History of the Jews, Vol. 5 (of 6)

The graceful and spiritual Sarah Copia (born about 1600, died 1641) excited a certain amount of attention in her time. She was an original poetess and thinker, and her gifts, as well as her grace, brought her temptations and dangers. The only child of a wealthy father, Simon Copia (Coppio) in Venice, who loved her tenderly, she yielded to her inclination for instruction, and devoted herself to science and literature. To this inclination she remained true even after her marriage with Jacob Sullam. Sarah Copia Sullam surpassed her sex and even men of her age in knowledge. She delighted in beauty, and breathed out her inspirations in rhythmic, elegant verses. Young, attractive, with a noble heart and a penetrating understanding, striving after high ideals, and a favorite of the muses, Sarah Sullam fascinated the old as well as the young. Her musical, well-trained voice excited admiration. When an elderly Italian priest, Ansaldo Ceba, at Genoa, published an heroic poem in Italian strophes, of which the scriptural Esther was the heroine, Sarah was so delighted, that she addressed an enthusiastic anonymous letter full of praise to the author (1618). It pleased her to see a Jewish heroine, her ideal, celebrated in verses, and the attention of the cultivated public directed to Jewish antiquity. She hoped that thereby the prejudice against the Jews of the day would vanish. Sarah did not conceal from the poet that she always carried his poetical creations about with her, and at night put his book under her pillow. Instead of finding satisfaction in the sincere homage of a pure woman's soul, Ceba, in his zeal for conversion, thought only of bringing her over to Christianity. When he heard Sarah's beauty extolled by the servant whom he sent with presents and verses, love for her awoke in him. This was increased by her sending him her portrait, accompanied by enthusiastic verses in the exaggerated style of that time, in which she said: "I carry my idol in my heart, and I wish everyone to worship him." But the beautiful Venetian Jewess did not allow herself to be entrapped. She held firmly to her Jewish beliefs, and unfolded to her priestly friend the reasons that induced her to prefer Judaism. In vain did Ceba, by tenderness, reproofs, and sentimental languishing, with intimations of his speedy end, and his longing to be united with her in heaven, endeavor to make her waver in her conviction. When he begged permission to pray for her salvation, she granted his request on condition that she might pray for his conversion to Judaism.

Her exceptional position as poetess, and her connection with Christians of high rank, brought her renown, not unattended by annoyances. Slanderous fellow-believers spread the report, that she esteemed the principles of Judaism but lightly, and did not fully believe in their divinity. An unprincipled Christian priest, Balthasar Bonifaccio, who later occupied the position of bishop, published a work accusing the Jewess Sarah Sullam of denying the immortality of the soul. Such a charge might in Catholic Venice have had other effects than that against Uriel da Costa in free-thinking, Protestant Amsterdam. Not merely fine and imprisonment might have been inflicted, but the Inquisition might have sentenced her to the dungeon, to torture, and perhaps even the stake. Hardly recovered from illness, she wrote (1621) a manifesto on the immortality of the soul, full of ripe dialectics, noble courage, and crushing force, against her slanderous accuser. The dedication to her deceased father is touching, and still more touching is her fervent psalm-like prayer in melodious Italian verses. The consciousness that she, a woman and Jewess, could not rely on her own strength, but only on help from above, spreads a halo about her memory. The end of this affair is not known. Ceba's epic "Esther" probably induced Leo Modena to translate Solomon Usque's tragedy on the same subject from Spanish into Italian verse; he dedicated it to Sarah Copia, whose epitaph he composed in melodious Hebrew verses.

Leo Modena also had frequent intercourse with Christians. His peculiar nature, his communicative disposition, and great learning, as also his wit and his fondness for gaming, opened the doors of Christian circles to the volatile rabbi. Christian disciples sat at his feet. The French bishop Jacob Plantavicius, and the half-crazed Christian Kabbalist Jacob Gaffarelli, were his pupils. Nobles and learned men corresponded with him, and permitted him to inscribe his works to them with flattering dedications. Leo Modena held in Italy nearly the same position as Manasseh ben Israel in Holland. In the conversation of serious men and in the merry circle of gamesters, he often heard the ceremonies of Judaism ridiculed as childish nonsense (Lex Judæorum lex puerorum). At first he defended his religion, but gradually was forced to admit one thing and another in Judaism to be defective and ridiculous; he was ashamed to be so thoroughly a Jew as to justify all consequences. His necessities led him, on pressure from Christian friends, to render single portions, and at last the whole, of the Jewish code accessible to the Christian public in the Italian language. An English lord paid him for the work, with the intention of giving it to King James I, who made pretensions to extensive learning. Afterwards his Christian disciple Gaffarelli had this work, entitled "The Hebrew Rites," printed in Paris, and dedicated it to the French ambassador at Venice. In this work, eagerly read by Christians, Leo Modena, like Ham, uncovered his father's nakedness, exposed the inner sanctuary of the Jews to prying and mocking eyes. To the uninitiated, that which within the Jewish circle was a matter for reverence could not but appear petty, silly, and absurd. Leo Modena explained what ceremonies and statutes Jews employ in connection with their dwellings, clothing, household furniture, up-rising and lying down, physical functions, and in the synagogues and schools. Involuntarily the author associated himself with the despisers of Judaism, which he as rabbi had practiced and taught. He showed that he was conscious of this:

"While writing I in fact forgot that I am a Jew, and considered myself a simple, impartial narrator. However, I do not deny that I have taken pains to avoid ridicule on account of the numerous ceremonies, but I had no intention to defend and palliate, because I wished only to communicate, not convince."

