Chapter III: Part 3

Of all the simply silly slanders from which his people had suffered, such, for instance, as the kneading Passover biscuits with the blood of Christian children, Manasseh disposes shortly, with brief and distinct denial; pertinently reminding Englishmen, however, that like absurd accusations crop up in the early history of the Church, when the ‘very same ancient scandalls was cast of old upon the innocent Christians.’

With the more serious, because less absolutely untruthful, charge of ‘usury,’ Manasseh deals as boldly, urging even no extenuating plea, but frankly admitting the practice to be ‘infamous.’ But characteristically, he proceeds to express an opinion, that ‘inasmuch as no man is bound to give his goods to another, so is he not bound to let it out but for his own occasions and profit,’ ‘only,’ and this he adds emphatically--

‘It must be done with moderation, that the usury be not biting or
exorbitant.... The sacred Scripture, which allows usury with him
that is not of the same religion, forbids absolutely the robbing of
all men, whatsoever religion they be of. In our law it is a greater
sinne to rob or defraud a stranger, than if I did it to one of my
owne profession; a Jew is bound to show his charity to all men; he
hath a precept, not to abhorre an Idumean or an Egyptian; and yet
another, that he shall love and protect a stranger that comes to
live in his land. If, notwithstanding, there be some that do
contrary to this, they do it not as Jewes simply, but as wicked
Jewes.’

The Appeal made, as it could scarcely fail to do, a profound impression--an impression which was helped not a little by the presence and character of the pleader. And presently the whole question of the return of the Jews to England was submitted to the nation for its decision.

The clergy were dead against the measure, and, it is said, ‘raged like fanatics against the Jews as an accursed nation.’ And then it was that Cromwell, true to his highest convictions, stood up to speak in their defence. On the ground of policy, he temperately urged the desirability of adding thrifty, law-respecting, and enterprising citizens to the national stock; and on the higher ground of duty, he passionately pleaded the unpopular cause of religious and social toleration. He deprecated the principle that, the claims of morality being satisfied, any men or any body of men, on the score of race, of origin, or of religion (‘tribal mark’ had not at that date been suggested), should be excluded from full fellowship with other men. ‘I have never heard a man speak so splendidly in my life,’ is the recorded opinion of one of the audience, and it is a matter of intense regret that this famous speech of Cromwell’s has not been preserved. Its eloquence, however, failed of effect, so far as its whole and immediate object was concerned. The gates were no more than shaken on their rusting hinges--not quite yet were the people free to ‘go through.’

The decision of the Council of State was deferred, and some authorities even allege that it was presently pronounced against the readmission of the Jews to England. The known and avowed favour of the Protector sufficed, nevertheless, to induce the few Jews who had come with, or in the train of, Manasseh to remain, and others gradually, and by degrees, and without any especial notice being taken of them, ventured to follow. The creaking old gates were certainly ajar, and wider and wider they opened, and fainter and fainter, from friction of unrestrained intercourse, grew each dull rust and stain of prejudice, till that good day, within living memories, when the barriers were definitely and altogether flung down. And on their ruins a new and healthy human growth sprang quickly up, ‘taking root downwards, and fruit upwards,’ spreading wide enough in its vigorous luxuriance to cover up all the old bad past. And by this time it has happily grown impervious to any wanton unfriendly touch which would thrust its kindly shade aside and once again lay those ugly ruins bare.

Manasseh, however, like so many of us, had to be content to sow seed which he was destined never to see ripen. His petitions to the Commonwealth were presented in 1655, his _Vindiciæ Judæorum_ was completed and handed in some time in 1656, and in the early winter of 1657, on his journey homewards, he died. His mission had not fulfilled itself in the complete triumphant way he had hoped, but ‘life fulfils itself in many ways,’ and one part at any rate, perhaps the most important part, of the Hebrew prophet’s charge, had been both poetically and prosaically carried out by this seventeenth century Dutch Jew. He had ‘lifted up a standard for his people.’

CHARITY IN TALMUDIC TIMES

SOME ANCIENT SOLVINGS OF A MODERN PROBLEM

‘What have we reaped from all the wisdom sown of ages?’ asks Lord Lytton in one of his earlier poems. A large query, even for so questioning an age as this, an age which, discarding catechisms, and rejecting the omniscient Mangnall’s Questions as a classic for its children, yet seems to be more interrogative than of old, even if a thought less ready in its responses. Possibly, we are all in too great a hurry nowadays, too eager in search to be patient to find, for certain it is that the world’s already large stock of hows and whys seems to get bigger every day. We catch the echoes in poetry and in prose, in all sorts of tones and from all sorts of people, and Lord Lytton’s question sounds only like another of the hopeless Pilate series. His is such a large interrogation too--all the wisdom sown of all the ages suggests such an enormous crop! And then as to what ‘we,’ who have neither planted nor watered, have ‘reaped’ from it! An answer, if it were attempted, might certainly be found to hinge on the ‘we’ as well as on the ‘wisdom,’ for whereas untaught instinct may ‘reap’ honey from a rose, trained reason in gathering the flower may only succeed in running a thorn into the finger. What has been the general effect of inherited wisdom on the general world may, however, very well be left for a possible solution to prize competitors to puzzle over. But to a tiny corner of the tremendous subject it is just possible that we may find some sort of suggestive reply; and from seed sown ages since, and garnered as harvest by men whose place knows them no more, we may likely light on some shadowy aftermath worth, perhaps, our reaping.

