Episode the Fourth
WHEN there is neither day nor night, at dusk, when night has given her last kiss of greeting to the day; when the blush that has mantled the face of the sky fades, when all is uncertain, unreal, doubtful, and indis- tince; in that hour the Messiah will be born. _ Epnıam TOr \URITINCS DE THE STRIRF
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"It is written that at the destruction of Jerusalem, in the selfsame hour that the temple fell, the Messiah was born," began the rabbi. "It is also written," rejoined his companion, "that every Jewish woman should be so virtuous as to be worthy of being the mother of the Messiah."
"And he is to come when it is neither day nor night. Here is a contradiction and a mystery. Who is the Messiah?"— and the rabbi fell into a brown study.
Deborah Isaacson entered the room hot and excited, with a Yiddish paper in her hand. "They live," and she began to cry.
"Wife, what is it?" asked Jacob Isaacson.
The woman dried her eyes and broke into hysteric laughter. "Read. They live."
The attempted suicide and the rescue had become a public record through the usual hearing before a police magistrate. The Jargon scribe had translated it into his journal.
Jacob Isaacson read and reread it with avidity.
The rabbi still meditating was barely conscious of the woman's presence. "The Messiah is, must be"—
"Hope," answered Isaacson with a face beaming with joy.
The Wilna Gaon’s Life.
III. Importance of the Gaon.
WE shall be in position to understand and appreciate the Gaon's work if we realize that he lived in an age in which rationalism, pietism, and pilpulistic scholarship flourished side by side, each of these tendencies struggling for the complete mastership. He gave to all these a new turn. Though very pious, he did not carry his piety to the point of fanaticism; his remarkable scholarship did not express itself in the mental gymnastics of the pilpulists; and his rationalism did not run mad. He combined these three into the enlightened study of theological and secular sciences, and the true observance of the "mizvoth." He perceived clearly, as did Mendelssohn, the necessity of a sweeping reform in Jewish studies. Each, however, was actuated by a different motive, that of Elijah being Jewish, that of Mendelssohn non-Jewish.
Elijah desired to restore the true and beneficial study of the Talmud and the Bible, and also to spread the knowledge of the Hebrew language and of Jewish teachings with the aid of other sciences; whereas Mendelssohn merely aimed to bring about an appreciation of modern culture, and employed the Hebrew as a means to that end. The one wished to have works from other languages translated into Hebrew so as to make them "Jewish;" the other translated Hebrew works into German so as to give them a German tinge (6).
The first thing, then, which Elijah did was to check mischievous pilpulism. During the Middle Ages the Talmud was studied not as a science but as a religion.
(6). Cf., E. Schulman, in "Mimkor Yisroel" (p. 34), Vienna, 1786.