Jewish Cultural Nationalism: Origins and influences (Routledge Jewish Studies Series)

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Jewish Cultural Nationalism

Judaism, though primarily a religious civilization, has also been a vehicle for nationalism, not just for Jews but also, via the Hebrew Bible, among all peoples who accepted the authority of the Scripture (in translation) and identified themselves with or as the Chosen People. Jewish nationalism is primarily identified with Hebrew language and literature which evolved in the struggle of a minority to survive, often in dominant, highly creative cultures: in the ancient world, the Mesopotamian empires and the Roman empire were the often-hostile Other, defining Jewish religious identity; in the Middle Ages, Islam was a powerful and stimulating rival; and in modern times the main political entity which drove Jewish nationalism was the Tsarist empire, particularly in the period 1881–1917. Jewish Cultural Nationalism explores the development of Jewish nationalism from the Bible to modern times, focusing on particular movements and places as well as texts which signified, or themselves brought about, change: the Bible, the siddur (Hebrew prayer book), and modern Hebrew literature, particularly in Tsarist Russia. While the influence of the Hebrew Bible alone on nationalism in individual periods has been subject to much scholarly study, the present work is unusual in its emphasis on the continuity of Jewish cultural nationalism and its influences through Hebrew texts. The book is essential for students of nationalism, providing basic information on the key developments in Jewish nationalism and its major texts through the ages. It has original insights in all areas it covers. Students of rabbinic literature, the siddur and modern Hebrew literature will find the book particularly valuable. It is written in a clear style, without scholarly jargon and is accessible to the general reader. David Aberbach is Professor at McGill University, Canada.

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Routledge Jewish Studies Series Edited by Oliver Leaman University of Kentucky

Studies which are interpreted to cover the disciplines of history, sociology, anthropology, culture, politics, philosophy, theology, religion, as they relate to Jewish affairs. The remit includes texts which have as their primary focus issues, ideas, personalities and events of relevance to Jews, Jewish life and the concepts which have characterized Jewish culture both in the past and today. The series is interested in receiving appropriate scripts or proposals. Medieval Jewish Philosophy An introduction Dan Cohn-Sherbok

Judaism, Philosophy, Culture Selected studies by E. I. J. Rosenthal Erwin Rosenthal

Facing the Other The ethics of Emmanuel Levinas Edited by Seán Hand

Philosophy of the Talmud Hyam Maccoby

Moses Maimonides Oliver Leaman A User’s Guide to Franz Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption Norbert M. Samuelson On Liberty Jewish philosophical perspectives Edited by Daniel H. Frank Referring to God Jewish and Christian philosophical and theological perspectives Edited by Paul Helm

From Synagogue to Church: The Traditional Design Its beginning, its definition, its end John Wilkinson Hidden Philosophy of Hannah Arendt Margaret Betz Hull Deconstructing the Bible Abraham ibn Ezra’s introduction to the Torah Irene Lancaster Jewish Mysticism and Magic An anthropological perspective Maureen Bloom

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Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed: Silence and Salvation Donald McCallum

Jews of Ethiopia The birth of an elite Edited by Emanuela Trevisan Semi and Tudor Parfitt

Muscular Judaism The Jewish body and the politics of regeneration Todd Samuel Presner

Art in Zion The genesis of national art in Jewish Palestine Dalia Manor

Image of the Black in Jewish Culture A history of the Other Abraham Melamed

Hebrew Language and Jewish Thought David Patterson

From Falashas to Ethiopian Jews Daniel Summerfield Philosophy in a Time of Crisis Don Isaac Abravanel: Defender of the Faith Seymour Feldman Jews, Muslims and Mass Media Mediating the ‘Other’ Edited by Tudor Parfitt with Yulia Egorova

Contemporary Jewish Philosophy An introduction Irene Kajon Antisemitism and Modernity Innovation and continuity Hyam Maccoby Jews and India History, image, perceptions Yulia Egorova Jewish Cultural Nationalism Origins and influences David Aberbach

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Jewish Cultural Nationalism Origins and influences

David Aberbach

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First published 2008 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2008 David Aberbach All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-93489-X Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0–415–77348–2 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–203–93489–X (ebk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–77348–5 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–93489–0 (ebk)

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To my beloved father Moshe Aberbach (1924–2007)

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Contents

Acknowledgements

xi

Introduction

1

1

Nationalism and the Hebrew Bible

6

2

The Roman–Jewish wars and Hebrew cultural nationalism

26

3

Jewish nationalism in medieval Islam

37

4

Nationalism, Reform Judaism and the Hebrew prayer book

57

5

The renascence of Hebrew and Jewish nationalism in the Tsarist empire 1881–1917

76

Notes Bibliography Index

101 110 121

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Acknowledgements

This book evolved over many years, in various books of mine – particularly Imperialism and Biblical Prophecy, Revolutionary Hebrew: Empire and Crisis, and Major Turning Points in Jewish Intellectual History – as well as in a series of articles for Nations and Nationalism between 1997 and 2006. The editors and critical readers of these books and of Nations and Nationalism, published by the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN), have given me much valuable advice and encouragement, for which I am grateful. A draft of the chapter on Jewish nationalism and Islam first appeared as a working paper published by the Sociology Department, LSE, in 1995. A longer version of the section on Uri Zvi Greenberg was first published by Central Conference of American Rabbis Journal in 2003. Details are in the Bibliography at the end of this book. Also, I thank the librarians of various libraries where research for this book was done: at McGill University, Montreal; and, in London: SOAS, the LSE, University College, The Leo Baeck Library and, above all, the British Library, as well as my colleagues and students in the Jewish Studies Department, McGill University, with whom for over twenty years I have had the privilege of discussing many of the texts and issues in this book. I am also thankful to my colleagues in the departments of Sociology and Government at the London School of Economics, where since 1992 I have been a visiting academic and where much of this book was written. Thanks are due also to McGill University for generously granting me an exceptional period of leave in 2006 and to the Government Department, LSE, where the leave was spent and the book completed. I am particularly indebted to my late father, Professor Moshe Aberbach, and my wife, Dr Miriam Skelker, for their unstinting help and support. Finally, I thank Joe Whiting, Oliver Leaman and Natalja Mortensen, my editors at Routledge, and John Clement, for bringing the book to press.

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Introduction

Until the nineteenth century, it was generally taken for granted that the only true homeland of the Jews was the land of Israel: Europe and everywhere else was golos (exile). Only since the French Revolution and the emancipation of the Jews has the subject of Jewish nationalism become contentious, together with the question of ‘who is a Jew?’ It has been claimed (mainly by pre-World War II assimilated Jews and by post World War II anti-Semites) that Judaism and national identity are mutually exclusive, that Jews are a religious group, not a nation; that Jews in the modern period have no genuine connection with the world of the Bible, and their main loyalty is to the countries in which they happen to live; and that Zionism, therefore, and especially the idea of a Jewish state, is unnatural, unnecessary and even dangerous. Such views were held by large numbers of nineteenth and early twentieth century secularized Jews, particularly in Germany, where for the first time the ancient hope for the return to Zion was omitted from Hebrew prayer books. Emancipation and the hope of emancipation and ultimate acceptance in their countries of citizenship meant that up to World War II, most Jews were hostile or indifferent to Zionism. If, prior to the war, anti-Semitism had kept Zionism going among a minority of Jews, the Holocaust swept away the old arguments against Jewish nationalism. Since 1942, when the first reports of the Holocaust reached the free world, most Jews, however reluctantly, have accepted the principle of Jewish national identity focused on the land of Israel and the need for a state where Jews can defend themselves. Awareness of national identity was stimulated also by Jewish cultural forces. The Jews, of course, guarded and transmitted the Hebrew Bible in the original; and their daily prayers, preserved in siddurim (prayer books) from the early Middle Ages, were mostly in Hebrew. In addition, much of the Talmud, homiletic literature (midrash and aggadah), and rabbinic responsa (halakhah) is in Hebrew. These and other sources were crucial in the remarkable development of Hebrew and Hebrew literature between 1881, when the first wave of pogroms broke out in Russia, and the outbreak of war in 1939. Most Hebrew writers during this period were also talmudic scholars. Their success in creating a modern Jewish national culture would have been inconceivable had there not already been a deep-rooted Jewish religious–national attachment – enhanced by Jew-hatred and genocide – to the Hebrew Bible and to the land of Israel.

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However one defines what Judaism and Jews should be, it would seem that Jewish nationalism is an incontrovertible fact, above all because the Hebrew Bible has operated as a national document, not just of the Jews but of all who adopted it in translation as their sacred scripture. Yet national identity in the Bible is not an end in itself but a practical means by which the world can ultimately be improved, through faith in one God and observance of the Law. Nationalism is, ideally, a stage towards Isaiah’s vision of all human beings renouncing war and united in faith. In other words, nationalism is a necessary evil reflecting human imperfection which might be overcome. Hebrew prophets were often at odds with kings whom they accused of abandoning their moral responsibilities and leading their people to ruin: some prophets were exiled, imprisoned, even murdered. The Bible anticipates modern suspicion of the realpolitik of narrow nationalism as a betrayal of deeper religious values. Pure monotheist faith is universal, not a clumsy vehicle for national identity. This view is not confined to Jews. In common with nineteenth century Jewish religious reformers such as Abraham Geiger and Samuel Holdheim, Muslim anti-Zionists (as well as a small group of ultra-Orthodox Jews) have tried to delegitimize Jewish political nationalism by arguing that the Jews are not a nation but exclusively a religious group. However, post-Holocaust Reform Judaism acknowledges nationalism as an integral part of Judaism. Historically, Judaism viewed in terms of its practical influence on world civilization, mainly through the Hebrew Bible in translation, is inseparable from nationalism. Scholars of ancient Jewish history and theologians who study nationalism, such as Adrian Hastings, seem to understand this best, while others – Ernest Gellner is a notable example – tend to deny or disregard the ancient sources of nationalism. They see it, instead, chiefly as a modern secular phenomenon divorced from the past. Judaism has served as a stimulus not just to Jewish national identity but also to the nationalism of countless other nations who have identified themselves with the ‘new Israel’. The concepts of nationalism and the nation state have Jewish roots, in the biblical story of the Exodus, the self-determination of a band of slaves who, against the odds, escape into the desert, accept their own sacred laws, conquer the Promised Land, and create their own government and religious–national culture centred on Hebrew Scripture. This was the model for countless national movements, despite the secular character of modern nationalism. Even in the French Revolution, which cast Christianity aside for la patrie, Robespierre created for himself a symbolic link with Moses at Sinai as he descended the artificial mountain in the Champs de Mars at the Festival of the Supreme Being in June 1794. Verdi in the Chorus of Hebrew slaves from his opera Nabucco (1842), which the Italians adopted as their national anthem, implicitly identified modern Italy with the ancient longing of the Israelites for freedom. Many national poets, including Blake (England), Pushkin (Russia), Petöfi (Hungary), Shevchenko (Ukraine), and Whitman (USA), as well as modern Hebrew poets such as Bialik and Greenberg, have imitated the voice of the prophet in calling for the moral regeneration of their people. Many would agree

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with Petöfi in ‘The Poets of the Nineteenth Century’ (1847): the task of the poet is to lead his people to the Promised Land. This book traces the history of Jewish nationalism in various permutations: in the ancient land of Israel, in the biblical and talmudic periods; in medieval Spain, under Islamic rule; and in Europe after the French Revolution. In each case, literature – a book or books – defined the character of this nationalism: the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, medieval Hebrew poetry, the siddur (Hebrew prayer book), and modern Hebrew literature. Jewish nationalism in the Bible was probably not much different from that of other countries in the ancient Near East which adopted monarchic rule. This was nationalism based primarily on military power and territory: when the territory was lost, national identity seems usually to have vanished as the defeated people were assimilated and absorbed by their conquerors. This happened to the kingdom of Israel after its defeat by Assyria in the eighth century BCE. Its sister kingdom of Judah survived, however. By the time of its defeat and exile, by the Babylonians in the early sixth century BCE, Judah evidently had a prophetic culture strong enough to survive exile. The attachment to the homeland in some ways became even more intense than in the past. After Jews were allowed under Persian rule to return to their land (after 538 BCE), their national identity was built increasingly upon observance of the Law. Consequently, when the Romans destroyed the Jewish state and exiled many of its inhabitants in the first and second centuries CE, a pacifist religious–cultural nationalism was firmly established which, faute de mieux, became for nearly 2,000 years mainstream rabbinic Judaism. In the ancient world, this survival of a national identity purely on a cultural basis, with no territory except in memory and hope, and little political power, was practically unique. From the Middle Ages onwards, it became increasingly common as the Hebrew Bible spread in vernacular translation. The Hebrew Bible in translation had decisive influence on the history of nationalism, and the rise of nationalism from the French Revolution onwards in turn transformed Judaism, first by encouraging assimilation and patriotism; then, as anti-Semitism grew, in driving Jews back to Bible-based nationalism. At first, as the emancipation movement spread, Jewish communities became increasingly identified with their countries of citizenship (or hoped-for citizenship). French Jews, the first in Europe to be emancipated, in 1791, did all they could to prove that to be a Jewish patriot was not a contradiction in terms. Reform Judaism in Germany developed in large part as a response to rising German nationalism, to show that the German Jews could be both Jewish (in a rational, secularized, enlightened sense) and loyal to Germany. The example of the French and German Jews set the pattern throughout Western and Central Europe. Even in Eastern Europe, where emancipation was held back by violent Jew-hatred, Jews became increasingly assimilated and identified with their countries, especially after the Russian Revolution in 1917. Though European nationalism was strongly rooted in Hebrew Scripture in translation, the Jews, who had preserved Scripture in the original, were the most reluctant of Europeans to assert their own nationalism.

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Jewish culture in any case taught the compatibility of Judaism with patriotic loyalty – even to countries that passed anti-Jewish laws, engaged in anti-Jewish discrimination, and made clear that they wanted to reduce or eliminate their Jewish populations. A viable, self-interested Jewish nationalism was forced into existence by the rise of racial anti-Semitism in the late nineteenth century. At this point, modern Hebrew language and literature began to evolve rapidly in an astonishing burst of creativity. Just as Reform Judaism, by stressing the need to distance Jews from their traditional loyalties, indirectly called attention to the continuing latent power of these loyalties, so also Hebrew writers, aiming initially to encourage secular education and assimilation, found that by developing the Hebrew language, modernizing it and expanding its range and richness, they inadvertently promoted Jewish nationalism. The chief example of this paradox is Mendele Mocher Sefarim (Mendele the Bookseller, pen name of Shalom Ya’akov Abramowitz, 1835?–1917), the leading Hebrew writer of the nineteenth century. Mendele began writing in the Russian Pale of Settlement in the 1850s during the brief period of reform of Tsar Alexander II. His main goal at first was to create a body of scientific texts in Hebrew translation which would allow the Russian Jews, who were largely ignorant of languages except for Yiddish and Hebrew, to study the sciences and send their children to secular schools where they could train in ‘useful’ professions. In the 1880s, after the pogroms, he abandoned this work and devoted the last thirty years of his life to Hebrew fiction. His six Hebrew novels, mostly recast from his earlier Yiddish texts, depict the gruesome state of the Russian Jews through a mixture of realism and satire. Mendele was not a political Zionist and continued to believe in secular education and assimilation, even in anti-Semitic Russia. Yet his works were adopted by the Zionist movement: the sheer beauty and originality of his prose made it the main artistic benchmark for Hebrew fiction; and the portraits of the persecuted, impoverished Russian Jews could be interpreted as justification for Zionism. And so, by the time of his death in 1917, Mendele found himself the leader of a remarkable group of Hebrew writers who, whatever their ideological sympathies, were now – whether they liked it or not – an integral part of the cultural arm of Zionism. Mendele’s most important follower, Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873–1934), emerged by the time of the Russian pogroms of 1903–1906 as the leading Jewish national poet. His Hebrew ‘poems of wrath’, particularly In the City of Slaughter, in response to the Kishinev pogrom in 1903, expressed the anguish of violent persecution in language unheard since the biblical prophets. Yet most of Bialik’s poems have little overt national content: they are mostly private confessional lyrics which were, nevertheless, usually interpreted as relating to the Jewish condition (Bialik 2004). In contrast, Bialik’s younger contemporary, Uri Zvi Greenberg (1896–1981), embraced the national-prophetic role with total unambiguous dedication. Greenberg brings Hebrew poetry back to its biblical roots, rejecting European patriotism and aestheticism in favour of purely Jewish biblical culture, and seeing Hebrew poetry as divine utterance whose sole purpose is to remind the Jews of their chosenness and inspire them to rebuild their lives in

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the Promised Land, their only home. Racial anti-Semitism culminating in the Holocaust forced these ideas, which were rejected or ignored by most Jews prior to the Holocaust, to be taken seriously again. And indeed, partly because of his immense authority as a poet of the Holocaust, Greenberg is recognized as the leading poetic spokesman of the militant Jewish nationalism taught by the Zionist Revisionist, Vladimir Jabotinsky. Jewish nationalism has gone through many twists and turns both internally and as an influence on other nationalisms. Yet throughout its history there is suspicion and reluctance towards nationalism as a lower and superficial – at times, repugnant – order of existence. Judaism preserves the conviction that nationalism is a phase in human development, not an end in itself. Hatred, defeat and persecution, and ultimately mass murder overcame arguments against renewed Jewish nationalism. For some Jews in the shadow of the Holocaust, survival is enough. Yet inherent in Judaism is the readiness to discard nationalism for a universal humanitarianism, however impractical, in the messianic future. Judaism sees its own supersession in the long term, in the vision of Isaiah inscribed on the foundation stone of the United Nations building in New York. And they will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears to pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift sword against nation, and there will be no more war.

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Nationalism and the Hebrew Bible

As a dominant driving force in civilization, the main root of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the Hebrew Bible has authored and nourished national identity and religious–cultural nationalism: in the belief in the chosenness of the nation and its necessarily moral foundations; its unity across divisions of class, geographic dislocation and cultural assimilation; fierce criticism of and grievance against its enemies, internal as well as external; acceptance of guilt for national failings and defeats, and grief-ridden penitence leading to moral reform; hopes for freedom, regeneration, and the ingathering of exiles; vengeful hatred of oppressors, and readiness to fight and die for the nation; and also the interconnection of the personal life with that of the nation.1 The Hebrew Bible also prefigures paradoxical conflict in national identity: between the individual and the group, chosenness and egalitarianism, the narrowly national and the universal. The Hebrew Bible is the great model of the Nation pickled, as it were, in literature, and preserved to survive defeat, failure and exile. Its vivid stories, characters, down-to-earth imagery and colloquial rhythms, and its extraordinary range of emotion, became an artistic yardstick for Western literature, particularly in English and German translation. About half the Hebrew Bible, from the Five Books of Moses to the Books of Kings, is in prose. The fabulous tale of the slaves who rebelled, won freedom, created their own laws and sacred scripture and themselves as a new nation and established their own state, has had decisive influence on modern nationalism (Walzer 1985). In translation, the Psalms and the fifteen prophetic books, with their extremes of universal ideals and militant chauvinism, of liberty and violence, of justice and vengeance, are the most influential poetry in cultural history.2 The next few pages sketch out motifs in biblical poetry, mostly that of the prophets, which have evidently influenced modern cultural nationalism.

Defeat and biblical nationalism The power of the Hebrew Bible was in inverse proportion to the political and military weakness of the people who created it, whose history was one of inner discord, defeat and exile. Spanning a period of at least 600 years (eighth–second centuries BCE), the Hebrew Bible evolved with the crushing defeat and exile of the two monotheist kingdoms, of Israel in 721 and Judah in 587. Much modern cultural

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nationalism, too, comes from the experience of defeat and humiliation.3 Jewish survival after defeat was itself an inspiration to later national movements as was the implied lesson that a national religious culture could be stronger than political and military force. Consequently, many modern nations have learned to preserve memories of heroic cultural struggle after military conquest, strengthening national unity, resolve and distinctiveness. The Hebrew prophets were, perhaps, the first to recognize that a weak nation that remembers its defeats can survive better than a strong nation that forgets its victories. The memory of defeat festering in the nation’s psyche can be a more powerful stimulant of nationalism than victory. The experience of defeat, persecution, weakness and chaos, can teach a nation to treasure their opposites as ideals, to be achieved, if not through politics, then through apocalypse. Defeat can steel national identity in countries which treat the Hebrew Bible as their true heritage, their licence of chosenness as the ‘new Israel’: the Armenians, Hungarians, Irish, Poles, Romanians, Scots, Ukrainians, as well as many Black Africans and Latin Americans, whose national identity was forged by conquest, slavery, colonization and/or exile. As a forerunner of dissident national literature with great sympathy for the defeated and downtrodden, and faith in an ethical power beyond the temporal, the Hebrew Bible offered consolation and hope in a world dominated by often-cruel, rapacious empires. In the biblical world, however, defeat as a lasting spur to national identity was rare. Defeated peoples – even great empires such as Assyria and Babylonia – were mostly decimated or destroyed or they assimilated and died and their culture was lost or incorporated into other cultures. In ancient Near Eastern literature, victory is trumpeted; defeat is usually passed over in silence. It seems that no ancient people reacted to defeat as the Jews did. The nature of this defeat in the biblical age was little different from that inflicted on many other small nations who got in the way of the great powers of the time. What was unusual, perhaps, was the perspective in exile of a defeated kingdom, Judah, whose people had witnessed the fatal defeats of the two greatest empires the world had yet seen – Assyria and Babylonia. This does not mean that the Jews would not have preferred victory. The first six books of the Hebrew Bible have as their main theme the emergence of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and their conquest of Canaan. The study and recital in synagogue of Scripture was a constant reminder of the possibility of a victorious struggle against the odds. Yet Judaism in practice evolved as an anti-triumphalist religion in which defeat was given unique emphasis as the communication of God’s judgement and will and as a challenge to moral renewal. The Judeans in sixth century Babylonia are the first known example in history of an exiled diaspora community that in the long run did not totally assimilate but kept its identity and the hope of return to its homeland. They turned to their religious culture as an exclusive means of preserving in sacred texts and memory their religious–national identity. As a defeated people, the Jews underwent a variety of metamorphoses but kept their identity until modern times. Meanwhile, missionary Christianity brought the Bible to Africa and South America, grafting it on to local cultures in the process of establishing colonial rule. The cultural imperialism represented by the Bible called up deep ambivalence in Third World countries struggling for independence. The Christianity of the

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empires was often felt as an imposition: ‘The Church in the colonies is the white people’s Church, the foreigner’s Church’ (Fanon 1983: 32). In a famous witticism, ‘When the white man came to our country he had the Bible and we had the land. Then the white man said “let us pray”. After the prayer, the white man had the land and we had the Bible.’ Yet, the bargain was not quite as unfair as that by which native Indians traded Manhattan for a few worthless baubles. The Bible was a tool not just of colonization but also of the empowerment of the colonized. The story of the escape of African slaves from bondage and their struggle for independence in the Promised Land was a clarion for liberation, inspiring colonized peoples to do likewise. Many defeated and suppressed peoples embraced this culture not out of identification with the empires that ruled them but, as in the case of European peoples struggling for freedom, with ancient Israel breaking out of slavery. The adoption of biblical faith was a political act: it meant acceptance of a system in which divine rule and messianic hopes are above temporal rule, and every human being, created in God’s image, is equal in the eyes of God.4 In the struggle for independence, imperial colonies and ex-colonies could draw on biblical authority in asserting cultural distinctiveness and universality, national self-awareness and self-criticism, and resistance to the oppressor, transforming the legacy of slavery, suffering and hate, as Israel did, into a source of proud collective identity, divine discontent, and hope for a better future. The hope for the fall of tyrannical empires, ultimately fulfilled to the astonishment of the ancient Israelites, has evidently left its mark on modern nationalism. Apart from ancient Egypt, the hated, persecutory ‘Other’ in the Hebrew Bible is Mesopotamia, home of the great idolatrous empires, Assyria and Babylonia. Vengeful rage similar to that of the prophet Nahum against Assyria, or Jeremiah against Babylonia, appears in the national culture of defeated peoples, such as the Irish, the Scots, the Greeks, the Poles, and the Ukrainians, under the heel of powerful, often ruthless empires. As biblical prophets found, so do modern cultural nationalists; cultural victory can be snatched from political defeat (Aberbach 2003). Modern nationalist works such as Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz follow the Hebrew Bible as cultural ‘victories’ over a hated oppressor, ensuring the literary survival of a destroyed world, and the hope of its restoration. In the struggle for independence, national poets, often inspired by the prophets, rage not only against external oppressors, but also against the nation itself, and its traitors. Mickiewicz (ibid. IX 133–36) echoes the prophets in his attacks on Poles who assimilated into foreign cultures, neglecting their own. Shevchenko, steeped in the Bible, castigates the cruel, indifferent Ukrainian landlords and the elite (1964: 255). The religious establishment itself is a common target for national poets from the Hebrew Bible onwards, for it allegedly betrays the moral integrity of the Nation. The prophetic attacks on the Temple priesthood and the religion of mere ritual anticipate modern national poetry – of Botev, Gibran, or J.L. Gordon, for example – which condemns the clergy who allegedly fail the people. Instead of leading them in revolt, the clergy defend the corrupt status quo. The ideology of self-sacrifice adopted by some modern nationalists can be traced to the Hebrew Bible. Modern national poets – Petöfi, Botev, Plunkett and Pearse,

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for example – easily find biblical inspiration for martyrdom in the name of the moral integrity of the Nation. The Hebrew Bible has the first recorded instances in history of poet-prophets speaking truth to power, risking their lives for an ideal. For example, Amos was expelled from Samaria, Jeremiah was imprisoned, and Isaiah ben Amoz, according to legend, was executed, as were, no doubt, many other prophets, whose moral teachings threatened the existing order.

The paradox of nationalism and universalism The Hebrew Bible exemplifies the tension, familiar in modern nationalism, between national identity and universal humanity, the sense of being chosen and special on the one hand and being like everyone else and aiming for similar worldwide goals on the other. Biblical poetry is the poetry of one nation but also the poetry of many nations. In particular, several dozen sections of biblical prophecy are addressed to ‘the nations’ (Aberbach 1993a). By implication, the message of ethical monotheism applies even to those who do not believe in God. Weber (1961) underlines the universal significance of the Hebrew prophets in suggesting that in some ways they prepared the ground not just for Jewish national identity but for the modern world. The universality of prophetic poetry is apparent in its emphasis on internal, abstract reality in metaphors and religious concepts, the prophets’ intense social conscience, violent opposition to magic and superstition, and their criticism of the status quo, which have no parallel in other surviving ancient near eastern texts (Pritchard 1969). The Hebrew Bible has an elective affinity for radical change, social reform, the transformation of an imperfect world through moral ideals and the imitatio dei. Political and religious movements which stress the value of social justice and compassion, oppose materialism and the unjust distribution of wealth, object to ritual at the expense of spirituality and to the emphasis on the letter of the law rather than its spirit, belong to a tradition pioneered by the biblical prophets. The prophets were hostile to national distinction as expressed in existing power structures, in monarchy and cultic ritual. In their view, national aspirations are meaningless unless directed by moral ideals based on monotheist faith. Though this faith derives from the land of Israel and the Temple on Mount Zion, it draws the believer away from the confines of the national to look at the world in terms of humanity as a whole.5 A person’s value rests not on his or her being a member of a nation or tribe but on being human. The messianic ideal of the prophets, expressed most famously by Isaiah (2:4), of weapons transformed by all nations into instruments of peaceful cooperation and productivity, is not the assertion but the dissolution of national separation, the harmonizing of the babel of conflicting nations, and their unity in common humanity and faith.6

The Hebrew Bible, morality and the nation In the next few pages I will look at some biblical poetry which has influenced modern cultural nationalism through Bible translation in the vernacular.

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This poetry is dominated by the inseparability of national identity from morality, an idea prevalent in modern cultural nationalism (see Hutchinson 1987, and Hutchinson and Aberbach 1999). The prophetic view of the nation, based on a conception of human beings as ‘a little lower than the angels’ (Psalms 8: 5), is incompatible with modern forms of exclusive racial nationalism. Israel’s survival is predicated on conduct. Its identity as a chosen people depends on a conviction of moral inferiority, certainly to the divine ideal and at times to other nations. The blunt humble acceptance of shameful imperfection and incompleteness (which can lead to defeat and exile) can give a nation a moral aim, a basis for community, and a reason for survival impossible if it believed arrogantly in its perfection and power.7 The book of Amos contains some of the earliest written literature to define a concept of national identity – not just of Israel but of all ‘chosen’ peoples – in purely moral terms. Amos lived in the last days of the Israelite monarchy, shortly before the Assyrian exile in 721 BCE. To Amos, Israel’s chosenness depends on moral stature. Otherwise it is no different from other nations. Are you different from the Ethiopians, children of Israel? For though I took Israel from Egypt I did the same for the Philistines from Cyprus and Aram from Kir! (9: 7–8) To keep its side of the divine covenant and survive as a nation, Israel must paradoxically transcend nationalism and reach for universal values, to fulfil its responsibilities to the poor and the helpless. Israel’s chosenness is defined by the privilege of being aware of its failings. You alone have I known among the families of men: Therefore I will punish you for your sins! (3: 2) The prophets regard the individual and the Nation as equally responsible before God. The value of a person and of a nation, and the justification for their continued existence, are measured not by military and political power but by Godly conduct.8 What does the Lord want of you? Only to do justice, to love kindness, to go humbly with your God . . . (Micah 6:8)

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Defeat, grievance and revenge Unlike other extant ancient literature, the Hebrew Bible does not censor defeat. Rather, it treats defeat as a divine message delivered by the enemy – mainly Assyria and Babylonia – the ‘rod’ of God’s wrath. Uniquely in ancient literature, defeat in the Hebrew Bible galvanizes national consciousness. The destruction of the kingdom of Judah in the early sixth century BCE is traditionally believed to be the background to the Hebrew book of Lamentations, unflinching in its picture of national humiliation and self-blame, of guilt at having ‘abandoned’ God and desolation at being ‘abandoned’ by God. Remember, Lord, what befell us, see our shame! Our land and homes in strangers’ hands. . . Orphans we became, our mothers – widows. Silver we paid for water. On the waste of mount Zion jackals prowl. But you, Lord, reign forever! Why do you forever forget us? Why do you abandon us? Return us, O God, to you. Let us be restored, as we were . . . (5:1–3, 18–21) Yet defeat cannot always be faced calmly, as the will of God. Memories of defeat and humiliation in biblical poetry are sometimes filled with lust for revenge. The prophets took comfort in an apocalyptic day of judgement and punishment, not only of Israel but also of its hated enemies.9 Psalm 137, dating from the late sixth century BCE, describes the captivity in Babylonia and the yearning for Zion and Jerusalem. It ends with a brutal curse at fallen Babylon, which had destroyed Judah and burnt down the Temple in Jerusalem.10 By the waters of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. On the branches of the willow trees we hung our harps when our tormentors mocked us, ‘Sing us a song of Zion.’

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Nationalism and the Hebrew Bible How can we sing a song of the Lord on foreign soil? If I forget you, Jerusalem, let my right arm be paralyzed. Let my tongue stick to my mouth if I do not remember you. O daughter of Babylon, you destroyer: Happy is he who pays you what you’ve done to us! Happy is he who takes your little ones and smashes them on the rock!

Condemnation and violence The prophets condemn their own people for moral backsliding, materialism, arrogance and insufficient regard for the sacred values of justice and truth, and for bringing disaster upon the nation. It is not unusual for prophets to attack kings: Nathan condemns David (II Samuel 12:7f.); Elijah, Ahab (I Kings 21:17f.); and Jeremiah fearlessly attacks Jehoiachin for betraying the faith (II Kings 24:9): the king’s punishment is to be deported by Nebuchadrezzar to Babylonia. These examples encouraged national identity based on the idea that, unlike human power, truth and justice are absolute, however humble their origins. Though idolatry could also inspire virtue, its gods tended to reflect the weaknesses of those who believed in them. Monotheism, with its impossible divine standard, could drive human beings to imagine and try to create a better world. At the same time, the Hebrew Bible is full of violence. Even Isaiah, who paints a roseate picture of a world of peace and harmony, of a messianic future when the wolf will live with the lamb, also imagines the annihilation of Israel’s enemies (e.g. Isaiah ch. 11, Micah chs. 5–6). The return to the ancestral homeland in the Hebrew Bible (as in The Odyssey) is accompanied by violence, which recurs throughout biblical history.

Hope of restoration The biblical hope for renewal of national political identity and the return of the ‘saving remnant’ to their land has had incalculable influence on modern nationalism. In the Book of Hosea, the negation of nationhood – ‘Not-my-nation’ (Lo-Ammi, Hosea 2:23) – will be put right when Israel abandons her idolatrous promiscuity, to become again ‘My-nation’ (Ammi). Only then will God abolish war and make a new covenant with all living things. Here again, national realization is possible only in the sphere of universal moral action. I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness,

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in justice, mercy and love. And I will betroth you to me in faith – and you will know God. (Hosea 2: 21–22) But these were dreams of a future time. For the time being, the prophets of the surviving monarchy of Judah were sharply aware that political power does not last. They had the example not just of the fall of the kingdom of Israel and many other small nations but also the destruction of the Assyrian empire – the most powerful up to that time – in the late seventh century BCE. The total eradication of Assyria from history taught the prophets the need to strengthen national identity to outlast defeat and exile. A small defeated nation could be resurrected – its ‘dry bones’ could live – if it based its survival on moral ideals. After the fall of Judah and the exile of most of its inhabitants to Babylonia in the early sixth century BCE, Ezekiel predicted national rebirth. Son of Man! These bones are the people of Israel. Some say our bones are dry, our hope is lost we’re clean cut off. Prophesy! Tell them: I will open your graves and bring you to life. I will bring you back to the land of Israel! (37:11–12) After the Persian conquest of Babylonia in 539 BCE, the Judean exiles were allowed to return to their land. This is the first known case when a defeated, exiled nation went back to its homeland and rebuilt it. At the time, national revival could be linked to ancient messianic hopes and to apocalyptic visions of Jerusalem not just as a national capital but as a universal one (see Ezekiel 5: 5; Zechariah 9: 9–10).11

The sociology of Biblical nationalism What is the sociological basis of biblical literature as ‘national’? The Bible is evidently the first literature aimed not at an elite, nor even just at the nation, including its illiterates and those as yet unborn (cf. Deuteronomy 29:13–14), but also at all nations. No extant literature from the ancient world placed more importance upon social welfare and the responsibility of the better-off towards the poor. The concept of tzedakah (meaning both righteousness and charity), which originates in the Hebrew Bible, encouraged national consciousness, though it also pointed Judaism in a universalist direction. Much biblical literature was sung

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or spoken, and biblical poets included Jeremiah, a priest, and Amos, who describes himself as ‘a shepherd and a dresser of sycamore trees’ (7:14). As the biblical works were regarded as sacred long before the canon was fixed, by the beginning of the second century CE, ordinary people (including, presumably, some women) were familiar with them, either in public recitals or speeches, or as part of Temple and, later, synagogue service.12 Israel’s centrality in the ancient trade routes and exile among non-Jews inclined Judaism to cosmopolitanism and the application of abstract ideals such as liberty, love, justice and faith to all nations. The idea of mission, of reaching out to non-believers and their conversion, evidently begins in the Hebrew Bible (see Isaiah 56: 3). Even when it was still a Jewish sect, ancient Christianity had little room for narrow nationalism. While the core of the Hebrew Bible is the birth of a nation, the core of the Greek Bible is the expectation of universal messianic redemption. The authors of the Greek Bible, written mostly by the start of the second century CE, believed in the imminent Second Coming. The prophecies in the Hebrew Bible would be fulfilled. The messianic age was at hand. Nations would soon be one family of mankind united in faith, as in Isaiah’s prophecy. When this did not happen, messianic hopes faded and Christian dogma forced a split with Judaism. The Hebrew Bible, in contrast, does not assume that the world is about to end. Rather, we must make do with this world, the world of peoples or nations (amim). As new nations grew and converted to Christianity, the Hebrew Bible rose in importance. It satisfied the instinct for this-worldly national assertion. It expressed the conflict many nations experience between national particularity and a universal ideology of moral values. Above all, it gave the masses a ready-made portable high culture whose beauty, as much as its moral and national content, had ensured its preservation by the Jews and led to its eventual adoption as sacred, even in translation, by a large part of the world’s population. The Church already in the early Christian era took on the identity of the ‘true Israel.’ Ancient Israel became the model for the evolving nation-state in European culture. The survival of ancient nations that translated the Bible into the vernacular – notably Armenia and Ethiopia around the fifth century (Hastings 1997: 198) – underscored the power of biblical nationalism among non-Jews. The return to the Hebrew Bible in the Renaissance might be seen as the start of modern nationalism (Greenfeld 1992). Bible translation into the vernacular throughout Europe in the century after the invention of printing by Gutenberg in the 1450s – in German, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Czech, Hungarian, and Polish, among others – became the chief tool of nation building: ‘Of all the works published, translations of the Bible were the most important, not only in the history of the Reformation but also in the history of languages’ (Elton 1971: 289). When the Bible was published in the language of the people, a crucial step was taken in the creation of the modern world of nations. It encouraged literacy in a broad cross-section of society, reaching, as Erasmus enthused, ‘the farmer, the tailor, the stonemason, prostitutes, pimps, and Turks’ (Wright 2001: 199). The ancient Jewish intoxication with vernacular Scripture could now be shared by the European masses. The German translation

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of Luther, a lecturer in Hebrew at the University of Wittenberg, ran into 377 editions by the time of his death in 1546! (Elton 1971: 289).13 Yet the translation and publication of the Bible in the vernacular was at first an act of heresy, a crime like witchcraft punishable by death. Why? One answer is that by making the content of the Bible clear to the common people, translation could undermine traditional Church authority. The Church had treated Scripture as being in its control. It effectively blinded the mostly-ignorant common people with Latin and Greek. The Latin Vulgate had supreme authority, but most people could not read or understand it. As a result, vernacular translations of the Hebrew Bible had consequences far beyond what was imagined at the time. The Reformation idea of ‘Scripture alone’ without a clerical intermediary implied not just that people should read the Bible on their own and make up their own minds about it, but also that, in principle, they could and should think for themselves (Hill 1994: 414). As a vital part of a humanist education, the Bible was now subject to critical study. Resultant theological debate leading to comparative critical Bible editions helped create a climate for secular scientific investigation, including social studies and theories of nation-building. In this way, the growth of scientific method in the study of ancient Israel encouraged the historical consciousness of nations. Especially in the age of nationalism during and after the American and French revolutions, nations struggling for independence were often compared with the Jews (even, ironically, when these nations were known for hatred of Jews). Their political system, directly or indirectly, could not help but be influenced by the Bible. The idea of the covenant between God and Israel (e.g. Exodus 19: 3–8) might be seen as a theological precursor of constitutional monarchy, the ‘consent of the governed’, and the free society (Sacks 2002: 134). The Puritans and, later, revolutionaries in America, France, Italy and elsewhere, including Washington, Robespierre and Garibaldi, carried the torch of the prophets. Political revolutionaries brought increasingly secularized ideals of liberty, human rights and equality into the forefront of what was to become Western democracy (Kohn 1946). Even as the ‘sea of faith’ retreated in the face of secular enlightenment, the ideological influence of the Hebrew Bible persisted in secular forms. In short, the influence of the Bible on modern nationalism has been overwhelming. Biblical influence was central in the German poetry of Klopstock (notably The Messiah, 1748–73), whose conception of the poet was that of prophet, teacher, and patriot. Goethe saw the Hebrew Bible not just as the book of one nation but also as the archetype for all nations. In Hungary, translations of the Psalms and Karolyi’s Bible translation ‘influenced the development of Hungarian literary language for centuries’ (Szakály 1990: 94). Biblical language of the emergence from slavery, prophetic denunciations of the wicked, and hopes for freedom not only for Hungary but for the world, are frequent in Petöfi’s poetry (Petöfi 1973, 1974).14 The Ukrainian poet Shevchenko was deeply influenced by the Hebrew Bible and the alleged similarities between Jews and Ukrainians (Shevchenko 1964: l). Biblical influences are plentiful, too, in the poetry of Mickiewicz, whose Polish nationalism has likewise been described as

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‘Judaic’: ‘that of a conquered, humiliated and oppressed nation dreaming of resurrection’ (Talmon 1967: 96). In a world of evolving nation-states in which secular culture had not yet taken full hold and the Book was still the Bible (and Church attendance was usually mandatory), such influences were perhaps inevitable, found among poets as diverse as Byron, Ibsen, and Bialik. Verdi’s Chorus of Hebrew slaves (Va pensiero) in the opera Nabucco (1842), written two decades before Italy’s independence, is a patchwork of biblical texts.15 In its longing for freedom, sung by the Israelite slaves in Egypt, Va pensiero became Italy’s unofficial national anthem. Sing again songs of our homeland, of the past. We have drunk the cup of sorrow, and repented in bitter tears. Inspire us, God, with courage to endure to the end.