The gospel of duty to one’s neighbour, which, long languishing as a creed, seems now reviving as a fashion, has always been, amongst that race which taught ‘love thy neighbour as thyself,’ not only of the very essence of religion, but an ordinary social form of it. It is ‘law’ in the ‘family chronicle’ of the race, as Heine calls the Bible; it is ‘law’ and legend both in those curious national archives known as Talmud. Foremost in the ranks of _livres incompris_ stand those portentous volumes, the one work of the world which has suffered about equally at the hands of the commentator and the executioner. Many years ago Emmanuel Deutsch gave to the uninitiated a glimpse into that wondrous agglomeration of fantastically followed facts, where long-winded legend, or close-argued ‘law,’ starts some phrase or word from Holy Writ as quarry, and pursues it by paths the most devious, the most digressive imaginable to man. The work of many generations and of many ‘masters’ in each generation, such a book is singularly susceptible to an open style of reading and a liberal aptitude of quotation, and it is no marvel that searchers in its pages, even reasonably honest ones, should be able to find detached individual utterances to fit into almost any one of their own preconceived dogmas concerning Talmud. On many subjects, qualifications, contradictions, differences abound, and instances of illegal law, of pseudo-science, of doubtful physics, may each, with a little trouble, be disinterred from the depths of these twelve huge volumes. But the ethics of the Talmud are, as a whole, of a high order, and on one point there is such remarkable and entire agreement, that it is here permissible to speak of what ‘the Talmud says,’ meaning thereby a general tone and consensus of opinion, and not the views of this or of that individual master. The subject on which this unusual harmony prevails is the, in these days, much discussed one of charity; and to discover something concerning so very ancient a mode of dealing with it may not prove uninteresting.

The word which in these venerable folios is made to express the thing is, in itself, significant. In the Hebrew Scriptures, though the injunctions to charitable acts are many, an exact equivalent to our word ‘charity’ can hardly be said to exist. In only eight instances, and not even then in its modern sense, does the Septuagint translate צדקה (_tzedakah_) into its Greek equivalent, ἑλεημοσὑνη, which would become in English ‘alms,’ or ‘charity.’ The nearest synonyms for ‘charity’ in the Hebrew Scriptures are צדקה (_tzedakah_), well translated as ‘righteousness’ in the Authorised Version, and חסד (_chesed_), which is adequately rendered as ‘mercy, kindness, love.’ The Talmud, in its exhaustive fashion, seems to accentuate the essential difference between these two words. _Tzedakah_ is, to some extent, a class distinction; the rights of the poor make occasion for the righteousness of the rich, and the duties of _tzedakah_ find liberal and elaborate expression in a strict and minute system of tithes and almsgiving.[25] The injunctions of the Pentateuch concerning the poor are worked out by the Talmud into the fullest detail of direction. The Levitical law, ‘When ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field’ (Levit. xiv. 9), gives occasion of itself to a considerable quantity of literature. At length, it is enacted how, if brothers divide a field between them, each has to give a ‘corner,’ and how, if a man sell his field in several lots, each purchaser of each separate lot has to leave unreaped his own proportionate ‘corner’ of the harvesting. And not only to leave unreaped, but how, in cases where the ‘corner’ was of a sort hard for the poor to gather, hanging high, as dates, or needing light handling, as grapes, it became the duty of the owner to undertake the ‘reaping’ thereof, and, himself, to make the rightful division; thus guarding against injury to quickly perishable fruits from too eager hands, or danger of a more serious sort to life or limbs, where ladders had to be used by hungry and impatient folks. The exactest rules, too, are formulated as to what constitutes a ‘field’ and what a ‘corner,’ as to what produce is liable to the tax and in what measure. Very curious it is to read long and gravely reasoned arguments as to why mushrooms should be held exempt from the law of the corner, whilst onions must be subject to it, or the weighty _pros_ and _cons_ over what may be fairly considered a ‘fallen grape,’ or a ‘sheaf left through forgetfulness.’ Yet the principle underlying the whole is too clear for prolixity to raise a smile, and the evident anxiety that no smallest loophole shall be left for evading the obligations of property compels respect.

Little room for doubt on any disputed point of partition do these exhaustive, and, occasionally, it must be owned, exhausting, masters leave us, yet, when all is said, they are careful to add, ‘Whatever is doubtful concerning the gifts of the poor belongeth to the poor.’ The actual money value of this system of alms, the actual weight of ancient ephah or omer, in modern lbs. and ozs. would convey little meaning. Values fluctuate and measures vary, but ‘a tithe of thy increase,’ ‘a corner of thy field,’ gives a tolerably safe index to the scale on which _tzedakah_ was to be practised. Three times a day the poor might glean, and to the question which some lover of system, old style or new, might propound, ‘Why three times? Why not once, and get it over?’ an answer is vouchsafed. ‘_Because there may be poor who are suckling children, and thus stand in need of food in the early morning; there may be young children who cannot be got ready early in the morning, nor come to the field till it be mid-day; there may be aged folk who cannot come till the time of evening prayer._’ Still, though plenty of sentiment in this code, there is no trace of sentimentality; rather a tendency for each back to bear its own burden, whether it be in the matter of give or take. Rights are respected all round, and significant in this sense is the rule that if a vineyard be sold by Gentile to Jew it must give up its ‘small bunches’ of grapes to the poor; while if the transaction be the other way, the Gentile purchaser is altogether exempt, and if Jew and Gentile be partners, that part of the crop belonging to the Jew alone is taxed. And equally clear is it that the poor, though cared for and protected, are not to be petted. At this very three-times-a-day gleaning, if one should keep a corner of his ‘corner’ to himself, hiding his harvesting and defrauding his neighbour, justice is prompt: ‘_Let him be forced to depart_,’ it is written, ‘_and what he may have received let it be taken out of his hands._’ Neither is any preference permitted to poverty of the plausible or of the picturesque sort: ‘_He who refuseth to one and giveth to another, that man is a defrauder of the poor_,’ it is gravely said.

