Part 15
Another century elapsed before the muse of the Hebrew drama escaped from leading strings. Moses Chayyim Luzzatto (1707-1747) of Padua was a poet of true dramatic gifts, and had he lived at another time he might have attained to absolute greatness of performance. Unluckily, the sentimental, impressionable youth became hopelessly enmeshed in the snares of mysticism. In his seventeenth year he composed a biblical drama, "Samson and the Philistines," the preserved fragments of which are faultless in metre. His next effort was an allegorical drama, _Migdal Oz_ ("Tower of Victory"), the style and moral of which show unmistakable signs of Italian inspiration, derived particularly from Guarini and his _Pastor Fido_, models not wholly commendable at a time when Maffei's _Merope_ was exerting wholesome influence upon the Italian drama in the direction of simplicity and dignity. Nothing, however, could wean Luzzatto from adherence to Spanish-Italian romanticism. His happiest creation is the dramatic parable, _Layesharim Tehillah_ ("Praise unto the Righteous!"). The poetry of the Bible here celebrates its resurrection. The rhythm and exuberance of the Psalms are reproduced in the tone and color of its language. "All the fragrant flowers of biblical poetry are massed in a single bed. Yet the language is more than a mosaic of biblical phrases. It is an enamel of the most superb and the rarest of elegant expressions in the Bible. The peculiarities of the historical writings are carefully avoided, while all modifications of style peculiar to poetry are gathered together to constitute what may fairly be called a vocabulary of poetic diction."[59]
The allegory _Layesharim Tehillah_ is full of charming traits, but lacks warmth, naturalness, and human interest, the indispensable elements of dramatic action. The first act treats of the iniquity of men who prize deceit beyond virtue, and closes with the retirement of the pious sage to solitude. The second act describes the hopes of the righteous man and his fate, and the third sounds the praise of truth and justice. The thread of the story is slight, and the characters are pale phantoms, instead of warm-blooded men. Yet the work must be pronounced a gem of neo-Hebraic poetry, an earnest of the great creations its author might have produced, if in early youth he had not been caught in the swirling waters, and dragged down into the abysmal depths of Kabbalistic mysticism. Despite his vagaries his poems were full of suggestiveness and stimulation to many of his race, who were inspired to work along the lines laid down by him. He may be considered to have inaugurated another epoch of classical Hebrew literature, interpenetrated with the modern spirit, which the Jewish dramas of his day are vigorously successful in clothing in a Hebrew garb.
In the popular literature in Jewish-German growing up almost unnoticed beside classical Hebrew literature, we find popular plays, comedies, chiefly farces for the _Purim_ carnival. The first of them, "The Sale of Joseph" (_Mekirath Yoseph_, 1710), treats the biblical narrative in the form and spirit of the German farcical clown dialogues, Pickelhering (Merry-Andrew), borrowed from the latter, being Potiphar's servant and counsellor. No dramatic or poetic value of any kind attaches to the play. It is as trivial as any of its models, the German clown comedies, and possesses interest only as an index to the taste of the public, which surely received it with delight. Strangely enough the principal scene between Joseph and Selicha, Potiphar's wife, is highly discreet. In a monologue, she gives passionate utterance to her love. Then Joseph appears, and she addresses him thus:
"Be welcome, Joseph, dearest one, My slave who all my heart has won! I beg of thee grant my request! So oft have I to thee confessed, My love for thee is passing great. In vain for answering love I wait. Have not so tyrannous a mind, Be not so churlish, so unkind-- I bear thee such affection, see, Why wilt thou not give love to me?"
Joseph answers:
"I owe my lady what she asks, Yet this is not among my tasks. I pray, my mistress, change thy mind; Thou canst so many like me find. How could I dare transgress my state, And my great trust so violate? My lord hath charged me with his house, Excepting only his dear spouse; Yet she, it seems, needs watching too. Now, mistress, fare thee well, adieu!"