The Bible and British national identity The chief influence of the Hebrew Bible on national identity has been through the English language and literature: the scholars who translated the King James Bible (1611) ‘forged an enduring link, literary and religious, between the Englishspeaking peoples of the world’ (Churchill 2002: 124).The Bible spread with the British empire, and it should not be forgotten that ‘the British ruled over much the largest and most diverse empire the world had ever known. It extended over every one of the world’s climatic zones, over every inhabited continent, and across all the world’s major religions and civilizations’ (Lieven 2000: 89). Perhaps no people, apart from the Jews themselves, have so totally absorbed the Bible as the British.16 British history is, in a sense, biblical history: long before the Norman conquest of 1066, the Bible was the main unifying force of the different, often warring groups in the British Isles. In the distinctiveness and cohesion of its national identity, England was centuries ahead of other west European societies (Hastings 1997). The Anglo-Saxon poem describing the battle of Maldon of 991, for example, is an appeal to the nation to stand firm, as Israel did, against invasion (ibid.: 42; also see Gillingham 1992). From the eleventh – fourteenth centuries, England was dominated by French-speaking Normans, after which the Bible played a primary role in forging English nationalism, using the newfound power of the English language in a vernacular largely created by translation from the Hebrew. Henry VIII’s break with the Church of Rome helped free the Bible from clerical control and gave English Bible translation the royal imprimatur. The English translations of the Hebrew Bible in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, above all, the King James Bible – ‘the most influential version of the most influential book in the world, in what is now its most influential language’

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(MacGregor 1968: 170) – were revolutionary in British (and European) history and in English literature. The Bible was no longer prohibitively expensive, read exclusively by Church-dominated Latin readers. It could now be read by the much larger numbers who knew English and could afford cheap printed editions (Dickens 1970). For these reasons, the English Bible, more than other translations of the Hebrew Bible, had massive influence on the growth of the vernacular among the general population and on English national identity. Between 1560 and 1611, there were over 100 editions of the Bible in English (including, by 1557, a cheap pocketbook edition) and between 1611 and 1640 about 140 editions of the King James Version (Hastings 1997: 58). The translations of William Tyndale were milestones in the growth of English vernacular and literary language and English national identity. Before Tyndale, the English language ‘was a poor thing, spoken only by a few in an island off the shelf of Europe, a language unknown in Europe’ (Daniell 2003: 248). Latin was the main language of educated men. England lagged behind the Continent as translation into English was prohibited by the Constitutions of Oxford of 1407–9. Tyndale pioneered Bible translation into English, in Cologne and Worms in the 1520s, a heretic in exile from a still-Catholic England. Tyndale took the revolutionary view (in fact, the norm in Judaism) that a ploughman could understand the Bible as well as, if not better than, a bishop. George Steiner sums up Tyndale’s importance: Beyond Shakespeare, it is William Tyndale who is begettor of the English language as we know it . . . . It is Tyndale’s cadences, sonorities, amplitudes and concisions (he is a master of both) which, via his commanding effect on the Authorized Version, characterize global English as it is spoken and written today. No translation-act, save Luther’s has been as generative of a whole language (1996: 49). Tyndale’s assistant, Miles Coverdale, printed the first complete Bible in English (1535), probably in Zurich, dedicated to King Henry VIII. In 1539, a revised version of Coverdale’s Bible was printed and put – later, because of its popularity, chained – in every parish church in England. For the first time, large numbers of English readers could respond, as the Jews had done for 2000 years, to the full literary splendour of biblical stories and poetry. Coverdale’s translation of the Psalms is the best-known and, to many, best-loved poetry in English as it was incorporated into the Book of Common Prayer (1662), which was used each day:17 ‘Even in their obscure moments they have the mellow beauty of some ancient, familiar window with slightly jumbled glass’ (Dickens 1970: 185). Most notable English poets between Wyatt and Milton tried their hand at translation from the Psalms. In this way, the Hebrew Bible largely determined British national identity, not just through its content but also through its language: it gave Shakespeare and all later English writers their chief model of literary excellence. Many biblical phrases became so assimilated into the English national heritage that their origin was often forgotten. If, for example, you stand at the parting of

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the ways, in jeopardy of your life, if you play the fool, if you set your house in order, harden your heart, love your neighbour as yourself, or turn the other cheek, you are quoting from the Hebrew Bible translated into English; if you believe the race is not to the swift, or that love is strong as death, or feel like a voice crying in the wilderness, a still small voice, or if you are slow of speech or slow to anger at those who multiply words without knowledge, and full of sour grapes, or do not see eye to eye with your friends, or put your trust in princes, you are using Hebrew expressions; if you believe the leopard cannot change his spots, or that you must cast your bread upon the waters, for to everything there is a season, or that if you sow the wind you reap the whirlwind, and escape by the skin of your teeth, or that if you spare the rod you spoil the child, or that you have punished a scapegoat, you are quoting from the Hebrew. Examples can by multiplied a hundredfold, not just in English but in all the languages into which the Bible was translated. In a society in which Church and State were one, Protestant Britain learned its history in the light of biblical history and saw itself as virtually the fulfilment of the Bible. Major events in British history – coronations, marriages, wars, deaths, the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, the English Revolution – were commonly identified with biblical texts, especially the 150 psalms, which were recited once a month. To Tyndale, England and ancient Israel were one: ‘As it went with their kings and rulers, so shall it be with ours. As it was with their common people, so shall it be with ours’ (Daniell 2003: 237–38). Many English kings were commonly identified with biblical kings, Henry VIII as David, for example, or Edward VI as Josiah (ibid.: 208). In particular, the Geneva Bible of 1560 ‘was the source book for public and personal lives in Britain, and a motor that drove revolution’ (ibid.: 221). Oliver Cromwell treated the Geneva Bible as a guide in war, revolution, and statecraft.18 English literature – Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton – is packed with biblical themes and allusions. Particularly in the Elizabethan period, and in the time of the English revolution in the seventeenth century (in some ways a model for later revolutions), the Bible was the chief inspiration of nationalism. In the age of Elizabeth, an English population of under six million bought half a million copies of the Bible (Daniell 2003: xiv). The imperialism of the Elizabethans – the ‘ancestor of modern nationalism’ (Kermode 1965: 12) – is reflected in their literature, notably Spenser’s The Fairie Queene (1590, 1596) in which corrupt Catholic Spain and Ireland are set allegorically against the ‘true Israel’ of the Protestant Church. Spenser is described by Hastings as ‘an out-and-out English Protestant nationalist’ (1997: 84) and The Fairy Queene as ‘the quintessence of Elizabethan nationalism’, celebrating the union of England and true religion under the sovereignty of Elizabeth; it is ‘a work of reconciliation between old Englishness and new Englishness, a closing of ranks between the “Merrie England” which Catholics claimed had been lost with the Reformation and the Protestant gospel’ (82–83). Spenser transforms the war between Protestant England and Catholic Spain into myth, the divine Una, the true universal English Church and its virgin empress, Elizabeth I, opposed to Duessa, the satanic Roman Church. In Book I, after his struggle with moral impurity, the saintly Red Cross

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Knight – St George the dragon slayer, symbol of England, defender and future husband of Una – arrives Moses-like at the top of a holy mountain where he glimpses the heavenly Jerusalem and the likeness of its earthly counterpart, Cleopolis (London). The new Hierusalem, that God has built For those to dwell in, that are chosen his. . . (X 57) England’s identification with Israel reached its height during the mid-seventeenth century Puritan revolution, whose outstanding poet was Milton. The revolution was driven by the religious–nationalist ideology and fervour of the prophets; by self-identification as a chosen people with a divine covenant and messianic hopes, a love of liberty and opposition to overweening monarchic rule. Milton read the Bible in Hebrew. Among Milton’s earliest writings were translations of Psalms 114 and 136, which relate Israel’s escape from slavery to freedom. The motif of freedom would later become central in Milton’s poetry, including Paradise Lost, and in his political works supporting Cromwell and the Revolution. Milton’s English nationalism derives mainly from the Hebrew Bible and the idea of a ‘national community bound by Covenant-bonds to its divine king’ (Fisch 1964: 123–24). The last book of Paradise Lost includes a prophecy of the birth of the nation of Israel, to which England would be heir. Though strongest in the seventeenth century, the influence of the Bible on the English language and on British nationalism predominated until the twentieth century. In his translation of the Psalms in 1719, Isaac Watts was moved to replace ‘Israel’ with ‘Great Britain’ (Hastings 1997: 62). Burns was taught to read mainly from the Bible. Coleridge, in the Biographia Literaria (1817), points out that fine English is less likely to come from scholars, whose style is artificial and burdened with linguistic knowledge, than from those who regularly read the Bible (1975: 190–91). Byron’s Hebrew Melodies reflect similar identification with the world of the Bible.19 To Blake, immersed in biblical prophetic imagery, the visionary ideal of England is a ‘new Jerusalem’. I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand Till we have built Jerusalem In England’s green and pleasant land. ‘Jerusalem’ (1804) Biblical influences saturated Victorian literature and modernists such as James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, and T.S. Eliot (Aberbach 2003b: 145–46).

Modern Jewish nationalism and neo-prophecy If the Bible in translation could give the English, Americans, Germans, Spanish, Dutch, Scandinavians, Poles, Hungarians, Africans, Latin Americans, and so on.

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a sense of chosenness in their ‘new Jerusalem’, how much more could the Bible in the original Hebrew stimulate national identity among the Jews. As we shall see in the next chapters, rabbinic Judaism for the most part facilitated the nationalism of longing, and lost the name of action; though among medieval Hebrew poets, Judah Halevi (c.1075–1140) stands out as a national poet in a more or less modern sense, illustrating the continuing potential power of biblical nationalism among the Jews: ‘ I’d lightly leave the good of Spain/ to see the Temple’s dust again’(Carmi 1981: 347). The dream of the lost homeland and hope for national regeneration are consistent motifs in Hebrew poetry from the Bible to modern times. The continuing influence of this poetry, as we shall see in Chapter 4, was ensured by the inclusion of much of it in the Jewish liturgy. Yet, the Christian nations of Europe, deriving their national identity as chosen peoples largely from the Bible, adopted the doctrine that they were the elect heir to Judaism. Judaism was now an obsolete fossil, and the Jews could live on purely as a token of the supremacy of the Church, damned in the eyes of God as murderers of the saviour, identified with contemptible material existence devoid of spirituality, with no original cultural development of their own, subject to ceaseless hatred and persecution. As guardians of a crushed religion, the Jews were the most reluctant of European nationalists, among the last to emerge from the world of the Middle Ages and to discover their national identity. Initially, the growth of universalist secular Enlightenment encouraged not Jewish nationalism but political loyalty of Jews to the countries in which they lived. The granting of emancipation to most European Jews in the eighty or so years after the French Revolution and the spread of secular enlightenment, led to their assimilation and upward social mobility. Assimilated European Jews were perfectly willing to concede to their countries of citizenship their albatross identity as a chosen people in exchange for equality and human rights. The French Jews, for example, introduced a ‘Prayer for France’ into their prayerbook, identifying France as God’s chosen nation: ‘France is of all countries the one which You seem to prefer, because it is the most worthy of You’ (Marrus 1971: 118). Nineteenth century European nationalism, however, precipitated anti-Semitism and brought about widespread acceptance of a new doctrine: even conversion to Christianity could not eradicate the wickedness of the Jew, which was in the blood (Wistrich 1992). Even France, with its enlightened revolutionary ideals, was infected by Jew-hatred. In these circumstances, political Zionism was forced upon the Jews, who then discovered its overwhelming power of regeneration: ‘The force we need,’ wrote Theodor Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization in 1897, ‘is created in us by anti-Semitism’ (Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz 1995: 536). Jewish nationalism, with its inevitable biblical undertones, led to the revival of prophetic poetry in free verse. Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873–1934) and Uri Zvi Greenberg (1896–1981) are the two outstanding neo-biblical poets, politically as well as culturally.20 Both responded forcefully to anti-Semitism. Yet their poetry raises a fundamental question: is modern Jewish nationalism a continuation of or a rebellion against Judaism? In some ways they are unlike the biblical prophets

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who offer hope and tend to be pacifists, teaching a morality which transcends the nation. The nation’s enemies carry out God’s will, which must be accepted. In contrast with their biblical sources, Bialik is uncompromising in his despair, and Greenberg in his violent militancy. Both are concerned less with prophetic ideals than with Jewish survival. Yet like the prophets, Bialik established his credentials not through praise but condemnation. In a poem quoting the Book of Amos, ‘Prophet, run away’ (Hoze, lekh brakh, 1908), he declares: My axe-like word strikes to damn, I never was a yes man. (Bialik 2004: 132) Bialik’s most notable neo-prophetic poems, or ‘poems of wrath’ date from 1903–6, responding to widespread pogroms in Russia and expressing the despair that drove the national movement. In particular, Bialik’s In the City of Slaughter (Be-Ir ha-Haregah), written in 1903 after the pogrom in Kishinev in southern Russia, had a volcanic effect on Jewish nationalism. The poet visited the town shortly after the pogrom and describes it in gory detail. But instead of condemning the perpetrators, he attacks the Jews. The descendants of the heroic Maccabees were cowards, he claims: they hid like mice. (In fact, some of them did fight back, but Bialik does not mention this.) The poem is revolutionary in treating the Jews not as an ethnic group living in Russia but as a nation in its own right. Bialik’s diatribe, majestically worthy of the prophet Isaiah, speaks in the spirit of a nation which no longer aims at assimilation but accepts in despair that it is different, and is hated. Later that year this poem helped inspire one of the first instances of organized Jewish military resistance since the Bar-Kokhba revolt, in the Gomel pogrom. Smith’s description of Bialik as writing of a ‘Davidic cultural and political renaissance’ (1999: 82) is perhaps even more true of Greenberg. Bialik ideologically was a disciple of the philosopher Ahad Ha’am, who believed in a secular cultural form of Jewish nationalism, built on traditional Judaism. It is Greenberg who writes of the realization of messianic longing through restoration of the so-called Jewish ‘kingdom’. For this reason, Greenberg was condemned and his poetry neglected by the Israeli literary establishment, which is predominantly secular, liberal, and generally unsympathetic to exclusivist nationalism. No modern Hebrew poet – perhaps no poet in any literature – has so passionately identified himself as a reincarnation of a biblical prophet as Greenberg. For Greenberg even more than Blake, the biblical celestial Jerusalem can be created on earth. Like a modern Jeremiah, Greenberg uses poetry to inspire national rebirth, holding up his personal biography as a symbol of the life of the people. The poem ‘With My God, the Blacksmith’(Im Eli ha-Napach, 1927) illustrates the poet’s total identification with the divine calling of the prophet. Like prophetic chapters my life burns in total revelation, my body a metal mass for smelting.

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Nationalism and the Hebrew Bible My God the blacksmith hammers me: every past wound opens in me, spits fire shut in my bones. (Greenberg 1990: I 124)

The first half of Greenberg’s life was a unique personal journey, which he came to regard as symbolic of the collective transformation of the Jewish people: from orthodox Hasid to Yiddish expressionist, to poet of World War I, to Palestinian Hebrew poet, the fiercest, most ardent and original poetic spokesman for Jewish religious–nationalist chosenness. The two great emotional poles of Greenberg’s work were Jew-hatred and the re-establishment of a Jewish state. Greenberg saw his poetry not as art but as God-given prophecy meant to influence events and ultimately bring about messianic salvation.21 Greenberg was no aesthete. He believed in action. He has much in common with nineteenth century militant national poets, such as Mickiewicz, Petöfi, and Botev (see Aberbach 2003). His poetry, born in violence, is full of violent images and gestures: perhaps no word echoes more angrily and insistently in his writings than ‘blood’. Hebrew, he declared, was not his mother-tongue, but ‘the language of my blood’. Uprooted from his Hasidic home in Polish Galicia and conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army in 1915, Greenberg, then eighteen, was thrust into the Serbian front on the Sava river, where he witnessed grotesque horrors which never left him – the lifeless bodies of comrades dangling upside down on the barbed wire fences. Towards the war’s end, Greenberg deserted. In Lemberg during the pogrom of November 1918, he and his family were captured by Polish anti-Semites and lined up against a wall in a mock execution. Greenberg never forgot this nor the ordeals which he suffered during the war. In the poem ‘Radiance’ (Hizdaharut, 1926), he alludes to the fate that was almost his. Miraculously I survived the grasp of goyim. May father’s God be blessed! I’m not lying in Slav earth, a Jew cut to pieces, eaten by worms. (Greenberg 1990: I 85) His grim view of Jewish history was largely formed by the time he arrived in Palestine in December 1923. Long before the Holocaust, he wrote powerful valedictions to centuries of Jewish life in Europe. In Earthly Jerusalem (Yerushalayim shel Matah, 1924), he describes his generation in the biblical language of trial by ordeal (Numbers 5:11f.) and crucifixion, driven to nationalism by anti-Semitism. Forced to leave all valuables, we dressed for exile, slung satchel on shoulder. We sang like new recruits in an army barefoot on Mediterranean sands. We were forced to go.

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The earth screamed under our feet, rattling our beds. Mouldy bread sickened us to death. Adulteress water turned us green with terror. Everywhere we looked we were nailed to the cross, agony filled our lives . . . (ibid. p. 66) For Greenberg, only national regeneration could save Europe’s Jews. In the 1920s and 1930s, he celebrated the growth of the Jewish settlement in British Palestine. In common with other Palestinian Hebrew poets of the period (many of whom, including Bialik, Shlonsky and Shin Shalom, former Hasidim), he adhered to the ‘religion of labour’ taught by the labour socialist philosopher, A.D. Gordon. In ‘Radiance’, the poet is an incandescent vessel of messianic song, and the land of Israel is depicted in prayer, its geography the phylacteries, and the thirty-six righteous men of Jewish legend in the kibbutzim. Jerusalem – tefillin shel rosh, the Emek – shel yad! Lamed vavin in all kibbutzim, divine grandeur of all who suffer for the Kingdom! Sinai smoking over father’s shoulder in Poland, face twilight-red . . . at times wax-like! Candles in the seven-branched candelabrum mother lights such Jerusalemite radiance: our Jerusalem! Is this my light’s source? – Answer me, God of my father in Zion! (ibid. p. 85) Greenberg wrote for Jews alone, not for those whom he regarded as murderous despicable goyim. Their culture, though magnificent in some respects, hid deep-rooted barbarity. Greenberg refused to be judged by gentile aesthetic criteria – though there was inconsistency here as his chief influences included Whitman as well as contemporary Expressionists such as Peretz Markish and Else Lasker-Schüler. His ultra-nationalism hardened with Arab opposition to Jewish nationalism. The anti-Jewish Arab pogroms of 1929 drove Greenberg to join the right-wing Revisionists, led by Jabotinsky, where he became a leading figure. He was convinced of an eternal hostility between Jews and non-Jews and indeed of Jewish racial superiority. He advocated the creation through force of a powerful Jewish state extending from the Nile to the Euphrates as the only way to overcome Jewish powerlessness and to defeat the rapacious anti-Semitic beast. In despair, Greenberg watched in the late 1930s as the nations whose languages and religious cultures owed most to the Hebrew Bible brought the European Jews to the brink of extermination: Germany, by making Europe a lethal trap; and the United States and Britain, master of the largest empire in history – including the Jewish National Home in the Land of Israel – by keeping the gates of immigration closed.

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For several years, Greenberg was stunned into silence by the Holocaust, which included the murder of his parents. He joined the Jewish underground, the Irgun, with the aim of forcing the British out of Palestine and saving some of the European Jews. Between the end of the war in 1945 and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 (when he became a member of Knesset in Begin’s Herut party) he wrote a series of dirges collected in Streets of the River (Rechovot Ha-Nahar, 1951), including savage invectives against the Christian world. The snow has melted there again . . . murderers turn back to farmers. Out they go to plough, in the fields of my dead! If the ploughtooth rolls out from under the furrow a skeleton, mine, the ploughman will have no fear or sorrow. He’ll smile . . . He knows it . . . for the blow of his tool he’ll see again. (Greenberg 1992: VI 67) Greenberg also lashed out at those Jews who failed to return earlier to their homeland. Now – our bodies made holy in their blood rot there, the inheritance of worms, house and vessels bathed in holiness of Sabbath and festivals, song of deep longing, the flap of the Shekhinah’s wings – the inheritance of goyim: for in their land we built houses and synagogues and dug graves not in Jerusalem Jerusalem of rock of gold Allelai Amen. (ibid. V 64) In Greenberg’s eyes, the Holocaust proved that the gentile world, in Europe at any rate, consisted mostly of murderers, collaborators, and indifferent onlookers. The surviving Jews had no choice but to arm themselves to fight. His dirges (kinot) for the Holocaust victims, collected in Streets of the River, perhaps more than any other single literary work, convey the force of Jewish national grief and rage in response to genocide. In these poems, Greenberg transcended his role as a poet of the far-right and emerged as a prophetic spokesman for the Jewish people as a whole. Ironically reversing the traditional call by Christian intellectuals such as von Dohm and Kant for the baptism of emancipated European Jewry, Greenberg declared in his poetry that, after the Holocaust, there was only one atonement for the Christian world: to adopt Judaism.

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In Greenberg, there is no split, as in much modern poetry, between the ‘man who suffers and the mind which creates’. He gives the impression of being an almost wholly public poet, with no private life, or none that really matters, and no ambivalence or regret towards his role. In this respect, too, he has much in common with nineteenth century national poets, especially Whitman, who looked to the prophets for inspiration. Greenberg shares with other Bible-based national poets an explosive mix of creative passion and militant nationalism. But there is also a sense in which Hebrew nationalism comes full circle with Greenberg. For Greenberg revives a dormant biblical national militancy in the original Hebrew that for hundreds of years had been largely the province of rising European nations in vernacular languages that had been decisively influenced by translations from the Bible. The European Jews had tried futilely to become assimilated into these nations, but had encountered hatred, persecution, and ultimately genocide. Greenberg’s prophetic poetry consequently despairs of Europe, asserting instead a revived Jewish nationalism, based ironically on the same literary heritage that inspired European nationalism, but in the original Hebrew. It demonstrates the power of the Bible as a living, if mostly unacknowledged, force in modern political, social and cultural life.

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The Roman–Jewish wars and Hebrew cultural nationalism

The Roman destruction of the Jewish state in the first century CE ended the old political-military forms of nationalism that the Jewish state had shared with other near eastern states in the biblical age. If the Jews were to survive, their culture and world outlook would now have to change radically; and change they did, in ways that anticipated later forms of nationalism. However, their conditions were inauspicious, and their future bleak. The three Jewish revolts against the Roman empire in 66–70, 115–17 and 132–35 CE, in which the Jews were crushed each time, led to the total ban on Jewish residence in Jerusalem as the focal point of militant messianic Jewish nationalism. The Jewish population of Judaea (southern Palestine) was destroyed, enslaved or exiled. A large part of the territory of Judaea was confiscated by the Romans as its Jewish owners had fought against Rome. Dozens of Jewish villages in Judaea were wiped off the map (Avi-Yonah 1976: 15–16). The wholesale replacement of a Jewish by a gentile population is described by Millar (1993: 348) as ‘the decisive transformation in the religious demography of the Holy Land in the Imperial Age’. As a result, the living centre of Jewish culture moved north, to Galilee, where many Judaeans fled. In Galilee, synagogues and schools were built, and the legal and homiletic traditions flourished. Here the Mishnah, the basis of the Talmud, was edited by Judah Hanasi around 200 CE. This culture, mostly in Hebrew but also in Aramaic, fortified the Jews for what became, in Isaiah Berlin’s words, ‘an unbroken struggle against greater odds than any other human community has ever had to contend with’ (1979: 253). Prior to the wars, Jewish political and religious identity were tied together; now, the Temple was destroyed, the priesthood and ruling class deprived of their political power, and Jewish identity was defined almost exclusively in terms of religious culture. Jewish leaders were no longer kings, priests, politicians and warriors, but masters of halakhah (law) and aggadah (legend). Yet, this cultural renaissance was nationalistic insofar as Jews mourned the memory of the land from which they were exiled and kept alive the hope of return. They maintained and developed their traditions, they preserved their holy scriptures and the Hebrew language as well as their sense of chosenness. The Tannaim (rabbis of the Mishnah) were crucial in the survival and growth of living Hebrew: ‘In the tannaitic age, Hebrew was evidently not widespread among the Jews, and only the Tannaim used it in daily life’ (Even-Shoshan 1983: III 1566).1 At the same time, they entered

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to a greater extent than previously a world of their own making, of inner reality. The imaginary celestial Jerusalem became all the more potent as the earthly Jerusalem was out of reach.2 This form of cultural nationalism spurred by defeat was practically unique in the ancient world. Nationalism bred of victory is a common and rationally explicable precipitant of cultural achievement and ethnic identity. Military victory – of ancient Greece over Persia, for example, or of Rome and later Islam over most of the civilized world, of the Italian city-states over their enemies, the English over the Spanish Armada and Napoleon, the Allied powers over Germany in the two world wars – heralded cultural victory of various forms and degrees. The form of cultural nationalism set off by defeat evolved in the Middle Ages and has become familiar in modern history: the Armenians, the Finns, the French Canadians, the Irish, the Poles, the Ukrainians, the Bosnian Muslims, the Basques, Kurds, Tamils and Palestinians are among many peoples whose identity has been galvanized and shaped by the frustration and humiliation of defeat. Many defeated peoples in modern times have taken strength from their religious–cultural heritage, making it a powerful force of nationalism. Cultural nationalism, even when rooted in defeat and grievance, can sometimes transcend these as a moral value of its own (Hutchinson 1987). In Ireland, for example, defeats by Cromwell in 1649 and William of Orange in 1690 heightened the sense of Irish national identity, reflected in Irish literature both in Gaelic and English, and culminating in the poetry of Yeats. Defeat and partition of Poland in the late eighteenth century and the failure of its revolts against Tsarist Russia in 1830 and 1863 led, again, to enhanced Polish national feeling and creative activity, notably in the writings of Mickiewicz. The Finns, Ukrainians and other subject peoples produced equally significant works during the same period. Russia’s military disaster in the Crimean War of 1853–56 and the reforms which followed triggered off what is, arguably, the most creative period of literary fiction in history. Indian literature developed remarkably after the failed mutiny of 1857, notably in the writings of Tagore, as the sense of Indian national identity was stirred up by oppressive British colonial rule. The French defeat by Prussia in 1870–71 and the German defeat in World War I led, in each case, to heightened nationalism and a flowering of the arts. However, the Jewish defeats by Rome were massive and virtually unprecedented, certainly in the internal history of the Roman empire. There was no return from exile and no rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Temple, as in the sixth century BCE. The Romans destroyed the Jews’ political independence and state-based national identity, as well as their militant, messianic fervour, and banned Jewish proselytizing. They crushed and humiliated the Jews with a ferocity that largely determined the socio-psychological and religious character of the Jews and Judaism until modern times. These defeats contributed to the emergence of Judaeophobia as an important social and political force. Defeat effectively fixed, up to the modern period, the character of the Jews – especially those living in Christian countries – as an oppressed, exploited, semi-pariah people who, nevertheless, had a rich civilization. Defeat labelled the Jews as deviant and amplified their

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cultural-national awareness, driving them more than previously into their own culture and educational system, sharpening their sense of distinctiveness and separation from the imperial system and their perception of the external world as the hostile impure Other. Defeat inclined some Jews to a lachrymose psychology of grief for the lost homeland, even in periods when the Jews were not persecuted. Defeat was decisive in the evolution of the Mishnah – and the tradition of Jewish law and of midrash, the Jewish homiletical tradition.3 The national identity of the Jews – their common religion and language (Hebrew), sacred texts (the Bible), territory (the land of Israel), and history – has led some scholars (e.g. Kohn 1946; Smith 1991) to suggest that Jewish nationalism was the closest in the ancient world to modern nationalism. Though there is debate among scholars of nationalism as to the existence of genuine pre-modern nationalism,4 many classical scholars – including Schürer (1909), Jones (1938), Smallwood (1976), Avi-Yonah (1976), Brunt (1977), Mendels (1992) and Millar (1993) – accept the idea of Jewish nationalism in the Roman empire as a given. This nationalism might be seen as an antecedent of the modern nationalism of defeated peoples. Before 66 CE, the Jews and Judaism were more diverse than after 70 CE. At no time, however, could the Jews be described as one single, simple organism reacting to external stimuli in a uniform, self-preservative manner. The picture of Jews in the Roman empire is mostly seen through rabbinic eyes. Yet not all Jews accepted the authority and ethical message of the rabbis. Jewish reactions to defeat included some that were not influenced greatly – if at all – by the rabbis. There are occasional glimpses of Jews who did not subscribe to, and even challenged, rabbinic teachings, for instance in 4 Ezra, in Martial’s epigrams, and in the Talmud (e.g. Pesahim 49b). Still, the Jewish defeats affected all Jews, uniting them in the end as sovereignty never did. To suggest a parallel with the Holocaust is exaggerated, but there is a common unifying effect of heterogeneous groups in the aftermath of both collective disasters. Jewish survival under Rome was best ensured by rabbinic Judaism, which for this reason became mainstream Judaism by the end of the tannaitic age, when the Mishnah was edited at the start of the third century CE. Largely deprived of the territorial, social, and political bases of their nationalism, the Jews were forced to base their identity and hopes of survival not on political but cultural and moral power, by things that could not be taken from them: the sacred word, the belief in being chosen, widespread education in Torah, legal justice, and the grief-stricken yearning for restoration to their ancestral homeland. Their religious life strengthened the Jews to tolerate the low social and political status and the psychological inferiority which came from taking up arms and losing. It gave them not just hope of ultimate freedom from Rome but also an inner freedom, out of the empire’s cultural radius. Hebrew literature, both in the Bible and newly emerging from the Bet Midrash and Bet Knesset (Houses of Study and Prayer), salved their wounded ethnic identity after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple and the exile from Judaea. It helped to overcome the ensuing crisis of confidence and social division, and sublimated militant aggression

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into religious creativity. Defeat forced the Jews to test the strength of their culture, whose essence was indifference to worldly power and submission to God, to the law of the only true, eternal imperial ruler. Survival confirmed belief in being chosen. The forced split between political and cultural nationalism was a major factor in Jewish survival. These combined elements of cultural nationalism were a unique mutation in the ancient world: a defeated people refusing to die but, instead, building and taking strength from a religious–national heritage; the split between political and cultural nationalism; the sense of uniqueness and chosenness nourished by defeat; the defence of this historical community, its ideals and dignity, expressed in a readiness to fight against the odds and die, if necessary, for ideals. Since the French Revolution, all these have become common features of national identities throughout the world. Even when major differences are taken into account – for example, that the Jews created a religious legal system independent of the dominant power, and they blamed themselves for their defeats – these similarities are striking. Hebrew creativity in the Roman empire of the second century CE is, therefore, a source of insight into the varieties of cultural nationalism stimulated by defeat. This culture, different in many ways from that of the Bible, was the ‘home territory’ of the Jewish people and the basis of their religious–cultural nationalism. As Goodman (1983: 180) writes, the rabbinic world view made a virtue of, and gave sense to, the need for protection of national identity and group solidarity against external hostility that Palestinian Jews were bound to feel after the bloody failure of two revolts [in 66–70 and 132–35 CE] and the accompanying surge of anti-Jewish feeling among the gentiles of nearby cities. While Greek culture itself derived much impetus from the defeat of Greece by Rome in the second century BCE, the Hellenists hitched their cultural wagon not to Greek nationalism and the hope of Greek independence from Rome, but to the Roman empire. Still, the Hellenists were the first to show that a culture could conquer an empire. This revolution in civilization pointed out the dangers of Judaism and undermined Jewish hopes of independence from Rome. It set into motion prejudice towards and hatred of the Jews which, taken up by Christianity, survived long after the Roman empire vanished, culminating in the Holocaust and the re-establishment of a Jewish state (cf. Poliakov 1965; Alexander 1992). Hebrew cultural nationalism in the Roman empire may be linked to a group of interconnected forces: Hellenism in the Roman empire; Jewish demographic expansion throughout the empire; anti-Semitic ideology and provocation; procuratorial misrule and the social and economic decline of Judaea; Jewish revolts and defeats; the retreat to cultural nationalism and to Hebrew creativity. Two new, more or less simultaneous, seemingly contradictory movements appeared at the start of Roman imperial rule: first, large numbers of pagans began to see Judaism as a strong, attractive religion and adopted Jewish customs or