In general charity, there are, it is true, certain rules of precedence to be observed; kindred, for example, have, in all cases, the first claim, and a child supporting his parents, or even a parent supporting adult children, to the end that these may be ‘versed in the law, and have good manners,’ is set high among followers of _tzedakah_. Then, ‘_The poor who are neighbours are to be regarded before all others; the poor of one’s own family before the poor of one’s own city, and the poor of one’s own city before the poor of another’s city._’ And this version of ‘charity begins at home’ is worked out in another place into quite a detailed table, so to speak, of professional precedence in the ranks of recognised recipients. And, curiously enough, first among all the distinctions to be observed comes this: ‘_If a man and woman solicit relief, the woman shall be first attended to and then the man._’ An explanation, perhaps a justification, of this mild forestalment of women’s rights, is given in the further dictum that ‘Man is accustomed to wander, and that woman is not,’ and ‘Her feelings of modesty being more acute,’ it is fit that she should be ‘always fed and clothed before the man.’ And if, in this ancient system, there be a recognised scale of rights for receiving, so, equally, is there a graduated order of merit in giving. Eight in number are these so-called ‘Degrees in Alms Deeds,’ the curious list gravely setting forth as ‘highest,’ and this, it would seem, rather on the lines of ‘considering the poor’ than of mere giving, that _tzedakah_ which ‘helpeth ... who is cast down,’ by means of gift or loan, or timely procuring of employment, and ranging through ‘next’ and ‘next,’ till it announces, as eighth and least, the ‘any one who giveth after much molestation.’ High in the list, too, are placed those ‘silent givers’ who ‘let not poor children of upright parents know from whom they receive support,’ and even the man who ‘giveth less than his means allow’ is lifted one degree above the lowest if he ‘give with a kind countenance.’

The mode of relief grew, with circumstances, to change. The time came when, to ‘the Hagars and Ishmaels of mankind,’ rules for gleaning and for ‘fallen grapes’ would, perforce, be meaningless, and new means for the carrying out of _tzedakah_ had to be devised. In Alms of the Chest, קופה (_kupah_), and Alms of the Basket, תמחוי (_tamchui_), another exhaustive system of relief was formulated. The _kupah_ would seem to have been a poor-rate, levied on all ‘residents in towns of over thirty days’ standing,’ and ‘Never,’ says Maimonides, ‘have we seen or heard of any congregation of Israelites in which there has not been the Chest for Alms, though, with regard to the Basket, it is the custom in some places to have it, and not in others.’ These chests were placed in the Silent Court of the Sanctuary, to the end that a class of givers who went by the name of Fearers of Sin,[26] might deposit their alms in silence and be relieved of responsibility. The contents of the Chest were collected weekly and used for all ordinary objects of relief, the overplus being devoted to special cases and special purposes. It is somewhat strange to our modern notions to find that one among such purposes was that of providing poor folks with the wherewith to marry. For not only is it commanded concerning the ‘brother waxen poor,’ ‘_If he standeth in need of garments, let him be clothed; or if of household things, let him be supplied with them,’ but ‘if of a wife, let a wife be betrothed unto him, and in case of a woman, let a husband be betrothed unto her._’ Does this quaint provision recall Voltaire’s taunt that ‘Les juifs ont toujours regardé comme leurs deux grands devoirs des enfants et de l’argent’? Perhaps, and yet, Voltaire and even Malthus notwithstanding, it is just possible that the last word has not been said on this subject, and that in ‘improvident’ marriages and large families the new creed of survival of the fittest may, after all, be best fulfilled.

Philosophers, we know, are not always consistent with themselves, and if there be truth in another saying of Voltaire’s--‘Voyez les registres affreux de vos greffes crimines, vous y trouvez cent garçons de pendus ou de roués contre un père de famille’--then is there something certainly to be said in favour of the Jewish system. But this by the way, since statistics, it must be owned, are the most sensitive and susceptible of the sciences. This ancient betrothing, moreover, was no empty form, no bare affiancing of two paupers; but a serious and substantial practice of raising a marriage portion for a couple unable to marry without it. By Talmudic code, ‘marriages were not legitimately complete till a settlement of some sort was made on the wife,’ who, it may be here parenthetically remarked, was so far in advance of comparatively modern legislation as to be entitled to have and to hold in as complete and comprehensive a sense as her husband.