Selicha then says:
"O heaven now what shall I do? He'll list not to my vows so true. Come, Pickelhering, tell me quick, What I shall do his love to prick? I'll die if I no means can find To bend his humor to my mind. I'll give thee gold, thou mayst depend, If thou'lt but help me to my end."
Pickelhering appears, and says:
"My lady, here I am, thy slave, My wisest counsel thou shalt have. Thou must lay violent hand on him, And say: 'Unless thou'lt grant my whim, I'll drive thee hence from out my court, And with thy woes I'll have my sport, Nor will I stay thy punishment, Till drop by drop thy blood is spent.' Perhaps he will amend his way, If thou such cruel words wilt say."
Selicha follows his advice, but being thwarted, again appeals to Pickelhering, who says:
"My lady fair, pray hark to me, My counsel now shall fruitful be. A garbled story shalt thou tell The king, and say: 'Hear what befell: Thy servant Joseph did presume To enter in my private room, When no one was about the house Who could protect thy helpless spouse. See here his mantle left behind. Seize him, my lord, the miscreant find.'"
Potiphar appears, Selicha tells her tale, and Pickelhering is sent in quest of Joseph, who steps upon the scene to be greeted by his master's far from gentle reproaches:
"Thou gallowsbird, thou good-for-naught! Thou whom so true and good I thought! 'Twere just to take thy life from thee. But no! still harsher this decree: In dungeon chained shalt thou repine, Where neither sun nor moon can shine. Forever there bewail thy lot unheard; Now leave my sight, begone, thou gallowsbird.'"
This ends the scene. Of course, at the last, Joseph escapes his doom, and, to the great joy of the sympathetic public, is raised to high dignities and honors.
This farce was presented at Frankfort-on-the-Main by Jewish students of the city, aided by some from Hamburg and Prague, with extravagant display of scenery. Tradition ascribes the authorship to a certain Beermann.
"Ahasverus" is of similar coarse character, so coarse, indeed, that the directors of the Frankfort Jewish community, exercising their rights as literary censors, forbade its performance, and had the printed copies burnt. A somewhat more refined comedy is _Acta Esther et Achashverosh_, published at Prague in 1720, and enacted there by the pupils of the celebrated rabbi David Oppenheim, "on a regular stage with drums and other instruments." "The Deeds of King David and Goliath," and a travesty, "Haman's Will and Death" also belong to the category of Purim farces.
By an abrupt transition we pass from their consideration to the Hebrew classical drama modelled after the pattern of Moses Chayyim Luzzatto's. Greatest attention was bestowed upon historical dramas, notably those on the trials and fortunes of Marranos, the favorite subjects treated by David Franco Mendez, Samuel Romanelli, and others. Although their language is an almost pure classical Hebrew, the plot is conceived wholly in the spirit of modern times. At the end of the eighteenth century, a large number of writers turned to Bible heroes and heroines for dramatic uses, and since then Jewish interest in the drama has never flagged. The luxuriant fruitfulness of these late Jewish playwrights, standing in the sunlight of modern days, fully compensates for the sterility of the Jewish dramatic muse during the centuries of darkness.
The first Jewish dramatist to use German was Benedict David Arnstein, of Vienna, author of a large number of plays, comedies and melodramas, some of which have been put upon the boards of the Vienna imperial theatre (_Burgtheater_). He was succeeded by L. M. Bueschenthal, whose drama, "King Solomon's Seal," was performed at the royal theatre of Berlin. Since his time poets of Jewish race have enriched dramatic literature in all its departments. Their works belong to general literature, and need not be individualized in this essay.