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converted to Judaism; and second, ideological anti-Semitism became a virulent lasting force.5 Judaism was portrayed as a barbaric superstition, the Jews as lepers, the plague and enemy of mankind. Jewish expansion evidently contributed to this hostility. In the broadest sense, the Roman–Jewish wars had one cause: the incompatibility of Judaism as a political force with the unity of the Roman empire (Mommsen 1996: 195). It was no accident that Judaea, the province that posed the greatest ideological threat to Rome, had practically the worst Roman administration. As Jewish political and religious hopes were inseparable from each other, Roman attempts to curtail Jewish political power inevitably threatened Jewish religious freedom and brought unforgiveable insult to the Jews. The main arena for conflict was what amounted to a Religionskrieg between Jews and Greeks, Judaism and Hellenism. The depth of hostility and ferocity of violence among Jews and Greeks in the first and second centuries CE was unusual in the history of inter-ethnic relations in the empire (Goodman 1987: 12ff.). The reasons are not hard to find. Hellenism and Judaism were powerful rival civilizations, the first to adopt the simplified alphabet at the start of the first millennium BCE and to develop sacred literary cultures (Homer and the Bible) with longlasting universal appeal. Both were conquered by Rome, the Greek city states by 146 BCE and Judaea in 63 BCE. Their cultures were to some extent mutually intolerant. Greek and Jewish communities co-existed uneasily in many of the major cities of the Roman empire, including Rome, Alexandria and Antioch, with sporadic outbreaks of violence.6 Rivalry between Greeks and Jews was exacerbated by the fact the both had cultures superior to that of Rome which, Feldman (1996: 22) observes, ‘had an inferiority complex about arriving so late on the scene of history’ and needed an imperial culture. Rome adopted Hellenism and, as Rostovtzeff (1957: 117–18) points out, the empire became increasingly Hellenized in the years just before the 66–70 CE war. Greek civilization, art, and literature were again regarded even by the Romans as the civilization, the art, the literature. Nero was the first to proclaim urbi et orbi the new gospel and to act on it. Even before Nero’s rule, in the reigns of Caligula (37–41 CE) and Claudius (41–54 CE), the central government bureaucracy in Rome had come largely under Hellenistic control. Hellenistic ex-slaves (freedmen), whose sympathies in the Greek–Jewish rivalry were naturally with fellow-Greeks, had at crucial moments powers equal to, if not greater than, the emperors themselves (Duff 1958). Egregious misrule of Judaea and maltreatment of diaspora Jews (primarily in Rome and Alexandria) became most bitter and violent when freedmen had most power in Rome (Aberbach and Aberbach 2000). This was the environment in which the war of 66–70 CE broke out. Judaism was a somewhat unwilling rival to imperial culture. Most diaspora Jews in the Roman empire – the majority of the world Jewish population – accepted Roman rule and assimilated to some extent into the culture of the empire. But whether they liked it or not, they had a powerful, attractive religious

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civilization of their own to which anyone could convert. Their influence and numbers were growing, apparently reaching a peak in Nero’s reign, in the years prior to the 66 CE revolt (Stern 1974: I 429).7 Jewish expansionism could be seen as a vote of no confidence in the Roman empire and its Hellenistic culture. These demographic and cultural changes evidently caused alarm and hatred in the empire, especially among anti-Jewish Hellenists in Rome, where Jewish influence in the imperial court also reached its height in the years leading up the 66 CE revolt (Feldman 1993: 428). True, the empire had many concerns other than the Jews. Also, although tension was always there, Roman–Jewish relations were sometimes good, and diaspora Jews were in most cases protected by Roman authorities. Still, Rome had more trouble with the Jews than with any other people in its empire. In the long run, negative elements – mutual suspicion and hostility leading to war and Jewish defeat – won out. The roots of Judaeophobia in the Roman empire – and, indeed, as a significant historical phenomenon – may be found in the early years of Roman rule, after the conquest of Judaea in 63 BCE. As in fifteenth century Spain or in the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik revolution, Judaism was perceived, whether in fact or exaggeratedly, as a potential danger to the unity of the ruling power. Of all the peoples in the Roman empire, only the Jews, because of their religion, felt strongly about keeping their distinctiveness (Roberts 1997: 241). Consequently, until 135 CE, the Jews were in an almost constant mood of revolt (Stern 1977: 244). In The Jewish War, Josephus writes that Titus declared as much to the besieged Jews of Jerusalem (VI 6,2 [329]). To some pagans, Judaism offered a welcome humanist antidote to the brutality of Roman culture. Weber (1952: 419–20) explains the attraction of Judaism in the Roman empire to proselytes. What was most appealing were the conception of God which appeared as grandiose and majestic, the radical elimination of the cult of deities and idols felt to be insincere, and, above all, Jewish ethics appearing as pure and vigorous, and besides the plain and clear promises for the future, hence rational elements. According to Smallwood (1976: 541), the high moral code of Judaism was politically a subversive force in the Roman empire because it was inseparably tied to messianic nationalism.8 The fact that a number of Roman client-kingdoms situated near the border of Rome’s enemy, Parthia, were temporarily at least ruled by Judaizing royal families was a further source of friction in Roman–Jewish relations: ‘in conjunction with Parthia and its allies, a concerted rising of such Judaizing kingdoms might have proved a formidable threat to Rome’s Eastern frontiers’ (Aberbach 1966: 39).9 Rome and Parthia clashed over zones of influence in the East. In particular, Parthia was dangerous to Rome as it aimed to emulate the ancient Persians and conquer the Roman-held east Mediterranean territory. It had better cavalry than Rome and inflicted two of the worst military disasters in Roman history, against

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Crassus (53 BCE) and Mark Antony (36 BCE). This might not have affected the position of the Jews in the Roman empire, except that Parthia also had large Jewish communities with close ties to Palestinian Jewry: ‘Palestine and Babylonian Jewries [almost all of whom lived under Parthian rule] formed in fact one national body separated by an artificial boundary’ (Avi-Yonah 1976: 38). The Palestinian Jews thus became vulnerable to Roman suspicion of divided loyalty and guilt by association. Rome in any case did not like peoples that were half in and half out of the empire. (The conquest of Britain was undertaken partly to bring the Celts of Gaul and of Britain under Roman rule.) The international character of Judaism was out of Roman control, and this inadvertently made Judaism a natural focal point for dissidence in the empire, expressed partly in the large number of proselytes, sympathizers, and adherents to Jewish customs in the empire. Rome naturally reacted with hostility. To some Greco-Romans, the reduction of the power and attraction of Jewish political identity and the proselytizing messianic fervour which drove it was a long-term sine qua non for the survival of the empire. In the case of the Jews and Judaism, official religious tolerance in the empire could sometimes be inimical to Roman interests. Rome dealt with the problem prior to 66 CE not by officially changing its policy of tolerance but through what might be called an elective affinity for misrule and provocation, persecution and anarchy in Judaea and, occasionally, the diaspora. In the context of the history of Roman provincial administration, the rule of Judaea was exceptionally poor (Grant 1971: 221), especially as Roman administration generally improved under imperial rule by comparison with the corruption of the last century of the republic (Roberts 1997: 240). The Judaean procurators behaved as though they set out to drive Judaea to revolt (Schürer 1973: I 455); their incompetence, their exploitation and insults to Judaean national and religious feelings, made war almost inevitable (Schäfer 1995: 114). Procuratorial policy must have had the approval or at least the tacit consent of the government in Rome. The treatment of the Jews, though generally localized and temporary, had no parallel in Roman treatment of its minorities. It was calculated to weaken the prestige and influence which the Jews and Judaism were perceived as having. The extraordinary military force deployed by Rome against the Jews, which included large numbers of Greeks from Hellenistic cities in Palestine, is an indication of the importance which Rome attached to the Jewish threat (Millar 1993: 73). The ban on Jewish proselytization by Hadrian was an implicit admission of the dynamic attraction of Judaism as a rival culture, and the closure of Jerusalem to Jews and the de-judaization of Judaea after the Bar-Kokhba revolt of 132–35 CE acknowledged the symbolic power of this territory as a unifying force of Jewish nationalism inimical to Rome (Mendels 1992). Aberbach (1966), Smallwood (1976) and Gager (1983), among others, describe Judaeophobia as part of the background to the Great Revolt of 66–70 CE. Goodman (1996: 781) writes that ‘wilful hostility’ of Romans towards Judaism led not just to the 66–70 CE revolt but also to the other two.10 The failed Jewish revolts prepared the ground for the culturally revolutionary Hebrew literature in the age of the Tannaim. Greek involvement in the Jewish

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defeats contributed in turning many Jews – certainly the rabbinic leadership – against Hellenistic culture. The consequent explosion of Hebrew literature – partly under the influence of Hellenism – led to an enhanced sense of Jewish national– religious identity which has survived to the present. The trauma of defeat, though lasting, was offset somewhat by changing sociological conditions in the Roman empire of the second century CE which aided recovery. The wars against Rome ended the Jewish internecine conflict that had erupted in civil war during the Great Revolt of 66–70 CE. Rome achieved a form of social electrolysis: it virtually destroyed the Sadducees, the Essenes and the Zealots, and by defeating the Jews helped split Christianity off from Judaism. Rome also made imperial Graeco-Roman culture unpalatable to many Jews – leaving only Pharisaic Judaism and its leaders, the rabbis. The paradox of defeat was that it ‘led to the triumph of rabbinic Judaism’ (Schürer 1973: I 555).11 The razing of Jerusalem and the ban on Jewish residence there after the BarKokhba revolt gave life to the imaginative idea of the celestial Jerusalem and the Temple, as it was in its glory and as it might someday become. In much the same way, exile has been the nursery of modern nationalisms such as that of the Irish. The massive exile which followed the famines of the 1840s left hundreds of thousands of Irish men and women in the major cities of Britain, North America and Australia dreaming of a homeland, and committed to carrying a burden which few enough on native grounds still bothered to shoulder: an idea of Ireland. (Kiberd 1995: 2) Perhaps partly for this reason, most of the greatest Irish literature was written outside Ireland. Similarly, Hebrew literature after the Roman–Jewish wars (and, indeed, until modern times) evolved and was edited in exile from Judaea. It may be a universal truth, Salman Rushdie (1991: 12) suggests, that various forms of exile can stimulate remarkable creativity. The writer who is out-of-country and even out-of-language may experience this loss in an intensified form. It is made more concrete to him by the physical fact of discontinuity, of his present being in a different place from his past, of his being ‘elsewhere’. This may enable him to speak properly and concretely on a subject of universal significance and appeal. Mutual hostility between Jews and Greco-Romans sharpened group boundaries and promoted Jewish cultural separatism: ‘historical consciousness that is so essential a part of the definition of what we mean by the term “ethnic community” is very often a product of warfare or the recurrent threat thereof’ (Smith 1981: 379). The failed Jewish revolts brought the secondary gain of an international community united in trauma and prepared the way for the culturally revolutionary age of the Tannaim. War, like exile, is often associated with periods of cultural creativity. For example, Hebrew prophecy flourished between the eighth and sixth

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34 Hebrew cultural nationalism centuries BCE against the background of conquest of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the exile of many of their inhabitants, and the rise and fall of the empires of Assyria and Babylonia (Aberbach 1993a). The birth of tragedy in the drama of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides (fifth century BCE) came in an age dominated by major wars, first between Greece and Persia, then between Athens and Sparta, in the Peloponnesian wars. In the fifth to third centuries BCE, the literature of Confucianism emerged amid constant civil war in China. In the High Renaissance (c.1495–1527), similarly, the explosion of original art by Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael was accompanied by frequent wars as France and Spain struggled for hegemony over Italy. Many of the artistic achievements of the Romantic movement – the poetry of Goethe and Wordsworth, the music of Beethoven and Schubert – were created under the impact of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. In the early twentieth century, too, the creative flowering of writers such as Yeats, Joyce, Eliot and Pound, among others, was inseparably bound up with the massive blow to the ideals of Western civilization – the ‘old bitch gone in the teeth’ as Pound called it – in World War I. Of the tannaitic age, as of these other periods of outstanding creativity, an observation of Goldmann’s is apt: ‘On the social as well as the individual plane, it is the sick organ which creates awareness, and it is in moments of crisis that men are most aware of the enigma of their presence in the world’ (1964: 49). The growth of Jewish legal and homiletic traditions was facilitated by conditions in the Roman empire in the late second century CE, by the Pax Romana, the waning of Roman imperialism, and improvements in the economy of Galilee and in Roman–Jewish relations. Much Roman animosity towards Jews was evidently transferred to Christianity, which unlike Judaism was not a religio licita. The originality of the Tannaim might be linked to their muted, ambivalent relationship with the dominant imperial culture. Hellenism permeated Jewish urban life. The cultural ambience of Hebrew literature was largely Greek, literary and archaeological evidence has shown (Lieberman 1950; Hengel 1981). No Greek writings have survived from any of the Tannaim. Few of them lived in major Hellenistic cities such as Caesarea and Scythopolis (Beth-Shean). Their lingua franca was Aramaic. There is little evidence that they knew Homer, but some of them possibly spoke Greek better than Hebrew as Greek was more widely used. The limited immersion in Greek culture – their use of Greek vocabulary, Greek rhetorical devices, and Greek styles and motifs in their architecture as well as their unprecedented emphasis on the importance of education and law – might be interpreted as a sign of admiration towards a rival culture. Yet, in its assimilation of elements of Hellenism, Hebrew literature could signify Jewish resignation to imperial rule: it drew strength from the strength of the empire and addressed some of the empire’s weaknesses. At the same time, the Jews inevitably associated Greco-Roman culture with their military defeats. Once Jewish political-messianic nationalism was broken by the Roman army in the 132–35 CE war and the Hadrianic persecution, the Jews were let alone, to remake their religious culture and develop the Hebrew language and literature as they wanted, independently of imperial culture. In some ways,

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the Jews reacted to defeat as they had during the persecution of Antiochus IV in 168–65 BCE: with hatred of pagan culture and a sharp psychological turn inwards (though the Hasmoneans kept the trappings of Hellenistic civilization, including their administration and military organization). In general, a tendency to retreat from Greco-Roman civilization had existed among Jews prior to the Roman–Jewish wars, notably in the monastic sect of Qumran. However, Hebrew literature of the tannaitic period and after expresses what Millar (1993: 352) describes as a wholesale retreat from Hellenism, representing what was becoming the Jewish mainstream, to the consolation of what was perceived as uniquely Jewish. While Greek and Aramaic were used by Jews and pagans alike, Hebrew was used only by Jews. It was unstained by enemy use. There is much artistry in tannaitic literature but little of the overt aestheticism associated with Greek culture. Defeat evidently led to a revulsion among many Jews towards Greek culture (cf. Mishnah Sotah IX 14 Hagigah 15b, Menahot 99b).12 The wars initially undermined Jewish communal cohesion and self-image and endangered Jewish survival. They spurred some Jews to develop their educational system and homiletic tradition and to edit oral teachings to ensure these would not be lost. In this way, Jewish cultural nationalism, with Hebrew literature at its core, became vital to Jewish survival. It kept alive the possibility, however faint, of a political awakening. The achievement of the Tannaim is ironically among the legacies of Rome. Hebrew flourished in the volcanic ash of defeat, spreading roots of Talmud and midrash, of halakhah and aggadah. Defeat converted an untolerated Jewish militant messianism, challenging the empire, into a tolerated cultural nationalism. It drove the Jews into their own Hebrew cultural identity, forcing unity, distinctiveness and a form of divorce from the imperial system. Jewish cultural nationalism after 70 CE had its chief impetus in the reconstitution of Judaism around the synagogue. This meant sermons by rabbis and imaginative development of aggadic as well as halakhic thought. While the Mishnah was the most lasting achievement of the Tannaim, tannaitic midrash set a similarly high standard of excellence in its originality, insight and stylistic felicity which later midrash rarely equalled. There is a view that the tannaitic midrashim on the Pentateuch – Mekhilta (on Exodus), Sifra (on Leviticus) and Sifre (on Numbers and Deuteronomy) – ‘reached a high point never since surpassed’ (Epstein 1959: 116). Though midrash evolved for at least a millennium after the tannaitic period, at times with much beauty and charm, its basic form and content did not change substantially (de Lange 1987: 157); much of it is at best an echo of tannaitic midrash. A re-examination of the Roman–Jewish wars and the ways in which defeat entered the national consciousness and cultural fabric of the Jews, is more than an academic exercise. It gives insight into modern nationalism born of defeat and humiliation, which in the absence of a creative outlet could lead to frustration, spite, bitterness, depression, rage and the lust for revenge. Tannaitic writings are eminently dignified and, at times, beautiful and moving. They are a reminder that defeat can sometimes be a more powerful, longlasting spur to national identity

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than victory. They also show how a defeated minority can learn from the dominant culture and enrich its own. History suggests that victors do not always know what they want and who they are; the defeated often do. Victory may lead to ultimate failure to adapt effectively to social change. Defeat and subjugation, in contrast, can promote sensitivity and caution and be a covertly subversive adaptive force. Power is not confined to the ruling body but may be found in various forms also among the subjugated. The many nations which sprang up with the fall of the Soviet empire are proof of the power of nationalism among defeated peoples. To the ardent nationalist crushed by an imperial power, the inversion of Vince Lombardi’s famous quote is more than a bon mot: ‘losing isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.’ The suicidal readiness of many modern nationalists to fight in fanatic defence of national and religious ideals and dignity has its closest ancient analogue in the Roman–Jewish war of 66–70 CE. Josephus conveys an almost modern spirit when in The Jewish War he has Eleazar ben Yair, commander of Masada, declare that he and his followers will die heroically, in defence of their liberty: ‘let us do each other an ungrudging kindness, preserving our freedom as a glorious windingsheet’ (VII 8,6 [370]). The act of revolt against Rome, writes Schürer (1973: I 357), was suicidal. Its chief aim – as among the Poles in 1830 and 1863, the Irish in 1916, or the Hungarians in 1956 – was to assert defiance and national pride. In their cultural nationalism, the Tannaim preserved a different form of national freedom, with survival at its heart.

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From the ruined shell of Rome after the empire’s fall, most of the world Jewish population came under Islamic rule in the seventh and eighth centuries CE. After a period of attempted assimilation into Arabic culture, particularly in Spain, the high point of medieval Jewish nationalism was reached in the poetry of Judah Halevi (c.1075–1141), after the Crusaders conquered the Holy Land from the Muslims in 1099. Halevi’s poems of Zion, written in Spain – ‘the end of the west’ – express yearning not only for the land of Israel as it was in the time of Jewish sovereignty but also as it might become in future.1 My heart is in the east and I – on the end of the west: how can I enjoy, how taste my food, how keep my vows while Zion is in Christian hands and I in Arab chains. I’d lightly leave the good of Spain to see the Temple’s dust again. Libi be-mizrah Halevi’s poem beginning ‘Zion, will you not ask’ is the best-known Hebrew poem between the biblical and modern periods. It is recited by observant Jews on the eve of Tisha B’Av, the Ninth of Av, the anniversary of the destruction of both Temples in Jerusalem. This poetry reflects Halevi’s unhappiness under Muslim rule and hope for the messianic redemption of the Jews and their return to their homeland. Zion, will you not ask about your captives? They ask for you, the last of your flock. Accept their greeting, west and east, north and south, far and near on every side; my greeting too, lust-locked to weep Hermon’s dew across your hills: A jackal I am, wailing out your grief, a harp for the dream-song of your exiles’ homecoming. Zion, ha-lo tishali

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Yet, most Hebrew poetry in Muslim Spain in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was not about Zion. It was conspicuous for non-theological elements, influenced by contemporaneous Arabic poetry with its various genres: love poetry, including homosexual poetry, poetry of friendship, wine songs, war poetry, and so on. This was the outstanding Hebrew poetry between the end of the biblical age and modern times. Most of it belongs to the narrow period 1031–1140 when the Umayyad empire fell apart and Christian Europe began to overtake Islam, militarily, economically and culturally. During this period, Hebrew poets not only adopted Arabic versification; they seem to some extent also to have been influenced by a secular lifestyle associated mainly with court culture, while at the same time keeping strictly to Jewish tradition and, in fact, also writing poems for the synagogue liturgy. How did Jewish literature move from its relatively assimilationist stance in the early eleventh century to nationalist longing by the early twelfth century? In the eleventh century there was a decisive historical shift in the global balance of power. Islam weakened as Christian Europe became stronger. The Islamic empire, which included most of the Mediterranean area, had split into three caliphates, the Abbasid, Fatimid and Umayyad, the main unifying feature of which was cultural, in particular the use of Arabic. The eleventh century began with the collapse of the Umayyad caliphate. It ended with the conquest of Muslimheld Sicily and the east Mediterranean, including Palestine, by the Crusaders. By 1099, Jerusalem after four and a half centuries under Islam was in Christian hands, a fact alluded to in Halevi’s poetry quoted above. The fragmentation of the seemingly stable and powerful Muslim empire in the west Mediterranean into over two dozen city-states (taifas
‘parts’) led to innumerable civil wars in Spain. Fanatical Berber Muslims invaded from North Africa. Gradually, the Christians reconquered Spain from the north. These upheavals were disastrous for the Jews and, as is often the case in Jewish history, stimulated renewed longing for the land of Israel. This age of imperial collapse and failed recovery in Muslim Spain was marked by two distinct periods: (1) civil war among the splinter-kingdoms; (2) Berber invasions from North Africa. The two Hebrew poets who dominated the first period were Samuel Hanagid (993–1056) and Solomon Ibn Gabirol (1021/2–56?), of whom Gabirol is acknowledged as the greater. In the second period there were also two outstanding Hebrew poets: Moses Ibn Ezra (c.1055–after 1135) and Judah Halevi. With Halevi, post-biblical Hebrew poetry reached its artistic peak prior to modern times. The poetry of Hanagid and Gabirol is set against the fall of the Cordoba caliphate, while the poetry of Ibn Ezra and Halevi has for its background the Berber invasions of 1090 and 1140. This explosion of creativity came from a society torn apart by internecine war and the spasmodic drive south by the armies of Christian Spain, yet culturally the most advanced in the Middle Ages. Its relatively secular, pluralistic outlook might be seen as a harbinger of the modern age. Nevertheless, the poets themselves might have been surprised to learn that later generations saw theirs as a golden age. Their own experience was war, chaos,

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instability and exile, conditions ripe with messianic hope, as the following calendar of events will bear out: 1009–31 1013

Collapse of the Umayyad caliphate. Fall of Cordoba. Exile of Samuel Hanagid from Cordoba, his birthplace, to Malaga. 1031–91 Over two dozen splinter-kingdoms rule Andalusia, often at war with one another. 1066 Massacre of Jewish community of Granada. 1085 Conquest of Toledo by Christian army of Alfonso VI. 1086 Almoravid invasion and defeat of Christian army at al-Zallaqah, near Badajoz. 1090 Destruction of Jewish community of Granada by Almoravids, witnessed by Ibn Ezra and Halevi. 1091–1145 Almoravid rule of Muslim Spain. 1096–99 First Crusade, culminating in Christian conquest of the Land of Israel from the Muslims. 1135 Capture of Seville by Christian army of Alfonso VII. 1140–50 Almohad invasion and conquest of Muslim Spain. 1147 Capture of Seville by Almohads. Maimonides and his family, resident in Cordoba, are forced into exile. 1147–49 Second Crusade. Jewish nationalism fructified in this volcanic soil. From the time of the Arab conquests of the seventh and early eighth centuries until the thirteenth century, the world Jewish population was still largely concentrated in the Middle East, chiefly in Babylonia under Abbasid rule. Economic decline and political instability, and the shift of the power centre of the Arab world from Baghdad to Cairo in the Fatimid empire, led many Jews to emigrate from Babylonia to North Africa or to Spain. Spain, conquered by Muslims in 711, was the frontier not just of Islam but also of the known world. Its large empty spaces and fertile land and its geographical position offered much opportunity within an Arabic culture familiar and congenial to most Jews. The hardships endured by the Babylonian Jews, driving them to emigrate, are the subject of an undated liturgical poem by the last great religious leader of Babylonian Jewry, Hai Gaon, who died in 1038 having lived for a century. Hai Gaon gives a bitter account of the precarious state of the Jews who, he writes, had survived countless sorrows only to escape no sorrow before death. This the people that never were, eaten away, scattered, despoiled. Babylonia trounced them, Media knocked them out, Greece swallowed them, Islam did not vomit them. Why make their yoke heavier?

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Jewish nationalism in medieval Islam Why double their misery? Powerless, what can they endure? Achen sar mar ha-mavet

At the start of the Golden Age, when these lines were written, most Jews spoke Arabic, which had replaced Aramaic as their lingua franca. Conditions in Spain encouraged assimilation, not longing for Zion. Spain’s manifest superiority as a rich, elegant, culturally sophisticated society on Islam’s toehold on continental Europe drew settlers from the east. The relative tolerance of Islam in Spain attracted Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. Throughout the Arab world, the Jews, like the Christians, had the status of a protected religious group (dhimma) and were respected as a ‘people of the book’ (ahl-al-kitab), a people who possessed holy scriptures recognized by Islam. Jewish immigrants to Spain easily fitted in, especially as the country was a frontier with many new immigrants. The similarities between Islam and Judaism also helped in the acculturation of Jews in exile: both religions being monotheisms which teach salvation through obedience to divine commandments as revealed to a supreme prophet; both are based on religious jurisprudence interpreted by scholars and judges; both emphasize the importance of dietary laws and communal worship. With their ancient, sharply defined religious culture, the Jews went on, in fact, to have a disproportionate influence at a time when Spain, with its highly diverse population, was struggling towards national self-definition. In particular, the Jews’ stress on their biblical lineage and chosenness, as well as being the bearers of a divine message in a pure and holy literature, was adopted by Christians and Muslims in shaping Spanish culture. Through its impact upon Europe and its empires overseas, this culture later became a seminal force in the making of modern civilization. Judaism, which was nowhere a state religion (except in the land of the Khazars in the ninth to tenth centuries), was the more adaptable under Islamic (and, later, Christian) rule. Psychologically, the Jews’ long experience of exile and minority status eased their adaptation within Spanish Muslim society, while Christians, unused to foreign rule, mostly converted to Islam or fled to Christian Spain. Hebrew poetry expressed the cultural synthesis for which Jews aspired in the Muslim world. But as for daily usage in Jewish life, Arabic went much the same way as Greek in the Roman empire and German in Christian Europe: all were instruments of failed assimilation. Jewish attempts to identify with the culture, however superior, of a hostile people have invariably led to disillusionment. In the long term, the Jews preserved only Hebrew as the language of their national memory and hope. Hebrew poetry in Muslim Spain was forged by the tension between the drive for acculturation and the inferior position of the Jews in Muslim society. Until modern times, Bernard Lewis has written (1984: 102), the Jews under Islamic rule were generally subjected to countless harassments and petty humiliations, to mockery, insult and chronic insecurity; they paid higher taxes than Muslims; they suffered severely restrictive laws of inheritance; they could not carry arms; there were limitations on the animals they could ride, the buildings they could build

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and the places of worship they could use; they were even limited in the clothes they could wear and were obliged to wear a special emblem, the origin of the notorious yellow star. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, until the Berber invasions, these disabilities were not felt as acutely in Muslim Spain as elsewhere. In fact, there were advantages in being Jewish in Andalusia at this time. Under Abd ar-Rahaman III (912–61), Muslim Spain achieved centralized rule and independence from the Abbasid empire. It quickly became the most powerful, richest and most culturally advanced country in tenth century Europe. Its capital, Cordoba, was one of the largest cites of the time with an estimated quarter million inhabitants. Cordoba’s central library had some 400,000 volumes (Baron 1957: IV 28). The Spanish Jews at this time may have numbered no more than 60,000 (Ashtor 1979: II 34). Yet they were concentrated in the cities, at the hub of the social, economic and political life of Muslim Spain. The creation of an independent caliphate in Spain led to the independence of its Jewish population from the declining Babylonian religious authority. Consequently, they were readier than in the past to take part in the life of the wider society, to experiment culturally. A sign of this new freedom was their use, for the first time, of secular forms and genres in Hebrew verse. The literature created by Jews in this period in some respects brings to mind the assimilationist Haskalah literature in the early and mid-nineteenth century. While this literature rarely suggests a burning desire to return to the land of Israel before the advent of the Messiah, it is a continual reminder of the latent nationalist power of Hebrew. Nevertheless, Spain at the start of the Golden Age had unusually propitious conditions for minorities. Most of the Spanish Christian population were recent converts to Islam (Glick 1979).2 The Muslim rulers were a minority among Christians, Jews, neo-Muslims and others and, needing their support, were sharply alive to the importance of tolerance and fairness. To ensure their sense of belonging and their loyalty, the Muslim rulers found it expedient to build a universalist Arab culture, rather than a narrow Islamic religious one. The court, not the mosque, was the centre of this culture. The splendid court of Cordoba and, later, the courts of the splinter-kingdoms, created opportunities for Jewish courtiers. Imitating their Arab colleagues, they became patrons of Hebrew poets. The importance of courts and of patronage in the Golden Age may be seen in the fact that when the courts vanished and patronage ceased, Hebrew and Arabic poetry declined. The Jews’ alliance with Islamic sovereignty discouraged Jewish nationalist feeling. The Golden Age of Hebrew poetry emerged in the context of the ethnic and religious diversity and conflicts of Hispano-Arab society and its socioreligious problems (Wasserstein 1985; Brann 1991)3. A further bar to nationalism in Muslim Spain was that the Jews comprised an essential part of the middle class. There was hardly a profession in which Jews were not active. Because of their considerable trading links, their cosmopolitanism and knowledge of languages, the Jews were invaluable as translators, courtiers and diplomats. Their talents were also a rich source of revenue. The shift of power in Andalusia in the tenth century from the aristocratic elite to the middle class

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worked to the Jews’ advantage, especially in cities such as Granada, where they formed a large part of the population. Hebrew poetry expressed Jewish pride and self-confidence stemming from social and economic success and political power. A point alluded to earlier should be stressed: Spain’s geographic position on the frontier of Christian Europe and the great unexplored Atlantic helped break down social barriers which prevailed elsewhere among Muslims and Jews. The cooperation and social harmony between them was virtually unique in the Middle Ages and unrepeated in modern times. These conditions were not conducive to Jewish nationalism. They encouraged Jews to think of the diaspora as home rather than return to the land of Israel.

The cultural background of the Golden Age How then did Jewish nationalism emerge among the Spanish Jews and in their poetry? As usual in Jewish cultural history, the forces of change were gradual. Medieval Hebrew poetry had a long, complex socio-linguistic germination. A number of factors in addition to those given above were of special importance in promoting a national literature, stimulating cultural imitation and competition, and in heightening sensitivity to the Hebrew language and sharpening its usage. 1

2

3

4

Christian biblical exegetes often undermined Jewish interpretation. They forced Jewish exegetes, many of whom wrote Hebrew poetry, to study closely the vocabulary and grammar of the Bible in order to refute the Christians and achieve a clear interpretation of the Hebrew text. The Karaites, a fundamentalist Jewish sect, denied the sacred character of the Oral Law and of post-biblical Hebrew, insisting instead that authentic Judaism was confined to the literal truth of the Five Books of Moses. The dispute with the Karaites, who had considerable influence in the ninth and tenth centuries and after, had the effect of forcing their ‘Rabbanite’ opponents to stop their neglect of the Bible and become more aware of the nuances of the Hebrew text. The proliferation since the late-Roman period of synagogues led to an increasing demand for original Hebrew liturgical poetry which entered the Jewish prayer book (siddur), the earliest editions of which were edited in the eighth or ninth centuries (Reif 1993). All the great medieval Hebrew poets wrote for the synagogue as well as for secular reading. The Golden Age was part of a flourishing of Jewish literature – legal, homiletical, polemical, exegetical, philological, as well as liturgical – in the years 900–1200 (Baron 1958: VII 136). This literature was facilitated by the reunification of the majority of the world’s Jewish population under Islamic rule and by the intellectual stimulus of the rise of Islam. It was also part of a great surge in European literary activity resulting from a revolution in book manufacturing. Paper reached the Islamic empire by the end of the eighth century. Within two centuries, Spain became a world centre of the manufacture of paper and the production of books.

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The increasing split between Jews living under Muslim and Christian rule made vital the use of Hebrew in contacts between the two groups as this was often their only shared language. The explosion in the use of Arabic and the growth of Islamic court culture in which Arabic was used in the eighth and ninth centuries led to an enrichment of the Arabic language and a high valuation of correct grammar, stylistic excellence and beautiful calligraphy. Baron observes: Perhaps in no period in human history did preoccupation with the correctness and purity of the spoken and written language become such a deep concern of the educated classes as during the Islamic Renaissance. (1958: VII 4)

The divine inspiration and truth of the Koran were believed by the Arabs to be proven by its stylistic excellence; the Jews adopted a similar belief about the Hebrew Bible. As the first fully bilingual group of Jewish writers, the Hebrew poets of Muslim Spain were well-acquainted with Arabic and the Koran, though as infidels they were discouraged from writing Arabic. In any case, they were convinced that Hebrew was superior to all languages as it was more ancient and beautiful and, above all, the language in which God had revealed himself in the Bible. They revolted against the eastern style of Hebrew poetry associated with Saadia Gaon, with its over-abundant, enigmatic talmudic and midrashic allusions. Instead, they favoured clear biblical language. Their poetry was further influenced by the rediscovery of ancient Greek learning, with its emphasis on philosophy and rhetoric. This resurrection led to a marked increase in the vocabulary and intellectual depth of Arabic language and thought, which Hebrew writers (who were often the translators from Arabic to Latin) adopted in Hebrew.

Poetry, the court and Islam The pre-eminent importance attached to poetry in the Islamic empire was the single main catalyst for Hebrew poetry, which was enriched immeasurably in imitation of and competition with Arabic poetry. This influence was not mutual, however: non-Jewish Arabic readers did not usually read Hebrew, and Hebrew poetry was apparently not translated into Arabic. Still, the high status of Hebrew poetry among the Spanish Jews at this time was probably unique in Jewish history. Whole cities, such as Lucena and Seville, were known as ‘cities of poetry’. Court life brought into being the professional Hebrew poet, employed by Jewish courtiers such as the physician and statesman Hasdai Ibn Shaprut (c.905–c.970), whose prominent position in the court of the above-mentioned Abd ar-Rahaman III made him the natural leader of the Jews in Muslim Spain. Imitating his Arab colleagues, Ibn Shaprut became the patron of scholars and poets. These included the two Hebrew poets who created the artistic basis for the Golden Age: Menahem Ibn Saruq (c.910–c.970) and Dunash ben Labrat (?– c.970). Neither had outstanding poetic gifts. Yet, ben Labrat revolutionized

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Hebrew poetry by imitating the quantitative metres and secular themes of Arabic poetry. He was also the first to criticize the artificiality of forcing Hebrew verse into Arabic prosody and the blasphemy of using the Holy Tongue for secular purposes. This criticism reached its bitterest expression in the writings of Judah Halevi. The Golden Age ironically began and ended with blasts at its own artistic bases. However, the criticism of Hebrew poetry was also imitative, as the Arabs, too, frequently voiced similar complaints against Arabic poetry of the Cordoba caliphate. This poetry was often felt to reflect the artificiality and corruption of court life, the abuse of artists as functionaries flattering their patrons, sycophantically toeing the party line. In its imitation of Islamic aesthetic norms, this poetry represents a movement among the Iberian Jews towards greater assimilation and an evident lack of interest in active Jewish nationalism. Yet the very fact that Spanish Jewish poets wrote in Hebrew – even with the aim of acculturation under Islam – inadvertently had a national significance. The attractiveness of Jewish nationalism increased when the Ummayad empire fell and splinter kingdoms replaced it in the first half of the eleventh century. This upheaval galvanized both Hebrew and Arabic literature. The technical and thematic revolution of the tenth century was now harnessed to a radical change in psychological outlook and sensibility. For a brief period, both literatures created poetry of exceptional artistic quality, if not genius. In Hebrew, this change led ultimately back to Zion. The Jews had mastered the dominant high culture of the early Middle Ages and gained entree into the highest social and political circles at the zenith of the Umayyad caliphate. Now they realized that their position under Muslim rule in Spain was untenable. Precisely at this moment – in the first half of the eleventh century – the Jews reached the high point of their political power and cultural achievement between the destruction of the Second Temple and modern times. Why was this so? One explanation is that the Jews, as part of a society in chaos, were liberated for a while from the normal social shackles of being Jewish in the medieval world. The Hebrew poet was, to an extent, temporarily free of social constraint and able to use advances in Hebrew poetry to find an original poetic voice. Like Van Gogh’s sunflowers, this golden Hebrew culture was dying, and dying in the very poetry which was its brightest sign of life. The destruction of court society centralized in Cordoba meant the end of ‘official’ court poetry. It freed the individual poet, Muslim and Jew, to explore personal emotion as a subject worthy of poetry (Monroe 1974: 21). This liberation prepared the way for the deeply personal poetry of Halevi, including his laments for Zion. The social anarchy described in the poetry of Hanagid and Gabirol belongs specifically to the eleventh century. The following lines by Gabirol, though typically they echo a biblical passage (Micah 7:6), could not describe tenth century Andalusia, when the caliphate was strong. They are a grim picture of the chaos, civil strife and despair which prevailed in Andalusia after the caliphate fell apart. Man has no joy on earth: Slave murders master. Servant girls attack their queen.