But whilst Alms of the Chest, though pretty various in its application,[27] was intended only for the poor of the place in which it was collected, Alms of the Basket was, to the extent of its capabilities, for ‘the poor of the whole world.’ It consisted of a daily house-to-house collection of food of all sorts, and occasionally of money, which was again, day by day, distributed. This custom of _tamchui_, suited to those primitive times, would seem to be very similar to the practice of ‘common Boxes, and common gatherynges in every City,’ which prevailed in England in the sixteenth century, and which received legal sanction in Act of the 23rd of Henry VIII.--‘Item, that 2 or 3 tymes in every weke 2 or 3 of every parysh shal appoynt certaine of ye said pore people to collecte and gather broken meates and fragments, and the refuse drynke of every householder, which shal be distributed evenly amonge the pore people as they by theyre discrecyons shal thynke good.’ Only the collectors and distributors of _kupah_ and _tamchui_ were not ‘certaine of ye said pore people,’ but unpaid men of high character, holding something of the position of magistrates in the community. The duty of contributing in kind to _tamchui_ was supplemented among the richer folks by a habit of entertaining the poor as guests;[28] seats at their own tables, and beds in their houses being frequently reserved for wayfarers, at least over Sabbath and festivals.[29]

The curious union of sense and sentiment in the Talmudic code is shown again in the regulations as to who may, and who may not, receive of these gifts of the poor: ‘_He who has sufficient for two meals_,’ so runs the law, ‘_may not take from tamchui; he who has sufficient for fourteen may not take from kupah_.’ Yet might holders of property, fallen on slack seasons, be saved from selling at a loss and helped to hold on till better times, by being ‘meanwhile supported out of the tithes of the poor.’ And if the house and goods of him in this temporary need were grand, money help might be given to the applicant, and he might keep all his smart personal belongings, yet superfluities, an odd item or two of which are vouchsafed, must be sold, and replaced, if at all, by a simpler sort. Still, with all this excessive care for those who have come down in the world, and despite the dictum that ‘he who withholdeth alms is “impious” and like unto an idolater,’ there is yet no encouragement to dependence discernible in these precise and prolix rules. ‘Let thy Sabbath be as an ordinary day, rather than become dependent on thy fellow-men,’ it is clearly written, and told, too, in detail, how ‘wise men,’ the most honoured, by the way, in the community, to avoid ‘dependence on others,’ might become, without loss of caste or respectability, ‘carriers of timber, workers in metal, and makers of charcoal.’ Neither is there any contempt for wealth or any love of poverty for its own sake to be seen in this people, who were taught to ‘rejoice before the Lord.’ In one place it is, in truth, gravely set forth that ‘he who increaseth the number of his servants’ increaseth the amount of sin in the world, but this somewhat ascetic-sounding statement is clearly susceptible of a good deal of common-sense interpretation, and when another Master tells us that ‘charity is the salt which keeps wealth from corruption,’ a thought, perhaps, for the due preservation of the wealth may be read between the lines.

On the whole, it looks as if these old-world Rabbis set to work at laying down the law in much the spirit of Robert Browning’s Rabbi--

‘Let us not always say,
Spite of this flesh to-day,
I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole.
As the bird wings and sings
Let us cry, ‘All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more now than flesh helps soul.’

After this manner, at any rate, are set forth, and in this sense are interpreted in the Talmud, the Biblical injunctions to _tzedakah_, to that charity of alms-deeds which, as society is constituted, must, as we said, be considered somewhat of a class distinction.

But for the charity which should be obligatory all round, and as easy of fulfilment by the poor as by the rich, the Talmud chooses the other synonym חסד (_chesed_), and coining from it the word _Gemiluth-chesed_, which may be rendered ‘the doing of kindness,’ it works out a supplementary and social system of charity--a system founded not on ‘rights,’ but on sympathy--dealing not in doles, but in deeds of friendship and of fellowship, and demanding a giving of oneself rather than of one’s stores. And greater than _tzedakah_, write the Rabbis, is _Gemiluth-chesed_, justifying their dictum, as is their wont, by a reference to Holy Writ. ‘Sow to yourselves in righteousness (_tzedakah_),’ says the prophet Hosea (Hos. x. 12); ‘reap in mercy (_chesed_)’; and, inasmuch as reaping is better than sowing, mercy must be better than righteousness. To ‘visit the sick,’ to promote peace in families apt to fall out, to ‘relieve all persons, Jews or non-Jews, in affliction’ (a comprehensive phrase), to ‘bury the dead,’ to ‘accompany the bride,’ are among those ‘kindnesses’ which take rank as religious duties, and one or two specimens may indicate the amount of careful detail which make these injunctions practical, and the fine motive which goes far towards spiritualising them.

Of the visiting of the sick, the Talmud speaks with a sort of awe. God’s spirit, it says, dwells in the chamber of suffering and death, and tendance therein is worship. Nursing was to be voluntary, and no charge to be made for drugs; and so deeply did the habit of helping the helpless in this true missionary spirit obtain among the Jews, that to this day, and more especially in provincial places, the last offices for the dead are rarely performed by hired hands. The ‘accompanying of the bride’ is _Gemiluth-chesed_ in another form. To rejoice with one’s neighbour’s joys is no less a duty in this un-Rochefoucauld-like code than to grieve with his grief. A bride is to be greeted with songs and flowers, and pleasant speeches, and, if poor, to be provided with pretty ornaments and substantial gifts, but the pleasant speeches are in all cases, and before all things, obligatory. In the discursive detail, which is so strong a feature of these Talmudic rulings, it is asked: ‘But if the bride be old, or awkward, or positively plain, is she to be greeted in the usual formula as “fair bride--graceful bride”?’ ‘Yes,’ is the answer, for one is not bound to insist on uncomfortable facts, nor to be obtrusively truthful; to be agreeable is one of the minor virtues. Were there anything in the doctrine of metempsychosis, one would be almost tempted to believe that this ancient unnamed Rabbi was speaking over again in the person of one of our modern minor poets:

‘A truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.’[30]

The charity of courtesy is everywhere insisted upon, and so strongly, that, on behalf of those sometimes ragged and unkempt Rabbis it might perhaps be urged that politeness, the _politesse du cœur_, was their Judaism _en papillote_. ‘Receive every one with pleasant looks,’ says one sage,[31] whose practice was, perhaps, not always quite up to his precepts; ‘where there is no reverence there is no wisdom,’ says another; and as the distinguishing mark of a ‘clown,’ a third instances that man--have we not all met him?--who rudely breaks in on another’s speech, and is more glib than accurate or respectful in his own.

