The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885)

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and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.





THE RENASCENCE OF HEBREW LITERATURE
(1743-1885)

BY NAHUM SLOUSCHZ

_Translated from the French_

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

The modern chapter in the history of Hebrew literature herewith
presented to English readers was written by Dr. Nahum Slouschz as his
thesis for the doctorate at the University of Paris, and published in
book form in 1902. A few years later (1906-1907), the author himself put
his Essay into Hebrew, and it was brought out as a publication of the
_Tushiyah_, under the title _Korot ha-Safrut ha-'Ibrit ha-
Hadashah_. The Hebrew is not, however, a mere translation of the
French book. The material in the latter was revised and extended, and
the presentation was considerably changed, in view of the different
attitude toward the subject naturally taken by Hebrew readers, as
compared with a Western public, Jewish or non-Jewish.

The present English translation, which has had the benefit of the
author's revision, purports to be a rendition from the French. But the
Hebrew recasting of the book has been consulted at almost every point,
and the Hebrew works quoted by Dr. Slouschz were resorted to directly,
though, as far as seemed practicable, the translator paid regard to the
author's conception and Occidentalization of the Hebrew passages
revealed in his translation of them into French.

HENRIETTA SZOLD.

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I
  In Italy--Moses Hayyim Luzzatto

CHAPTER II
  In Germany--The Meassefim

CHAPTER III
  In Poland and Austria--The Galician School

CHAPTER IV
  In Lithuania--Humanism in Russia

CHAPTER V
  The Romantic Movement--Abraham Mapu

CHAPTER VI
  The Emancipation Movement--The Realists

CHAPTER VII
  The Conflict with Rabbinism--Judah Leon Gordon

CHAPTER VIII
  Reformers and Conservatives--The Two Extremes

CHAPTER IX
  The National Progressive Movement--Perez Smolenskin

CHAPTER X
  The Contributors to _Ha-Shahar_

CHAPTER XI
  The Novels of Smolenskin

CHAPTER XII
  Contemporaneous Literature

CONCLUSION

INDEX

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INTRODUCTION


It was long believed that Hebrew had no place among the modern languages
as a literary vehicle. The circumstance that the Jews of Western
countries had given up the use of their national language outside of the
synagogue was not calculated to discredit the belief. The Hebrew, it was
generally held, had once been alive, but now it belonged among the dead
languages, in the same sense as the Greek and the Latin. And when from
time to time some new work in Hebrew, or even a periodical publication,
reached a library, the cataloguer classified it with theologic and
Rabbinic treatises, without taking the trouble to obtain information as
to the subject of the book or the purpose of the journal. In point of
fact, in the large majority of cases they were far enough removed from
Rabbinic controversy.

Sometimes it happened that one or another Hebraist was overcome with
astonishment at the sight of a Hebrew translation of a modern author.
And he stopped at that. He never went so far as to enable himself to
pass judgment upon it from the critical or the literary point of view.
To what purpose? he would ask himself. Hebrew has been dead these many
centuries, and to use it is an anachronism. He considered it only a
curiosity of literature, literary sleight of hand, nothing more.

The bare possibility of the existence of a modern literature in Hebrew
seemed so strange, so improbable, that the best-informed circles refused
to entertain the notion seriously--perhaps not without some semblance of
a reason for their incredulity.

The history of the development of modern Hebrew literature, its
character, the extraordinary conditions fostering it, its very
existence, are of a sort to surprise one who has not kept in touch with
the internal struggles, the intellectual currents that have agitated the
Judaism of Eastern Europe in the course of the past century.

So far from deserving a reputation for casuistry, modern Hebrew
literature is, if anything, distinctly rationalistic in character. It is
anti-dogmatic and anti-Rabbinic. Its avowed aim is to enlighten the
Jewish masses that have remained faithful to religious tradition, and to
interpenetrate the Jewish communities with the conceptions of modern
life.

Since the French Revolution the ghetto has produced valiant champions of
every good cause, politicians, legislators, poets, who have taken part
in all the movements of their day. But it has also given birth to a
legion of men of action sprung from the people and remaining with the
people, who, in the name of liberty of conscience and in the name of
science, fought the same battles upon the field of traditional Judaism
that the others were fighting outside.

A whole school of literary humanists undertook the work of emancipating
the Jewish masses, and pursued it for several generations with admirable
zeal.