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Son strikes parents. Daughter does the same. Friend, the best remedy I know – madness. Ve-lev navuv The social stratification in Muslim Spain, already greatly weakened in the tenth century, was largely swept aside. The splinter-kingdoms, battling among themselves, sought allies – Jews and Christians alike – where they could find them. As a result, Jews were allowed to take part in Islamic society to a degree unprecedented in Islamic history and unrepeated since. In this chaotic state of transition, Arabic poets such as Ibn Hazm (994–1064) and Ibn Zaidun (1003–71) and their contemporary Hebrew poets Hanagid and Gabirol, created a body of poetry extraordinary in its emphasis upon the individual sensibility as well as its technical mastery. The following lines by Ibn Hazm, for example, strike a new note in Arabic poetry: I am seen as a youth desperate with love, my heart broken, my spirit troubled. By whom? Men glance at me and know, but on closer look are left in doubt. I am like clear handwriting, meaning obscure, like a dove cooing every which way in its little forest, delighting the ear with its melody, its meaning untapped . . . A girl once loved me, I surprised her with a kiss: That kiss was my only life, however long my life is. (Monroe 1975: 174–75)4 The poetry of Ibn Zaidun, too, comes more from the poet’s true feelings than the artifice of court life. Most of Ibn Zaidun’s poems were inspired by his love for an Umayyad princess in the last days of the caliphate and for some time after. His poems of lost love recreate a world that has vanished but are at the same time deeply personal. Yes, I remembered you, longed for you, as you were in az-Zahara’, the sky blue, earth alight, the evening breeze languid with pity for me. And the garden smiled. A day like the lost pleasure time we thieved our nights away as fortune slept. Flowers caught our eye, bent with dew as if in tears for my sleeplessness. (Arberry 1965: 114–15) In the poetry of Ibn Zaidun, Arabic poetry reached a peak of artistic perfection, ‘the last flowering of an original and personal lyrical [Arabic] poetry before modern times’ (Hourani 1991: 194)5. The same was true of Ibn Zaidun’s Jewish contemporaries, whose best work is unequalled until modern times.

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Hanagid and Gabirol The new individual tone of Arabic poetry reached Hebrew with lasting impact in the poetry of Hanagid. Hanagid had an exceptionally varied and interesting life and career, though what is known of his life can be summed up in a few lines. As well as being the first major Hebrew poet of the Golden Age, he was also an important rabbi, the leader of the Granada Jewish community, ultimately first citizen of Granada as vizier (from 1027) and minister of war (from 1038), commander of the Berber Muslim army for nearly two decades of almost constant war. He reportedly never lost a battle. The complexity of Hanagid’s career and the extent of his power are themselves the clearest indication of the new life chances which opened to Jews in Muslim Spain after the fall of the caliphate. The formative trauma of Hanagid’s early manhood was, in fact, the end of the caliphate – the horrific siege of Cordoba, his hometown, by the Berbers. This siege lasted for several years until the Umayyad capital fell in 1013. Exiled from his native city, Hanagid was an eyewitness of the appalling effects of the fall of the caliphate and the civil wars which followed. His rise to power in Granada was, paradoxically, made possible by the very fact of his being Jewish. Jewish nationalism in any political sense evidently meant little to him: his immediate wholehearted loyalty was to the kingdom of Granada, and this was also in the interests of the Jewish community. The Spanish Jews, representing the economic strength of the middle class, helped create a precarious stability in the balance of power between the Berber rulers and the Arab aristocratic elite. Yet, again, the fact that Hanagid’s verse was in Hebrew, not Arabic, suggests deeper religious feelings and cultural loyalty. When Hanagid saw how the neighbouring Christian powers began what amounted to a protection racket by which the fragile Muslim kingdoms obtained military aid against their Muslim rivals, Hanagid called for the renewal of his people as he cursed the Christians in impeccable metre and rhyme. Evil queen, cease your reign! Reign instead, hated Jews, long asleep on bed of pain. Wake! There’s medicine for you, and recompense for being true. Malka resha’ah6 The fascination of Hanagid lies in the contradictions of general and poet, leader of an Arab army and head of the Granada Jewish community, public man and tough individualist, religious Jew and secular poet. The toughness and directness of some of his war poetry had not appeared in Hebrew since the Bible and were not to appear again until the twentieth century, when most Hebrew poets have also been soldiers. I stationed a regiment in a fortress destroyed long ago in war.

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There we slept, below us the dead . . . If they woke to life, they’d kill us and take everything we have. It’s God’s own truth, by tomorrow we’d all be stone-cold as they. Halinoti gedud The kingdom of Seville was Granada’s main rival. Many of Hanagid’s poems describe wars which he fought against Seville. Although Hanagid commanded a Muslim army, he writes as though Jews are at war with the infidel, not Muslims fighting against Muslims. (He never mentions, incidentally, that there were Jews in the armies against which he fought.) Instead, his victories are the victories of the Jewish God. In Seville they did evil to the Jews – conspiracy, weapons, chains – to murder Jewish mothers and babies, rich and poor alike. We laughed when their king spoke arrogantly. We crossed the border to avenge our people, our warriors savage as lions, we swarmed in on them like locusts . . . God tied their hands with rope, their hearts too. They stumbled over their chariots, their horses chains on their feet. In a word, he broke them as a weaver snaps thread. Famous warriors in chains, dragged before the king – at his will they lived or died. I was faint at the bloody torture, the pampered foot stabbed with thorns, warriors’ corpses tossed on a pile. Ha-li ta’as bekhol shanah7 The Arabs led by Hanagid were not so secular as to overcome their prejudice against him as an infidel Jew, damned to perdition; neither were they so devout as to shirk from the leadership of an inordinately gifted Jew. As a prominent figure in the Granada court, Hanagid had his Jewish retinue, including the young Gabirol who seems to have admired Hanagid’s poetry as well as his statesmanship.

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In a panegyric for Hanagid, Gabirol compares him with his namesake, the prophet Samuel. Wisdom-seeker, delver into her mysteries to gather her from exile, making her treasures his, her silver and gold. Mi zot ke-mo shachar To Gabirol, Hanagid was a model of the synthesis to which he aspired between Arab culture and the Jewish tradition. As a poet, however, Gabirol went much further than Hanagid in using the new-found freedom of Andalusian poetry. Whereas much of Hanagid’s poetry is outgoing and public, Gabirol’s is deeply personal. The sadness and loneliness in Gabirol’s poetry is unparalleled in any other medieval Hebrew poet. His works reflect not only his physical illnesses and mental tortures but also – a stage towards the renewal of Jewish national feeling – his awareness that the hoped-for cultural synthesis between Jews and Muslims in Spain was a pipe dream. I am buried – not in a desert but in my house, my coffin. I agonize, orphaned of mother and father, brotherless. Young, alone, poor. Thought is my only friend. My tears are stirred in blood and wine, thirsting for a friend – I will die before that thirst is quenched. The heavens block my yearning. Alien am I to all. Nichar be-kori groni If you want to join the man forever young, as your soul gutters by the underworld’s flame – mock worldly things, be not the fool of wealth and honour, a son to have your name. Value poverty and humility, then die as Seled did, with no son. Try to know your soul well. It alone will live when skin and flesh are gone. Im te’ehav lihyot ke-anshe Cheled8 Gabirol’s fears were borne out by the execution of his patron, Yekutiel ben Isaac ibn Hassan, in 1039. It is recorded in the following lyric:9 See the sun red-cloaked at dusk, stripping itself of north and south,

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dressing itself crimson, leaving the land naked, to sleep in night’s dark shelter. Then the sky went black as a sack for the death of Yekutiel. Re’eh shemesh In the face of outrage to his body, his soul and his social world, Gabirol retreats to his infinitely gentle, suffering spirit, to a dialogue with soul or Creator. The poet is trapped in a shifting no-man’s land in the long religious war between Muslims and Christians, in which the Jews are losers. Terrified, he calls to God, the beloved in rabbinic interpretations of the Song of Songs.10 Open the gate, my love! Get up, open the gate! I tremble in terror. Mother’s slave, Hagar, mocked me in her arrogance, for God heard her son Ishmael’s cry. In the dead of night the wild-ass Muslims chased me, the wild-boar Christians trampled me. When my exile’s end was fixed my heartache grew worse. No one can explain – and I am dumb. Sha’ar petach

Social breakdown in Andalusia and Hebrew creativity The pessimism of Gabirol’s poetry foreshadowed the end of Andalusian Jewry under Muslim rule and Halevi’s laments for Zion. In 1066, Hanagid’s son, Joseph, who had succeeded him as vizier of Granada, was murdered. In one of the earliest pogroms in European history, about 3,000 Jews of Granada were massacred. An Arabic poem by Abu Ishaq helped to trigger off the pogrom. It incited Badis ibn Habbus, king of Granada, to wipe out Jewish influence in the Granada government. This was Badis’ fatal mistake, making our enemy rejoice: Not Muslim but Jew he made his minister. Now the Jews are not just low-down: They’re arrogant, insolent too. They got more than they ever dreamed of, ignoring Muslims dying in misery. How many noble Muslims are brought low before this wretched monkey-Jew! (Monroe 1975: 206–7)

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It is possible to see this poem and the pogrom which followed as a turning point in the history of the Andalusian Jews, a warning that they lived on an live volcano. The slaughter in Granada showed them the tenuousness of their position in alien lands. Over the generations they had come to believe [sic] that they were as much citizens of Spain as were the Muslims and Christians, the Andalusians and Arabs, the Berbers and Slavs – now it was clear: Spain was a land of exile as were all the other diasporas. (Ashtor 1979: II 191) As in Russia 700 years later, anti-Jewish violence in Muslim Spain was a gauge of general political and social instability, not only in the splinter-kingdoms that sprang from the ruins of the Umayyad empire but in the Islamic world as a whole as the balance of power between Muslims and Christians shifted to the clear advantage of the Christians. The lack of strong central authority in the Arab empire led to political breakdown and to Christian military success, in Spain and the Holy Land. The Christians won control of trade in the Mediterranean. The Muslims lost economic power in lands controlled by Islam. The defeats in Spain and the Holy Land at the end of the eleventh century were not just military blows. They were also unprecedented religious and psychological setbacks to Islam. They led to growing fanaticism among the Muslims, which increasingly soured relations between Muslims and Jews and stirred up Jewish national longing. To devout Muslims, the integration of Jews within Spanish Muslim society was a sign of defeat, even of moral decline and corruption. After the fall of Toledo in 1085, the splinter-kingdoms invited the Almoravid Berbers to cross the strait of Gibraltar to save them from the Christian infidel. In 1086 the Berbers defeated the Christian army of Alfonso VI of Castile at Sagrajas. Between 1090–1102 they ended the disunity which had prevailed since 1031. They seized Andalusia and made it a province of their North African empire. This military feat led to the migration of most Andalusian Jews to Christian Spain. Unexpectedly, it heralded an Indian summer of Hebrew poetry and a turn to Zion.

Moses Ibn Ezra and Judah Halevi Hanagid and Gabirol were wholly Andalusian poets in the time of the splinterkingdoms and civil wars, but after the Almoravid invasion they were exiled to Christian Spain. Unlike Halevi, and despite maltreatment by the Andalusian Muslims, Ibn Ezra remained nostalgic for the Andalusia of his youth. No other Hebrew poet applied so expertly Arabic metrics, themes and images to Hebrew.11 The following poem, for example, bears an Arabic imprint in its meter (in the Hebrew ABCBDB), its imagery and feeling: Let man always know unto death he moves.

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As day to night creeps past he may think he is at rest – at rest on a boat flying in the wind. Yizkor gever Ibn Ezra’s affection for Andalusia evidently grew as he discovered the pains of being a stranger and a Jew in Christian Spain. In one of his poems, Pnei he-El levad, the world is a mother with a stillborn child in her belly and a dying child on her back. He might have been thinking of his own life. To Ibn Ezra as to Gabirol, poetry consoled the poet and his readers. You who are heartsick and cry bitterly – do not grieve. Come into the garden of my poems to find medicine, sung aloud. Compared to them honey is bitter incense stinks: these poems make the deaf hear the stammerer speak, the blind see, the lame run. The grieving, the heartsick, those who cry bitterly find joy in them. Kol ish deveh levav In poems written to Halevi, his protégé, he poured out his heart. Even my enemies take pity, while my obstinate brother refuses to admit his folly has stripped me of everything precious. My children too betray me; strangers hurry to dress the wound my flesh and blood inflicted. Will I ever again find the strength to take up the wanderer’s staff fate thrust into my hands? Mornings I chew twigs for my hunger, at dusk stagnant water quenches my thirst. I sink deeper and deeper into a pit of depression, and barely pull myself out. My eyes are glazed with wandering, my innards rumble like the sea, my nerves are on edge. I dwell among wolves for whom the word human means nothing. (Levin 1992: 35–36)

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Ibn Ezra’s destination as a wanderer in his poetry remained uncertain, but Halevi’s unhappiness in Spain drove him to think with longing of Zion. Yet, as among many modern Zionists, even his Zionism was filled with love for his native land. He vainly entreated Ibn Ezra in verse to return to Muslim Spain. How can I find peace with you gone? My heart beats after you. If I left off waiting for your return I’d die. Look, the mountains of our separation testify: clouds are cheap with rain. I cry buckets. Come back to Muslim Spain, lamp of Muslim Spain. Make your mark on every heart and hand. Pure of speech among the stammerers: Why spread Hermon’s dew on cursed Gilead? Ech aharecha emtza margo’a Halevi was born in Tudela, then under Muslim rule, near the Christian border. As a young man, he came south to Granada where he met Ibn Ezra. The Almoravid invasion drove him to Toledo, recently (1085) captured by the Christians, where he worked as a doctor. After the Toledo Jews were set on by a bloodthirsty mob in 1109 and his patron was murdered, Halevi came back to Andalusia. He lived in Cordoba for some thirty years. When the Almohads invaded southern Spain, he set out for the Holy Land. It is not known if he reached his destination. The two decisive events in Halevi’s life were the Almoravid invasion of Andalusia in 1090 and the Christian conquest of the Holy Land in 1099. The first aroused his disillusionment with Muslim Spain – indeed, with any form of gentile rule – and the second his yearning for messianic redemption and the return to the land of Israel. To the North African scholar, Rabbi Habib, Halevi confessed in a letter that ‘Greece and its wisdom have drowned me in thick black grease; Islam and Arabic have blackened me; Christianity has torn me apart, destroyed me’ (Brann 1991: 90). In poetic dialogues between the Congregation of Israel and God (the Lover), again based on the Midrash on the Song of Songs, Halevi confesses the torment of entrapment between two rival religions and frustration that Jerusalem, ‘my palace’, was now ruled by the Crusaders. Friend – suffering forces me to live with viper and scorpion, captive. Pity me! I despair of sunrise. Day by day I cannot hope. What can I say, lover? Crusaders, freeborn, in Jerusalem, my palace, while I slave for Arab and Christian – a dog in their tormenting hands. Yodi, hefitzuni yeme oni

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Lover, have you forgot how you lay between my breasts? Why have you sold me for all time? Did I not follow you in the wilderness? Let the mountains be my witnesses – Seir and Paran, Sinai and Sin! My love was yours, you wanted just me – how can you share yourself with others? I am crushed by the Persians, scorched by the Greeks, thrust among Christians, driven among Muslims: Is there a saviour but you? A prisoner of hope but me? Give me your power, I’ll give you my love! Yedidi, hashakhahta The suffering of the people of Israel is seen by the poet as an expiation for sin. Israel takes almost masochistic pleasure in its persecution – this is God’s will, but it is also God’s will to free his people as he did in the past. Since you became love’s home, my loves are pitched by you. My enemies’ curse makes me glad. Let them curse me – as you did. They learned to hate from you and I love them – they hound the one you hurt. The day you scorned me I felt the same. How can I love the one you hate? Till your fury goes and you free again your people whom you freed from Egypt. Me’az me’on ahavah The conquest of the Holy Land by the Crusaders after four and a half centuries of Muslim rule was a disaster to the Jewish communities there (as of those in Europe). Yet it also awakened in the diaspora the Jewish hope of return to the land of Israel at a time when the majority of the world’s Jewish population was still in the Middle East. The memory of Hanagid’s military accomplishments was still green: if Jerusalem could be captured by Christians, could it not someday fall to the Jews? Halevi’s messianic hope was roused, too, by the rise of the Almohads in the second and third decades of the twelfth century. Like the earlier invaders, the Almohads were a fanatical North African Berber tribe, with the difference that they were also a messianic movement. Their founder was believed to be the messiah, destined to restore Islam to the true path and create a kingdom of heaven on earth. The Almohads were, in fact, the last gasp of the Islamic empire which had ruled Andalusia since 711. They ended Andalusian Jewish life under Islam when they invaded in 1140. Yet they might also have stirred up parallel Jewish

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messianic hopes, which found their way into Halevi’s writings. Such hopes are familiar signs of socio-political upheaval and danger. Halevi’s decision to go to the Holy Land, to which his poetry points as inevitable, was part of a general religious upsurge in the early twelfth century. Halevi’s poems of longing for Zion are among the best-known Hebrew poems outside the Bible. Yet they belong to no genre or tradition. Rather they are the response of one unusually gifted poet to a decisive crisis in medieval Jewish life. They express nostalgia not just for a Zion that Halevi had never seen – and which had never existed except in the world of Jewish legend – but also, implicitly, for a lost, once powerful and splendid Andalusia in which great hopes and illusions had died.12 In these poems, a western voice speaks at a time when the demographic process that was to bring most Jews westward was not yet completed. For brief moments, Hebrew, in engaging the obsession closest to its heart, breaks out of the shackles of Arabic ornamentation and speaks with real individuality and passion. In contrast with most medieval Hebrew poetry, the longing and searching of the Zion poems were not literary conventions but the true feelings of the ageing poet, driving him to leave Spain for Palestine. The plangent, questing mood of the Zion poems seems to pervade Halevi’s work, the secular love poems as well as the liturgical ones. Ophrah washes her clothes in my tears. She spreads them in the sunshine of her life. She has no need of fountains, nor sun to beautify her light. Ophrah tekhabes Time’s slaves – slaves of slaves, but God’s servant is free. For his part in life man prays: My part in you I see. Avdei zeman God, where can I find you, hidden in heaven on high? And where can I not find you – you fill the universe with glory! Yah, ana emtza’akha

Conclusion With Halevi’s departure forever from Spain in 1140 – he died a year or two later – and the Almohad conquest of Andalusia, the Jews of Muslim Spain and Hebrew poetry were exiled. Then, by the start of the thirteenth century, the Almohads were themselves defeated by Christian armies, and the empire of Islam was driven from Europe. And so, we see now, the flowering of Hebrew poetry in the

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years 1031–1140 was the final creation of a dying empire that had made Spain the cultural centre of the Western world. It was a long goodbye of a minority once integrally a part of this empire, whose alienation and decline – and its turn from assimilation to Jewish nationalism in despair, marked the empire’s fall. Halevi’s poetry represents a break with the artificiality caused by a crippling prosody: Arabic metrics and techniques, rhetoric and thematic conventions – part of Jewish assimilation into Arabic culture. For the creation of standard Arabic and the establishment of clear readings of the Koran for a diverse and growing Muslim population had affected the Arabic language adversely. When the philologists received wide-spread recognition from the upper strata of society it was difficult for the would-be poet not to adhere to the canons of language and style they established. This led to artificiality, with the emphasis on the manner of saying a thing rather than on the meaningful content. (Watt 1984: 48) Halevi’s Zion poems, though a step down from a more glorious literary past, marks a major turning point in Jewish socio-cultural history. However much influenced by secular Arabic poetry and lifestyle, Hebrew poets wanted to assert firm loyalty to the Jewish faith. They wrote Hebrew poetry because, despite the inherent artificiality of its adopted poetics, it was best capable of expressing their strongest feelings. In Hebrew, this poetry could be widely read only by Jews. At the same time, it was an act of cultural synthesis, of alliance and mimicry, of assimilation and competition. Enthusiasm for this assimilationist ideal might have led some Hebrew poets to adopt at times a secular voice alien to them. Symptomatic of the twisted state of Jewish–Muslim relations of the latter part of the ‘golden age’ is the fact that the most famous Jewish philosophical work of this period, Halevi’s Kuzari, written in Arabic, was a defence of the allegedly inferior religion, Judaism. More than this, ‘The Kuzari was a glorification of rabbinic Judaism and an unabashed statement of nationalism, very much in the modern sense of the word’ (Stillman 1979: 60). In the discussion in Book II, the Rabbi extols the land of Israel. Moses prayed to see it; he considered it a misfortune when this was denied him, and as an act of grace, when the land was shown to him from the summit of Pisgah, Persians, Indians, Greeks, and other nations begged to have sacrifices offered and prayers to be said for them in that Holy House, and they spent their wealth on it, though they believed in other religions, since the true religion did not admit them. Today, also, the country is honoured, although the Shekinah no longer appears in it; all nations make pilgrimages to it, long for it – excepting we ourselves, being oppressed and homeless. The King of the Khazars asks in reply why Jews do not return to the Holy Land. If this be so, thou fallest short of thy religious duty, by not endeavouring to reach that place, and making it thy abode in life and death, although

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The defence of Judaism in the Kuzari and its declaration of the practical duty to return to Zion would, of course, have been unnecessary if the Jews had been accepted as equals in Arab society. Especially after the pogrom in Granada in 1066, it was clear that the Jews were not tolerated in positions of power under Muslim rule. The artificiality of Hebrew poetry might be seen in this light as an inadvertent enactment of the artificiality and awkwardness of Jewish life under Muslim rule in medieval Spain. Hebrew poets were most completely freed from this artifice when, amid the warring fragments of the Umayyad empire and caught in a ‘holy war’ of Christians and Muslims, they could no longer see Spain as a ‘new Zion’. In much Hebrew poetry that emerged from this crisis, bitter despondency towards Arab society was implicitly far greater than that towards any aspect of Judaism. Jewish acculturation in Muslim Spain was based on the assumption of a realizable parity within a tolerant, essentially secular Arabic civilization. The fall of the Umayyad empire led, instead, to a failure of Arab universalism and a resurgence of Islamic religious militancy in which the Jews were seen as part of the problem of the empire’s decline. The nationalist undercurrent in Hebrew poetry may be seen as a reaction to this exclusivist zealotry. In the Kuzari, Halevi argues that the Jews are distinguished above all other peoples through their capacity to receive divine prophecy. Only in the land of Israel could they fulfil their prophetic destiny. Such nationalist views are not found among the earlier poets of the Golden Age, such as Hanagid and Gabirol. They betray the poet’s disillusionment with Muslim Spain. The strongest thrust of Hebrew poetry in the years immediately prior to the Almohad invasion was a nagging unease and, at times, despair with the host country. Consequently, the medieval Hebrew poets created an ideal alternative world in their poetry. In so doing, they anticipate an independent modern Hebrew literature, part of the resurgence of Jewish nationalism and the return to Zion.

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Nationalism, Reform Judaism and the Hebrew prayer book

Next to the Bible, the Hebrew prayer book (siddur, pl.
siddurim; ‘order’ or ‘arrangement’ [of prayers]) is the most important book in Jewish history and in some ways the most influential, particularly in keeping alive religious–national Jewish identity among scattered and highly diverse communities.1 Until the early nineteenth century, the siddur, despite local variations, had standard features internationally, both among Oriental Jews and those in European countries, with roots chiefly in the biblical and talmudic periods. All siddurim included prayers for the restoration of the Jews to the land of Israel. With the rise of European nationalism and the emancipation of the Jews in France (1791), and in the territories conquered by France in the Napoleonic wars, the question arose whether the national–religious content of the siddur was compatible with Jewish citizenship in the modern national state. In most European countries, the Jews were emancipated by 1870. Ancient restrictions and discriminatory practices were abolished. The Jews were granted full legal equality as citizens. The spread of secular enlightenment brought unprecedented Jewish acculturation, upward social mobility and radical changes in religious practices and self-perception. But there was a price to be paid. The denial of the distinctiveness of Jewish identity and community life meant the end of the considerable legal and fiscal autonomy typically enjoyed by Jewish communities in the early modern period. It also fixed Jewish difference as a problem. (Sutcliffe 2003: 3) As Jews became citizens of modern European states, they were expected to give up ‘Jewish difference’. With the incentives of civil rights and opportunities, and hoped-for freedom from their albatross identity as Jews, increasing numbers were ready to do so, particularly in Western Europe, where there was rapid expansion of secular school systems and universities. (In Russia, in contrast, which had a much larger Jewish population than in Western Europe, emancipation did not come until the 1917 revolution, and Jewish assimilation there was slower, dogged by violent Jew-hatred.) Through the Bible, Hastings (1997: 186) points out, the Jewish people gave the world the concepts of nation and nation-state. Now, many Jews,

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emancipated or hoping for emancipation, were forced to the painful realization that their ancient beliefs, tradition, and learning – including the love of Zion, fundamental to Judaism – might hold back their acceptance and adaptation. Rabbinic Judaism had totally defined them, directed their way of life, and maintained faith and Jewish social–religious solidarity. Now their religion seemed increasingly outmoded and in conflict both with their newly developing political loyalties to the countries in which they lived and with the secular universalist aims of the Enlightenment. Hebrew prayers, such as the Alenu and the Blessing of the New Month (Yehi ratzon), roused alarm among assimilationists, who wanted to be seen as loyal patriots. It is our duty to praise the Master of all, to exalt the Creator of the universe, who has not made us like the nations of the world and has not placed us like the families of the earth; who has not designed our destiny to be like theirs, nor our lot like that of all their multitude. (Birnbaum 1999: 136) May he who performed miracles for our fathers, and freed them from slavery, speedily redeem us and gather our dispersed people from the four corners of the earth so that all Israel be knit together; and let us say, Amen. (ibid.: 382) Legal emancipation encouraged many Jews to feel that their destiny was bound up not with their fellow Jews, in traditional hope for the messianic age and the restoration to Zion, but with their countries of citizenship. Their Jewish religious nationhood was superseded by their secular patriotism. In the new world of nationalist rivalries and conflicts, it was questionable if, for example, German Jews could be ‘knit together’ in fellowship with French Jews: at times it was their patriotic duty to fight and even kill one another. Political pressure contributed to this extraordinary, perhaps unique, spectacle – contrary to the spirit of the age of nationalism – of a religious minority declaring its own supersession by the dominant culture of Christian Europe, with the (ultimately illusory) aim of gaining acceptance. The problem of Jewish religious– national identity in France was put on the political agenda by Napoleon in 1807, when he convened the so-called Sanhedrin (a supreme Jewish religious court). His aim: to secure the affirmation that the Jews – whom he described as ‘the vilest of all nations’ (Landes 1985: 292) – were no longer a nation, only a religion, and that the French Jews owed love and loyalty neither to fellow Jews nor to the land of Israel but to fellow Frenchmen and to France. The eager compliance of Jews in France (who at the time numbered no more than 40,000) became the model for Jewish communities struggling for acceptance in nineteenth century Europe. In the ultra-patriotic ‘Prayer for France’ in the French siddur, France is a chosen nation, ‘most worthy’ of God, a light unto the nations (Marrus 1971: 118).2 For some French Jews, overwhelmed with gratitude for egalité, France was the new Zion, and the Revolution the messianic age.

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The principle of national affirmation seemed to settle the matter of Jewish identity for emancipated Jews – if Christian Jew-hatred vanished. In the first decades after the French Revolution, legal emancipation totally changed the lives of many European Jews. The ominous French suspicion of dual identity was offset by signs that the old Christian hatred of Jews and Judaism might pass. Emancipation had inbuilt anti-Jewish elements – it was not granted on principles of tolerance and pluralism but with the aim of benefiting the ruling classes – but it gave Jews new chances of educational and professional advancement and, to an extent, social integration. Beliefs in the irreversibility of assimilation, the weakening of Church superstition and power, the spread of enlightened liberalism and tolerance, were common in the nineteenth century, especially among the upper and middle classes. German-Jewish reformers – anticipating ‘modernist’ students of nationalism such as Kedourie (1960), Gellner (1983), and Hobsbawm (1990) – assumed that the modern world of the secular Enlightenment, of reason and science, marked a total, irrevocable break with the past, with its religious superstition and backwardness.3 Even if Judaeophobia survived, Judaism – like other religions – would have to change, perhaps vanish, in an increasingly modern, secular, urban, industrialized world. The Age of Reason would bring emancipated Jews ‘messianic’ redemption. Berlin or Paris or Vienna would be their new Jerusalem. German would replace Hebrew as the Holy Tongue. The Preface to the Berlin Reform siddur of 1817 states that however holy Hebrew had been to the Jews in the past, ‘seven times more holy unto us is the language which belongs to the present and to the soil whence we have sprung forth’ (Petuchowski 1968: 135). From the time of Moses Mendelssohn (1727–86), leader and exemplar of the German-Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah), the Reform movement was itself part of the struggle for emancipation. The fateful conversion of the God-intoxication of the Jews to Nation-intoxication began in eighteenth century Germany. The Jews were as yet totally lacking in civic rights, except for a handful of wealthy Hofjuden (court Jews), granted privileges in return for their financial services. As they rose socially, German Jews had their sons and daughters educated by German tutors who often denigrated Judaism. The resultant alienation from Judaism contributed to the wave of conversions to Christianity in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. And so began throughout Europe a pattern of defection from Judaism to national identity and patriotism. Mendelssohn himself showed signs of patriotism despite being a ‘politically outcast Jew’ with very limited rights. He embodies the incongruity of Jewish patriotism in that he ‘could forget that he was a Jew and regard the patriotic ideal as might the fully privileged member of a nation-state’ (Meyer 1967: 25). The German maskilim, particularly Mendelssohn’s successor and the founder of Reform Judaism, David Friedländer (1756–1834), ‘rejected Judaism as a national religion’ (Barzilay 1959: 169). In 1812, after the Prussian Jews were emancipated, Friedländer published an appeal to the Prussian Jews to reform Jewish prayer and education totally, as part of their integration in the Prussian state. The attachment of the Jews to the land of Israel was a thing of the past.

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Reform Judaism and the Hebrew prayer book As long as the Jews . . . were not only made to feel, but actually told, that they were only tolerated and really belonged to Palestine, so long there was neither cause nor reason to change the contents and the language of the prayers. (Petuchowski 1968: 132)

However, in the age of emancipation, Friedländer went on, ancient prayers for the return to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the Temple were anachronistic: Here I stand before God. I pray for blessing and success for my king, for my fellow-citizens, for myself and for my family – not for a return to Jerusalem, not for a restoration of the Temple and the sacrifices. (ibid.: 133) During the Napoleonic wars, Jewish patriotism reached a new level of intensity, when Jewish religious leaders called for sacrifice for the Prussian Fatherland. O what a heavenly feeling to possess a fatherland! O what a rapturous idea to be able to call a spot, a place, a nook one’s own upon this lovely earth. . . . There upon the battlefield of honor where [. . .] all work for a single goal: for their fatherland; there where he is best who submits most loyally to his king – there also will the barriers of prejudice come tumbling down. Hand in hand with your fellow soldiers you will complete the great work; they will not deny you the name of brother, for you will have earned it. (Meyer 1967: 139) Had Christian Judaeophobia vanished with emancipation, the de-nationalization of Judaism might have gone ahead with little hindrance, and the ultimate success of political Zionism would have been unnecessary and unlikely. As a young man, Theodor Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization in 1897, had shared with the radical German reformers the view that the primary loyalty of the Jew should be not to the Jewish people and to Judaism, which was fossilized, but to the nation (in Herzl’s case, Austria). Few predicted in the early nineteenth century that Jewish assimilation and success would rouse widespread hostility among the Christians at being ‘Jewified’ and ‘taken over’ by Jews, and that Jewish patriotism would be contemptuously dismissed by Jew-haters as a cover for malevolence, or that German völkisch groups would ultimately point to the alleged lack of patriotism among the Jews to justify hatred and persecution (Niewyk 1980: 47). The idea expressed by Friedländer in 1812 that through emancipation, the Jew ‘was no longer regarded as a stranger. He ceased being a stranger’ (Petuchowski 1968: 132), proved overly optimistic. Most Europeans saw the Jews not as fellow citizens but as aliens – as, indeed, the Jews had traditionally regarded themselves in the diaspora, up to the time of the Enlightenment. Prophets such as Heine and, later, Moses Hess and Nietzsche, who had nightmares of the brave new world of enlightened liberalism turning into a killing field, were mostly ignored.

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The Enlightenment, Jew-hatred and reform There was sobering evidence already in the age of Enlightenment that Christian Jew-hatred could be maintained in new secular forms: this hatred set off a reaction in Reform Judaism. Many towering eighteenth century thinkers of the Enlightenment influenced the Reform movement. Yet they generally hated Judaism as the fount of Christianity and looked upon the Jews with contempt. Alone among them, the French political philosopher Montesquieu was willing to accept Jews as they were, without change or conversion to Christianity. The French Enlightenment, while creating the ideological basis of emancipation, also undermined it with Jew-hatred (Hertzberg 1968, Sutcliffe 2003). To Diderot, for example, the Jews were a nation of bigoted, greedy obscurantists, ignorant and fanatical, aliens in Europe, dangerous enemies of the human race, beyond redemption. Voltaire, while teaching universal toleration, expressed intolerance of Judaism and of the Jews as an ‘ignorant and barbarous people, who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition and the most invincible hatred for every people by whom they are tolerated and enriched. Still, we ought not to burn them’ (Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz 1995: 305). Hate or ambivalence towards Jews was expressed by German Enlightenment thinkers, too. To Kant, for example, Judaism was not a true religion: it was not founded on moral law. Jews were a nation of usurers and cheaters (Low 1979: 94). Fichte believed that the Jews constituted a state within a state, they were crooked, powerful, and dangerous to Europe: ‘In the country where I have the same rights as an all-powerful minister of state, any Jew can rob me with impunity’ (Ettinger 1978: 13). Scholars such as Rühs and Fries attacked the Jews as an intolerable state within a state; they were aliens, parasites, conspiratorially tied to their co-religionists everywhere by their arrogant religious belief in being ‘chosen’, Judaism was a plague which the Jews must give up for Christianity. Though Hegel supported emancipation, he regarded the Jews as inferior to Christians. To Schopenhauer, Christianity was itself a contemptible Jewish depravity. These were among the most respected thinkers of the period between the French Revolution and the Holocaust, and their teachings were ‘politically correct’ in their time. The German Jewish reformers belonged to the first generations of universityeducated Jews. They gravitated to the rabbinate in part because as Jews they were barred from other professions, such as law and university teaching. They used the rabbinate as a platform in the struggle for emancipation. Influenced by negative views of Judaism expressed by German professors, they agreed that Judaism was filled with benighted medieval superstition and guided by retrograde rabbinic authority. Perhaps they were excessively in awe of professorial authority and secular learning, especially German ‘science’. Yet their fundamental belief was hardly irrational: that a new, more modern and viable form of Judaism might emerge, free of alleged Jewish ‘flaws’, and solving the so-called Jewish Problem, through modern education. In common with other educated European Jews, powerlessness inclined the reformers to a naïve utopian faith in progress. The idea

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that the removal of Jewish national prayers from the siddur would help bring the Jews acceptance in a predominantly anti-Jewish Europe was one of their lesser illusions. In the half-century after the fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna in 1815, European Jews discovered to their dismay that emancipation, assimilation, patriotic loyalty, and even baptism, did not free them from Jew-hatred, which persisted at every level of society: among the ignorant, bigoted, as yet unenfranchised masses, who bitterly resented Jewish emancipation; among the middle classes, who viewed with hostility the influx of Jews to higher education and the professions, where success was judged on merit, not religion or social standing; and among Conservative and Christian groups, including the aristocracy and the Church, who felt threatened by change. Secular enlightenment, revolutions and massive social and economic upheavals, far from eliminating Jew-hatred, caused it to flourish. France’s defeat in 1815 led to an anti-Jewish backlash against Napoleon’s policy of emancipating all Jews who lived in countries which he conquered. The ‘Hep Hep’ riots of 1819 were the worst outbreak of German anti-Jewish violence before Kristallnacht. Faced with the angry mob and accusations of dual loyalty, the Jews found their assertions of patriotism, however fervent and sincere, to be futile. The contemptuous German response to this patriotism was unexpected: ‘Very few possessed the insight to see that the defeat of Napoleon would bring the Jews not the welcome given a brother but the rejection accorded an intruding stranger’ (Meyer 1967: 139). Jews continued to hope that Jew-hatred would pass and Germany would accept them as Germans.4 The ugly fact was that ‘the further Jewish integration proceeded – the more Jews blended into German society – the more pronounced anti-Semitism became’ (Markovits et al. 1998: 90).