And as postscript to the ‘law’ obtaining on these cheery social forms of ‘charity’ a tombstone may perhaps be permitted to add its curious crumbling bit of evidence. In the House of Life, as Jews name their burial-grounds, at Prague, there stood--perhaps stands still--a stone, erected to the memory, and recording the virtues, of a certain rich lady who died in 1628. Her benefactions, many and minute, are set forth at length, and amongst the rest, and before ‘she clothed the naked,’ comes the item, ‘she ran like a bird to weddings.’ Through the mists of those terrible stories, which make of Prague so miserable a memory to Jews, the record of this long-ago dead woman gleams like a rainbow. One seems to see the bright little figure, a trifle out of breath may be, the gay plumage perhaps just a shade ruffled--somehow one does not fancy her a very prim or tidy personage--running ‘like a bird to weddings.’ She seems, the dear sympathetic soul, in an odd, suggestive sort of way, to illustrate the charitable system of her race, and to show us that, despite all differences of time and place and circumstances, the one essential condition to any ‘charity’ that shall prove effectual remains unchanged; that the solution of the hard problem, which may be worked out in a hundred ways, is just sympathy, and is to be learnt, not in the ‘speaking from afar’ of rich to poor, but in the ‘laying of hands’ upon them. The close fellowship of this ancient primitive system is perhaps impossible in our more complex civilisation, but an approximation to it is an ideal worth striving after. More intimate, more everyday communion between West and East, more ‘Valentines’ at Hoxton are sorely needed. Concert-giving, class-teaching, ‘visiting,’ are all helps of a sort, but there are so many days in a poor man’s week, so many hours in his dull day. Sweetness and light, like other and more prosaic products of civilisation, need, it may be, to be ‘laid on’ in those miles of monotonous streets, long breaks in continuity being fatal to results.

MOSES MENDELSSOHN

‘I wish, it is true, to shame the opprobrious sentiments commonly entertained of a Jew, but it is by character and not by controversy that I would do it.’[32] So wrote the subject of this memoir more than a hundred years ago, and the sentence may well stand for the motto of his life; for much as Moses Mendelssohn achieved by his ability, much more did he by his conduct, and great as he was as a philosopher, far greater was he as a man. Starting with every possible disadvantage--prejudice, poverty, and deformity--he yet reached the goal of ‘honour, fame, and troops of friends’ by simple force of character; and thus he remains for all time an illustration of the happy optimistic theory that, even in this world, success, in the best sense of the word, does come to those who, also in the best sense of the word, deserve it.

The state of the Jews in Germany at the time of Mendelssohn’s birth was deplorable. No longer actively hunted, they had arrived, at the early part of the eighteenth century, at the comparatively desirable position of being passively shunned or contemptuously ignored, and, under these new conditions, they were narrowing fast to the narrow limits set them. The love of religion and of race was as strong as ever, but the love had grown sullen, and of that jealous, exclusive sort to which curse and anathema are akin. What then loomed largest on their narrow horizon was fear; and under that paralysing influence, progress or prominence of any kind became a distinct evil, to be repressed at almost any personal sacrifice. Safety for themselves and tolerance for their faith, lay, if anywhere, in the neglect of the outside world. And so the poor pariahs huddled in their close quarters, carrying on mean trades, or hawking petty wares, and speaking, with bated breath, a dialect of their own, half Jewish, half German, and as wholly degenerate from the grand old Hebrew as were they themselves from those to whom it had been a living tongue. Intellectual occupation was found in the study of the Law; interest and entertainment in the endless discussion of its more intricate passages; and excitement in the not infrequent excommunication of the weaker or bolder brethren who ventured to differ from the orthodox expounders. The culture of the Christian they hated, with a hate born half of fear for its possible effects, half of repulsion at its palpable evidences. The tree of knowledge seemed to them indeed, in pathetic perversion of the early legend, a veritable tree of evil, which should lose a second Eden to the wilful eaters thereof. Their Eden was degenerate too; but the ‘voice heard in the evening’ still sounded in their dulled and passionate ears, and, vibrating in the Ghetto instead of the grove, it seemed to bid them shun the forbidden fruit of Gentile growth.