In the province of dramatic music, too, Jews have made a prominent position for themselves. It suffices to mention Meyerbeer and Offenbach, representatives of two widely divergent departments of the art. Again, to assert the prominence of Jews as actors is uttering a truism. Adolf Jellinek, one of the closest students of the racial characteristics of Jews, thinks that they are singularly well equipped for the theatrical profession by reason of their marked subjectivity, which always induces objective, disinterested devotion to a purpose, and their cosmopolitanism, which enables them to transport themselves with ease into a new world of thought.[60] "It is natural that a race whose religious, literary, and linguistic development in hundreds of instances proves unique talent to adapt itself with marvellous facility to the intellectual life of various countries and nations, should bring forth individuals gifted with power to project themselves into a character created by art, and impersonate it with admirable accuracy in the smallest detail. What the race as a whole has for centuries been doing spontaneously and by virtue of innate characteristics, can surely be done with greater perfection by some of its members under the consciously accepted guidance of the laws of art." Many Jewish race peculiarities--quick perception, vivacity, declamatory pathos, perfervid imagination--are prime qualifications for the actor's career, and such names as Bogumil Davison, Adolf Sonnenthal, Rachel Felix, and Sarah Bernhardt abundantly illustrate the general proposition.
Strenuous efforts to ascertain the name of the first Jewish actor in Germany have been unavailing. Possibly it was the unnamed artist for whom, at his brother's instance, Lessing interceded at the Mannheim national theatre.
Legion is the name of the Jewish artists of this century who have attained to prominence in every department of the dramatic art, in every country, even the remotest, on the globe. Travellers in Russia tell of the crowds that evening after evening flock to the Jewish-German theatres at Odessa, Kiev, and Warsaw. The plays performed are adaptations of the best dramatic works of all modern nations. We outside of Russia have been made acquainted with the character of these performances by the melodrama "Shulammith," enacted at various theatres by a Jewish-German _opera bouffe_ company from Warsaw, and the writer once--can he ever forget it?--saw "Hamlet" played by jargon actors. When Hamlet offers advice to Ophelia in the words: "Get thee to a nunnery!" she promptly retorts: _Mit Eizes bin ich versehen, mein Prinz!_ (With good advice I am well supplied, my lord!).
The actor recalled by the recent centennial celebration of the first performance of "The Magic Flute" must have been among the first Jews to adopt the stage as a profession. The first presentation, at once establishing the success of the opera, took place at Prague. According to the _Prager Neue Zeitung_ an incident connected with that original performance was of greater interest than the opera itself: "On the tenth of last month, the new piece, 'The Magic Flute,' was produced. I hastened to the theatre, and found that the part of Sarastro was taken by a well-formed young man with a caressing voice who, as I was told to my great surprise, was a Jew--yes, a Jew. He was visibly embarrassed when he first appeared, proving that he was a human being subject to the ordinary laws of nature and to the average mortal's weaknesses. Noticing his stage-fright, the audience tried to encourage him by applause. It succeeded, for he sang and spoke his lines with grace and dignity. At the end he was called out and applauded vigorously. In short, I found the Prague public very different from its reputation with us. It knows how to appreciate merit even when possessed by an Israelite, and I am inclined to think that it criticises harshly only when there is just reason for complaint. Hartung, the Jewish actor, will soon appear in other roles, and doubtless will justify the applause of the public."
To return, in conclusion, to the classical drama in Hebrew. Though patterned after the best classical models, and enriched by the noble creations of S. L. Romanelli, M. E. Letteris, the translator of _Faust_, A. Gottloeber, and others, Hebrew dramas belong to the large class of plays for the closet, unsuited for the stage. This dramatic literature contains not only original creations; the masterpieces of all literatures--the works of Shakespere, Racine, Moliere, Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing--have been put into the language of the prophets and the psalmists, and, infected by the vigor of their thought, the ancient tongue has been re-animated with the vitality of undying youth.