Reform Judaism and the suppression of Jewish nationalism In the charged atmosphere of rising German nationalism, Reform Judaism emerged: this was a half-century before full emancipation was granted, when Germany was unified in 1871. The siddur of the Hamburg Temple – symbolically dedicated on 18 October 1818, the fifth anniversary of the battle of Leipzig and the liberation of German territories from French rule – was revolutionary in omitting prayers which had been recited daily since the talmudic era and, in some cases, since biblical times.5 Without question the omission and alteration of certain liturgical passages dealing with the messianic return to Zion was the most audacious innovation of the Hamburg reformers. It cast doubt on a central principle of Jewish faith firmly grounded in all layers of Jewish tradition. To deny hope of Israel’s reconstitution as a nation on its own soil and the rebuilding of the temple, it was felt, amounted to a denial of Judaism itself. (Meyer 1988: 59)

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Other German communities adopted similarly radical siddurim. Among prime ‘offenders’ were prayers for the return of Jewish exiles to the land of Israel and for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the restoration of the royal house of David. O bring us home in peace from the four corners of the earth, and make us walk upright to our land. (Birnbaum 1999: 76) Return in mercy to thy city Jerusalem and dwell in it as thou hast promised; rebuild it soon, in our days, as an everlasting structure, and speedily establish in it the throne of David. Blessed art thou, O Lord, Builder of Jerusalem. (ibid.: 90) From thy abode, our King, appear and reign over us, for we wait for thee. O when wilt thou reign in Zion? Speedily, in our days, do thou dwell there forever. Mayest thou be exalted and sanctified in Jerusalem thy city throughout all generations and to all eternity. May our eyes behold thy kingdom, as it is said in thy glorious Psalms by thy truly anointed David: The Lord shall reign forever; Your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the Lord! [146:10]. (Birnbaum 1987: 264) The reformers excluded Hebrew prayers for Zion and Jerusalem in part because they genuinely believed them to be anachronistic but also in reaction to the charge that Jews could not be loyal citizens. Long before the emergence of political Zionism at the end of the nineteenth century, the reformers were afraid that religious–national elements of Judaism and Orthodox rabbinic authority would undermine Jewish assimilation into German society and call into question the patriotism of the German Jews.6 This fear was grounded in reality. From the start of emancipation until the Holocaust, European ‘Zionist’ anti-Semites (who in some cases – e.g. Werner Sombart – were well-meaning) would taunt the Jews with the charge that their only real loyalty was to Zion: ‘What are you doing in our country? You do not belong here. Go back to your own country!’. Fichte, the prophet of German nationalism, accused the Jews of being a nation inimical to the interests of Christian Europe. Shortly after the emancipation of the French Jews in 1791, he expressed a form of ‘Zionism’ which was to become common among anti-Semites.7 I see absolutely no way of giving [the Jews] civic rights; except perhaps, if one night we chop off all their heads and replace them with new ones, in which there would not be one single Jewish idea. And then, I see no other way to protect ourselves from the Jews, except if we conquer their promised land for them and send all of them there. (Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz 1995: 309)

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Reform Judaism as an expression of German patriotism German Reform Judaism responded to such criticisms by insisting that the German Jews were devoted to the fatherland and nothing else. Some German rabbis – including Abraham Geiger (1810–74), chief rabbi of Breslau and leader of Reform Judaism in Germany; Samuel Holdheim (1806–60), the radical Reform rabbi of Berlin; Joseph Kahn (1809–75), chief rabbi of Trier; and David Einhorn (1809–79), rabbi of Hoppstaedten and chief rabbi of the district of Birkenfeld – developed anxieties and convictions unknown prior to the age of nationalism. Jewish national hopes were irreconcilable with German nationalism. Jewish religious nationalism as reflected in prayers to Zion must be eliminated. Loyalty must be shown not to Jewry but to the German people. The use of Hebrew itself could signify Jewish aspirations and should be scrapped (Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz 1995: 178–83)8. Judaism as interpreted by Reform Jews must not conflict with German nationalism: it was a universal religion teaching the love and progress of humanity. At the Reform rabbinical conference in Brunswick in 1844, Naphtali Frankfurter (1810–66), a preacher in Hamburg, extolled the fervent patriotism typical of German Jews: ‘As men, we love all mankind, but as Germans, we love the Germans [sic] as the children of our fatherland’ (ibid.: 177). The 1848 introduction to the siddur of the Berlin Reform congregation – the most radical in Europe at the time – justified the omission or alteration of prayers relating to Jewish chosenness. Israel was a chosen people, and this well-founded conviction of its chosenness worked for the salvation and enlightenment of mankind. But as an objective fact, with all its important consequences for our religion, this chosenness has lost its validity. (Plaut 1963: 58) This siddur, while omitting a service for the Ninth of Av, the anniversary of the destruction of both temples in Jerusalem, did include a long German prayer explaining why mourning was no longer necessary for the Temple, Jerusalem, the ruined kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and the consequent humiliation of the Jews. Here, on the soil of a new homeland, Thou hast restored to us the fatherland which we have lost for ever in the land of our fathers; and Thou hast given us a full and unlimited portion in the freedom of this great and free nation to which we belong. (Petuchowski 1968: 293) In the same year, the programme of the Friends of Reform in Worms declared the need to replace prayers for Zion with German patriotism: ‘No longer must our

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lips pray for a return to Palestine, while at the same time the strongest bonds tie our souls to the German Fatherland whose fate is inextricably interwoven with ours’ (Plaut 1963: 61). Geiger in 1869 stated among the principles of the Reform siddur that ‘the national aspect of Israel must recede to the background . . . . The separation between Israel and the other nations, which existed at one time, has no right to be expressed in prayer. Rather ought there to be an expression of the joy that such barriers are increasingly falling’ (Petuchowski 1968: 166). Most Reform rabbis did not go as far as Holdheim, who considered total social and cultural integration of the Jews among the German people as a religious duty, regardless of what the Germans thought. Holdheim wanted to jettison everything in Judaism that smacked of superstition, exclusiveness and particularity – he even shifted the Sabbath to Sunday to bring the Jews into line with their Christian neighbours. Yet Geiger and his colleagues were the most radical religious reformers in Jewish history. They did not just omit prayers for the return to Zion and depicting the Jews as a chosen people: they also denied the existence of allegedly universal Jewish solidarity. Biblical prophecies of the return of Jews from exile to the Land of Israel, they claimed, belonged to the distant messianic age. The Talmud, a relic of the Roman period, was irrelevant. The German Jews were permanently resident in Germany. Barriers separating Jews and non-Jews should no longer be expressed in prayer – though Jew-haters insisted that Jews were different. The first loyalty of Jews was to the fatherland – even if the fatherland did not want them. Out of this patriotic loyalty Geiger condemned Moses Montefiore’s mission to the Orient to save the endangered Jews of Damascus during the blood libel of 1840. Jews should not agitate for their own interests, only for those of the fatherland. Geiger declared himself a human being first, then a German, then a Jew.9 The thorny problems created by the struggle for Jewish emancipation also underlie Einhorn’s declaration at the Reform rabbinical conference at Frankfurt in 1845 that in the interests of ‘progress’, prayers for Jewish political independence should be excised from the siddur (Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz 1995: 183–84). In an open rebuke to the reformers in 1845, the chief rabbi of Prague, Salomon Jehuda Leib Rappoport (1790–1867) argued that the renunciation of nationhood would bring no benefit to the Jews. The events of the next century were to bear out the essential truth of his prediction. Those among the gentiles who have considered the sons of Jacob to be loyal servants and lovers of their present homeland have done so knowing of [the Jews’] yearning for the holy land of their forefathers. They never rejected, nor will they ever reject, the Jews for seeking comfort in their prayers and pouring out their hearts over past troubles and future fortune. In contrast, those who have hated Israel in the past will not change their attitudes to the Jews now and love and respect them because they have made themselves desperate and forlorn, without any hope for the future. (ibid.: 191)

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According to Gershom Scholem, the reformers’ exclusion from the siddur of the hope of return to Zion and the rebuilding of Jerusalem was a form of appeasement and self-effacement, with questionable effectiveness. The self-abnegation of the Jews, although welcomed and indeed demanded, was often seen as evidence of their lack of moral substance . . . the disdain in which so many Germans held the Jews fed on the ease with which the upper cultural stratum of the Jews disavowed its own traditions. For what could a heritage be worth if the elite of its chosen heirs were in such a rush to disavow them? (Scholem 1976: 76)

National elements in the siddur In trying to eliminate Jewish national elements from the siddur, the reformers set themselves an impossible task. Their aims were undermined not only by the anti-Semitic charge that Jews remained Jews regardless of assimilation (and even baptism) but also by Jewish history: Hebrew Scriptures, prayer, homiletics, mysticism, sacred poetry, the Hebrew language, the synagogue and its symbols, as well as the rabbinic tradition – not to speak of the Jews themselves, among whom religious conversion and marriage out of the faith were rare prior to the nineteenth century – had their roots in the land of Israel.10 The reformers were faced with the conundrum how Jewish prayer could be divorced from Zion and Jerusalem. The siddur defined to an enormous extent the character of the Jews, cutting across differences of class, age, sex, geography, degrees of religious belief and observance. The prayers in the siddur never belonged to an elite but were loved and preserved by the Jewish masses. As in the case of other ancient religious cultures which survived into and influenced the modern age – in China or India, for example – the siddur inevitably left its mark on modern Jewish national identity. The exploration of a small part of the siddur which follows makes clear why changes made by the reformers were unacceptable to most Jews, even to many congregants in Reform temples, as Geiger and his colleagues found out.11 The history of the siddur and many of its primary themes – especially Jerusalem and the Temple – reflect the persistence of Jewish national identity, which no editing could change.

The evolution of the siddur: national roots For most of Jewish history, the siddur has been an effective instrument for mass literacy and the survival of Judaism and Jewish religious–national identity. The Bible and Talmud have traditionally been male preserves, based on the biblical injunction in the Shema that fathers must teach their children (Deuteronomy 6:4–9) – which was interpreted to mean ‘their sons’. However, in rabbinic law (Mishnah Berachot 3: 3), women were expected to pray, and women occasionally learned to read in Hebrew from the siddur.

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Until the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, Jewish worship was focused on the sacrificial cult, though prayer was part of the Temple rite and private prayer was common. Many prayers in the modern siddur date from before the fourth century CE, when much prayer and Torah study was still oral, for their commitment to writing was discouraged.12 Hebrew prayers were apparently not standardized into works recognized today as siddurim until the ninth to twelfth centuries CE.13 Though collections of Hebrew prayers had evidently circulated for many generations previously, the earliest known siddurim were compiled in Babylonia (now Iraq) under Islamic rule by some of the Geonim, the foremost rabbinic authorities of the early Middle Ages.14 As the centre of Jewish life shifted from the Middle East, from Palestine and Babylonia, to Europe, and the Palestinian Jewish community was largely decimated by the Crusades, the tradition of prayer was endangered and the standardization of the siddur became necessary (Reif 1993: 131).

The ahistoricity of Hebrew prayer In common with the Bible (c.eighth–second centuries BCE) and the Talmud (c.first– sixth centuries CE), the siddur is an anthology of texts, though its time frame is wider: it has texts from the Bible, especially the Book of Psalms, to the sixteenth century and even to the present. The Friday evening prayers (Kabbalat Shabbat), for example, move from the Bible to the rabbinic period to the kabbalists in sixteenth century Safed in the space of a few pages. This flight above time is intentional: the religious values of the siddur, as of other sacred Jewish texts, are ahistorical. This concept of time has had far-reaching political consequences in the history of nationalism. It encourages the nation to see itself as eternally present: it emerges from slavery now, receives the Torah, endures the tribulations of wandering through the desert, and enters the land of Israel. Prayer affirmed eternal God-given sovereignty over the Promised Land. Most Jewish festivals and ceremonies recall Zion and Jerusalem. The sixth blessing of the wedding ceremony, for example, is a blessing of Zion: ‘May Zion exult at the joyful reunion of her children in Jerusalem. Blessed art thou O Lord, who causest Zion to rejoice in her children’ (Birnbaum 1999: 756). Prayer, too, is mostly in simple Hebrew which children who have a basic vocabulary and grammar can understand and learn by heart, and which in a life of observance accumulates a wealth of associations. The Hebrew Nobel laureate for literature, S.Y. Agnon (1888?–1970), describes the effect of a siddur on a sensitive child’s imagination in ‘A Beautiful Story about my Siddur’ (Sippur na’eh shel Siddur Tefillati, 1931), set in Polish Galicia at the end of the nineteenth century. Father makes the blessing over the wine saying, ‘who has chosen and exalted us above all nations’, and the whole world is exalted, we above all. I am astonished that this can happen through a few words sung by father. And as he thanks the Lord for granting us life, I feel that the Holy One, Blessed be He, has brought not just us, but time itself, to this moment. (Agnon 1953–62, vol. 2: 239)

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Jews alienated from their tradition might take to heart the anti-Semitic charge that this culture was inferior. But those well-educated in Judaism tended to remain loyal to their religious–national identity. For this reason, political Zionism had its grass roots support not in Western Europe, where the Jews (including Zionists) were for the most part culturally assimilated – and had developed a different, secular perception of time – but in Eastern Europe, where traditional Judaism was far stronger.

The Temple in Jerusalem Prayer evolved partly with the aim of preserving the memory of Temple sacrifices and the messianic hope that the Temple would be rebuilt. The synagogue was seen as an outpost of the ruined Temple, a ‘minor sanctuary’.15 Prayer took the place of sacrifices.16 The three pilgrim festivals – Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles – and the prayers recited on these holidays replaced the pilgrimages to Jerusalem. As well as specific prayers for the rebuilding of the Temple and the restoration of sacrifices (e.g. Birnbaum 1999: 96–98), the arrangement of prayers follows the pattern of the Temple sacrifices: the morning prayers (Shacharit), the additional prayers (Musaf, for Sabbath and festivals), and the afternoon prayers (Mincha); the evening prayers (Ma’ariv) were a later addition. The siddur has detailed quotations from the Bible and Talmud describing Temple sacrifices. The Temple service on the festivals is recalled in minute detail in the festival Musaf (Additional) services, including the following prayer: Because of our sins we were exiled from our country and banished far from our land . . . . Our Father, our King . . . . Unite our scattered people from among the nations; gather our dispersed from the far ends of the earth. Bring us to Zion thy city with ringing song, to Jerusalem thy sanctuary with everlasting joy. (Birnbaum 1987: 750)

National elements of Bible readings in the synagogue service The siddur has many biblical quotations which emphasize the religious–national identity of the Jewish people. At that time I will bring you home; at that time I will gather you; indeed, I will grant you fame and praise among all the peoples of the earth, when I bring back your captivity before your own eyes, says the Lord [Zephaniah 3:20]. (e.g. Birnbaum 1999: 20) I will remember my covenant with Jacob; also my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham I will remember; and I will remember the land [Leviticus 26:42]. (ibid.: 24)

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The offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord, as in the days of old and as in former years [Malachi 3:4]. (ibid.: 33 etc.) Since antiquity, the synagogue service has included readings from the Bible (kri’at ha-Torah) which have helped keep Jewish national identity alive. From the first century CE, public readings from the Torah were an institutional part of the prayer services (see Mishnah Megillah III 4 – IV 10). The stories of the Exodus, the giving of the Torah at Sinai, the wanderings in the desert, and the entry to the Promised Land, have been constants in Jewish life. After the Torah readings, there are also readings from the prophetic literature (haftarot). The national significance of the readings on prominent dates in the Jewish calendar is clear. a

New Moon Sabbath: Rejoice with Jerusalem, all who love her, rejoice with her all who mourn her. (Isaiah 66:10)

b

New Year (Rosh Hashana), second day: Bitter sobs and laments in Ramah . . . Rachel weeps for her children. She won’t be consoled for they are gone . . . Do not cry: reward will come for your labour. They will return from enemy land. There’s hope for you yet. Your sons will come back to their land. (Jeremiah 31:14–15)

c

Tabernacles (Sukkot), eighth day: Solomon’s dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem (I Kings 8).

d

Rejoicing of the Law (Simchat Torah): the start of the conquest of Canaan (Joshua 1).

e

On the Sabbath which falls on Hanukkah: the restoration of Judah and rebuilding of the Temple, late sixth century BCE (Zechariah 2–3).

f

Passover, intermediate Sabbath: Son of Man! These bones are the people of Israel. Some say our bones are dry,

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Ninth of Av (Tisha B’Av), national defeat: . . . On the waste of mount Zion jackals prowl. But you, Lord, reign forever! Why do you forever forget us? Why do you abandon us? Return us, O God, to you. Let us be restored, as we were . . . (Lamentations 5:18–21)

h

Sabbath before Rosh Hashana: The Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the peoples, whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee. (Deuteronomy 30:3)

The Psalms In countless translations from the Hebrew, especially those of Luther into German and Coverdale into English, the Psalms are the most influential poetry in cultural history. The Psalms in the original Hebrew helped preserve Jewish national consciousness as they did among nations that adopted Jewish Scripture in translation. Originally products of Temple culture, recited and sung in the Temple, set in Jerusalem and the land of Israel, the Psalms are integral to Jewish national identity, and ideally suited for prayer. The Hallel (Praise) service, which dates from well before the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, evidently has the first set of psalms (113–18) used in communal worship (Reif 1993: 130; Birnbaum 1999: 565–71). After 70 CE, the daily psalms recited by the Levites (Sunday: no. 24; Monday: no. 48; Tuesday: no. 82; Wednesday: nos. 94–95:2; Thursday: no. 81; Friday: no. 93; Saturday: no. 92) and the fifteen Shirei ha-Ma’alot (Songs of Ascents)
Psalms 120–34, recited during the ascent on the Temple Mount, continued to be read or sung and were eventually incorporated into the siddur (ibid.: 139ff., 467ff.). Psalms incorporated into the daily Morning Service include nos. 100, 145–50 and, specially for Sabbath, nos. 19, 33, 34, 90, 91, 92, 93, 135, and 136 (ibid.: 55ff., 305 ff.). As a preamble to the weekday Grace after meals (birkhat ha-mazon) the rabbis chose Psalm 137: ‘By the waters of Babylon,

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there we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.’ For Sabbath and festivals they chose Psalm 126: ‘When the Lord returned the exiles of Zion, we were like unto dreamers’ (Birnbaum 1999: 757). By implication, the weekday represents exile while on the holy days the Jews are restored, as it were, to the land of Israel. In such ways, Jewish national identity could be maintained symbolically, in the fabric of Judaism. About half the 150 psalms were eventually included in the siddur.

Hymns While the Psalms are among the oldest strata of the siddur, the hymns and popular songs are among the most recent, mostly dating from the tenth–sixteenth centuries. The compilation of Rabbi Israel Najara (sixteenth century), Zemirot Yisrael (Songs of Israel), includes 346 poems and was ‘the most popular songbook among the Jewish communities in the Orient’ (Birnbaum 1999: 295). Some of these were so much loved that they were included in the siddur. Like the compilations of Percy, Goethe, Scott, Lönnrot and others, Zemirot Yisrael helped preserve and reshape national consciousness. Among the repeated themes in these poems are the return of the exiles to the land of Israel and the rebuilding of the land and of Jerusalem.17 [O God] rejoice them with total rebuilding [of Jerusalem] Kol mekadesh (He who makes holy . . . ) Rabbi Moses ben Kalonymus (?) (Mainz, tenth century) (ibid.: 293) The bereaved city of Zion, Held today in utter contempt, May she soon be populated – A happy mother of children Be-Motza’ei yom menucha (At the close of the day of rest) Rabbi Jacob Menuy (thirteenth century) (ibid.: 556) Temple of the king, royal city Rise from your ruins You’ve been long enough in the valley of tears Lecha dodi (Come, my friend) Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz (sixteenth century) (ibid.: 245) Return to your Temple and the Holy of Holies where all will be glad and sing songs of praise in Jerusalem, city of beauty Yah Ribbon (Almighty God), last stanza Rabbi Israel Najara (sixteenth century) (ibid.: 295)

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Reform Judaism and the Hebrew prayer book May the Temple be rebuilt and Jerusalem filled; As we climb the mountain we will song a new song Tzur mi-shelo (Rock of Ages . . . ) Anonymous (ibid.: 297)

The siddur, Scripture and national identity The German Jewish reformers found that by trying to switch off the nationalist current in the siddur, they drew attention to it and in some ways enhanced it. The same force in Scripture could be adapted to inspire national identity in modern nations, such as Britain, the United States and Germany, which had to a large extent adopted biblical typology (Smith 2003): they were the ‘new Israel’ covenanted to God, who had brought them out of ‘Egypt’. If the exodus from Egypt could inspire the English Revolution under Cromwell and the American Revolution under Washington, why could it not stir the Jews – for whom the Exodus was a daily event in the siddur and Torah readings18 – to revive their ancient religious nationalism in secular political form? Some Orthodox contemporaries of the German reformers – notably Rabbi Zvi Hirsh Kalischer (1795–1874) and Judah Alkalai (1798–1878) – were beginning to see national movements such as those of the Poles and the Greeks as an inspiration to nascent Bible-based Jewish nationalism. In light of the biblical influence on modern nationalism, the claim of anti-Semites that the Jews comprised a nation seemed unanswerable – unless the modern world broke totally with the past. Yet the survival of Jew-hatred in modern states showed that the past was not dead. At the same time, the reformers did not want religious–national elements in Judaism to hinder even further Jewish integration into Christian society and jeopardize their civil rights, or the prospects thereof. Patriotism and good will, deutscher Gesinnung and sacrifice an Gut und Blut, might eventually tame the savage beast of ancient hatred. Germany was, after all, the land of Goethe, Beethoven and Kant.

The hope of the reformers The reformers’ efforts to amputate Jewish religious nationalism and national identity from Judaism were doomed from the start. The rise of the secular European nation-state guided by reason and science did not mean a total break either with Christian Jew-hatred or with Jewish religious–national memories and hopes as expressed in Scripture and the siddur. The prophetic teaching to ‘seek the welfare of the city where I have exiled you’ (Jeremiah 29:7) and the rabbinic injunction ‘to pray for the welfare of the [Roman] government’ (Mishnah Avot III 2) were articles of faith among diaspora Jews. Yet Jewish patriotism and national identity were traditionally expressed in religious form, not to the countries in which the Jews lived, which they regarded as galut (exile), but to the land of Israel, to which all diaspora synagogues faced and for which their congregations prayed. The reformers argued in effect that, with emancipation, the Jews were

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no longer in galut, that a secular, liberal Europe was their salvation; they had to recognize that they were no longer, as it were, ‘God’s children’ but Germany’s ‘stepchildren’, and Stiefkinder müssen artig sein (Stepchildren must behave themselves).19 This crisis of Jewish identity was (and to a lesser extent, still is) the crucible of modern Judaism, with totally unexpected – at times absurd, even tragic – consequences. ‘No community’, wrote Isaiah Berlin of the German Jews, ‘ever succeeded in identifying itself more closely with the nation in which it lived’ (2000: 169). The main organization of German Jews, the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (the CV), founded in 1893, followed the view of the German Haskalah in rejecting the idea of mutual Jewish responsibility: they refused on principle to have official contact with Jewish organizations outside Germany or to help Jews from other countries unless they became German citizens. The CV feared the accusation, which became increasingly popularized in bestselling anti-Semitic tracts such as the forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that the Jews were international conspirators. Despite continuing prejudice and discrimination, culminating in racial anti-Semitism, the German Jews showed extraordinary eagerness to serve the fatherland in the wars of 1870–71 and 1914–18. Their sacrifice – about one German Jew in seven served on the front in World War I, and 12,000 were killed in action – did not save them from being blamed for Germany’s defeat (the Jewish ‘stab in the back’). Yet, the negation of a Jewish national identity was widespread, not just in Western Europe but also, to a growing extent after the Russian Revolution, in Eastern Europe. Even Zionists, particularly in Germany, tended to be patriots who saw their Zionism as merely philanthropic activity for poor Jews in other countries. When the Nazis came to power, many German Jews were so strongly attached to Germany that they preferred to stay regardless of the danger. The Reform Jews in Berlin stated on 1 May 1935: ‘We have absolutely no intention of cutting ourselves off from our German national community and our national ties and of changing over to a Jewish national or folk community’ (Bauer 1978: 115). This view, echoing Geiger and Holdheim, proved fatal to many of those who believed in it and were consequently held back from flight overseas. In the end, about one tenth of the German Jews (60,000) were driven to Palestine, the highest percentage of immigrants from any country, including Russia and Poland, from a community that, on the whole, had been vehemently anti-Zionist. The issue of Jewish identity as reflected in the controversy over the siddur is coloured – settled perhaps – by the fact that in the Holocaust the Jews were murdered not as Germans, Frenchmen, Italians, Poles, Hungarians, Austrians and so on, but as Jews. Yet, long before the Holocaust, the arguments over the siddur made clear that even as a religious work, it had the potential for stirring up political nationalism. Otherwise, the reformers could hardly have seen the siddur as a threat to their longed-for assimilation into Germany and other European countries and consequently felt the need to eliminate the ‘evidence’ that they were a separate nation. This was felt to be shameful accommodationism and obsequiousness by scholars such as Krochmal, Rappoport, Luzzatto and Graetz. They determined to

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redress the balance and instil national pride in Jewish culture and, as Luzzatto passionately wrote, ‘put an end to the servility and spiritual degradation of those [Jews] who say: “we are Germans, we are just like you, your culture is our culture, your morality is our morality!” It is not so! It is not so!’ (Sachar 1977: 262). By denying that the Jews were a nation, the reformers roused awareness that traditional Jewish national identity was potentially adaptable and viable in the secular modern age. Indirectly they helped prepare the way for the rise of political Zionism in the late nineteenth century, as racial anti-Semitism grew.20 Political Zionism, in turn, stimulated new sympathy for Judaism among assimilated Jews. At the start of the Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897, Herzl for the first time in many years entered a synagogue. So alienated was he from Jewish culture that he needed special coaching for the ordeal of reciting from the siddur the short Hebrew blessing over the Torah: ‘When he was called up to the Torah, he found that the few Hebrew words of the benediction were causing him more anxiety than all the speeches he had delivered, more than the entire direction of the congress’ (Elon 1975: 237). The benediction that caused Herzl such trouble reads: ‘Blessed art thou, Lord our God, King of the universe, who hast chosen us from all peoples, and hast given us thy Torah. Blessed art thou, O Lord, Giver of the Torah’ (Birnbaum 1999: 370). Though the Zionist movement imitated other modern secular national movements, it also represented for some a return to Judaism, a recreation of traditional Jewish culture on a new basis, asserting, contrary to those who argued that the modern world marked a total break with the past, that the Jews remained a chosen people – like others who had discovered their national identity in Hebrew Scripture.21 Though the Reform movement ultimately failed in the European Jewish struggle for acceptance, it revitalized Judaism. In the half-century after 1848, the reformers were the primary religious influence upon the newly emerging vibrant American Jewish community. Initially, American Reform followed German Reform in its anti-Zionism, expressed notably at the 1885 Pittsburgh Conference of Reform Rabbis. We consider ourselves no longer a nation but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the administration of the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state. (Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz 1995: 469) However, in 1937, as a result of the persecution of the European Jews and the growth of the Palestinian Jewish community under the British mandate, the American Reform movement adopted a more sympathetic view of Zionism, in the so-called Columbus Platform. In the rehabilitation of Palestine, the land hallowed by memories and hopes, we behold the promise of renewed life for many of our brethren. We affirm the obligation of all Jewry to aid in its upbuilding as a Jewish homeland by

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endeavouring to make it not only a haven of refuge for the oppressed but also a center of Jewish culture and spiritual life. (ibid.: 518) Ironically in view of the anti-Zionist thrust of the German Reform movement, it was Zionist Reform rabbis, Stephen S. Wise and Abba Hillel Silver, who led American Jewry in the years immediately preceding the establishment of the state of Israel. Silver successfully presented the case for a Jewish state in the United Nations in 1947. American Reform Jews in the immediate post-Holocaust years contributed massive financial support for the Palestinian Jewish community, without which it is unlikely that the Jewish state would have survived.

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The renascence of Hebrew and Jewish nationalism in the Tsarist empire 1881–1917

In previous chapters, we have explored national elements of Hebrew in a longterm framework including medieval Spain and the French Enlightenment, which prepared the language to become a vehicle for modern Jewish cultural nationalism. This chapter considers in greater detail a narrower and in some ways more striking change: the point at which modern Hebrew literature emerged as art, between the outbreak of the pogroms in 1881 and the 1917 revolution. This renascence is arguably the most important development in Jewish culture since the Bible. Hebrew literature was the main cultural spur to the rise of modern Jewish nationalism. The Russian Jewish population prior to 1881 had been moving toward increased acculturation within the Tsarist empire and had hopes of emancipation and civil rights. They were deeply wounded, psychologically as well as economically, by Russian government policies legislated in a futile reactionary struggle to adapt to major changes in socio-economic conditions and the international balance of power. In common with earlier periods of remarkable creativity in Hebrew – those of the prophets, the Tannaim, and the poets of the ‘golden age’ in medieval Muslim Spain – artistic breakthrough in 1881–1917 coincided with a turning point in the dominant empire. Crisis in the Tsarist empire led to heightened Jewish national identity. This chapter sets out the historical and literary background to Hebrew literature of 1881–1917 and describes some of its salient qualities and influences, particularly in Russian literature. As in earlier periods, Hebrew writers reacted to imperial upheaval, social and cultural metamorphosis and wanton violence; and the very fact of writing Hebrew expressed, or implied, a strong current of religious-nationalist feeling. A major difference between Hebrew literature in the Tsarist empire and its antecedents is its predominantly secular dissident character. Hebrew literature, in common with contemporary Russian literature of the pre-1881 era, might be interpreted ipso facto as an act of subversion, a rejection of Tsarist authority, an assertion of Jewish national feeling and a declaration of independence from the empire. Hebrew briefly engaged in a dynamic relationship with the dominant Russian literary culture, adapting and assimilating many of its features while aiming at a distinctively Jewish mode of expression. Hebrew grew both as an ethnic branch of Russian literature and as a counterculture.1

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The Jewish problem in Tsarist Russia was inseparable from the general weaknesses of the empire. The image of the Jew in Russian society and culture betrayed Russia’s distorted self-image: medievally backward, superstitious, ignorant, corrupt, dominated by a reactionary Church, subject to severe internal strain and violence. The pogroms were only a small fraction of the general unrest in Russia from 1881 until the revolution, a symptom of the breakdown of Tsarist authority (Fuller 1985; Klier and Lambroza 1992). Challenged by the intelligentsia and the working masses, the government created the first modern police state, with extensive use of spying, repression and terror. In its dying days, despite an improving economy, the Tsarist empire had trouble feeding its large and growing population. It had the largest standing army in the world – about two and a half million – but to a degree unprecedented in history, the army was used to control and crush the internal opposition. In 1903, when the second wave of pogroms began, about one-third of its infantry and two-thirds of its cavalry were used against its own citizens (Fuller 1985). Nevertheless, the Jews more than most other ethnic groups suffered under Tsarist rule. Even prior to 1881 the Russian Jews were burdened with countless laws and restrictions. Most prominent was their confinement within the so-called Pale of Settlement on the western frontier of the empire, which was abolished only after the revolution in 1917. The pogroms brought about an ‘ideological metamorphosis’ away from adaptation and merging with Russia and in favour of mass emigration: ‘spontaneously in almost every town of any size societies were founded for the colonization of Palestine’ (Frankel 1981: 49). The May Laws, passed in May 1882, which officially blamed the Jews for bringing the pogroms on their own heads, excluded them further from Russian society. From then on, there were escalating waves of anti-Semitic violence and official discrimination. Russian Jews left in exceptionally large numbers – about two-thirds of the total rate of emigration, though the Jews were less than 5 per cent of the empire’s population. The majority – about two million in all – went to America, but two waves of these emigrants, totalling about 65,000, comprised the first aliyot (migrations to Palestine). For these reasons, 1881 is often regarded as the great turning point in modern Jewish history. In Hebrew literature, 1881 marks a point of artistic departure (Alter 1988; Aberbach 1993). The new-found freedom in Russian Jewish politics not only from the state but also from the established Jewish leadership – which, exposed in its patriotic self-interest and ineffectuality during the pogroms, lost much of its authority (Frankel 1981; Lederhandler 1989) – was reflected in Hebrew literature. Prior to 1881, Russian Hebrew writers did not for the most part create works of enduring aesthetic value; after 1881 they did. From the time of the freeing of the serfs in 1861 until 1917, the Russian Jews produced three different generations of writers and bodies of literature (though there was some overlapping), each representing a different mode of Jewish adaptation to the crumbling Tsarist empire. The first, in Yiddish, was led by Mendele Mocher Sefarim (Mendele the Bookseller, pen name of S.J. Abramowitz, 1835?–1917)2 and by his younger contemporaries Sholom Aleichem (‘How do

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you do?’, pen name of Sholom Rabinowitz, 1859–1916) and I.L. Peretz (1852–1915). Yiddish literature (unsuccessfully) promoted the survival of the Russian Jews as an ethnic minority within a clearly defined territory. A second, younger group consisted of assimilated Russian Jews – such as Isaac Babel, Osip Mandelstam, Boris Pasternak, Ilya Ehrenberg. These writers, born in the last years of the Pale of Settlement, rejected Yiddish and Hebrew in favour of Russian and eventually came to prominence under Soviet rule. The third group – the subject of this chapter – had the most far-reaching influence. It included such figures as C.N. Bialik (1873–1934), Saul Tchernichowsky (1875–1943), M.J. Berdichevsky (1865–1921), M.Z. Feierberg (1875–99), and J.H. Brenner (1881–1921). These writers created a literary culture that acted as midwife to the birth of Zionism and the State of Israel. Hebrew literature of 1881–1917 was inseparable from the rise of political Zionism. Yet, the nationalism of this literature was Herderian in its primary concern with Jewish culture rather than politics. Characteristic of this literary movement is the fact that Mendele, its outstanding artist in fictional prose, was contemptuous of political Zionism (Aberbach 1993: 45–46); Bialik, though hailed as the poet laureate of the Jewish national renascence, persisted in writing deeply personal lyrics and neglected national themes (Aberbach 1981, 1988); and Ahad Ha’am (‘One of the people’, pen name of Asher Ginzburg, 1856–1927)3, its outstanding theoretician, was locked in fierce debate with political Zionists in the years after 1897, when the World Zionist Organization was founded by Theodor Herzl (1860–1904). Other important Hebrew writers of the period, including David Frischmann (1859–1922), Zalman Schneour (1886–1959), Gershon Shoffman (1880–1970) and, above all, Uri Nissan Gnessin (1879–1913), were primarily interested in the creation of art rather than in having educational or political influence. This literature, in contrast with much pre-1881 Hebrew literature, attached great importance to childhood and to aggadah (Aberbach 1994), to the exploration of the inner life of the individual, and to the creation of a distinct Jewish aesthetic as part of the developing national consciousness. Bialik, and Berdichevsky, in many ways ideological opponents, shared a high valuation of aggadah: each produced anthologies of aggadah. (Bialik’s, edited jointly with J.H. Ravnitzky [1908–11], has become a modern Hebrew classic, while Berdichevsky’s work has been undeservedly forgotten.) The crucial spur in the Jewish national awakening was cultural. In this regard, it may be compared with other cultural nationalisms, including those of the Slovaks, the Greeks, and the Irish (Hutchinson 1987).