In September 1729, under a very humble roof, in a very poor little street in Dessau, was born the weakly boy who was destined to work such wonderful changes in that weary state of things. Not much fit to hold the magician’s wand seemed those frail baby hands, and less and less likely altogether for the part, as the poor little body grew stunted and deformed through the stress of over-much study and of something less than enough of wholesome diet. There was no lack of affection in the mean little Jewish home, but the parents could only give their children of what they had, and of these scant possessions, mother-love and Talmudical lore were the staple. And so we read of the small five-year-old Moses being wrapped up by his mother in a large old shabby cloak, on early, bleak winter mornings, and then so carried by the father to the neighbouring ‘Talmud Torah’ school, where he was nourished with dry Hebrew roots by way of breakfast. Often, indeed, was the child fed on an even less satisfying diet, for long passages from Scripture, long lists of precepts, to be learnt by heart, on all sorts of subjects, was the approved method of instruction in these seminaries. An extensive, if somewhat parrot-like, acquaintance at an astonishingly early age with the Law and the Prophets, and the commentators on both, was the ordinary result of this form of education; and, naturally co-existent with it, was an equally astonishing and extensive ignorance of all more everyday subjects. Contentedly enough, however, the learned, illiterate peddling and hawking fathers left their little lads to this puzzling, sharpening, deadening sort of schooling. Frau Mendel and her husband may possibly have thought out the matter a little more fully, for she seems to have been a wise and prudent as well as a loving mother; and the father, we find, was quick to discern unusual talent in the sickly little son whom he carried so carefully to the daily lesson. He was himself a teacher, in a humble sort of way, and eked out his small fees by transcribing on parchment from the Pentateuch. Thus, the tone of the little household, if not refined, was at least not altogether sordid; and when, presently, the little Moses was promoted from the ordinary school to the higher class taught by the great scholar, Rabbi Frankel, the question even presented itself whether it might not be well, in this especial case, to abandon the patent, practical advantages pertaining to the favoured pursuit of peddling, and to let the boy give himself up to his beloved books, and, following in his master’s footsteps, become perhaps, in his turn, a poorly paid, much reverenced Rabbi.

It was a serious matter to decide. There was much to be said in favour of the higher path; but the market for Rabbis, as for hawkers, was somewhat overstocked, and the returns in the one instance were far quicker and surer, and needed no long unearning apprenticeship. The balance, on the whole, seemed scarcely to incline to the more dignified profession; but the boy was so terribly in earnest in his desire to learn, so desperately averse from the only other career, that his wishes, by degrees, turned the scale; and it did not take very long to convince the poor patient father that he must toil a little longer and a little later, in order that his son might be free from the hated necessity of hawking, and at liberty to pursue his unremunerative studies.

From the very first, Moses made the most of his opportunities; and at home and at school high hopes began soon to be formed of the diligent, sweet-tempered, frail little lad. Frailer than ever, though, he seemed to grow, and the body appeared literally to dwindle as the mind expanded. Long years after, when the burden of increasing deformity had come, by dint of use and wont and cheerful courage, to be to him a burden lightly borne, he would set strangers at their ease by alluding to it himself, and by playfully declaring his hump to be a legacy from Maimonides. ‘Maimonides spoilt my figure,’ he would say, ‘and ruined my digestion; but still,’ he would add more seriously, ‘I dote on him, for although those long vigils with him weakened my body, they, at the same time, strengthened my soul: they stunted my stature, but they developed my mind.’ Early at morning and late at night would the boy be found bending in happy abstraction over his shabby treasure, charmed into unconsciousness of aches or hunger. The book, which had been lent to him, was Maimonides’ _Guide to the Perplexed_; and this work, which grown men find sufficiently deep study, was patiently puzzled out, and enthusiastically read and re-read by the persevering little student who was barely in his teens. It opened up whole vistas of new glories, which his long steady climb up Talmudic stairs had prepared him to appreciate. Here and there, in the course of those long, tedious dissertations in the Talmud Torah class-room, the boy had caught glimpses of something underlying, something beyond the quibbles of the schools; but this, his first insight into the large and liberal mind of Maimonides, was a revelation to him of the powers and of the possibilities of Judaism. It revealed to him too, perchance, some latent possibilities in himself, and suggested other problems of life which asked solution. The pale cheeks glowed as he read, and the vague dreams kindled into conscious aims: he too would live to become a Guide to the Perplexed among his people!

Poor little lad! his brave resolves were soon to be put to a severe test. In the early part of 1742, Rabbi Frankel accepted the Chief Rabbinate of Berlin, and thus a summary stop was put to his pupil’s further study. There is a pathetic story told of Moses Mendelssohn standing, with streaming eyes, on a little hillock on the road by which his beloved master passed out of Dessau, and of the kind-hearted Frankel catching up the forlorn little figure, and soothing it with hopes of a ‘some day,’ when fortune should be kind, and he should follow ‘nach Berlin.’ The ‘some day’ looked sadly problematical; that hard question of bread and butter came to the fore whenever it was discussed. How was the boy to live in Berlin? Even if the mind should be nourished for naught, who was to feed the body? The hard-working father and mother had found it no easy task hitherto to provide for that extra mouth; and now, with Frankel gone, the occasion for their long self-denial seemed to them to cease. In the sad straits of the family, the business of a hawker began again to show in an attractive light to the poor parents, and the pedlar’s pack was once more suggested with many a prudent, loving, half-hearted argument on its behalf. But the boy was by this time clear as to his vocation, so after a brief while of entreaty, the tearful permission was gained, the parting blessing given, and with a very slender wallet slung on his crooked shoulders, Moses Mendelssohn set out for Berlin.

