History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume 1 of 3. From the Beginning until the Death of Alexander I (1825)

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 participated 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 title 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 Meïrath `Enaïm, "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, Meïr 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 (entitled Meïr `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 analysis, Rabbi Meïr of Lublin looked down upon the codifiers and systematic writers of the class to which Isserles and Jaffe belonged. The trifling minuteness of his investigations may be illustrated 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 nobleman.

In the domain of dialectics Rabbi Meïr found a successful rival in the person of Samuel Edels, known by the abbreviated name of MaHaRSHO101 (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 principally 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 title 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 titles 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 Hispanus under John Albrecht and Alexander; Solomon Ashkenazi (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-Kuyavsk105 (Ohel Ya`kob, "Tent of Jacob,"106 Cracow, 1599), and Gedaliah Lifshitz, 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 God 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 passage in which Albo states that "the happiness of man depends on the perfection of his thought and conduct," Lifshitz 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 phraseology109– 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, entitled "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 ARI111 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 title 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 God 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 God 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.

More wholesome and more closely related to life was the trend of the Jewish apologetic literature which sprang up in Poland in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. The religious unrest which had been engendered by the Reformation gave rise to several rationalistic sects with radical, anti-ecclesiastic tendencies. Nearest of all to the tenets of Judaism was the sect of the Anti-Trinitarians (called Unitarians, Arians, or Socinians116), who denied the dogma of the Trinity and the divine nature of Jesus, but recognized the religious and moral teachings of the Gospels. Among the Anti-Trinitarian leaders were the theologian Simon Budny, of Vilna, and Martin Chekhovich, of Lublin. Stung by the fact that the Catholic clergy applied to them the contemptuous appellation of "Judaizers," or semi-Jews, the sectarians were anxious to demonstrate to the world that their doctrine had nothing in common with Judaism. For this purpose they carried on oral disputes with the rabbis, and tried to expose the "Jewish falsehoods" in their works.

Martin Chekhovich was particularly zealous in holding theological disputations, both in Lublin and in other cities, "with genuine as well as pseudo-Jews." The results of these disputations are embodied in several chapters of his books entitled "Christian Dialogues" (1575) and "Catechism" (1580). One of his Jewish opponents, Jacob (Nahman) of Belzhytz,117 found it necessary to answer him in public in a little book written in the Polish language (Odpis na dyalogi Czechowicza, "Retort to the Dialogues of Chekhovich," 1581). Jacob of Belzhytz defends the simple dogmas of Judaism, and accuses his antagonists of desiring to arouse hostility to the Jewish people. The following observation of Jacob is interesting as showing the methods of disputation then in vogue:

It often happens that a Christian puts a question to me from Holy Writ, to which I reply also from Holy Writ, and I try to argue it properly. But suddenly he will pick out another passage [from the Bible], saying: "How do you understand this?" and thus he does not finish the first question, on which it would be necessary to dwell longer. This is exactly what happens when the hunter's dogs are hounding the rabbit which flees from the road into a by-path, and, while the dogs are trying to catch it, slips away into the bushes. For this reason the Jew too has to interrupt the Christian in the midst of his speech, lest the latter escape like the rabbit as soon as he has finished speaking.

Chekhovich replied to Jacob's pamphlet in print in the same year. While defending his "Dialogues," he criticized the errors of the Talmud, and made sport of several Jewish customs, such as the use of tefillin, mezuza, and tzitzith.

A serious retort to the Christian theologians came from Isaac Troki, a cultured Karaite,118 who died in 1594. He argued with Catholics, Lutherans, and Arians in Poland, not as a dilettante, but as a profound student of the Gospels and of Christian theology. About 1593 he wrote his remarkable apologetic treatise under the title Hizzuk Emuna ("Fortification of the Faith"). In the first part of his book, the author defends Judaism against the attacks of the Christian theologians, while in the second he takes the offensive and criticizes the teachings of the Church. He detects a whole series of contradictions in the texts of the Synoptic Gospels, pointing out the radical deviations of the New Testament from the Old and the departure of the later dogmatism of the Church from the New Testament itself. With calmness and assurance he proves the logical and historical impossibility of the interpretations of the well-known Biblical prophecies which serve as the substructure of the Christian dogma.

For a long time no one was bold enough to print this "dreadful treatise," and it was circulated in manuscript both in the Hebrew original and in a Spanish and German version. The Hebrew original, accompanied by a Latin translation, was printed for the first time from a defective copy by the German scholar Wagenseil, Professor of Law in Bavaria. Wagenseil published the treatise Hizzuk Emuna in his collection of anti-Christian writings, to which he gave the awe-inspiring title "The Fiery Arrows of Satan" (Tela Ignea Satanae, 1681), and which were published for missionary purposes, "in order that the Christians may refute this book, which may otherwise fortify the Jews in their errors." The pious German professor could not foresee that his edition would he subsequently employed by men of the type of Voltaire and the French encyclopedists of the eighteenth century as a weapon to attack the doctrine of the Church. Voltaire commented on the book of Isaac Troki in these words: "Not even the most decided opponents of religion have brought forward any arguments which could not be found in the 'Fortification of the Faith' by Rabbi Isaac." In modern times the Hizzuk Emuna has been reprinted from more accurate copies, and has been translated into several European languages.119