Historical and literary background During the nineteenth century, the Jewish population of Russia rose to nearly five million. It made up the largest, most homogeneous and dynamic, and most persecuted Jewish community of the time. The collapse of the Tsarist empire was by no means inevitable. Yet its weaknesses became clear with the fiasco of the Crimean War (1853–56). The freeing of the serfs in 1861 weakened the empire

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further by exacerbating its main problems: backwardness, social inequality, chronic poverty, unemployment and overcrowding in the cities. At the same time, autocratic rule was undermined by a new and growing university-educated intelligentsia and the limited introduction of capitalist-based industry. The failure of the Polish revolt of 1863 and the Russian–Turkish war of 1877–78 set off waves of Russian nationalism which, in turn, led to violent anti-Semitism. It may be that the use of Jew-hatred was not sanctioned officially as a diversion from revolutionary unrest within the empire (Rogger 1986; Lo¨we 1993); yet there is little doubt that the pogroms had this effect up to a point. Russian Judaeophobia came by the end of the Reform Era, in 1881, ‘to incorporate literally all of the fears and obsessions of a society in the midst of traumatic social change’ (Klier 1995: 455). There were two major waves of pogroms, in 1881–84 and 1903–06, in the Pale of Settlement. From the outbreak of pogroms in 1881 until the 1917 revolution, these circumstances stirred up a new Jewish national self-consciousness, with profound cultural and political consequences. Hebrew literature prior to 1881 was a vital part of the background to the cultural nationalism of post-1881 Hebrew literature. The Odessa pogrom of 1871 was a significant turning point (Zipperstein 1985; Haberer 1995). Jewish intellectuals such as Mendele and Peretz Smolenskin (1842?–84) began at this time to question Haskalah ideals, and elements of Jewish nationalism entered Hebrew literature (Patterson 1985). The leading Hebrew poet of the pre-1881 era, Judah Leib Gordon (1830–92) – not Bialik – is cited by Kedourie (1960: 100–01) as communicating in his poetry the alienation and the violent revolt against authority and restraints which are characteristic of national movements. The lexicographer Eliezer Ben-Yehuda tells in his autobiography (1917–18) that he conceived of Hebrew as a vehicle for Jewish nationalism in Palestine already in the late 1870s under the impact of the Russian nationalism stirred up by the Russian–Turkish war of 1877–78. Nevertheless, prior to 1881 Hebrew literature was, for the most part, nonnationalistic, heavily didactic, artistically clumsy and linguistically shallow. The rise of Jewish nationalism after 1881 was a critical force galvanizing both the language and the literature. It brought the latter within a span of two generations into the front ranks of Western literature. (Samuel Joseph Agnon, the leading Hebrew novelist after Mendele’s death in 1917, went on to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1966.) Hebrew in the Tsarist empire prior to 1881 had been used mainly as a catalyst for educational reform among the Jews and their assimilation (or ‘russification’) into Russian society. The eighteenth century Age of Enlightenment and the liberal ideals promulgated by the French Revolution and spread by the Napoleonic wars had their Hebrew offshoot in the Haskalah (Enlightenment) movement. As in Germany and Galicia in the late eighteenth and early nineteeth centuries, Hebrew was adapted as the language by which the largely uneducated Jews could be introduced to the arts and sciences, particularly the latter. As long as Hebrew writers believed that emancipation and civil rights – above all the abolition of the Pale – were possible under Tsarist rule, they used Hebrew to promote secular education.

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The Russian Haskalah, lasting from the 1820s to 1881, was the springboard for post-1881 Hebrew literature. It inspired much translation of educational works as well as experiments in poetry, drama, autobiography and fiction, including the earliest Hebrew novels, starting with Ahavat Zion (The Love of Zion, 1853), by Abraham Mapu (1808–67), and included influential works by Gordon (Stanislawski 1988), Smolenskin, Mendele, Braudes and others (Patterson 1964). Though this work has scant artistic merit, its historical importance is vast. Its relationship with post-1881 Hebrew literature brings to mind Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fable of the ram troubled by a word (freedom) which it cannot clearly remember. The Jews in the same way were dimly aware of a viable national identity beyond Russia’s borders: the pogroms were the main trauma bringing it to consciousness.

The pogroms and Hebrew literature The pogroms which broke out after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 were the death-blow to Haskalah ideology and the hope of Jewish emancipation under Tsarist rule. After 1881, Hebrew literature was inseparably part of a critical mass of national feeling, of will and creativity liberated by trauma and the new realism which followed. Hebrew writers no longer used Hebrew literature primarily to teach the ideology of assimilation and Russian patriotism. They aimed instead to depict Jewish life as they saw it, for its own sake and with empathy. Apart from the already-mentioned fiction of Mendele, poems of Bialik and essays of Ahad Ha’am, the high points of their achievement include: four short novels by Gnessin; a group of semi-fictional autobiographies by Mendele, Bialik, Feierberg, Brenner, and Berdichevsky; poems by Saul Tchernichowsky; and the Hebrew translations of Sholom Aleichem’s stories by I.D. Berkowitz (1885–1973) and the Hebrew translations (by Peretz and others) of Peretz’s stories. The chief literary characters in Hebrew at the turn of the century, Mendele the Bookseller and Sholom Aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman – both tragi-comic creations – are without precedent or parallel in Jewish or any other literature. Interestingly, these characters are based on Yiddish originals, but they became inseparably a part of Hebrew literature. The bulk of this work, comprising a dozen or so volumes in all, was published in the fifteen years between 1896 and 1911. Rarely in literary history have a literature and language undergone such massive change as Hebrew did in this short time. This literature has a unique socio-linguistic character. Its writers were all native Yiddish speakers. Their leader, Mendele, had a seminal role as the ‘grandfather’ both of modern Yiddish and Hebrew fiction. His novels, most of which were written twice, first in Yiddish and then in Hebrew, were the principal achievement in Hebrew prose fiction prior to 1939. Two of these Yiddish works, Die Kliatsche (The Mare, 1873) and Masos Binyomin ha-Shlishi (The Travels of Benjamin the Third, 1878), pre-date 1881; the latter, published in 1896, became the first classic in modern Hebrew. Mendele was the first to recognize in Yiddish a catalyst for the creation of lasting art in Hebrew. Mendele’s novels are mostly set during the reign of Nicholas I, and the Hebrew drafts post-date the Yiddish ones by as much as thirty years and more (e.g. The Mare); yet, the basic conditions of the

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Russian Jews in the time of Nicholas II, when all the Hebrew drafts were written, worsened in some respects. Consequently, Mendele’s Hebrew versions largely retained their social relevance after 1881. Unlike post-1948 Hebrew writers, Hebrew writers of 1881–1917 were selftaught intellectuals, mostly without even a high school diploma. Almost all were lapsed from a religious background and had intensive experience of rabbinical seminaries (yeshivot), where they were for the most part outstanding scholars. Their alienation from traditional Judaism and their struggle to adapt to a new, secular world are central motifs in their autobiographical works (Mintz 1989). The richness of their style, at its best, reflects years of study. With religious fervour and reverence, they adapted Hebrew classical idioms to modern secular art. Perhaps the closest literary analogue to this aspect of their achievement is James Joyce’s Ulysses. They denied through mock-heroic satire the sacred authority of the sources but implicitly accepted their imperishable value and their power to inspire (Aberbach 1993).

Hebrew and Jewish liberation The metamorphosis of Hebrew after the pogroms of 1881–82 helped to bring about political metamorphosis via the Zionist Organization in which the Russian Jews soon became the largest and most influential group. Zionism promoted Hebrew as the national language of all Jews and the growth of creative literature in Hebrew as an integral part of the national renaissance. The sudden, steep rise in the status and artistic value of Hebrew literature would have been highly unlikely had the Russian empire been stronger and less gripped by Jew-hatred. Jewish literature became a vehicle for a form of emigration into a private national domain, the full dimensions of which would soon be mapped out. While there was and could be no open call for revolution, a number of new features of Hebrew literature were revolutionary: Bialik’s revival of the biblical prophetic style, bitter, angry and critical of the status quo, striking in imagery and rhythmic power, demanding truth and justice; Berdichevsky’s call for the Nietzschean release of the instinctual power of the individual; Tchernichowsky’s idealization of the Greek way of life, its heroes and mythology, whose healthy, democratic nature implicitly contrasted with the repression of Tsarist rule and the stifling narrowness of Russian Jewish life; the introduction of the heretic as a sympathetic character in the writings of Feierberg, Brenner, Berdichevsky, and others. The defiant spirit of the age is, perhaps, best captured in Bialik’s poems, such as En zot ki rabat tzerartunu (Nothing but your fierce hounding, 1899): Nothing but your fierce hounding has turned us into beasts of prey! With cruel fury we’ll drink your blood. We’ll have no pity when the whole nation rises, cries – ‘Revenge!’

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Not least, the elevation of the common Jew as a subject of serious Hebrew literary art, rather than to promote an educational message, was revolutionary. It began with Mendele’s act of introducing the character of Mendele the Bookseller into a Hebrew story in 1886, after over two decades of depicting this character exclusively in Yiddish fiction (Aberbach 1993, 2001). This act implicitly rejected the idea of inborn superiority, for even ordinary Yiddish-speaking Jews – a bookseller, a bathhouse attendant or beggar – could be presented artistically and with human significance. This literature counteracted the dehumanization of the Jews resulting from anti-Semitic violence, poverty and discrimination. The disdain which Russian-Jewish intellectuals previously felt for the ignorant, superstitious Jewish masses now largely disappeared. It was replaced by warm and curious, though not uncritical, sympathy. The populist movement in Russia in the late 1870s, with its idealization of the Russian peasant, also left its mark on Jewish literary self-perceptions. Even the ultra-Orthodox pious Jews, the Hasidim, who throughout the nineteenth century had served as the chief satiric target in Hebrew (Davidson 1966), were now described far more seriously (in Peretz’s collection of stories, Hasidut, with glowing empathy), as repositories of profound folk wisdom. The waves of pogroms of 1881–84 and 1903–06 liberated the Hebrew language and literature in specific practical ways. Emigration to Palestine triggered off by the pogroms brought about the creation of hundreds of Hebrew-speaking groups in Russia. Suddenly, it became clear to the young Russian Jewish men and women who were thinking of emigrating that the emerging Jewish community in Palestine was the most heterogeneous in the world: only one language united its varied groups – Hebrew. The pogroms were the catalyst for an historic encounter between the Russian Jewish lower middle class and the Hebrew intelligentsia, leading to a phenomenal increase in Hebrew journalism and in Hebrew readers, which may have reached 100,000 already in the 1880s (Miron 1987: 59ff.). For the first time, Hebrew writers could, in theory, make a living from their writings, and publishers could make substantial profits. In the short story Bi-Yme ha-Ra’ash (Earthquake Days, 1890), Mendele gives a brilliant satiric picture of the time: a bedraggled melamed attempting to escape the pogroms to Palestine via Odessa is converted literally overnight into a private tutor of modern Hebrew. The upsurge of interest in the study and creation of modern spoken Hebrew and journalism naturally increased the market for creative Hebrew. After 1881, the artistic standard of this literature rose impressively. Hebrew readers of important writers such as Mendele, Bialik, Brenner and Gnessin during this period rarely exceeded a few thousand, but this was far more than during the pre-1881 period. These readers constituted an elite, widely read and discerning, though mostly self-taught, and familiar with European and Russian literature. Hebrew literature, previously imitative, became competitive. It now aimed, largely successfully, to become an important part of European literature. The optimism and didacticism of Haskalah literature were turned round. Much post-1881 Hebrew literature is pessimistic and anxietyridden, foreshadowing the tone of post-World War I European literature. Yet, this

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literature also includes two outstanding humorists – Mendele and Sholom Aleichem (again, in Berkowitz’s translation) – who convey a Yiddish comic sensibility which, in retrospect, appears to have been virtually a condition of survival in the Pale. As mentioned previously, Mendele’s comic novella The Travels of Benjamin the Third was recast from a Yiddish original of 1878. However, it is highly significant in considering 1881 as a psychological divide in Jewish history and literature that whereas in the Yiddish draft of The Travels the quixotic Benjamin does not reach the land of Israel, in the Hebrew draft of 1896 he does. In the Hebrew version, Benjamin emerges in the end more as a courageous visionary than an unbalanced figure of fun. Following the 1903 pogrom in Kishinev, Bialik developed a programme of kinnus, the ‘ingathering’ of fragments of Jewish culture in an effort to give new force and direction to the growing Jewish national consciousness. Kinnus found practical expression in Bialik’s work as a publisher and his co-editing of the legends and folklore of the Talmud and midrash, as well as of the medieval Hebrew poetry of Solomon Ibn Gabirol and Moses Ibn Ezra. But his poems, particularly the prophetic ‘poems of wrath’, are themselves a major contribution to kinnus, a creative amalgam of Hebrew strata parallel to Mendele’s achievement in prose. Maxim Gorky, who read the ‘poems of wrath’ in Russian translation, called Bialik a modern Isaiah. Most of these poems were written during and in response to the pogroms of 1903–06. They express the outrage and impotence felt by the Russian Jews as well as the aggressiveness which led to increased militancy, especially among the young. It is estimated that by 1903 about half of those arrested for revolutionary activities in Russia were Jews. The official tendency to identify revolutionaries with ‘the Jews’ – though the vast majority of Russian Jews were not – is exemplified in a letter of Tsar Nicholas II to his mother on 27 October 1905: ‘nine-tenths of the revolutionaries are Yids’ ( Pipes 1990: 48). Bialik’s ‘poems of wrath’ are the outstanding literary expression of the growing radicalization of the post-1881 generation (Aberbach 1988, 2003). They mark a turning point in modern Jewish history, the beginning of a far-reaching change in Jewish consciousness and the emergence from powerlessness. As our voices entreating lift into the darkness – Whose ear will turn? As our raw blasphemy streams to heaven – Over whose crown will it trickle? Grinding tooth, knuckling ire-veined fists – On whose scalp will the fury drift? all will fall windily Down the throat of chaos; No comfort remains, no helping hand, no way out – And heaven is dumb; Murdering us with dispassionate eyes, Bearing its blame in blood-torn silence. Davar (1904)

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The art which Russian Jewish writers created from then until the revolution is built upon the conviction of holding the moral high ground. Their alienation from Russia, painful though it was, forced them to break from Russia and from the ideology of assimilation, to seek inner sources of strength and freedom. The following lines from Feierberg’s novella Le’an? (Whither? 1899), though put into the mouth of a madman, sum up the metamorphosis which turned many disillusioned young Russian Jews back to their semitic roots and to Palestine. The greatest enemy that Judaism has ever had has been . . . the West, which is why I believe it to be unnatural that we Hebrews, we Easterners, should throw in our lot with the West as we set out for the East . . . . I believe that this great people, without whose books and spiritual genius the world could not possibly have achieved what it has, will again give a new civilization to the human race, but this civilization will be Eastern. (1973: 214)

The collapse of rabbinic authority Unlike the relatively emancipated and enlightened Jews in the cities ofWestern Europe, the East European Jews until the latter part of the nineteenth century accepted Jewish orthodoxy as an immutable fact of existence, knowing little else, and with deep distrust of secular education. A number of social forces caused the breakdown of rabbinic authority and of Jewish orthodoxy. This breakdown was so total that after the 1917 revolution most Russian Jews would for the most part willingly accept the atheist ideology of socialism. The most radical force for change was the growing availability and attraction of secular education, inspired in the first place by Haskalah ideology. The Russian Haskalah did not dismiss Jewish orthodoxy and rabbinic authority outright. Instead, it aimed to adapt Judaism to the modern world while preserving rather more than the Western European reform movement the traditional character of Judaism. There was no internal reform movement in the rabbinate in the Russian Pale of Settlement. The government under Alexander II set up rabbinical training schools designed to produce modern rabbis who would not be opposed to secular education. Whether for liberal or anti-Semitic motives, it aimed to weaken traditional rabbinic authority. The Haskalah was in a sense a willing instrument of government policy and inevitably conveyed a strong measure of Jewish self-hate. This is the background to a unique phenomenon in the history of Hebrew literature: a literary movement opposed in many ways to Jewish orthodoxy but consisting of writers who, though heretics, themselves had much of the erudition, the devotion, the puritanism, the sense of spiritual calling associated – ideally – with the rabbinate. They bore something of the same tense relationship of tradition and modernity as writers such as Joyce, Yeats and Eliot who, similarly, came from a theological environment and in an earlier age might have become clergymen.

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The Hebrew writers were steeped in Judaism and Jewish learning. They were the children of rabbis and scholars; they almost all had a classical Jewish education consisting of the cheder and the bet midrash; and they included some of the brightest scholars in the yeshivot in eastern Europe. Had they been born a generation or two earlier, most of them would almost certainly have become rabbis. Mendele and Sholom Aleichem were, in fact, trained as government rabbis. Mendele apparently failed his preaching examination and never practised, but Sholom Aleichem actually worked as a rabbi for several years. These writers in effect were the founding fathers of modern Hebrew (and Yiddish) literature. In their writings, they give not just a critique of Jewish life in eastern Europe but also of Judaism. They provide a remarkable artistic picture of the problems, conflicts and revolutionary changes brought about by the violent clash between traditional, almost medieval Judaism and the modern world. They were practically the Reform Judaism of Eastern Europe, but in contrast with West European Reform, they were mostly Zionists. Hebrew literature of the Haskalah anticipates the anti-rabbinic thrust of post-1881 Hebrew literature. The importance of Haskalah literature is mostly historical rather than literary. It was created under the illusion that by gaining a secular education the East European Jews would, as it were, earn civil rights and emancipation. As we have seen, the Haskalah movement ended when this illusion was shattered in 1881. Nevertheless, Haskalah literature, led by writers such as Mapu and Gordon, is the basis of modern Hebrew literature. Many of its elements, including the attacks on what its writers regarded as the unhealthy aspects of orthodoxy, look forward to the far greater literature of the post-pogrom years. The Haskalah writers invariably attack the rabbinate for being narrowminded and fanatical, stifling and imprisoning the people through their halakhic rulings, and arresting their normal growth. The virulence of Haskalah attacks on rabbinic authority owes much to a suppressed resentment at the hundreds of anti-Semitic laws passed by the Russian government. The rabbis with their laws were a soft target, as were the Russian clergy in Russian literature who represented government authority: unlike the government itself, they could be attacked and their authority undermined. Gordon, the greatest Hebrew poet of the Haskalah, has a blistering attack on the emptiness and futility of rabbinic teaching in his poem Ben shinei arayot (In the Lions’ Jaws, 1868): ‘They set up houses of study. What did they teach? To guard the wind, to plough the stone, to sieve water, to thresh chaff!’ In his novel Religion and Life (Ha-Dat veha-Chayim, 1876–77), Gordon’s younger contemporary, the novelist Reuben Asher Braudes (1851–1902), attacks the demands of Judaism and of a normal life as being antithetical. He blames the rabbis for making Judaism unlivable. The Rabbis have so restricted every path of life, scarcely allowing the people to draw breath, that they have deadened their very spirit. And the people meekly bear the burden on their shoulders through blindness and fatigue, and have become a corpse among the living, without ever knowing that their Rabbis

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Renascence of Hebrew have overstepped the mark, broken the covenant of their Torah, and led them into the wilderness. (Patterson 1964: 203)

Mendele bridges the Haskalah and the dor ha-techiyah, the post-1881 ‘generation of revival’. In his writings, he subjects the rabbis to his unique brand of acerbic and often hilarious social satire. In the opening of Masot Binyamin ha-Shlishi (The Travels of Benjamin the Third), the Hebrew version of which appeared in 1896, the rabbi as authority figure is an object of mockery as are those who naively believe in him. Once, on a boiling day in the month of Tammuz – I remember it as clearly as if it were today – our rabbi went for a dip in the lake outside town. I and two friends tracked after him, in awe of his presence, completely sure that nothing bad could happen, and with God’s help we would come home safe and sound. No small matter, the protection of a rabbi, whose authority the whole world accepts, who can have no superior, whose honorary titles alone fill a whole page! The rabbi set a leisurely pace, some distance ahead of us: however, just as he reached the lake and began to undress, a peasant boy appeared and set his dog on him. The holy man was scared stiff. He ran off – if you’ll excuse my saying so – clutching his trousers in one hand and his round plush hat in the other. We boys were simply flabbergasted: if Leviathan himself was caught in the meshes, what were we minnows in the mud to do? (1947: 60) Despite Mendele’s affection and empathy for Jews and Jewish, such satire is evidence of severe disillusionment and a breakdown in rabbinic authority. The formative trauma in modern Jewish life and literature – the pogroms of 1881–82 and the May Laws of May 1882 in which the Jews were officially blamed for provoking the pogroms – in some ways confirmed and hastened this breakdown, but in other ways stimulated new pride in Jewish distinctiveness, expressed primarily, though not exclusively, in nationalism. Among the effects of the pogroms and the May Laws was Jewish revulsion at the injustice of these atrocities. The Jews were helpless victims. Consequently, they reacted against the Haskalah ideal of assimilation into the society that had victimized them. The May Laws increased the chronic pauperization of the Russian Jews. By the end of the century, as many as 40 per cent of the Russian Jews were dependent partly or wholly on Jewish charity, and emigration became a matter of life and death. The angry sense of injustice was often expressed against traditional Jewish life, with its alleged passivity and stagnancy. The rabbis gave little practical leadership in the face of the massive crisis faced by the Russian Jews. At this time, Leon Pinsker wrote his treatise Autoemancipation, coming to a conclusion shared by many Jews at the time: that the Jews could not appeal to universal justice but must take their fate into their own hands. Pinsker was one of the

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founders of Hibbat Zion, the organization based in Odessa responsible for the first aliyah, which brought about 25,000 Jews to Palestine by the end of the century.

Jewish heresy and the rejection of Russia Modern Jewish nationalism was born out of the idea that the Jews had to master their own destiny and not depend on providence, but rather reject passive faith and rabbinic authority as potential dangers. Precisely at this point, Hebrew literature emerged as an important artistic expression of modern Jewish identity and hopes. It was on one level a vote of no-confidence in Tsarist Russia. The pogroms of 1903–06 confirmed this movement toward internal and external Jewish independence: they, too, set off a wave of Jewish immigration to the land of Israel. At this time, in response to the pogrom in Kishinev, Bialik wrote his poem ‘On the Slaughter’ (Al ha-Shechitah, 1903), in which, apparently for the first time in Hebrew poetry, the existence of God was questioned. Heaven! Beg mercy for me, If you have a God, and he can be found . . . The heretic is newly prominent in the Hebrew literature of this period. This is hardly surprising as the majority of the Hebrew writers of the age – including Agnon and Greenberg, Galician Jews who later returned to a form of orthodoxy – were heretics in the sense that they broke away from orthodox Judaism: they were no longer part of a Jewish religious community, they ceased prayer, religious study, and observance of the sabbath, the festivals and the dietary laws. In some cases, they had affairs with non-Jewish women. Shoffman and Tchernichovsky married outside the faith. Micha Yosef Berdichevsky was the outstanding ideologue and one of the principal writers of this Hebrew literature of heresy. Berdichevsky had a decisive influence on the writers born around the 1881 watershed: Gnessin, Shoffman and Brenner. After years of agonizing, he came to the conclusion that rabbinic Judaism was itself to blame for the exile and the diaspora of the Jews. The only way to overcome the psychological blows of exile was to deny Judaism and its values and return to a healthy pre-rabbinic, even pre-biblical identity. Berdichevsky was the son of a rabbi in the Ukraine and, like Bialik, spent time as a student in the distinguished Lithuanian yeshivah of Volozhin. As a teenager he was married off and, as was the custom, he lived with his in-laws. When his father-in-law discovered that he was reading Haskalah literature and having secret contact with maskilim, he forced Berdichevsky to divorce his wife. This is the background to the story ‘Across the River’ (Me-Ever la-Nahar, 1899), whose chief symbol is a bridge crossing from the lower town, where the Jews live, to the upper town, home of the gentiles and the enlightened Jews. The young man in the story loves his wife and is fond of his father-in-law. But his questioning intellect does not allow him peace and draws him to secular study and to fraternity with

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a maskil across the river. The young man becomes a voice for the author’s own questionings, in which the influence of Nietzsche is paramount: ‘Is there truly good and evil? Is there a God who watches over man and makes a covenant with man?’ (1969: 13). On the night of Yom Kippur, his impatience and alienation from the community become almost unbearable. When two old men stood in front of the Ark holding sifre Torah and said Kol Nidre, permitting the congregation to pray with the sinners, a strange lust burned in me to lift my talit above my head and cry out: “Wake up, my people!” (ibid.: 20) Eventually his father-in-law discovers his heretical leanings and in a scene charged with conflict on the bridge, each renounces the other. The young man leaves his home and his wife forever. The poet Saul Tchernichovsky was the type of new Jew that Berdichevsky admired. Radiating energy, optimism, and health, he seemed largely untouched by the neuroses of traditional Jewish life, by its backwardness, and poverty. Tchernichovsky was unusual among Hebrew writers of the age as he grew up in a largely non-Jewish rural part of southern Russia, and his family was wellintegrated into their environment. By training a doctor, he was also a great linguist and, after Bialik, the most influential Hebrew poet of his generation. His poetry contains a radical protest against what were then seen as the life-denying qualities of Judaism. He was fascinated by paganism in a variety of cultures, but especially Canaanite, as a more authentic, freer and healthier way of life than monotheism which had in his view deadened the spirit of mankind. His ideal, not unlike Berdichevsky’s, was a Nietzschean god of youth, power and beauty. In the poem ‘Before the Statue of Apollo’ (Le-Nohakh Pesel Apollo, 1898), the poet expresses anger at the Jews for having destroyed this god. I bow down to life, might and beauty. I bow to all beautiful things, robbed by rotten human carcasses, rebels against life, against Tzuri Shaddai – God of the gods of wondrous deserts, God of the gods of the conquerors of Canaan in storm – and tied him with tefillin straps . . . If Berdichevsky was the chief ideologue of heresy and Tchernichovsky its poet, Gnessin was the most dedicated and influential creator of heretics in prose. Gnessin describes in his fiction and was himself a type of uprooted Jewish intellectual of the turn of the century: alienated from tradition while being steeped in it; bound to the enlightened ideals of a universal Western culture, which he was barred from entering. This alienation is distilled in the titles of Gnessin’s four main prose works (incidentally, inscribed on his tombstone): ‘Sideways’ (Hatzidah), ‘Meanwhile’ (Bentayim), ‘Beforehand’ (Be-Terem), and

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‘Next to’ (Etzel). These stories express alienation from Judaism. ‘Sideways’, for example, tells of a young man named Hagzar who comes, as Gnessin did, from a distinguished rabbinical family – his father was a yeshivah head – but has abandoned the faith and lives a shiftless, bohemian, largely unsatisfied life in a small East European town. The elderly and sympathetic traditionalist Simcha Baer, father of one of Hagzar’s girl friends, teases him with a jibe calculated to arouse guilt. Enjoying his own joke, Simcha Baer inquired which synagogue Hagzar attended and had he said his evening prayers there – adding without waiting for an answer that it would have broken Rabbi Shmulka of Mogilev’s heart to have lived to see his nephew’s sinful ways. (Shaked and Lelchuk 1983: 24) Gnessin’s background was similar to that of Shoffman and Brenner – Brenner in fact once studied at the yeshivah run by Gnessin’s father. Together these three writers created a new, highly experimental Hebrew style with an emphasis not upon communal values but upon the unique inner world of the individual. Their struggle for new forms and new subject matter was part of the struggle to reform Jewish tradition, using for its main weapons elements of the tradition itself. Invariably these writers were attracted to Zionism, and some, notably Brenner and Agnon, lived in Palestine even prior to 1914, when the land was still a cultural backwater. The cultural nationalism promoted by Zionist ideology meant that Hebrew writers, even if they were not Zionists, found themselves with a growing market and an elite readership, unusually well-educated and discriminating. The process by which Zionism came to replace Jewish orthodoxy among many young eastern European Jews at the turn of the century is depicted with great feeling in Feierberg’s Whither?. This was Feierberg’s only major work before his death from tuberculosis at the age of 24 in 1899. In it, a rabbi’s son, Nachman, highly intelligent and sensitive, begins to question the relevance of rabbinic tradition. He rejects his family’s ambition that he should himself become a rabbi. The climax of the story occurs during the service on Yom Kippur. Nachman suddenly declares his heresy in front of the congregation. it’s all nonsense. What does the high priest mean to you? Why should you care about something that happened thousands of years ago? . . . And he picked up the candle that stood burning on the podium – and blew it out. (1973: 125–26) Nachman the heretic, son of the rabbi, can remain within the community only if he is branded a madman. Though tormented by guilt, Nachman is sure that he is right, that the Jews must have something more than a religious identity, for this is too narrow, at least in its present form. Why must he profane what is holy to so many people? – It’s my curse, he thought, to belong to a nation that has nothing in this world but its religion.

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Renascence of Hebrew This leaves only two choices . . . to attack the faith or defend it . . . and yet all that I want for myself all is to be a free man. I can’t spend my life being for or against religion . . . there are other things for me to be and to do, for myself and among my people. (ibid.: 127)

The writings of Feierberg and his contemporaries show in detail how for the first time in Jewish history the Jews in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries began to define themselves en masse in terms other than religion. The yeshivot themselves often served as clandestine halfway houses, where young men entered as strictly orthodox Jews and emerged with at least some secular education and, more importantly, with a conviction that they would not continue to live within the faith as their fathers did. Brenner’ semi-biographical novel Winter (Ba-Horef, 1903–4) includes a classic account of this transition. The novel tells of Jeremiah, a highly sensitive and intelligent young man from a poor and troubled family who begins life at a yeshivah with an exalted sense of religious calling and an all-consuming thirst for learning – ‘life is nothing without God’s Torah, for this is the foundation of the world’ (1955: I 20). He discovers modern Hebrew literature which changes him slowly but inexorably. He develops critical distance toward Jewish observance, becomes a Zionist and secretly cultivates what he recognizes as a highly individual creative gift as a budding Hebrew writer. With a religious zeal and triumphalism bordering on illness – ‘like a priest worshipping his God’ (ibid.: 22) – he writes imitations of the Hebrew poetry, parodies, feuilletons and articles which he consumes indiscriminately and edits a collection of this work. Found out by the yeshivah head, he is disgraced and expelled. Spiritually divorced from traditional Jewish life, he has no new life to fill the void.

Hebrew and Jewish continuity Nevertheless, to say that Hebrew literature of 1881–1939 one-sidedly abandons the faith, and is itself a symptom of the decline of orthodoxy, is to miss its complexity. Virtually all the writers of this period, rebels though they were against tradition, were also dedicated to some form of continuity of the Jewish tradition, to a distinctive Jewish identity and culture. In some cases, they were quite clear about their identification with Jewish spiritual values, though often in a new, secular form, without what they felt to be the persecution of rabbinic authority in a socio-political environment already burdened with totalitarianism and antiSemitism. They saw themselves rightly as a prophetic minority who might in the near future become the majority. At the same time that Gnessin and Brenner were depicting Jewish heretics, Peretz was writings stories in Hebrew as well as Yiddish in which the Hasidim are presented not satirically, as in the past, but with loving empathy. Berdichevsky and Bialik were mining the richness of the aggadic traditions.

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The opening of Bialik’s autobiography, Aftergrowth (Safiah, 1903–23), published last, in 1923, reads almost like the testimony of a Jewish mystic. The poet recalls his childhood as a world of providence and faith and unceasing miracles. The origins of Judaism are in effect the origins of all religion, the mystery of creation, the soul of poetry. God in his mercy gathered me under the shadow of his wings . . . His hidden hand scattered miracles on every paths, planting riddles wherever I looked. In every stone and twig a midrash of wonder, in every hole and ditch eternal mystery. (Aberbach 2002: 63) A large part of Bialik’s enormous appeal as national poet was his capacity to translate the spiritual fervour of Judaism – and particularly Hasidism – into a secular Zionist form. Many of Agnon’s stories are similarly rich with Jewish tradition. While Agnon is often described as a secular artist, and in some ways a heretic, his art could hardly have been created if he did not have a very strong spiritual identification with Judaism. He is outstanding among Hebrew writers in emphasizing the creative, rather than the oppressive, side of the rabbinic tradition. (He once declared that if he had had a choice he would have lived in the eighteenth century, ‘when Torah ruled Israel.’) The opening of the story ‘Agunot’ (1908) from which Agnon took his pseudonym, is written in a style which seems to belong more properly to the midrash or kabbalah than to modernism but is, on close reading, a revolutionary synthesis of tradition and modernism. It is said: A thread of grace is spun and drawn out of the deeds of Israel, and the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself in His glory, sits and weaves – strand on strand – a prayer shawl all grace and all mercy, for the Congregation of Israel to deck herself in. Radiant in the light of her beauty she glows, even in these, the lands of her exile, as she did in her youth in the Father’s house, in the Temple of her Sovereign and the city of sovereignty, Jerusalem. And when He, of ineffable Name, sees her, that she has neither been sullied nor stained even here, in the realm of her oppressors, He – as it were – leans toward her and says, ‘Behold thou art fair, my beloved, behold thou art fair.’ And this is the secret of the power and the glory and the exaltation and the tenderness in love which fills the heart of every man in Israel. But there are times – alas! – when some hindrance creeps up, and snaps a thread in the loom. Then the prayer shawl is damaged: evil spirits hover about it, enter into it, and tear it to shreds. At once a sense of shame assails all Israel, and they know they are naked. Their days of rest are wrested from them, their feasts are fasts, their lot is dust instead of luster. At that hour the Congregation of Israel strays abroad in her anguish, crying, ‘Strike me, wound me, take away my veils from me!.’ Her beloved has slipped away,

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Renascence of Hebrew and she, seeking him, cries, ‘If ye find my beloved, what shall ye tell him? That I am afflicted with love.’ (Agnon 1970: 30–31)

Agnon’s generation felt strongly that the thread of tradition was broken, but also that they could continue this tradition through the fulfilment of Zionist ideals. To many of the halutzim (pioneers), the building of the land of Israel took the place of religious practice. Aharon David Gordon’s ideology of the religion of labour is expressed memorably in the poetry of Shlonsky. Shlonsky, born into a Hasidic family, survived the Russian revolution and came to Palestine in the early 1920s. There, like many of the young Hebrew writers, he became a labourer. In his poem Work (Amal, 1927), the building of the roads is depicted in the imagery of prayer. My land is wrapped in light like a talit. Houses stand like tefillin boxes. Like tefillin straps the roads sweep down. This is how the lovely town says its morning prayers to its creator. This is modernist poetry, influenced by the great revolution in European poetry in the early twentieth century, and by Russian poets such as Mayakovsky, Esenin and Blok. But it is also a distinctive Jewish modernism which attempts to preserve and create as well as deny and destroy. Destruction may bring about a spirit of creativity. The poet does not put on tefillin. But he puts tefillin on to the land of Israel. The writers of the period 1881–1939 were indeed heretics from the standpoint of the largely monolithic Judaism that existed up to that point in eastern Europe. In their writings, they described faithfully the defections from the faith as the Jews became increasingly aware of the world around them and critical of their own way of life. Hebrew writers helped the Jews see themselves more realistically, as a relatively small, powerless, impoverished and uneducated minority amid a hostile majority. Their critical perspective prepared them for a process of change which was general in Western society at the time.