It was a long tramp of over thirty miles, and, towards the close of the fifth day, it was a very footsore, tired little lad who presented himself for admission at the Jews’ gate of the city. Rabbi Frankel was touched, and puzzled too, when this penniless little student, whom he had inspired with such difficult devotion, at last stood before him; but quickly he made up his mind that, so far as in him lay, the uphill path should be made smooth to those determined little feet. The pressing question of bed and board was solved. Frankel gave him his Sabbath and festival dinners, and another kind-hearted Jew, Bamberger by name, who heard the boy’s story, supplied two everyday meals, and let him sleep in an attic in his house. For the remaining four days? Well, he managed; a groschen or two was often earned by little jobs of copying, and a loaf so purchased, by dint of economy and imagination, was made into quite a series of satisfying meals, and, in after-days, it was told how he notched his loaves into accurate time measurements, lest appetite should outrun purse. Fortunately poverty was no new experience for him; still, poverty confronted alone, in a great city, must have seemed something grimmer to the home-bred lad than that mother-interpreted poverty, which he had hitherto known. But he met it full-face, bravely, uncomplainingly, and, best of all, with unfailing good humour. And the little alleviations which friends made in his hard lot were all received in a spirit of the sincerest, charmingest gratitude. He never took a kindness as ‘his due’; never thought, like so many embryo geniuses, that his talents gave him right of toll on his richer brethren. ‘Because I would drink at the well,’ he would say in his picturesque fashion, ‘am I to expect every one to haste and fill my cup from their pitchers? No, I must draw the water for myself, or I must go thirsty. I have no claim save my desire to learn, and what is that to others?’ Thus he preserved his self-respect and his independence.

He worked hard, and, first of all, he wisely sought to free himself from all voluntary disabilities; there were enough and to spare of legally imposed ones to keep him mindful of his Judaism. He felt strong enough in faith to need no artificial shackles. He would be Jew, and yet German--patriot, but no pariah. He would eschew vague dreams of universalism, false ideas of tribalism. If Palestine had not been, he, its product, could not be; but Palestine and its glories were of the past and of the future; the present only was his, and he must shape his life according to its conditions, which placed him, in the eighteenth century, born of Jewish parents, in a German city. He was German by birth, Jew by descent and by conviction; he would fulfil all the obligations which country, race, and religion impose. But a German Jew, who did not speak the language of his country? That, surely, was an anomaly and must be set right. So he set himself strenuously to learn German, and to make it his native language. Such secular study was by no means an altogether safe proceeding. Ignorance, as we have seen, was ‘protected’ in those days by Jewish ecclesiastical authority. Free trade in literature was sternly prohibited, and a German grammar, or a Latin or a Greek one, had, in sober truth, to run a strict blockade. One Jewish lad, it is recorded on very tolerable authority, was actually in the year 1746 expelled the city of Berlin for no other offence than that of being caught in the act of studying--one chronicle, indeed, says, carrying--some such proscribed volume. Moses, however, was more fortunate; he saved money enough to buy his books, or made friends enough to borrow them; and, we may conclude, found nooks in which to hide them, and hours in which to read them. He set himself, too, to gain some knowledge of the Classics, and here he found a willing teacher in one Kish, a medical student from Prague. Later on, another helper was gained in a certain Israel Moses, a Polish schoolmaster, afterwards known as Israel Samosc. This man was a fine mathematician, and a first-rate Hebrew scholar; but as his attainments did not include the German language, he made Euclid known to Moses through the medium of a Hebrew translation. Moses, in return, imparted to Samosc his newly acquired German, and learnt it, of course, more thoroughly through teaching it. He must have possessed the art of making friends who were able to take on themselves the office of teachers; for presently we find him, in odd half-hours, studying French and English under a Dr. Aaron Emrich.[33] He very early began to make translations of parts of the Scripture into German, and these attempts indicate that, from the first, his overpowering desire for self-culture sprang from no selfishness. He wanted to open up the closed roads to place and honour, but not to tread them alone, not to leave his burdened brethren on the bye-paths, whilst he sped on rejoicing. He knew truly enough that ‘the light was sweet,’ and that ‘a pleasant thing it is to behold the sun.’ But he heeded, too, the other part of the charge: he ‘remembered the days of darkness, which were many.’ He remembered them always, heedfully, pitifully, patiently; and to the weary eyes which would not look up or could not, he ever strove to adjust the beautiful blessed light which he knew, and they, poor souls, doubted, was good. He never thrust it, unshaded, into their gloom: he never carried it off to illumine his own path.

Thus, the translations at which Moses Mendelssohn worked were no transcripts from learned treatises which might have found a ready market among the scholars of the day; but unpaid and unpaying work from the liturgy and the Scriptures, done with the object that his people might by degrees share his knowledge of the vernacular, and become gradually and unconsciously familiar with the language of their country through the only medium in which there was any likelihood of their studying it. With that one set purpose always before him, of drawing his people with him into the light, he presently formed the idea of issuing a serial in Hebrew, which, under the title of _The Moral Preacher_, should introduce short essays and transcripts on other than strictly Judaic or religious subjects. One Bock was his coadjutor in this project, and two numbers of the little work were published. The contents do not seem to have been very alarming. To our modern notions of periodical literature, they would probably be a trifle dull; but their mild philosophy and yet milder science proved more than enough to arouse the orthodox fears of the poor souls, who, ‘bound in affliction and iron,’ distrusted even the gentle hand which was so eager to loose the fetters. There was a murmur of doubt, of muttered dislike of ‘strange customs’; perhaps here and there too, a threat concerning the pains and penalties which attached to the introduction of such. At any rate, but two numbers of the poor little reforming periodical appeared; and Moses, not angry at his failure, not more than momentarily discouraged by it, accepted the position and wasted no time nor temper in cavilling at it. He had learnt to labour, he could learn to wait. And thus, in hard yet happy work, passed away the seven years, from fourteen till twenty-one, which are the seed-time of a man’s life. In 1750, when Moses was nearly of age, he came into possession of what really proved an inheritance. A rich silk manufacturer, named Bernhardt, who was a prominent member of the Berlin synagogue, made a proposal to the learned young man, whose perseverance had given reputation to his scholarship, to become resident tutor to his children. The offer was gladly accepted, and it may be considered Mendelssohn’s first step on the road to success. The first step to fame had been taken when the boy had set out on his long tramp to Berlin.