THE JEW'S QUEST IN AFRICA
Citizens of ancient Greece conversing during the _entr'actes_ of a first performance at the national theatre of Olympia were almost sure to ask each other, after the new play had been discussed: "What news from Africa?" Through Aristotle the proverb has come down to us: "Africa always brings us something new." Hence the question: _Quid novi ex Africa?_[61]
If ever two old rabbis in the _Beth ha-Midrash_ at Cyrene stole a chat in the intervals of their lectures, the same question probably passed between them. For, Africa has always claimed the interest of the cultured. Jewish-German legend books place the scenes of their most mysterious myths in the "Dark Continent," and I remember distinctly how we youngsters on Sabbath afternoons used to crowd round our dear old grandmother, who, great bowed spectacles on her nose, would read to us from "Yosippon." On many such occasions an unruly listener, with a view to hurrying the distribution of the "Sabbathfruit," would endanger the stability of the dish by vigorous tugging at the table-cloth, and elicit the reproof suggested by our reading: "You are a veritable Sambation!"--Aristotle, Pliny, Olympia, Cyrene, "Yosippon," and grandam--all unite to whet our appetite for African novelties.
Never has interest in the subject been more active than in our generation, and the question, "What is the quest of the Jews in Africa?" might be applied literally to the achievements of individual Jewish travellers. But our inquiry shall not be into the fortunes of African explorers of Jewish extraction; not into Emin Pasha's journey to Wadelai and Magungo; not into the advisability of colonizing Russian Jews in Africa; nor even into the role played by a part of northern Africa in the development of Jewish literature and culture: briefly, "The Jew's quest in Africa" is for the remnants of the ten lost tribes.
For more than eight hundred years, Israel, entrenched on his own soil, bade defiance to every enemy. After the death of Solomon (978 B. C. E.), the kingdom was divided, its power declining in consequence. The world-monarchy Assyria became an adversary to be feared after Ahaz, king of Judah, invited it to assist him against Pekah. Tiglath-Pileser conquered a part of the kingdom of Israel, and, in about the middle of the eighth century, carried off its subjects captive into Assyria. In the reign of Hosea, Shalmaneser finished what his predecessor had begun (722), utterly destroying the kingdom of the north in the two hundred and fifty-eighth year of its independence. Before the catastrophe, a part of its inhabitants had emigrated to Arabia, so that there were properly speaking only nine tribes, called by their prophets, chief among them Hosea and Amos, Ephraim from the most powerful member of the confederacy. Another part went to Adiabene, a district on the boundary between Assyria and Media, and thence scattered in all directions through the kingdom of the Medes and Persians.
The prophets of the exile still hope for their return. Isaiah says:[62] "The Lord will put forth His hand again the second time to acquire the remnant of his people, which shall remain, from Asshur, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Chamath, and from the islands of the sea. And he will lift up an ensign unto the nations, and will assemble the outcasts of Israel; and the dispersed of Judah will he collect together from the four corners of the earth.... Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not assail Ephraim.... And the Lord will utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea.... And there shall be a highway for the remnant of his people, which shall remain from Asshur, like as it was to Israel on the day that they came up out of the land of Egypt." In Jeremiah[63] we read: "Behold I will bring them from the north country, and I will gather them from the farthest ends of the earth ... for I am become a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my first-born." Referring to this passage, the Talmud maintains that the prophet Jeremiah led the lost tribes back to Palestine.
The second Isaiah[64] says "to the prisoners, Go forth; to those that are in darkness, Show yourselves." "Ye shall be gathered up one by one.... And it shall come to pass on that day that the great cornet shall be blown, and then shall come those that are lost in the land of Asshur, and those who are outcasts in the land of Egypt, and they shall prostrate themselves before the Lord on the holy mount at Jerusalem."
And Ezekiel:[65] "Thou son of man, take unto thyself one stick of wood, and write upon it, 'For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions'; then take another stick, and write upon it, 'For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions': and join them one to the other unto thee as one stick; and they shall become one in thy hand."
These prophetical passages show that at the time of the establishment of the second commonwealth the new homes of the ten tribes were accurately known. After that, for more than five hundred years, history is silent on the subject. From frequent allusions in the prophetical writings, we may gather that efforts were made to re-unite Judah and the tribes of Israel, and it seems highly probable that they were successful, such of the ten tribes as had not adopted the idolatrous practices of the heathen returning with the exiles of Judah. In the Samaritan book of Joshua, it is put down that many out of the tribes of Israel migrated to the north of Palestine at the time when Zerubbabel and Ezra brought the train of Babylonian exiles to Jerusalem.