Hebrew and Russian literature While asserting Jewish continuity, nineteenth-century Hebrew literature was closely linked with contemporary Russian literature. In some respects, including its countercultural qualities, it might be regarded almost as a branch of Russian literature. The Russian and Hebrew writers came from radically different social and religious backgrounds. The first group was largely aristocratic and wealthy; the second, mostly from impoverished homes. Yet they lived in the same empire at the same time. They describe the same general world and confront similar problems. Repugnance at the poverty, backwardness and injustice of life in Tsarist

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Russia was common to Russian as to Hebrew and Yiddish literature. Each of these literatures explores social and psychological malaises which contributed to the break-up of the Tsarist empire. The humane depiction of the ordinary Jew in late nineteenth-century Hebrew fiction – a phenomenon which began before 1881, though initially without lasting artistry – was as revolutionary as that of the Russian peasants in Turgenev’s Notes of a Huntsman (1852). The quarter-century rule of Alexander II (1855–81) produced an unrivalled body of Russian prose fiction, including Fathers and Sons (1861), Crime and Punishment (1865–66), War and Peace (1865–68), Anna Karenina (1874–76) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). The subtlety and depth of Russian literature, its moral power, the astonishing variety of its great characters, its heady blend of realism, idealism and universalism, its potential subversiveness – and its antiSemitism – all left their mark on Hebrew literature. No Hebrew writer equalled the best of Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky: Chekhov, a major influence on Gnessin, Shoffman and Brenner, is far and away their superior as an artist as they themselves would have admitted notwithstanding their crucial importance in the development of modern Hebrew fiction. For inasmuch as these writers set Russian literature as their chief model for the depiction of modern life, they inevitably came off second. Hebrew at the time was still too wooden and undeveloped. However, some Hebrew writers, notably Mendele and Bialik, adopted Western literary standards while creating a new style of Hebrew based on the full richness of the Hebrew literary tradition. (Often they did this after writing a first draft in Yiddish). These writers had far greater artistic success. Mendele’s dual achievement in Yiddish as well as Hebrew is comparable with that of Gogol or Turgenev, certainly of Saltykov-Shchedrin. Bialik’s best poetry is not inferior to that of Lermontov or the young Pushkin. Characters such as Benjamin the Third or Tevye the Dairyman, both recast from Yiddish originals, are indigenous to Russia: though they are manifestly Jewish, Russia (or, to be more specific, the Ukraine) is their native soil. Also, as a charismatic literary figure in the Jewish national movement, Bialik had an influence on Russian Jewish society which was in some ways even greater than that of Tolstoy on Russian society (Aberbach 1996). Perhaps at no other time was a secular literature valued so highly among its readers – to the point of acting as a compass of moral direction and social and political change – as in Russia in the second half of the nineteenth-century. For the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia, this view of literature came easily, with the Bible and Talmud as its precedent. The Russian perception of literature as a means of changing society was largely adapted by Hebrew writers, though by the 1890s the ‘art for art’s sake’ movement affected both literatures. The two often-overlapping streams of Hebrew literature, one drawing from native Jewish culture and the other from Western influences, are closely paralleled in the two main directions of Russian literature, the Slavophile and the Western. As in Russian literature, notably the fiction of Ivan Bunin, the village, or shtetl, became a stock setting of Hebrew literature, often treated with contempt, or in a sentimental or semi-satirical style. Gogol’s description in Dead Souls (1842) of the ‘quixotic’ element in the Russian character is duplicated among the

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Russian Jews: Mendele’s Travels of Benjamin the Third, as indicated earlier, tells of a Jewish Quixote who sets off with his Sancho Panza for the Holy Land. Mendele’s satiric juxtapositions of biblical and talmudic characters and allusions with contemporary realities bring to mind similarly absurd juxtapositions in Russian literature, for example, in Leskov’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk or Turgenev’s A Hamlet of the Shchigry District. The character of the ‘superfluous man’ and the talush (‘uprooted’) is common to both literatures: the man with gifts which have no outlet, alienated and trapped in conditions over which he has little control. Russian and Jewish literatures of the late Tsarist period are united in their critical attitude to the role of education in a society in which the dominant problem was getting enough to eat from day to day (Aberbach 1993: 80–82). The purpose of education, both secular and religious, is called into question. The most striking poetic expression in Hebrew of being at an educational crossroad is Bialik’s Lifne aron hasefarim (In front of the bookcase, 1910). The poet stands in front of a bookcase whose sacred books no longer meet present day needs. This scene echoes Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (1904), though without the comic irony, when Gayev addresses the family bookcase. Gayev and his family are about to lose their estate through bankruptcy. The bookcase is a symbol of loss, not only of the property but of noble ideals identical with those of the Haskalah. Dear bookcase! Most esteemed bookcase! I salute your existence, which for more than a hundred years now has been directed towards the shining ideals of goodness and truth. For a hundred years your unspoken summons to fruitful labour has never faltered, upholding [in tears] through all the generations of our family, wisdom and faith in a better future, and fostering within us ideals of goodness and of social consciousness. (1975: 13) The radical critique of orthodox religion is another feature which binds Russian and Hebrew literature in an age of imperial decline. This critique was especially vehement prior to 1881, when Haskalah ideology emerged in opposition to what was often seen as a stifling puritan tradition based on outmoded rabbinic authority. In some cases, as we have seen, the attacks on the rabbis may have been unnaturally severe because the Jewish clergy, in common with the Russian orthodox priests, represented the status quo and, therefore, became symbolic of oppressive authority. The rabbis, like some of the priests in Russian literature, were acceptable targets for social criticism and satire, unlike the totalitarian government which had subjected the Jews to hundreds of restrictive laws. After 1881, however, the anti-clericalism of Hebrew literature was toned down as the Jews were galvanized into unprecedented unity by Christian hatred. Censorship deeply affected both Hebrew and Russian literature. It made open criticism of the government impossible and encouraged self-blame and self-hate. Jewish writers, intentionally or not, resorted to displacements or, following the lead of Saltykov-Shchedrin, used an ‘Aesopic’ language of fables to hint at

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their intentions. In the greatest of these allegories, Mendele’s The Mare, the battered mare is a symbol of the Jewish people whose miserable state is caused by prejudice and discrimination. However, when it came to the question of blame, the Jews are themselves held responsible for the mare’s pathetic state. In much the same way, Gogol, in his tale of Captain Kopeikin in Dead Souls, was forced by the censors to alter his attacks on the uncaring Tsarist bureaucracy that denied a soldier mutilated in war a proper pension. Instead, he put the blame for Kopeikin’s misfortune on Kopeikin, not on the authorities. In Hebrew as in Russian literature both before and after 1881, censorship taxed the ingenuity of the writer, to convey a desired meaning subtly and allusively. In this way, Hebrew writers such as Bialik discovered that the resources of Jewish history and literature gave cover to thoughts and emotions which would otherwise have been banned. The poem quoted earlier beginning ‘Nothing but your fierce hounding’ got past the censor as it was originally called ‘Bar-Kokhba’, which set it safely in the second century CE. Any challenge to authority was politically charged both in Hebrew and Russian literature. Under the Tsarist regime, literature became a vital outlet by which the depiction of individual consciousness was indirectly an act of rebellion against a social system in which there was scarcely room for individualism. The idea expressed by Ivan Karamazov in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov that ‘If God is dead, all things are possible’ is implicit in Hebrew literature. As we have seen, Bialik’s poem Al ha-Shehitah (On the Slaughter), written after the Kishinev pogrom in 1903, questions the existence of God, apparently for the first time in Hebrew. In Feierberg’s Whither?, the hero’s break from the authority of family and religion, as well as his incipient Zionism, is signalled by the momentous act of blowing out a candle in synagogue on Yom Kippur. If such sacrilege is possible, anything is possible – even the overthrow of the Tsar, the restoration of the Jews to their ancestral homeland, and the revival of Hebrew language and literature.

Hebrew literary stereotypes Perhaps the most striking and important similarity in Hebrew and Russian literature is the low opinion – often coupled with great affection – the writers of each language appear to have of their own people (Aberbach 1993). This aspect of Russian literature may be taken to presage the need for revolution; in Hebrew literature it is part of Jewish self-criticism accompanying the national revival. Almost every Jewish literary stereotype crops up in Mendele’s writings. Though vile and expressive at times of Jewish self-hate, these stereotypes are exploded through empathy and the passion for social change. They are seen as a symptom, not a cause, of poverty and backwardness whose elimination would allow a new type of Jew, free, strong and confident, to emerge. For this reason, though not a political Zionist, Mendele was adopted by the Zionist camp. His writings, with their ambivalence towards and satire of diaspora Jews, were interpreted as a justification of Zionism.4

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Mendele’s ambivalence towards his own people is often expressed in the pose of the impartial entomological observer. Like a natural scientist – in the 1860s and 1870s he had produced the first Natural History in Hebrew – the narrator of his stories constantly likens the Jews to ants or fleas. For example, in Mendele’s fictional autobiography Ba-Yammim ha-Hem (Of Bygone Days, 1894, 1903–17), mostly recast from a Yiddish original of the same period, the narrator complains: ‘We are a congregation – no, a heap – of ants. In a book on natural history you find a chapter on ants, not on any one ant’ (1947: 259). In Ha-Nisrafim (The Fire Victims, 1897), an indigent Jew complains to Mendele the Bookseller that the house of study where he slept has burned down in a fire which destroyed the whole town – this often happened in Russia – and Mendele cruelly remarks to himself: ‘Fleas if they could talk would argue so after losing their lodgings in houses and beds’ (ibid.: 445). Blatant anti-Semitic stereotyping occurs frequently in Mendele’s description of typical Jewish noses, the Jews’ uncleanliness and unhygienic manners, their ridiculous appearance, and love of money. Russian literature prior to the 1880s was full of similar anti-Semitic stereotyping, though without the empathy and reforming zeal which mark Mendele’s fiction far more strongly than self-hate. Lermontov’s play The Spaniards, Turgenev’s story The Jew, Gogol’s novels Taras Bulba and Dead Souls, Dostoyevsky’s fictional memoir The House of the Dead (1860), the satires of Saltykov-Shchedrin, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, among others, betray shameful prejudice and hatred nourished by the Church and kept alive in the popular imagination. Whatever their personal views of the Jewish people, pre-1881 Russian writers fell short of their liberal, humanistic ideals when they wrote of Jews. The literary stereotype built largely on Church anti-Semitism poisoned the image of living Jews. In The House of the Dead, Dostoyevsky tells of the Jew whom he met while imprisoned in Siberia. He was the only Jew in our barrack, and even now I cannot recall him without laughing. Every time I looked at him I would think of the Jew Yankel in Gogol’s Taras Bulba who, when he undressed in order to climb, together with his Jewess, into some sort of cupboard, looked uncommonly like a chicken. (1965: 93) In Crime and Punishment (1866) Dostoyevsky cannot resist describing the odious moneylender whom Raskolnikov murders as ‘rich as a Jew’ (1975: 83); and in The Brothers Karamazov (1880), when the invalid girl, Lisa Khokhlakov, asks the saintly Alyosha, ‘is it true that at Easter the Jews steal a child and kill it?’ Alyosha replies, ‘I don’t know’ (1976: 552). Even so, the anti-Semitism here as elsewhere in Dostoyevsky’s major writings is muted in comparison with the virulent hatred spewed out in his publicistic works (Goldstein 1976). Perhaps the most disturbing and dangerous side to this literary stereotype was the fact that while most Russian Jews lived in conditions of unspeakable poverty and degradation, Russian literature persisted in depicting ‘the Jew’ as being wealthy and in the habit of using his wealth to oppress Russians. Russian writers

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prior to 1881 seen to have been largely unable to contemplate a Jew without medieval associations of moneylending, miserliness, trickery and extortion. In Dead Souls, for example, Chichikov tries to persuade Nozdryov to sell his dead souls and Nozdryov, sensing a trick, keeps urging him to buy something of value: ‘what Jewish instincts you have,’ thinks Chichikov (p. 89). The Jewish revolutionary Liamshin in Dostoyevsky’s The Devils (1871–72) is singled out as a traitor to Russia, a new Judas (Goldstein 1976), though Jewish involvement in the Russian revolutionary movement at this time was minimal. Even in Anna Karenina the only Jewish character is presented stereotypically. Prince Oblonsky covets a lucrative post on the railway board and is kept waiting to his annoyance by Bulgarinov, a Jew whose support he needs (1968: 775). A measure of the extraordinarily poor image of the Jew in Russian society prior to 1881 (and, to a large extent, afterwards) is that although these Russian works are counted among the classics in world literature and are peopled with a wide range of characters, the negative image of the Jew is the only one which appears in them. There are no realistic or even sympathetic portraits to balance them, as for example Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend is a corrective to Oliver Twist. Jewish nationalism and the accompanying creation of a vibrant Hebrew literature became a means of fighting this racist stereotype by means of more balanced self-portrayals.

Russian literary stereotypes The distorted perception of the Jews is in most respects equalled by the generally low view of the Russian people in Russian literature. This sense of inferiority made the Russians especially vulnerable (as were the Germans in the 1920s and 1930s) to the projective identification of anti-Semitism. The self-hatred expressed by the characters in Russian literature (who in some cases are authorial mouthpieces) might be seen as foreshadowing the collapse of the Romanov empire inasmuch as it implicitly calls for radical change. The poor Russian selfimage is put succinctly by Bazarov in Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons: ‘The only good thing about a Russian is the poor opinion he has of himself ’ (1965: 116). Gogol’s particular genius was to delineate with sharp, precise strokes of satire this allegedly inferior side of the Russian character.5 It is uncanny how closely Mendele’s satires against the Jews resemble the jibes at the Russians in Gogol’s works, notably in Dead Souls: ‘no Russian likes to admit before others that he is blame’ (p. 99); ‘You know perfectly well what a Russian peasant is like: settle him on new land and set him to till it, with nothing prepared for him, neither cottage nor farmstead, and, well, he’ll run away, as sure as twice two makes four’ (p. 164); ‘In general, we somehow don’t seem to be made for representative assemblies’ (p. 208); ‘a Russian is wise after the event’ (p. 215); ‘a Russian likes spicy words; he needs them as much as a glass of vodka for his digestion’ (p. 307); ‘A Russian, to judge by myself, cannot carry on without a taskmaster: otherwise he will only drowse off and go to seed’ (p. 339). The contempt which Jewish writers often felt for the Yiddish language had its parallel in the disdain

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which the Russian intelligentsia had for the Russian language, as in Dead Souls, ‘To ennoble the Russian tongue even more, almost half its words were banished from their conversation, and because of that they had very often to have recourse to French’ (p. 169). Russia’s weaknesses were betrayed in her perception and treatment of the Jews and in the Jews’ vulnerability. It is a lesson of history that a nation’s Jewish policy is a gauge of its self-image. Individuals belonging to a hated minority might in any case come to hate their own people. The individual belonging to an oppressed and exploited minority which is aware of the dominant cultural ideals but prevented from emulating them, is apt to fuse the negative images held up to him by the dominant majority with the negative identity cultivated in his own group. (Erikson 1974: 303) The ‘negative images’ are likely to be all the more vicious if the dominant majority has a strongly negative self-image. Indeed, it is striking how the main criticisms of Russia in Russian literature are echoed in pre-1881 Hebrew literature: for example, in the charges of the lack of dignity, parasitism, backwardness, and demonic corruption. Prior to 1881, the attacks on Jewish society in Hebrew (and Yiddish) literature are mainly a clarion for social reform; after 1881, for national revival. In his letter to Gogol of 1847, for example, Belinsky writes that what Russia needs is ‘the reawakening in the people of a sense of their human dignity lost for so many centuries amid the dirt and refuse’ (1981: 537). A similar attitude prevailed among enlightened Jews toward the Jewish masses in the Pale of Settlement. In Dead Souls, likewise, the charge of parasitism is implicitly levelled by Gogol against the privileged classes, the landowners and the bureaucracy who treat human beings like property. Identical charges against the Jewish upper class appear frequently in nineteenth-century Yiddish and Hebrew literature (e.g. in Mendele’s novel Dos Kleyne Mentschele [The Parasite, 1864–65]). The critic Chernyshevsky’s attack in the 1840s upon the total lack of originality in Russian intellectual life – ‘What have the Russians given to learning? Alas, nothing. What has learning contributed to Russian life? Again, nothing’ (in Treadgold 1973: I 181) – is echoed in the critique of traditional Jewish life in Haskalah literature. Turgenev went so far in his novel Smoke as to suggest that if Russia were destroyed it would be no great loss to civilization. The low national self-image in Russian literature, though not unmixed with pride and empathy, came largely out of the awareness that most of the empire’s population was desperately poor and ignorant. The disgust and condescension often felt by educated Russians towards the peasants is well expressed in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, set shortly after the liberation of the serfs in 1861. The examining magistrate Porphiry jokes sardonically with Raskolnikov that no educated murderer would take refuge in the Russian countryside: ‘our modern educated Russian would sooner be in jail than live among such foreigners as our peasants’ (1975: 355). In The House of the Dead, Dostoyevsky expresses

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amazement at the number of literate prisoners among whom he was incarcerated for four years in Omsk, Siberia, in the early 1850s. In what other place where ordinary Russians are gathered together in large numbers would you be able to find a group of two hundred and fifty men, half of whom could read and write? (1985: 31) Even the idea that the Jews are in some way possessed by the Devil, in Mendele’s The Mare as in the traditional anti-Jewish stereotype, is echoed in Russian literature of the same period. At the end of Dostoyevsky’s The Devils, the dying progressive scholar Stepan Verhovensky retells the New Testament story of the devils entering the swine as a parable of contemporary Russia. That’s exactly like our Russia, those devils that come out of the sick man and enter into the swine. They are the sores, all the foul contagions, all the impurities, all the devils great and small that have multiplied in that great invalid, our beloved Russia, in the course of ages and ages. (1952: II 288) This roughly corresponded with Dostoyevsky’s own view of Russia, the germ of his novel which, he wrote in a letter of 9/2l October 1870 to A.N. Maikov, ‘describes how the devils entered into the herd of swine’ (1987: 343). Not surprisingly, then, Russia’s leading satirist of the late nineteenth century, Saltykov-Shchedrin, who influenced Mendele in his satiric portrayal of towns such as Glupsk and in beast fables such as The Mare – he used the battered mare as a symbol of the exploited Russian peasant – took a deeply negative view of Russian society and institutions, which he characterized as being ruled by ‘arbitrariness, hypocrisy, lying, rapacity, and vacuity’ (1986: vii). A further sign that Russian Jewish writers often took their cue from Russian writers may be seen in the fact that when Russian writers, in part because they were shocked by the pogroms of 1881–82, began to depict Jews favourably – for example, in works by Leskov, Chekhov, Korolenko and Gorky – the image of the Jew in Mendele and other Jewish writers became markedly less satirical and more realistic and positive. The negative image in Hebrew literature, as in Russian, might represent on one level a breaking away from this image, a declaration of ‘not us’, a function not unlike that of anti-Semitic literary stereotypes in Russian and other literatures. This splitting away from diaspora Jewry, which was perhaps inevitable in the creation of a new national identity, has led to a deeply ambivalent view of the diaspora among many Israelis.

Conclusion Hebrew literature of 1881–1917 in some ways marks a revolutionary point of departure both from previous Hebrew literature (and, indeed, from Judaism and

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the predominantly sacred Hebrew literature of the past) and also, in its assertion of Jewish distinctiveness, from Russian and European literature. At the same time, the social and political causes which forged Hebrew into an artistic instrument for Jewish cultural nationalism also gave Russian literature its revolutionary impetus. The extraordinary artistic quality of Hebrew literature of this period must be ascribed to the convergence of cultural influences in which each major stratum of Hebrew literature in the past and much of the most important nineteenth century world literature played their part. Imitation came to serve the cause of Jewish national assertion. The growth of European nationalism and anti-Semitism in the latter part of the nineteenth century drove many of the Russian Jews to rediscover their religious–cultural roots while rejecting traditional clerical authority. In doing so, they redefined their national identity by asserting a new aggressive creativity, mainly through massive development of literary and spoken Hebrew. This revival of an ancient language has no parallel in cultural history. Following its meteoric ascent, in 1881–1917, Hebrew was exiled by the Soviet empire, driven back to its birthplace and only homeland. In the land of Israel, Hebrew has continued as a critical mouthpiece for Jewish national identity. It has grown with confidence and creative vigour lacking since the time of the Bible.

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1 Nationalism and the Hebrew Bible 1 Despite vast, complex differences between the ancient and modern worlds, and the possibly insuperable difficulty in identifying the ultimate sources of modern nationalism (Taylor 1998: 196), interpretations of modern nationalism often seem to apply, to some extent at least, to the world of the Hebrew Bible: for example, that religion and history are harnessed to the national cause (Kedourie 1971); that nationalism leads to nations, not vice versa, and the importance of loyalty to a ‘high’ literate culture, to a language, an educational system, a national ‘will’ (Gellner 1983); or the emphasis on the growth of capital cities of political-military powers with extended bureaucratic administration (Giddens 1985); the importance of ideology, the need for identity, the split between state and society, which can stimulate nationalism (Breuilly 1993); or the idea that ‘alien rule is illegitimate rule’ (Connor 1994: 169). Print culture, which Anderson (1991) sees as a vital element in modern nationalism, has an ancient precedent in the tradition of the Hebrew scribes (sofrim) who preserved and disseminated the sacred texts generation after generation, and whose limitations were compensated by the Oral Tradition, by ritual weekly public readings of the Torah in synagogue, and by an unusually high level of literacy among the Jews. Even the idea of ‘invented tradition’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983) might have biblical precedents: for example, the revival of the Passover festival by Josiah (late seventh century BCE), or the establishment of the reading of the Torah by Ezra (mid-fifth century BCE). Consequently, it seems that modern nationalism has its closest ancient analogue in the Bible (Smith 1991, 1998, 2003; Grosby 1991, 1999); and for these reasons, Hastings describes the Jews as ‘the true proto-nation . . . the people who gave the world the model of nationhood, and even nation-statehood’(1997: 186). Smith (1999: 50) sums up the importance of the Hebrew Bible in the growth of nationalism. The profound consequences of the concept of a chosen people, and the passionate attachment to sacred languages and scriptures proved to be an enduring legacy for many peoples from late antiquity to modern times, sustaining their sense of uniqueness and nurturing their hopes of regeneration. (See also Novak 1995 and Smith 2003) On England and America as ‘chosen peoples’, see Longley (2002). For fuller accounts of national aspects of biblical literature, with bibliography, see Aberbach (1993) and Grosby (1999). Translations from the Hebrew are by David Aberbach. 2 Though much modern cultural nationalism is true to the idealistic international spirit of the Hebrew prophets, there is also significant divergence from the biblical source in setting the Nation above moral principles. The adoption and perversion in the name of Christianity of the concept of chosenness – which in the Hebrew Bible depends on

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moral behaviour – has brought national conflict, racist ideology, and the Holocaust: ‘the more powerfully one identified one’s own nation as chosen, the more one might want to eliminate the first chosen nation, the Jews, from the face of the earth’ (Hastings 1997: 198). Hastings’ view (which, if correct, does not bode well for future relationships between secularized Judaeo-Christianity and fundamentalist Islam) might be compared with that of Freud (1939: 88) who (naturally) saw the conflict between Judaism and Christianity in Oedipal terms, the ‘Son-religion’ (Christianity) aiming to murder the ‘Father-religion’ (Judaism). 3 According to Kedourie (1960), modern nationalism starts with Germany’s defeat by Napoleon at Jena in 1806. Kedourie, however, does not recognize that defeat characterizes certain forms of pre-modern nationalism, notably that in the Hebrew Bible. 4 Biblical messianism has had far-reaching influence on modern nationalism: The mainspring of nationalism in Asia and Africa is the same secular millennialism which had its rise and development in Europe and in which society is subjected to the will of a handful of visionaries who, to achieve their vision, must destroy all barriers between private and public. (Kedourie 1971: 106) 5 The Hebrew Bible is extraordinarily welcoming to the stranger: ‘you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt’ (Exodus 19:34). Even if he belongs to an enemy nation, the stranger must be treated according to the same law as native Israelites (Exodus 12:49). A non-Israelite such as Ruth the Moabite who exemplifies moral behaviour is regarded more highly than an Israelite such as Miriam, Moses’ sister who takes him to task for marrying a Cushite (evidently Black) woman (Numbers 12). 6 Whitman’s poetry is particularly striking in its allusions to universalist prophetic ideals, for example the following lines in ‘Salut au Monde’: Each of us inevitable, Each of us limitless – each of us with his or her right upon the earth, Each of us allow’d the eternal purports of the earth, Each of us here as divinely as any is here. Whitman, imitating the style of the King James Bible, created what he called a ‘New Bible’ in an age in which the Bible was still overwhelmingly the determining book of American identity (Perry 1969: 96). The Bible, Whitman wrote, was the ‘principal factor in cohering the nations, eras, and paradoxes of the globe, by giving them a common platform of two or three great ideas, a commonality of origin, and projecting cosmic brotherhood, the dream of all hope, all time’ (Whitman 1964: II 548). The American self-image as ‘a light unto the nations’, which Whitman brilliantly reflects, has had not-inconsiderable political repercussions. What is sometimes denounced as naked American imperialism is, to an extent, a genuine attempt to bring the secular gospel of freedom and democracy to oppressed people. Biblical influence on this sense of responsibility as the ‘true Israel’ should not be underestimated. 7 Monotheist faith is undermined even at the moment of the giving of the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai. As the Israelites below worship the Golden Calf, monotheism and national identity are joined momentously in the opening of the Ten Commandments, which does not read simply, ‘I am the Lord your God,’ but ‘I am the Lord your God who has brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage’ (Exodus 20:2; Deuteronomy 5:6). This is not only a call to difference but to common humanity: it applies to all with the mother wit to accept the Law, who then can enter the covenant of faith as chosen peoples yearning for exodus from oppression, and freedom. And precisely this happened in Western and much Eastern civilization as nations emerged

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from the ‘house of bondage’. Even the most secular modern societies often contain more than a residual trace of religion, and this is certainly true of nationalism. The secularization of society does not so much mean the disappearance of religion as it does the weakening of the hold of religion in its traditional forms, along with the disappearance of religious emotion into other areas, particularly the political. (Tucker 1968: 733; also see Aberbach 1996: ch. 4) 8 The moral purpose of the nation and of humanity as a whole is summed up in a section of the Book of Isaiah which apparently dates from the late sixth century BCE, at the time of the return of the Judeans to their homeland. It is not enough you are my servant, not enough to restore the tribes of Israel, or to bring the survivors back – I have made you a light of salvation to all peoples! (Isaiah 49:6) 9 The prophet Joel, for example, warns of the day when the nations would gather to be judged in the valley of Jehoshafat in Jerusalem. The harvest is ripe for the sickle– Wield it! The vats overflow with grapes – Tread them! For there is much wickedness! Multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of decision. . . (4:13–14) 10 Later poets, including Byron, Shevchenko, Ibsen, and Bialik, have been particularly drawn to Psalm 137, its combination of longing, humiliation, idealization of the homeland in exile, and lust for revenge. The psalm suggests that national survival was possible in exile, yet the nation’s identity was inhibited and deformed in consequence: ‘How can we sing a song of the Lord on foreign soil?’ I am grateful to Professor Steven Grosby for this observation. 11 Kedourie, dividing the noumenal from the political, argues against the political significance of the passage from Isaiah (2:3), ‘from Zion the Torah shall go forth, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem,’ as ‘simply the word of the Lord’ (1971: 61). However, in the prophets – as among modern fundamentalists – no distinction is made between politics and religion. 12 The Hebrew synagogue service, whose origins date from the biblical period, includes many selected readings from biblical poetry, which have helped keep Jewish national identity alive in literary-religious form. See pp. 68–71. 13 Smith observes: Protestantism ably exploited the vernacular market in order to reach the masses in its war against the Papacy and the monarchy; if print-capitalism aided the spread of Protestant ideas, the latter increasingly required familiarity with the Bible on the part of every believer, and hence put a premium on literacy and understanding in the local vernacular. (1998: 135) 14 After the Turkish conquest of Hungary in the sixteenth century, for example, the Hungarians took comfort from the divine salvation of ancient Israel: ‘Just as He had

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liberated the Jews from their Babylonian and Egyptian captivities, He would certainly free the Hungarians from the Turkish yoke’ (Szakály 1990: 94). It is not suggested here that Judaism and the Hebrew Bible were the only ancient source of modern nationalism, though they obviously defined to an enormous extent the character of monotheist countries, especially in the West. In general, ancient religious cultures, however they survived into the modern age, have left their mark on modern national identity. On nationalism in Asia, for example, ses Gungwu (in Kamenka 1976: 83). Biblical references in Va Pensiero include: Psalms 48:5, 137:2–3; Isaiah 22:4, 51:17; and Song of Songs 8:14. The British national anthem is similarly indebted to the Bible: for example, ‘God save the King’ is found for the first time as a salute to Saul, first king of Israel (I Samuel 10: 24); and ‘O Lord our God arise/ Scatter his/her enemies’ comes from Numbers 10: 35. The Welsh in particular came to identify themselves with ancient Israel: ‘The Welsh myth of election pictured the community as the lost tribes of Israel, a latterday chosen people’ (Smith 1999: 136–37). The translation of the Bible into Welsh in 1563 rejuvenated Welsh national consciousness. (The decision of John Knox and the Scottish reformers to adopt the English Geneva Bible of 1560 and the King James Version of 1611 and not translate the Bible into Scots was an important factor in weakening the Scots language and Scottish national identity, leading to increasing cultural and political union with England.) On the influence of the Bible on English, see Hill (1994) and Daniell (2003). Also see Colley (1992). Since Tyndale’s translation, there have been about 900 translations of the Bible into English (Daniell 2003: 134). For a comprehensive dictionary of biblical motifs in English literature, see Jeffrey (1992); broad selections of English literature influenced by the Bible are given by Jasper and Prickett (1999) and Atwan and Wieder (2000). The British ‘temptation/To belong to other nations’, as W.S. Gilbert put it in HMS Pinafore, or at any rate to identify with other nations, can also be attributed partly to the universalist spirit in the Hebrew Bible: this is apparent, above all, in Byron, but also in Swinburne, Clough, the Brownings, Kipling and T.E. Lawrence, among others. The Psalms are so well-known that in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations they appear not in the section on the Hebrew Bible but under The Book of Common Prayer, and there are more quotations there from the Psalms than from any other book, including Hamlet. After the battle of Dunbar in 1650, Cromwell interrupted his pursuit of the Scots to sing Psalm 117: ‘Fortunately’, Hill observes, ‘it is the shortest in the book’ (1994: 356). On Byron’s use of biblical sources, see Slater (1952). On Bialik, see Aberbach (1988) and Bialik (2004); on Greenberg, see Aberbach (2003a). For an account of Greenberg’s rejection of aestheticism, which he associated with Hellenism, in the context of the history of the Greek–Jewish relationship, see Leoussi and Aberbach (2002).

2 The Roman–Jewish wars and Hebrew cultural nationalism 1 Tanna (Heb.)
teacher of the tannaitic (Mishnaic) age (first two centuries CE). According to Cohen (1992: 157), the Mishnah records dicta of fifty-four figures in the period between c.80–135 CE (the Yavnean period); twenty-nine figures in the generation after the Bar-Kokhba war (the Ushan period); and sixteen contemporaries of Judah Hanasi. A few additional names appear in other tannaitic literature. 2 On the concept of the celestial Jerusalem in the Talmud, see Ta’anit 5a. 3 For general introductions to the talmudic period and its literature, see Stemberger (1996) and Steinsaltz (1976). The outstanding literary anthology of non-legal rabbinic texts (much of which dating, however, from the post-tannaitic period) is that of Bialik and Ravnitsky (1992). For a detailed analysis of effects of the Roman–Jewish wars on Hebrew creativity and Jewish identity, see Aberbach and Aberbach (2000).

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4 On the view that nationalism is a modern phenomenon, see for example Kedourie (1960), Gellner (1964), Deutsch (1966), Anderson (1983) and Hobsbawm (1990); the opposing view, that nations do indeed have ancient ‘navels’, is argued among others by Kohn (1946), Seton-Watson (1977), Armstrong (1982), Hutchinson (1987), and Smith (1991). 5 On this paradox, see Aberbach (1966) and Feldman (1993). 6 Smallwood (1976) links the Roman annexation of Egypt as a province in 30 BCE with anti-Semitic eruptions in Alexandria soon after. These were the first pogroms in history: mob attacks on Jews and their property. They came at a time when Rome seemed to be favouring the Jews under Herod and in the diaspora. The Egyptian Jews had given the Roman invaders military help and were naturally hated by the Greeks. But on a deeper level, in Smallwood’s view, Greek anti-Semitism might have been a displaced expression of humiliation over defeat and resentment at Roman domination: ‘[The Greeks] could make indirect attacks on Rome through her protégés the Jews, who were at hand and far more vulnerable, and whose ambitions were causing friction and tension’ (p. 234). 7 On the attraction of Judaism in the Roman empire, see Millar (1986: 160–61). Competitive incentives for Jewish mission might have derived from the fact that Greeks and Persians also required conversion for membership in the nation. When foreigners were initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries, they became Greek nationals. Those initiated into Mithraism became Persians. Cf. Baron (1952: I 181). The spread of Hellenism might itself have spurred imitative missionary forces in Judaism (Smith 1978). For texts which demonstrate or hint at Jewish religious expansion see Stern (1974). 8 The high moral code of Judaism was not tied to messianic nationalism. Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, for example, was a model of this moral code while having reservations as to the value of messianism. 9 See Josephus, Antiquities XX 7,1 (139–40); 7,3 (145f.); also XVI 7,6 (225); XVIII 5,4 (133, 139, 140); XIX 9,1 (355). No doubt partly because of the close affinity between the Judaean client kingdoms and Parthia, a congress of princes from these kingdoms held by Agrippa I at Tiberias (c.42 CE) was dispersed by the Roman governor of Syria (Antiquities XIX 8,1 [338–41]). Rome’s distrust of any political or religious movement that might undermine the empire is apparent also in its suppression of various cults. See, for example, Antiquities XVIII 3,4 (65–80); Tacitus, Annals II 85; Suetonius, Tiberius 36. Roman concern about the Parthian threat continued after 120 CE, when the post of legate of praetorian rank was upgraded to consular status and two permanent divisions were introduced: these were due, Goodman (1983) writes, ‘as much for possible Parthian campaigns as to prevent internal rebellion’ (p. 135). 10 For a brief, comprehensive survey, with bibliography, of the history of anti-Semitism, showing its roots in the early imperial period, see Alexander (1992). 11 This state of faute de mieux had a precedent in the aftermath of the destruction of the First Commonwealth, the burning down of the Temple in Jerusalem in 587 BCE and the Judean exile to Babylonia: ‘With land, temple and king gone, only one contact with the holy was left: the divine word’ (Kaufmann 1960: 447). 12 On the ambivalence of Judaism toward Greek culture, see Leoussi and Aberbach (2002). 3 Jewish nationalism in medieval Islam 1 Bilingual selections of medieval Hebrew poetry include Carmi (1981) and Scheindlin (1986, 1991). For a brief but comprehensive introduction to medieval Hebrew poetry by an important modern Hebrew poet, see Pagis (1970). Also, see Goldstein (1971) and Stillman (1979). Texts are taken mostly from Schirmann (1959). 2 From a sociological viewpoint, Spain was unique in a number of other ways: in having been a Roman province, then later an undifferentiated province of Western Christianity,

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and in having undergone Germanic conquest, with the result that ‘Even the Christians displayed a degree of assimilation that is scarcely paralleled in the east’. Crone and Cook (1977: 115). ‘Abd ar-Rahman III’s Umayyad predecessors repeatedly sought to exert Cordoba’s centralizing authority over a territory and population torn by numerous tribal, ethnic, and social cleavages, socio-economic and religious struggles, and factional rivalries: Arabs battled with Berbers, Syrian Arabs quarreled with Yemenis, and Arab Muslims competed with native Iberian neo-Muslims and their descendants (Ar. muwalladun). The saqaliaba or ‘Slavs’, praetorian guards of diverse European origin, brought to Spain as slaves at a young age, were involved in revolts against Umayyad authority as well as Mozarabic Christians, not without considerable ambivalence, occasionally resisted the idea of living with an Islamic polity. Under such complex and unpredictably shifting political circumstances, it is easy to appreciate why the Jewish community, which had no stake in the various internecine disputes among Muslims and which could be neither accused of harbouring a subversive allegiance to any sovereign power nor suspected of entertaining an obligation to any anti-Umayyad cause, might have warranted the trust of the Umayyads’ (Brann 1991: 4). The diversity in Muslim Spain was, at the same time, part of the wider unified Islamic empire: ‘It is precisely this pattern of regional disjunction within a broader context of fundamental social unity, as part of the universal society of Islam, which marks Iberian Islam from start to finish’ (Wasserstein 1985: 294). The translation of this and the other Arabic verse quoted below has been revised by David Aberbach. For a more detailed and convincing argument that the most original Arabic poetry was written in its earliest phase, in the ninth–eleventh centuries, see Giffen (1971). Malkah resha’ah (Evil queen, i.e. Christian Spain) is apparently a play on malkhut resha’ah (evil kingdom) which in the Talmud (e.g. Berakhot 61b) describes Rome. The collected poems of Hanagid are edited by Jarden (1966). For a bilingual edition of Hanagid’s poetry by Hillel Halkin, see Hanagid (2000). The imagery and language here owe much to the Book of Nahum. Jarden (1975: 33). Schirmann (1959, I 231) has lihyot (to be) rather than lihyot (to live). Schirmann (1959: 202) dates this poem 1039–40. Schirmann (ibid.: 243) notes the biblical references in this poem: Genesis 16:12; 21:17; Psalms 80:14 with its gloss in Lev. Rab. 13, ‘The pig is Edom’ [i.e. Rome]. For a literary study of Ibn Ezra’s poetry, see Pagis (1970). See, for example, Schirmann (1959: 386, 460), where Halevi describes Andalusia in biblical language reminiscent of his poems of Zion. Halevi’s hope that messianic redemption from what he describes as arrogant and oppressive Muslim rule would occur in 1130 is expressed in the poem beginning Namta ve-nirdamta (ibid.: 480).

4 Nationalism, Reform Judaism and the Hebrew prayer book 1 The siddur has been largely ignored in studies of nationalism. Even among the so-called primordialists – who find the ethnic origins of nations and nationalism in religious culture and values, history, myth, memory, codes, art and archaeology, symbols, customs, language, going back to antiquity – the category of prayer is conspicuous by its absence. Yet, the siddur, as much as any pre-modern culture, fits Smith’s definition of nationalism as ‘a doctrine of autonomy, unity and identity for a group whose members conceive it to be an actual or potential nation’ (1999: 139). This understanding of national identity is implicit in the Proclamation of the State of Israel, which alludes to the fact that the Jews never ceased to pray for their return to the Land of Israel and the restoration of their national freedom (Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz 1995: 629).