However, it would be an error to infer from this that Leo Modena had at heart completely broken with Rabbinical Judaism. He was, as has been stated, not a man of firm and lasting convictions. Almost at the same time when he exposed the rites of Judaism to the Christian public, he composed a defense of them and oral teaching in general against attacks from the Jewish side. A Hamburg Jew of Marrano descent had raised eleven points to show the falsehood of Talmudic tradition. Of these arguments some are important, others frivolous. The Hamburg sceptic laid chief stress on the point that Talmudic and Rabbinic ordinances are additions to Pentateuchal Judaism, and the Pentateuch had expressly forbidden additions of this sort. At the wish of certain Portuguese Jews, Leo Modena confuted these objections, raised by a sciolist. His confutation was a feeble performance, and contains nothing new. With Leo Modena one never knew whether he was earnest in his belief or his unbelief. As in youth he had brought forward reasons for and against games of chance, had finally condemned them, and nevertheless freely engaged in them, so he behaved with regard to Talmudical Judaism. He attacked it, defended it, made it appear ridiculous, and yet practiced it with a certain degree of honesty.

Some years after his vindication of Talmudical Judaism against the Hamburg sceptic he composed the best work (1624) that issued from his active pen. On the one side it was a weighty attack on Rabbinical Judaism, such as had hardly been made even by Christians and Karaites, on the other side, an impressive defense of it. He did not venture to put his own name to the heavy charges against Judaism, but used a fictitious name. The part which contains the attacks he called "The Fool's Voice" (Kol Sachal), and the defense, "The Roaring of the Lion" (Shaagath Aryeh). Leo Modena allotted to two characters his own duplex nature, his varying convictions. He makes the opponent of Judaism express himself with a boldness such as Uriel da Costa might have envied. Not only did he undermine the Rabbinical Judaism of the Talmud, but also biblical Judaism, the Sinaitic revelation, and the Torah. But the blows which Leo Modena, under the name of Ibn-Raz of Alkala, in an attack of unbelief, inflicted on oral teaching, or Talmudical Judaism, were most telling.

He premises that no form of religion maintains itself in its original state and purity according to the views of its founder. Judaism, also, although the lawgiver expressly warned his followers against adding anything, had many additions thrust upon it. Interpretation and comment had altered many things in it. Ibn-Raz (or Leo Modena in his unbelieving mood) examines with a critical eye Jacob Asheri's code, and at each point marks the additions made by the rabbis to the original code, and where they had weakened and distorted it. He goes so far as to make proposals how to clear Judaism of excrescences, in order to restore genuine, ancient, biblical, spiritual Judaism. This was the first attempt at reform: a simplification of the prayers and synagogue service, abolition of rites, omission of the second day of the festivals, relaxation of Sabbath, festival, Passover, and even Day of Atonement laws. Every one was to fast only according to his bodily and spiritual powers. He wished to see the ritual for slaughtering animals and the laws as to food set aside, or simplified. The prohibition to drink wine with those of other creeds made Jews ridiculous, as also did the strictness against alleged idolatry. All this, observed Ibn-Raz, or Leo Modena, at the close, does not exhaust the subject; it is only a specimen of the evil of Rabbinical Judaism. He knew well that he would be pronounced a heretic, and persecuted on account of his frank criticism, but if he could open the eyes of a single reader, he would consider himself amply rewarded.

Had Leo Modena been in earnest with this bold view, which would have revolutionized the Judaism of his day, had he uttered it to the world with deep conviction, he would no doubt have produced great commotion in Judaism. But criticism of the Talmud was only mental amusement for him; he did not intend to engage in an actual conflict. He composed a reply with as little sincerity, and let both attack and defense slumber among his papers.

Leo Modena was more in earnest with the attack on the Kabbala, which had become burdensome and repulsive to him. He felt impelled to discharge destructive arrows against it, and this he did with masterly skill. He called the anti-Kabbalistic work, which he dedicated to his disciple Joseph Chamiz, a Luryan enthusiast, "The Roaring Lion" (Ari Noham). From many sides he threw light on the deceptions, the absurdity, and the falsehood of the Kabbala and its fundamental source, the Zohar. Neither this work nor his attacks on Talmudical Judaism were published by him: the author was not anxious to labor in either direction. To a late age he continued his irregular life, without striving after real improvement. Leo Modena died, weary of the conflict, not with gods (i. e., ideas) and men, but with himself, and of the troubles which he had brought upon himself.

