hath no delight in the sharpened arrows of the grammarians, poets, and logicians, nor in the measurements of the mathematicians and the calculations of the astronomers.
The Cabala, which might be designated as an Orthodox counter-philosophy, made constant progress in Poland. The founder of the Polish Cabala was Mattathiah Delacruta, a native of Italy, who lived in Cracow. In 1594 he published in that city the system of Theoretic Cabala, ent.i.tled "Gates of Light" (_Sha`are Ora_), by a Sephardic writer of the fourteenth century, Joseph Gicatilla, accompanying it by an elaborate commentary of his own. Delacruta was, as far as the subject of the "hidden science"
was concerned, the teacher of the versatile Rabbi Mordecai Jaffe, who, in turn, wrote a supercommentary to the mystical Bible commentary by the Italian Menahem Recanati.
Beginning with the seventeenth century, the old Theoretic Cabala is gradually superseded in Poland by the Practical Cabala,[110] taught by the new school of ARI[111] and Vital.[112] The Cabalist Isaiah Horowitz, author of the famous work on ascetic morals called SHeLoH,[113] had been trained in the yeshibahs of Cracow and Lemberg, and for several years (1600-1606) occupied the post of rabbi in Volhynia. His son, Sheftel Horowitz, who was rabbi in Posen (1641-1658), published the mystical work of his father, adding from his own pen a moralist treatise under the t.i.tle _Vave ha-`Amudim_.[114] Nathan Spira, preacher and rector of the Talmudic academy in Cracow (1585-1633), made a specialty of the Practical Cabala. His more ingenious than thoughtful book, "Discovering Deep Things"[115] (_Megalle `Amukoth_, Cracow, 1637), contains an exposition in two hundred and fifty-two different ways of Moses" plea before G.o.d for permission to enter the Promised Land (Deuteronomy iii.
23). It consists of an endless chain of Cabalistic word-combinations and obscure symbolic allusions, yielding some inconceivable deductions, such as that Moses prayed to G.o.d concerning the appearance of the two Messiahs of the house of Joseph and David, or that Moses endeavored to eliminate the power of evil and to expiate in advance all the sins that would ever be committed by the Jewish people. Nathan Spira applied to the Cabala the method of the Rabbinical pilpul, and created a new variety of dialectic mysticism, which was just as far removed from sound theology as the scholastic speculations of the pilpulists were from scientific thinking.