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2 On myths of election, including those of France going back to the 8th century, see Smith (1999: 131–35). 3 Ibid. 205. 4 For example, the Jewish jurist and historian Eduard Gans (1798–1839), who eventually was baptised, explained the anti-Jewish riots in 1819 in Hegelian terms. What to many observers, who do not go beyond the surface of daily phenomena, may loom like an age of recurrent, incomprehensible hatred and reawakened barbarism, is nothing but the symptom of the struggle which must precede unification. (Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz 1995: 216) 5 The replacement of the word ‘Temple’ for ‘synagogue’ implied the abdication of hope for the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. In contrast, in the more pluralistic Hapsburg empire, prayers for the return to Zion were not a contentious issue; and similarly, the West London Synagogue originally retained prayers for Israel’s hope of restoration to its land perhaps partly because this was in keeping with the conservative character of the British religious milieu (Meyer 1988: 149, 175). German Reform remained anti-Zionist, even during the Hitler era, while American Reform became increasingly sympathetic to Zionism. Recent Reform siddurim, such as Ha-Avodah Sheba-Lev (Jerusalem 1982) and Kavanat Ha-Lev (Jerusalem 1989) follow the early reformers in omitting references to the rebuilding of the Temple, the resurrection of the dead, and the re-establishment of the House of David, but in retaining large sections pertaining to the Return to Zion and to the Holocaust are ‘unashamedly Zionist and post-Holocaust’ (Reif 1993: 331). 6 On early Reform, see Barzilay (1959), Plaut (1963), Philipson (1967), Petuchowski (1968), Rosenbloom (1976) and Meyer (1988). The decline of Judaism among the German Jews already by the early nineteenth century is apparent in the fact that the Hamburg siddur of 1819 was for Sabbath and festivals only. In view of the attendance habits of the Hamburg Jews, the largest Jewish community in Germany, there was no need for a new weekday siddur. Similarly, the Jewish community of Paris numbering about 8,000 in 1840 had a single synagogue with about 500 seats, which was virtually empty (Meyer 1988: 171). This indifference to Judaism was not shared by all. Abraham Kohn (1807–48), rabbi in Hohenems, Vorarlberg, and later, Lemberg, Galicia, was murdered by fanatical opponents after he attacked the allegedly hidebound character of Judaism, dedicated a new temple, instituted reforms, and questioned whether the restoration of Israel to the Promised Land was necessary for the fulfilment of the divine kingdom of truth, love and justice: ‘Is [the modern Jew] not more concerned with the welfare of the German fatherland and the improvement of conditions for his coreligionists?’ (Plaut 1963: 135). The general attitude of the orthodox East European Jews towards the German Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) was one of horror. It is summed up by the Hebrew and Yiddish novelist, Mendele Mocher Sefarim (1835?–1917). A Jew – without a hat! A Jew – eating without washing his hands and saying a blessing! Have the Berlin Jews gone out of their minds? Don’t they know what’s waiting for them in hell? Traps, fire and brimstone, and trails of flame! (Mendele 1947: 277) 7 For other examples of anti-Semitic ‘Zionism’, see Katz (1980: 238–42), O’Brien (1986: 122) and Friedlander (1997: 62–63). On the history of anti-Semitism, see Poliakov (1965–85). 8 Even Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808–88), founder of modern Orthodoxy and opponent of Reform Judaism, was a German patriot who claimed that Jewish nationalism was purely religious, not political (Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz 1995: 197–202).

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9 Geiger evidently did not realize that such cosmopolitanism was alien to most Germans, including the intellectual elite. Nearly thirty years after the Damascus affair, when Romanian Jewry suffered persecution, he tried to gain Prussian intervention on their behalf (Meyer 1988: 97), but on the grounds that this was in the interests of Germany. 10 For details of changes made in these and many other Reform siddurim, see Petuchowski (1968) who examined 171 Reform siddurim and found that, despite the removal or alteration of prayers expressing Jewish national hopes, they remained in many respects traditional. American Reform was more radical than German Reform. The reformers were somewhat lacking in Germanic thoroughness in their efforts to eliminate Jewish national identity from the siddur. For example, the 1819 Hamburg siddur includes the Hebrew prayer ‘Thou hast chosen us from among all nations’ and the 1841 edition has prayers in German for the return to Zion and the rebuilding of Jerusalem – though the Hebrew is omitted; and Geiger’s 1854 siddur affirms Jewish chosenness while omitting ‘from all nations’. 11 Zecharias Frankel (1801–75), chief rabbi of Dresden, resigned from the Reform Rabbinical Conference at Frankfurt in 1845 in protest against the dismissive attitude towards Hebrew expressed by some of his colleagues. Frankel’s view that Hebrew is essential to Jewish prayer is now generally accepted in the Reform movement. 12 On Jewish prayer texts of the talmudic period, see Petuchowski and Brocke (1978: 21–44). The index to the Soncino Babylonian Talmud (s.v. ‘Benedictions’) has over two pages of references to blessings and prayers (Slotki 1952: 44–46). 13 Special siddurim for the pilgrim festivals (Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles) and for the High Holy Days (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) evolved as part of medieval synagogue culture: they are known as machzorim (sing. machzor
‘cycle’). 14 The head of each of the two leading Babylonian talmudical colleges, Sura and Pumbaditha, was known as Gaon (Excellency). Among the most influential early siddurim were those compiled by Amram Gaon (ninth century) and Saadia Gaon (tenth century); also influential were the Machzor Vitri (twelfth century) and the Sefer Maharil (fifteenth century). 15 ‘And I will be to them a minor sanctuary’ (Ezekiel 11:16). Rabbi Isaac taught: ‘These are the synagogues and houses of prayer in Babylonia’ (Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 29a). According to Jewish legend, in the messianic age all synagogues (and all the dead) would miraculously be transported to the Land of Israel (ibid.). 16 ‘May it be thy will, Lord our God and God of our fathers, that this recital be favourably regarded and accepted by thee as if we offered the daily offering at its proper time, its right place, and according to rule’ (Birnbaum 1999: 30). 17 Translations of some of the hymns have been done by David Aberbach. 18 See, for example, Birnbaum (1999: 65–68, 79–82). 19 This saying is attributed to Maximilian Horwitz, first president of the Centralverein of German Jewry (Reinharz 1975: 67). 20 Also, the reformers provided a model for Zionist thinkers such as Smolenskin and Ahad Ha’am of what to react against – namely the idea that the Jews no longer constituted a nation. 21 On the influence of Judaism on the concept of ‘chosen peoples’, see ch. 1. 5 The renascence of Hebrew and Jewish nationalism in the Tsarist empire 1881–1917 1 Mostly because it asserted Jewish national distinctiveness, Hebrew was banned under Soviet rule; and it is highly significant that many leading Soviet dissidents in the 1970s and 1980s, such as Scharansky, were teachers and students of Hebrew.

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2 On Mendele and his milieu, with literary and historical bibliography, see Aberbach (1993). The most comprehensive history of Hebrew literature of the period 1881–1917 is that of Shaked (1977). 3 On Ahad Ha’am’s rivalry with Herzl, see Zipperstein (1993). 4 Only one other major Hebrew writer – Agnon – followed Mendele in this ambivalent, satiric mode of depiction of European Jews, which became the essence of his style (Aberbach 1984). But in contrast with Mendele a generation earlier, Agnon was totally committed to Zionism, and he wrote most of his works in Jerusalem. 5 Gogol’s claim to love Russia seems to have been true for the most part when he was out of the country (which he was while writing Dead Souls). When he lived in Russia, he appears to have despised it (Maguire 1994: 176–77).

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Note: Numbers in bold refer to quoted passages. Abbasid caliphate 38, 39, 41 Abd ar-Rahaman 41, 43 Abraham 69 Abramowitz, S.Y. see Mendele Mocher Sefarim Abu Ishaq 49 Aeschylus 34 Africa 7, 8, 19, 38, 39, 40, 52, 53, 102 aggadah 1, 26, 35, 78 Agnon, S.J. 67, 79, 87, 89, 91–92, 109 Ahab, King 12 Ahad Ha’am 21, 78, 80, 108, 109 Alenu 58 Alexander II, tsar of Russia 4, 80, 84, 93 Alexandria 30, 106 Alfonso VI 39, 50 Alfonso VII 39 aliyah 22–23, 37, 77, 87, 92 Alkabetz, Shlomo 71 Alkalai, Judah 72 Almohads 39, 52, 53, 54; see also Berbers Almoravids 39; see also Berbers American Revolution 72 Amos, the prophet 9, 10, 14, 21 Andalusia 39, 41, 44, 48ff., 106 Antiochus IV 35 anti-Semitism: Abu Ishaq 49; and assimilation 25, 65–66; and Church 20, 62; Damascus blood libel 65, 108; effect on Zionism 1, 3, 4, 5, 20, 73, 74, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 86–87, 99, 100; emancipation and hope of end of 59, 60; French 20, 61; German 23, 60, 61, 62, 73; Greco-Roman 27, 30ff., 105; ‘Hep Hep’ riots 62, 107; and the Holocaust 5, 24; Islamic 40–41, 49–50; literature in response to, Bialik 20–21, 81, 83, 87, Gabirol 49,

Greenberg 20–21, 22ff., Halevi 37, 52, 55–56, Mendele 96, and omission of prayers, by Reform Jews 62–63; in the Roman empire 31ff.; Protocols of the Elders of Zion 73; racial 4, 5, 73, 74; Russian 4, 77, 79, 86–87, 90, 93, 97; and sense of national inferiority 97–99; ‘Zionist’ anti-Semites 63, 72, 107; see also pogroms Arabic, culture 37ff., 106 Aramaic 26, 34, 35, 40 Armenia 7, 14, 27 Assyria 3, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 34 Babel, Isaac 78 Babylonia 3, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 32, 34, 39, 41, 67, 105, 108 Baghdad 39 Bar-Kokhba 21, 32, 33, 95, 104 Beethoven, Ludwig van 34, 72 Belinsky, Vissarion 98 Ben-Yehudah, Eliezer 79 Berbers 46, 50, 106 Berdichevsky, M.J. 78, 80, 81, 87–88, 90 Berkowitz, I.D. 80, 83 Berlin 59, 64, 73, 107 Bet Knesset 28; see also Synagogue Bet Midrash 28, 85 Bialik, Chaim Nachman: aggadah, use of 90; Ahad Ha’am, disciple of 21; autobiography 80, 91; In the City of Slaughter 4, 21; defiant spirit 81, 83; despair 21, 83; and educational crossroads 94; God, questions existence of 87, 95; hasid, lapsed 23, 91; Hebrew literary tradition, use of 93; kinnus 93; Kishinev pogrom 4, 21, 83, 87, 95; lyric poet 78; mysticism 91;

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Bialik, Chaim Nachman (Continued ) national poet of the Jewish people 2, 4, 16, 78, 83, 94; ‘poems of wrath’ 4, 83, 87; and pogroms 4, 21, 83, 87, 95; prophets, influence of 2, 4, 20, 21; Psalm 137, influence of 103; readership 82 Bible, Hebrew: and change 9; Geneva Bible 18, 104; Greek translation 14; King James translation 16, 17, 102, 104; Latin translation (Vulgate) 15, 17; moral ideals of 2, ch. 1, 101–02, 103; in siddur 68–71; translations of 14f.; violence of 12; see also Britain; Lamentations; nationalism; prophets; Psalms; Tyndale Blake, William 2, 19, 21 Blessing of the New Month 58 Blok, Alexander 92 Book of Common Prayer 17, 104 Botev, Hristo 8, 22 Braudes, Reuben Asher 80, 85–86 Brenner, J.H. 78, 80, 81, 82, 87, 89, 90, 93 Britain, and the Bible 16ff. Bunin, Ivan 93 Burns, Robert 19 Byron, George Gordon, Lord 16, 19, 103, 104 Cairo 39 Caligula 30 Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens 73, 108 Chaucer, Geoffrey 18 Chekhov, Anton 93, 94, 99 Chernyshevsky, Nikolai 98 Christianity 2, 6, 7, 14, 20, 29, 33, 34, 52, 59, 61, 101, 102, 105 Church 8, 14ff. Claudius 30 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 19 Confucianism 34 Cordoba 38, 39, 41, 44, 46, 52, 106 Coverdale, Miles 17, 70 Crassus 32 Crimean War 27, 79 Cromwell, Oliver 18, 19, 27, 72, 104 Crusades 53, 67 Damascus blood libel 65, 108 David, king of Israel 12, 18, 21, 63, 107 Dickens, Charles 97 Diderot, Denis 61 Dohm, Christian von 24 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 93, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99

Edward VI 18 Egypt 7, 8, 10, 16, 53, 72, 102, 104, 105 Ehrenberg, Ilya 78 Einhorn, David 64, 65 Eleazar ben Yair 36 Elijah 12 Eliot, T.S. 19, 34, 84 Elizabeth I 18 English Revolution 18, 19; see also Cromwell Erasmus 14 Esenin, Sergei 92 Ethiopia 10, 14 Euripedes 34 Europe: exile for Jews 1, 3; genocide, guilty of 24; Islam, overtakes 38; ‘true Israel’, adoption of 14, 16ff., 20, 40; see also anti-Semitism; France; Germany; Jews; nationalism; Spain exile see galut; Israel, land of Ezekiel, the prophet 13, 69–70, 108 Ezra, Moses Ibn 38, 39, 50–52, 83 Fatimid caliphate 38, 39 Feierberg, M.Z. 78, 80, 81, 84, 89–90, 95 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 61, 63 France: Bible, influence on French Revolution 15, 107; Jewish emancipation 57; Jewish patriotism for 58; Prayer for France 20, 58; in Renaissance 34; see also antiSemitism; Napoleon Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) 27 Frankfurter, Naphtali 64 French Enlightenment 61, 76 French Revolution 1, 2, 3, 15, 20, 29, 34, 59, 61, 79 Friedländer, David 59 Fries, Jakob Friedrich 6 Frischmann, David 78 Gabirol, Shlomo Ibn 38, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48–49, 50, 51, 56, 83 Galilee 26, 34 galut (golos) 1, 72–73; see also Israel, land of Garibaldi, Giuseppe 15 Geiger, Abraham 2, 64, 65, 66, 73, 108 Geneva Bible 18, 104 Geonim 67 Germany: anti-Semitism 23, 60, 61, 62, 63, 73; Haskalah 59, 61, 73, 79; ‘Hep Hep’ riots 62, 107; Jews, anti-Zionism 1, 59, 107, 108,

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Index 123 emancipation in Prussia 59, patriotism ch. 4; nationalism 3, 102; World Wars 27, 73; see also Centralverein; Friedländer; Geiger; Holdheim; Mendelssohn; Reform Judaism Gibraltar, strait of 50 Gibran, Khalil 8 Gnessin, U.N. 78, 80, 82, 87, 88–89, 90, 93 God: atheism 9; as blacksmith (Greenberg) 21–22; communication of will 7; covenant of with Israel 15, 72; death of, in The Brothers Karamazov 95; exiles, gathering of by God 70; faith in 2; First Commandment 102; France, chosen by God 20, 58; God-intoxication to nation-intoxication 59; God of Zion 63; ‘God save the king’ (Bible) 104; Hebrew as language of God 43; inspiration of 16; Israel’s enemies, rod of God’s wrath 11, 21; Jerusalem, built by God 19, rebuilding of 71; Jews, chosen by God 74, conception of God attracted converts 31, damned by God 20, God’s children no longer 73; in literature, Agnon 91–92, Bialik 91, Brenner 90, Dostoyevsky 95, Gabirol 49, Greenberg 21–22, 23, Halevi 52–53, 54, Hanagid 47, Nietzsche 88, Tchernichowsky 88; mankind, abandonment of and by God 11, created in God’s image 8, equality of in eyes of God 8, responsibility of before God 10; and messianic age 12–13; prayers to in Reform synagogue 60; Promised Land, prayer to God gives sovereignty over 67; questioning of 87–88, 95; return to 70; submission to 29; will of 11; see also monotheism Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 15, 34, 71, 72 Gogol, Nikolai 93, 95, 96, 97–98, 109 Gordon, Aharon David 23, 92 Gordon, Judah Leib 8, 79, 80, 85 Gorky, Maxim 83, 99 Graetz, Heinrich 60 Granada 39, 42, 46, 49–50, 52, 56 Greece and Greeks: Greek anti-Semitism 105; Greek language 34, 35, Bible 14, 15; Greek learning, rediscovery in Middle Ages 43; Greeks, in Palestine 32, slaves (freedmen) 30; Jews and Greek civilization, ambivalence to 105,

assimilation into, failed 40, Greek language, use by Jews 34, 35, immersion in 34, among Hasmoneans 35, rejection of Greek aestheticism (Greenberg) 23, 104, retreat from 35, Tchernichowsky, admiration for Greeks 81; and mission 105; nationalism 8, 78; Religionskrieg with Judaism 30; Rome, conquest of Greece by 30, Greeks on Rome’s side in wars against Jews 32–33; ‘scorched by the Greeks’ (Halevi) 53; in the Kuzari 55; and Zionism, influence on 72, 81; see also Hellenism Greenberg, Uri Zvi 2, 4, 5, 20–25, 87, 104 Gunpowder plot (1605) 18 Gutenberg, Johan 14 Habbus, Badis Ibn 49 Hadrian 32, 34 Hadrianic persecution 34 Hai Gaon 39–40 halakhah 1, 26, 35 Halevi, Judah 20, 37, 38, 39, 44, 49, 50–56, 106 Hanagid, Joseph 49 Hanagid, Samuel 38, 39, 44, 45, 46–48, 49, 50, 53, 56, 106 Hanukkah 69 Hasidim and Hasidism 22, 23, 82, 90, 91, 92 Haskalah 41, 59, 73, 79, 80, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, 94, 98, 107; maskilim 59, 87 Hasmoneans 35 Hazm, Ibn 45 Hebrew: in empires, Islamic ch. 3, Mespotamian ch. 1, Roman ch. 2, Tsarist ch. 5; see also Bible; Mishnah; prophets; satire; siddur Hegel, G.W.F. 61, 107 Heine, Heinrich 60 Hellenism 29, 30, 33, 34, 35, 104, 105; see also Greece Henry VIII 16, 17, 18 Herzl, Theodor 20, 60, 74, 78, 109 Hess, Moses 60 Hofjuden 59 Holdheim, Samuel 2, 64, 65, 73 Holocaust 1, 2, 5, 22, 24, 28, 29, 61, 63, 73, 75, 102, 107 Homer 30, 34 Hosea, the prophet 12–13 humanism 15, 31, 96

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Ibsen, Henrik 16, 103 Ireland 18, 27, 33 Isaiah ben Amotz, the prophet 2, 5, 9, 12, 14, 21, 69, 83, 103, 104; see also Second Isaiah Islam 3, 6, 27, ch. 3, 67, 102, 105–06 Israel: chosen people of 10, 53, 64; Christianity and ‘true Israel’ 14, 18, 102; Congregation of Israel 52, 91; and covenant with God (Hosea) 10, 12–13, 15, 19, (Leviticus) 68, 72, 102 n. 7; break of (Braudes) 86, (Berdichevsky) 88; and the dry bones 13, (Ezekiel) 69–70; enemies of 12; hatred for 65; idolatry of 12; Israelite slaves 1, 7, 8, 10, 16, 19, 102; kingdom of 3, 6, 10, 13, 34, 64; nation, model of 14, 15, Anglo-Saxon 16, English 18, 19, 104, German 14–15, Hungarian 103–04, Italian 16, Welsh 104; and nationalism 3, 8, 10; ‘new Israel’ 2, 7, 72; poetry of, Halevi 53; punishment of 11; Reform Judaism, rejection of link to Israel 58ff.; restoration of 103; psalms of 70; Saul, first king of 104; in siddur 57, 58, 72; state of 2, 24, 75, 78, 106; and time 67; ‘when Torah ruled Israel’ (Agnon) 91; trade, centrality for 14 Israel, land of: aliyah to 87, 92; building of as a religious act (Shlonsky) 92; Christian conquest of 39, 53; exile from 1, 2, by Assyria (721 BCE) 10, 13, by Babylonia (587 BCE) 3, 7, 13, 72, 105, and Bible 6, blame for 87, and cosmopolitanism 14, and cultural growth 33ff., ‘exiles of Zion’ (Psalm 137) 71, 103, in kabbalah (Agnon) 91, and prayer 63, 65, 68, by Rome (70, 135 CE) 3, 26, 27, 28, 33, in Spain (Halevi) 37, 39, 40, (Gabirol) 49, 50; Hebrew, centre of 100; and Jewish nationalism 1, 3, 28, 55, 67, 72; and Jews, only true homeland of 1, religious-national attachment to 1; Judaism, integral to 66; and monotheism 9; psalms set in land of Israel 70; see also nationalism; Zionism, return to, hope of 7, 53, 55, 56, 71, hymns of 71, in Mendele’s Travels 83, in messianic age 41, 65, 108, prayers for 57, 114, restoration through prayer 71, vision of 13, (Ezekiel) 69–70, wish not to, French Jews 43, German Jews 59, 63, 65

Jabotinsky, Vladimir 5, 23 Jehoiachin, King 12 Jeremiah, the prophet 8, 9, 12, 14, 21, 69, 72, 90 Jerusalem: ban on Jewish residence in, by Romans 26, 32, 33; celestial 33, 104; conquest by crusaders (1099) 38; destruction of 27, 28, 37, 67, 105; and Jewish nationalism, unifying force of 32; and messianic hope 13, 26; national and universal capital 13, 66; ‘new Jerusalem’ after emancipation 59; pilgrimage to 68; poetry of Jerusalem, in Book of Psalms 70, celestial (Greenberg) 21, ‘city of beauty’ (Najara) 71, ‘city of sovereignty’ (Agnon) 91, crusader conquest (Halevi) 52, Earthly Jerusalem (Greenberg) 22–23, grief (Halevi) 37, and Holocaust (Greenberg) 24, hope of recovery (Halevi) 53, ‘If I forget you, Jerusalem’ (Psalm 37) 12, ‘Jerusalem – tefillin shel rosh’ (Greenberg) 23, new (Spenser) 19, 20, rebuilding of 72; rejoice with (Isaiah) 69, ruin (Lamentations) 11, ‘the word of the Lord from Jerusalem’ (Isaiah) 103, ‘Till we have built Jerusalem’ (Blake) 19; prayers of return to, elimination by German Reform 60, 63, 64, 66; rebuilding of 71, 107, prayers for excluded from Reform siddur 108; siege of (70 CE) 31; in wedding ceremony 67; see also Crusades; Messiah; nationalism; Ninth of Av; Temple; Zion Jewish cultural nationalism see Ahad Ha’am; Bible; Hebrew; Israel; Jerusalem; Jews; kinnus; Messiah; nationalism; Temple; Zionism Jews: ahl-al-kithab 40; as aliens 60; and anti-Semitism 61–62, 63; Autoemancipation (Pinsker) 86–87; defeat and exile of 3, 5, 6–7, 10, 11, 13, 27–36, 70; definition of 1; dhimma 40; emancipation of 1, 20, 57–58, 59; in exile, accommodation in 72; see also galut, in France 3, 20, 57, 63; in Germany 3, 60, 62, 65, 72–73; as infidels 43, 47; patriotism of 3, 4, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64f., 72, 80; and Reform Judaism ch. 4; in Russia 57, 76, 79, 80, 85; as slaves 2, 6, 8, 16, 30; in Spain ch. 3; wars with Rome ch. 2;

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Index 125 see anti-Semitism; Bible; Israel; Yiddish; Zionism: and Zionism 60, 63 Joel, the prophet 103 Josephus 36 Joyce, James 19, 34, 83, 84 Judah, kingdom of 3, 6, 7, 11, 13, 34, 64, 69 Judah Hanasi 26, 104; see also Mishnah Judaism see Bible; Christianity; Hasidism; Hebrew; Islam; Israel; Jews; kinnus; Messiah; Mishnah; monotheism; nationalism; Reform Judaism; religio licita; siddur; Synagogue; Talmud; Zionism Kahn, Joseph 64 Kalischer, Zvi Hirsch 72 Kalonymus, Moses ben 71 Kant, Immanuel 24, 61, 72 Karaites 42 Karolyi, Sandor 15 Khazars 40, 55 kinnus 83 Kishinev pogrom 4, 21, 83, 87, 95 Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb 15 Kohn, Abraham 107 Koran 43, 55 Korolenko, V.G. 99 Krochmal, Nachman 73 The Kuzari 55–56 Labrat, Dunash ben 43–44 Lamentations, Book of 11, 70 Lasker-Schüler, Else 23 Latin 15, 17, 43 Lawrence, D.H. 19, 104 Leonardo da Vinci 34 Lermontov, M.Y. 93, 96 Leskov, Nikolai 94, 99 Lönnrot, Elias 71 Lucena 43 Luther, Martin 15. 17, 30 Luzzatto, Samuel David 73–74 Maimonides 39 Malaga 39 Maldon, battle of 16 Mandelstam, Osip 78 Mapu, Abraham 80, 85 Mark Antony 32 Markish, Peretz 23 Martial 28 Mayakovsky, Vladimir 92 May Laws (1882) 77, 82, 86

Mendele Mocher Sefarim 4, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 83, 85, 86, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 107, 109 Mendelssohn, Moses 59 Menuy, Jacob 71 Messiah and messianic age: and Age of Reason 59; in Christianity 14; and English Revolution 19; and French Revolution 58; in Greenberg’s poetry 21, 22, 23; hopes, above temporal rule 8, 14, 22, and crisis 39, destruction of by Rome 27, 34, in Halevi’s poetry 37, 52, 53, 54, 106, Jerusalem as centre of 26, Reform Judaism, rejection of 58, 62, 65, Temple, rebuilding of 68; Judaism inseparable from 31; and nationalism 31, 34, 37, 105; and national revival 13, 21; prophetic ideals 9, 12, 14, 21ff: and proselytization 32; in Talmud 108; universal humanitarianism 5, 9 Micah, the prophet 10, 12, 44 Michelangelo 34 Mickiewicz, Adam 8, 15, 22, 27 midrash 1, 28, 35, 43, 52, 83, 91 Milton, John 17, 18, 19 Mishnah 26, 28, 35, 66, 69, 72, 104 monotheism 9, 12, 40, 88, 102; see also God Montefiore, Moses 65 Mount Zion 9, 11, 70 Nahum, the prophet 8, 106 Najara, Israel 71 Napoleon and Napoleonic wars 27, 34, 57, 58, 60, 62, 79, 102 Nathan, the prophet 12 nationalism, biblical and after: Anglo-Saxon 16; in the Bible ch. 1; chosenness 1, 4, 6, 7, 9, (Amos) 10, (Spenser) 19, 20, 22, 26, 28, 29, 40, 58, 61, 64, 65, 66, 67, 74, 101, 102, 104, 108; and conflict 6, 9, 14, 30, 33, 41, 58, 64, 85, 102; and covenant 10, (Hosea) 12–13, 15, 19, (Leviticus) 68, 72, 102 n. 7; break of (Braudes) 86, (Berdichevsky) 88; and defeat 3, 5, 6–8, 10, 13, 27–29; English 8, 19, 104; and exile 1, 2, 6, 10, 13, 14, 33ff., (Gabirol) 49, 63, 65, 68, 71, 72, 87, (Agnon) 91, 103, 105; German 3, 14–15, 102; German Jews vs. Jewish nationalism ch. 4; Greek 8, 72, 78; grievance 6, 11, 27; and guilt 6, 11;

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nationalism, biblical and after (Continued ) hopes of 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 12f., 15, 19, 20, 21, 26, 28, 29, 30, (Halevi) 37, 39, 40, (Halevi) 53, 54, 58, 62, 64, 65, 66, 68, (Jeremiah) 69, 74, 87, 101, 106, 107, 108; Hungarian 103–04; in Islamic world 3, ch. 3, 106; Italian 16, 72; ‘light unto the nations’ (France) 58, (USA) 102, (Israel) 103; and martyrdom 9; moral foundation of 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, (Micah) 10, 12, 13, 14, 18, 21, 27, 28, 31, 101–02, (Isaiah) 103, 105; in Roman empire ch. 2; in Russia under the tsars ch. 5; in siddur 66, 68–70, 72, 73, 106; in Spain ch.3; unity and community of nation 6, 7, 10, 19, 26, 27, 33, 35, 67, 73, 74, 75, 78, 82, 87, 88, 89, 94, 104, 106, 107; and universalism 9, 56, 93; Welsh 104; see also Israel Nebuchadrezzar 12 Nero 30, 31 Nicholas I, tsar of Russia 80 Nicholas II, tsar of Russia 81, 83 Nietzsche, Friedrich 60, 81, 88 Ninth of Av (Tisha b’Av) 37, 64, 70

Ezekiel 13, 69–70, 108; Greenberg 4–5, 20, 21–24; influence of 8–9; Isaiah ben Amotz 2, 5, 9, 12, 14, 21, 69, 83, 103, 104; Jeremiah 8, 9, 12, 14, 21, 69, 72, 90; Joel 103; maltreatment of 2; messianic ideal of 9; Micah 10, 12, 44; Nahum 8, 106; and the nation, attacks on 8, 12, 21; nationalism, influence on 6, 8–9, 10ff., 15, 25; ‘new Jerusalem’ (Blake) 19; religion and politics, do not distinguish 103 n. 11; Second Isaiah 69, 103, 104; speaking truth to power 9; vision, universal 9, 12–13, 101; writings, characteristics of 9, 101–02 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion 73 Psalms: in Book of Common Prayer 17, 18, 104; in Church 18; and Cromwell 104; influence of 6, 15, 17, 18, 19, 104; Milton’s translations from 19; in siddur 63, 67, 70–71; universal vision of mankind 10; in Va Pensiero 104; Watts’ translations from 19 Pushkin, Alexander 2, 93

The Odyssey 12

Raphael 34 Rappoport, Salomon Jehuda Leib 65, 73 Ravnitzky, J.H. 78, 104 Reformation 14, 15, 18 Reform Judaism ch. 4; see also Friedländer; Geiger; Holdheim; Mendelssohn religio licita 34 Renaissance 14, 34 Revisionism 15, 23; see also Greenberg; Jabotinsky Robespierre, Maximilien 2, 15 Roman empire 1, ch. 2, 105 Rosh Hashana 69, 70, 108 Rühs, Friedrich 61 Russia 1, 4, 21, 27, 50, 57, 73, ch. 5, 109; see also Pale of Settlement; serfs Russian Revolution 3, 73 Russian Turkish War 79

Pale of Settlement (Russia) 4, 77, 78, 79, 83, 84, 98 Parthia 31, 32, 105 Passover 68, 69, 101, 108 Pasternak, Boris 78 Pax Romana 34 Pearse, Padriac 8 Peloponnesian wars 34 Percy, Thomas 71 Peretz, I.L. 78, 80, 82, 90 Persia 3, 13, 27, 31, 34, 53, 55, 105 Petöfi, Sandor 2, 3, 8, 15, 22 Plunkett, Joseph 8 pogroms: in ancient Egypt 105; in medieval Spain 49; in Palestine 23; in Russia 1, 4, 21, 76, 80–81, 82, 83, 86, 87, 99 Pound, Ezra 34 prayer book see siddur ‘Prayer for France’ 20, 58 Promised Land see Israel, land of prophets, Hebrew: Amos 9, 10, 14, 21; and apocalypse 7, 11, 103; Bialik 4, 20–21; civilization, turning point in 76; and English Revolution 19; and establishment, at odds with 2, 9;

Qumran 35

Saadia Gaon 43, 108 Sagrajas 50 Saltykov-Shchedrin 80, 93, 94, 96, 99 Sanhedrin (convened by Napoleon) 58 Saruq, Menahem Ibn 43 satire 4, 81; Gogol 97–98; Mendele 86, 94, 95

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Index 127 Schneour, Zalman 78 Schopenhauer, Arthur 61 Schubert, Franz 34 Scott, Sir Walter 71 Scythopolis (Beth Shean) 34 Second Isaiah 69, 103, 104; see also Isaiah ben Amotz serfs, freeing of Russian 77, 79, 98 Seville 39, 43, 47 Shakespeare, William 17, 18 Shalom, Shin 23 Shaprut, Hasdai Ibn 43 Shekhinah 24 Shema 66 Shevchenko, Taras 2, 8, 15, 103 Shlonsky, Abraham 23, 92 Shoffman, Gershon 78, 87, 89, 93 Sholom Aleichem 77–78, 80, 83, 85 siddur: ‘A Beautiful Story about my Siddur’ (Agnon) 67; anthology of texts 67; antiquity of prayers 67; birkhat ha-mazon 70–71; blessing for the Torah 74; evolution of 66–67; and festivals 69; in Hebrew 1, 3; hymns in 71–72; importance of 57, 66; kri’at ha-Torah 69; liturgical poetry in 42; machzorim 108; national elements in 66, 68–70, 72, 73, 106, removal of 57ff., 62, 64, 65; prayers, Alenu 58, Hallel 68, Ma’ariv 68, Mincha 68, Musaf 68, New Moon 69, ‘Prayer for France’ 20, 58, for restoration of Jews to the land of Israel 57, Shacharit 68, Shema 66; psalms in 70–71; siddurim, American Reform 108, Berlin Reform 59, 64, earliest 43, 67, 108, Geiger 65, 108, Hamburg Reform 62, 107, 108; standardization of 67; see also Synagogue Silver, Abba Hillel 75 Simchat Torah (Rejoicing of the Law) 69 Sinai, Mount 2, 23, 53, 69, 102 Smolenskin, Peretz 79, 80, 108 Sombart, Werner 63 Sophocles 34 Soviet Union 31, 36, 78, 100, 108 Spain 3, 18, 20, 31, 34, ch. 3, 76, 105–06 Spenser, Edmund 19 Sukkot (Tabernacles) 69 Synagogue: in the diaspora (Greenberg) 24; east facing 72; growth of 42, in Galilee 26; Herzl in Basel 74; Reform ‘temple’ 66, 107, 108; rejection of

(Gnessin) 89, 89–90, (Feierberg) 95; and Scripture, study and recital of 7, 101, 103; and Spanish Hebrew poets 38; and Temple, after destruction of 35; service derived from 14, 68–69; see also siddur Tagore, Rabindranath 27 taifas 38 Talmud 1; aggadah in 83; allusions to in poetry 43; as anthology 67; colleges 108; Jerusalem in 104; Jewish culture, centrality to 35; and Jewish nationalism 3; male preserve 66; Mishnah the basis of 26; and moral direction 93; in Reform Judaism, rejection of 65; and Rome 106; satire of 94; scholars 1; siddur, origins in talmudic age 57, 62, 108; Temple sacrifices, descriptions of 68; see also Mishnah; Tannaim Tannaim (rabbis of the Mishnah) 26, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 76 Tchernichowsky, Saul 78, 80, 81, 87, 88 Temple in Jerusalem: destruction, by Babylonia (587 BCE) 64, 105, by Rome (70 CE) 11, 26, 27, 28, 44, 64, 67, 70; and faith 9; hope, for God’s return to (Najara) 71, for restoration of 69, 71 (Alkabetz), 72, 107; in kabbalah (Agnon) 91; pilgrim festivals 68; priesthood, attacks on by prophets 8; psalms recited in 70; and Reform Judaism 60, 107, ‘denial of Judaism’ 62, in Reform siddur 64; ruin (Lamentations) 11, 70, longing to see (Halevi) 20, 37; sacrificial cult 67, 68, 69; service 14, 67; in siddur 66, 68; Synagogue as outgrowth of 68, 108 n. 16; see also Jerusalem; Ninth of Av Toledo 39, 50, 52 Tolstoy, Leo 93, 96 Turgenev, Ivan 93, 94, 96, 97, 98 Tyndale, William 17, 18, 104 tzedakah (charity, righteousness) 13 Umayyad caliphate 38, 39 Van Gogh, Vincent 44 Verdi, Guiseppe 2, 16 Voltaire 61 Washington, George 15, 72 Watts, Isaac 19

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Whitman, Walt 2, 23, 25, 102 William of Orange 17 Wise, Stephen S. 75 Wordsworth, William 34 World War I 22, 27, 34, 73, 82 World War II 1 Wyatt, Thomas 17 Yeats, William Butler 27, 34, 84 Yiddish 4, 22, 77–78, 80, 82, 83, 85, 90, 93, 96, 97, 98; see also Jews Zaidun, Ibn 45 Al-Zallaqah 39 Zemirot Yisrael 71

Zionism: and anti-Semitism 1, 4, 20, 60, 74; anti-Zionism of German Reform 1, 59, 63, 73, 74, 107, 108; and Eastern Europe, grass roots in 68; in Hebrew literature, Ahad Ha’am 21, 78, 108, 109, Bialik 2, 4, 20–21, 83, 87, 91, 193, Feierberg 84, 95, Greenberg 2, 4–5, 21ff., Halevi 37, 52, 54, 55–56, love for Andalusia 52, 106; Herzl 20, 60, 74; influences on 72; and Judaism 20, 74, 90ff.; Mendele 4, 78, 95; as philanthropy for poor Jews 73; in Russia 4, ch. 5; World Zionist Organization (1897) 20, 60; see also Bible; Israel; Messiah; nationalism