Driving Forces in Jewish History*
A Neminent historian of Jewish literature, Gustav Karpeles, declares, in the introduction to his "History of Jewish Literature," that it is not a mere phrase to assert of the Jewish people that its history was at the same time its literature. The greatest Jewish historian of modern times, Heinrich Graetz, has written a history of the Jews in twelve volumes. He might just as well have called it a history of Jewish literature, for instead of being a history of deeds, of civilizing labors and actions, it is a history of books, of ideas, of intellectual tendencies and personalities. It will be admitted that Graetz and other Jewish historians have done good work in collecting historical data, and in arranging them scientifically and presenting them with accuracy. If, despite their painstaking labors they have produced only a history of literature, it is not their fault. Now, a history of literature is a history of ideas and their sponsors, a history of personalities. Take literature from Jewish history and there remains an airy nothing. This fact alone supplies sufficient ground for interpreting Jewish history from the viewpoint of individuality, which is its prime driving force, and by so doing we shall penetrate into its peculiarity and consequently into the Jewish mind.
The Talmud was the center of gravity in the last days of ancient Judaism, and is still so in our days. The Jews themselves give the first place to the Talmud, and there is even a certain coldness towards the Bible. One may meet even today some great Talmudical scholars who have never read the Prophets, and the average Talmud-Jew knows the Bible only from the quotations he finds in the Talmud. In many Talmudical academies the reading of the Prophets is, if not interdicted, yet not recommended. Especially does the pious Jew who knows little of the Talmud treat the Bible, with the exception of the Pentateuch, as a sort of revolutionary literature. It may be rightly maintained that there are not many peoples on earth who are as ignorant of the Bible as the Jews.
Christian peoples, on the other hand, look in a different way upon these two books created by one and the same people. The philo-Semites appeal to the Bible, the anti-Semites to the Talmud. The Bible makes the Jews the Chosen People of God. The Talmud makes them Pariahs. Into the Bible they read all great and holy thoughts, into the Talmud the meanest and lowest. The Bible, as far as I know, was never condemned to be burned, but this happened to the Talmud more than six times in the sixteenth century alone.
Kings and Popes vied with each other in their hatred towards this book. During several centuries it was spoken of as liber damnabilis (damnable book). When Pius IV after much hesitation gave his permission for the imprint of a new edition of the Talmud he stipulated that the word Talmud should not be on the front page.
* This essay forms part of a chapter of the English edition of my book, "Psychology of the Jewish Mind," soon to be published.
His decree in this matter had this sentence: "Si tamen prodierit sine nomine Talmud tolerari deberet." Even today this book is thoroughly hated even by liberal-minded Christians. The word Talmud conjures up conceptions of a book produced through the frenzy of a bigoted people. Every time the anti-Semite tries to revive the ritual murder story the Talmud is placed in the center of the discussion. Just think of it! On account of the Bible, which the Jews know so little, they are called God's own people, and on account of the Talmud they are branded as fanatic assassins and superstitious Haitis! The very men who appear as crown witnesses at every ritual murder case are often firm believers in the Bible. How shall we account for this strange phenomenon? At present the Talmud has been translated almost in its entirety, and in former times there were always a few Christian scholars
who had a more or less intimate Talmudic knowledge. So we would miss the point were we to assign ignorance of the book as the cause of the furious anti-Jewish wave that dashes around the Talmud. There is nothing in the Talmud that would justify this bimillenial antipathy. If any great work of the world literature may be pronounced harmless, it is surely the Talmud. This work contains discussions of religious precepts and enactments, a system of civil and criminal law, which is ethically motivated, and in addition, all kinds of folklore and poetry, called Hagadah. The reason for the positive attitude of the Jews toward the Talmud and the pronounced Christian dislike of it must be other than philological or ethical. The position occupied by the Talmud in Judaism as well as in Christianity can be explained only by a psychological reason, just as the position
of the Bible in Judaism and Christianity can be only psychologically explained. Inasmuch as the Talmud is still more than the Bible a product of individuals, it becomes necessary to inquire into the psychology of those individuals. It will then appear that the Christians' dislike for the Talmud is psychologically as well founded as the Jewish liking for the Talmud. In Jewish history there appear successively four personalities that are in part mutually exclusive: (1) The strong-willed and exceedingly active lawgiver of the earliest period, who was at the same time a statesman, a tribune, organizer and judge.† (2) The priest, who besides officiating at the divine services, acted also as public health official, and who, as priests ever do, always sided with the strong and influential ones. (3) The prophet, who was poet and politician, patriot and tribune, and (4) the rabbi (from Sopher down to this day) the interpreter of the law, half-priest and half-judge, wholly rooted in the book. In ancient times the prophet was also opposed to the
† Let me refer the reader to the splendid psychological Moses essays, by Adolf Gelber and Ahad-Haam, in the "Moses" Symposium, published in Berlin, 1905.