Jewish Literature and Other EssaysKarpeles, Gustav
Religion
Jewish Literature and Other Essays
Karpeles, Gustav
Jewish literature -- History and criticism; Jews
_Die Gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden_, by Zunz, published in 1832,
was the pioneer work of the new Jewish science, whose present
development, despite its wide range, has not yet exhausted the
suggestions made, by the author. Other equally important works from the
same pen followed, and then came the researches of Rappaport, Z.
Frankel, I. M. Jost, M. Sachs, S. D. Luzzatto, S. Munk, A. Geiger, L.
Herzfeld, H. Graetz, J. Fürst, L. Dukes, M. Steinschneider, D. Cassel,
S. Holdheim, and a host of minor investigators and teachers. Their
loving devotion roused Jewish science and literature from their secular
sleep to vigorous, intellectual life, reacting beneficently on the
spiritual development of Judaism itself. The moulders of the new
literature are such men as the celebrated preachers Adolf Jellinek,
Salomon, Kley, Mannheimer; the able thinkers Steinheim, Hirsch,
Krochmal; the illustrious scholars M. Lazarus, H. Steinthal; and the
versatile journalists G. Riesser and L. Philipson.
Poetry has not been neglected in the general revival. The first Jewish
poet to write in German was M. E. Kuh, whose tragic fate has been
pathetically told by Berthold Auerbach in his _Dichter und Kaufmann_.
The burden of this modern Jewish poetry is, of course, the glorification
of the loyalty and fortitude that preserved the race during a calamitous
past. Such poets as Steinheim, Wihl, L. A. Frankl, M. Beer, K. Beck, Th.
Creizenach, M. Hartmann, S. H. Mosenthal, Henriette Ottenheimer, Moritz
Rappaport, and L. Stein, sing the songs of Zion in the tongue of the
German. And can Heine be forgotten, he who in his _Romanzero_ has so
melodiously, yet so touchingly given word to the hoary sorrow of the
Jew?
In an essay of this scope no more can be done than give the barest
outline of the modern movement. A detailed description of the work of
German-Jewish lyrists belongs to the history of German literature, and,
in fact, on its pages can be found a due appreciation of their worth by
unprejudiced critics, who give particularly high praise to the new
species of tales, the Jewish village, or Ghetto, tales, with which
Jewish and German literatures have latterly been enriched. Their object
is to depict the religious customs in vogue among Jews of past
generations, their home-life, and the conflicts that arose when the old
Judaism came into contact with modern views of life. The master in the
art of telling these Ghetto tales is Leopold Kompert. Of his
disciples--for all coming after him may be considered such--A. Bernstein
described the Jews of Posen; K. E. Franzos and L. Herzberg-Fränkel,
those of Poland; E. Kulke, the Moravian Jews; M. Goldschmied, the Dutch;
S. H. Mosenthal, the Hessian, and M. Lehmann, the South German. To
Berthold Auerbach's pioneer work this whole class of literature owes its
existence; and Heinrich Heine's fragment, _Rabbi von Bacharach_, a model
of its kind, puts him into this category of writers, too.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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