Bernhardt was a kind and cultured man, and in his house Mendelssohn found both congenial occupation and welcome leisure. He was teacher by day, student by night, and author at odd half-hours. He turned to his books with the greatest ardour; and we read of him studying Locke and Plato in the original, for by this time English and Greek were both added to his store of languages. His pupils, meanwhile, were never neglected, nor in the pursuit of great ends were trifles ignored. In more than one biography special emphasis is laid on his beautifully neat handwriting, which, we are told, much excited his employer’s admiration. This humble, but very useful, talent may possibly have been inherited, with some other small-sounding virtues, from the poor father in Dessau, to whom many a nice present was now frequently sent. At the end of three or four years of tutorship, Bernhardt’s appreciation of the young man took a very practical expression. He offered Moses Mendelssohn the position of book-keeper in his factory, with some especial responsibilities and emoluments attached to the office. It was a splendid opening, although Moses Mendelssohn, the philosopher, eagerly and gratefully accepting such a post somehow jars on one’s susceptibilities, and seems almost an instance of the round man pushed into the square hole. It was, however, an assured position; it gave him leisure, it gave him independence, and in due time wealth, for as years went on he grew to be a manager, and finally a partner in the house. His tastes had already drawn him into the outer literary circle of Berlin, which at this time had its headquarters in a sort of club, which met to play chess and to discuss politics and philosophy, and which numbered Dr. Gompertz, the promising young scholar Abbt, and Nicolai, the bookseller,[34] among its members. With these and other kindred spirits, Mendelssohn soon found pleasant welcome; his talents and geniality quickly overcoming any social prejudices, which, indeed, seldom flourish in the republic of letters. And, early disadvantages notwithstanding, we may conclude without much positive evidence on the subject, that Mendelssohn possessed that valuable, indefinable gift, which culture, wealth, and birth united occasionally fail to bestow--the gift of good manners. He was free alike from conceit and dogmatism, the Scylla and Charybdis to most young men of exceptional talent. He had the loyal nature and the noble mind, which we are told on high authority is the necessary root of the rare flower; and he had, too, the sympathetic, unselfish feeling which we are wont to summarise shortly as a good heart, and which is the first essential to good manners.

When Lessing came to Berlin, about 1745, his play of _Die Juden_ was already published, and his reputation sufficiently established to make him an honoured guest at these little literary gatherings. Something of affinity in the wide, unconventional, independent natures of the two men; something, it may be, of likeness in unlikeness in their early struggles with fate, speedily attracted Lessing and Mendelssohn to each other. The casual acquaintance soon ripened into an intimate and lifelong friendship, which gave to Mendelssohn, the Jew, wider knowledge and illimitable hopes of the outer, inhospitable world--which gave to Lessing, the Christian, new belief in long-denied virtues; and which, best of all, gave to humanity those ‘divine lessons of Nathan der Weise,’ as Goethe calls them--for which character Mendelssohn sat, all unconsciously, as model, and scarcely idealised model, to his friend. It was, most certainly, a rarely happy friendship for both, and for the world. Lessing was the godfather of Mendelssohn’s first book. The subject was suggested in the course of conversation between them, and a few days after Mendelssohn brought his manuscript to Lessing. He saw no more of it till his friend handed him the proofs and a small sum for the copyright; and it was in this way that the _Philosophische Gespräche_ was anonymously published in 1754. Later, the friends brought out together a little book, entitled _Pope as a Metaphysician_, and this was followed up with some philosophical essays (‘Briefe über die Empfindungen’) which quickly ran through three editions, and Mendelssohn became known as an author. A year or two later, he gained the prize which the Royal Academy of Berlin offered for the best essay on the problem ‘Are metaphysics susceptible of mathematical demonstration?’ for which prize Kant was one of the competitors.

Lessing’s migration to Leipzig, and his temporary absences from the capital in the capacity of tutor, made breaks, but no diminution, in the friendship with Mendelssohn; and the _Literatur-Briefe_, a journal cast in the form of correspondence on art, science, and literature, to which Nicolai, Abbt, and other writers were occasional contributors, continued its successful publication till the year 1765. A review in this journal of one of the literary efforts of Frederick the Second gave rise to a characteristic ebullition of what an old writer quaintly calls ‘the German endemical distemper of Judæophobia.’ In this essay, Mendelssohn had presumed to question some of the conclusions of the royal author; and although the contents of the _Literatur-Briefe_ were generally unsigned, the anonymity was in most cases but a superficial disguise. The paper drew down upon Mendelssohn the denunciation of a too loyal subject of Frederick’s, and he was summoned to Sans Souci to answer for it. Frederick appears to have been more sensible than his thin-skinned defender, and the interview passed off amicably enough. Indeed, a short while after, we hear of a petition being prepared to secure to Mendelssohn certain rights and privileges of dwelling unmolested in whichever quarter of the city he might choose--a right which at that time was granted to but few Jews, and at a goodly expenditure of both capital and interest. Mendelssohn, loyal to his brethren, long and stoutly refused to have any concession granted on the score of his talents which he might not claim on the score of his manhood in common with the meanest and most ignorant of his co-religionists. And there is some little doubt whether the partial exemptions which Mendelssohn subsequently obtained, were due to the petition, which suffered many delays and vicissitudes in the course of presentation, or to the subtle and silent force of public opinion.