In Talmudic literature we occasionally run across a slight reference to the ten tribes, as, for instance, Mar Sutra's statement that they journeyed to Iberia, at that time synonymous with Spain, though the rabbi probably had northern Africa in mind. Another passage relates that the Babylonian scholars decided that no one could tell whether he was descended from Reuben or from Simon, the presumption in their mind evidently being that the ten tribes had become amalgamated with Judah and Benjamin. If they are right, if from the time of Jeremiah to the Syrian domination, a slow process of assimilation was incorporating the scattered of the ten tribes into the returned remnant of Judah and Benjamin, then the ten lost tribes have no existence, and we are dealing with a myth. But the question is still mooted. The prophets and the rabbis continually dwell upon the hope of reunion. The Pesikta is the first authority to locate the exile home of the ten tribes on the Sambation. A peculiarly interesting conversation on the future of the ten tribes between two learned doctors of the Law, Rabbi Akiba and Rabbi Eliezer, has been preserved. Rabbi Eliezer maintains: "The Eternal has removed the ten tribes from their soil, and cast them forth into another land, as irrevocably as this day goes never to return." Rabbi Akiba, the enthusiastic nationalist, thinks very differently: "No, day sinks, and passes into night only to rise again in renewed brilliance. So the ten tribes, lost in darkness, will reappear in refulgent light."
It is not unlikely that Akiba's journeys, extending into Africa, and undertaken to bring about the restoration of the independence of Judaea, had as their subsidiary, unavowed purpose, the discovery of the ten lost tribes. The "Dark Continent" played no unimportant role in Talmudic writings, special interest attaching to their narratives of the African adventures of Alexander the Great.[66] On one occasion, it is said, the wise men of Africa appeared in a body before the king, and offered him gifts of gold. He refused them, being desirous only of becoming acquainted with the customs, statutes, and law, of the land. They, therefore, gave him an account of a lawsuit which was exciting much attention at the time: A man had bought a field from his friend and neighbor, and while digging it up, had found a treasure which he refused to keep, as he considered it the property of the original owner of the field. The latter maintained that he had sold the land and all on and within it, and, therefore, had no claim upon the treasure. The doctors of the law put an end to the dispute by the decision that the son of the one contestant was to take to wife the daughter of the other, the treasure to be their marriage portion. Alexander marvelled greatly at this decision. "With us," he said, "the government would have had the litigants killed, and would have confiscated the treasure." Hereupon one of the wise men exclaimed: "Does the sun shine in your land? Have you dumb beasts where you live? If so, surely it is for them that God sends down the rain, and lets the sun shine!"
In biblical literature, too, frequent mention is made of Africa. The first explorer of the "Dark Continent" was the patriarch Abraham, who journeyed from Ur of the Chaldees through Mesopotamia, across the deserts and mountains of Asia, to Zoan, the metropolis of ancient Egypt. When Moses fled from before Pharaoh, he found refuge, according to a Talmudic legend, in the Soudan, where he became ruler of the land for forty years, and later on, Egypt was the asylum for the greater number of Jewish rebels and fugitives. As early as the reign of King Solomon, ships freighted with silver sailed to Africa, and Jewish sailors in part manned the Phoenician vessels despatched to the coasts of the Red Sea to be loaded with the gold dust of Africa, whose usual name in Hebrew was _Ophir_, meaning gold dust. In the Talmud Africa is generally spoken of as "the South," owing to its lying south of Palestine. One of its proverbs runs thus: "He who would be wise, must go to the South." The story of Alexander the Great and the African lawyers is probably a sample of the wisdom lauded. Nor were the doctors of the Talmud ignorant of the physical features of the country. A scoffer asked, "Why have Africans such broad feet." "Because they live on marshy soil, and must go barefoot," was the ready answer given by Hillel the Great.