Apparently similar, yet differing fundamentally from him, was the third burrower of this period: Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (born 1591, died 1655). Scion of an old and noble family, in whose midst science and the Talmud were cultivated, and great-grandson on the female side of the clear thinker Elias del Medigo, he but slightly resembled the other members of his house. His father, a rabbi in Candia, had not only initiated him into Talmudic literature, but also made him learn Greek. Later Delmedigo acquired the literary languages of the time, Italian and Spanish in addition to Latin. The knowledge of languages, however, was only a means to an end. At the University of Padua he obtained his scientific education; he showed decided inclination for mathematics and astronomy, and could boast of having as his tutor the great Galileo, the discoverer of the laws of the heavens, the martyr to natural science. By him he was made acquainted with the Copernican system of the sun and the planets. Neither Delmedigo nor any believing Jew labored under the delusion that the stability of the sun and the motion of the earth were in contradiction to the Bible, and therefore heretical. Delmedigo also studied medicine, but only as a profession; his favorite subject continued to be mathematics. He enriched his mind with all the treasures of knowledge, more varied even than that of Leo Modena, to whom during his residence in Italy he clung as a disciple to his master. In the circle of Jewish-Italian semi-freethinkers he lost the simple faith which he had brought from home, and doubts as to the truth of tradition stole upon him, but he was not sufficiently animated by a desire for truth either to overcome these doubts and become settled in the early belief to which he had been brought up, or unsparingly to expose the false elements in Jewish tradition. Joseph Delmedigo was as little formed to be a martyr to his convictions as Leo Modena, the latter by reason of fickleness, the former, of insincerity.

With doubt in his heart he returned to his home in Candia, and gave offense by his free mode of thought, especially by his preference for secular knowledge. He made enemies, who are said to have persecuted him, and was obliged to leave his native land. Then began a migratory life, which drove him from city to city, like his model Ibn-Ezra. Like him, he made friends with the Karaites wherever he met them, and they thronged to his presence. At Cairo Delmedigo celebrated a complete triumph with his mathematical knowledge, when an old Mahometan teacher of mathematics, Ali Ibn-Rahmadan, challenged him, a youth, to a public combat, in which Ali was beaten. The victorious combatant was magnanimous enough to show honor to Ali before the world. Instead of betaking himself to Palestine as he had intended, Delmedigo traveled to Constantinople; here also he attached himself to the circle of the Karaites, and at last passed through Wallachia and Moldavia to Poland. There, mathematics procuring him no bread, he practiced medicine, of which, however, he had learnt more from books than by the bedside of patients. In Poland he passed for a great physician, and was taken into the service of Prince Radziwill, in Wilna (about 1619–1620). Here, through the excessive attention given to the Talmud, general culture was forsaken, but youths and men eager for learning, especially Karaites, thronged to Delmedigo to slake their thirst for knowledge. A half-crazed Karaite, Serach ben Nathan of Trok, who had an inclination to Rabbinical Judaism, in order to show his extensive knowledge, with mock humility laid before him a number of important questions, which Delmedigo was to answer offhand, and sent him a sable fur for the Polish winter.

Delmedigo found it to his advantage, in order to give himself the appearance of a distinguished character in Poland, to shroud himself in silence and seclusion. He at first answered Serach's questions not personally, but through one of his companions, an assistant and follower, Moses Metz. This man described his teacher as a choice intellect, a demi-god, who carried in his brain all human and divine knowledge. He sketched his appearance and character, his occupation and behavior, regulated, as he said, by higher wisdom, gave information about his descent from a learned and distinguished family on his father's and his mother's side, and, as his teacher's mouth-piece, imposed upon the credulous Karaite by saying that he had composed works on all branches of knowledge, at which the world would be astonished, if they came to light. Metz also communicated to Serach some of his teacher's theories in mathematics, religion, and philosophy, and thus still more confused Serach's mind. In his communications on Judaism, which Delmedigo either made himself or through Moses Metz, he was very cautious; here and there, it is true, he allowed a suggestion of unbelief to glimmer through, but quickly covered it over with a haze of orthodoxy. Only where he could do so without danger Delmedigo expressed his real opinion.

When he at last sent the Karaite an answer to a letter with his own hand (about 1621), he did not conceal his true views, but declared his preference for Karaism and its ancient teachers, loaded them undeservedly with praise, exalted science, and ridiculed the delusions of the Kabbala and its adherents. In the same letter to Serach, Delmedigo indulged in scoffs against the Talmud, and thought the Karaites fortunate that they were able to dispense with it. He had nothing to fear when he unburdened his heart before his Karaite admirer.

Delmedigo does not seem, on the whole, to have been at ease in Poland. He could not carouse with the nobles whom he attended professionally for fear of the Jews, and it was not possible to earn money in so poor a country. So he betook himself by way of Dantzic to Hamburg, where a Portuguese community had been lately permitted to settle. His knowledge of medicine seems to have met with little esteem in the city on the Elbe. What was his skill in comparison with that of the De Castros, father and son? He was compelled, in order to subsist, to undertake a certain amount of rabbinical duty, if only as preacher. For the sake of bread he had to play the hypocrite, and speak in favor of Rabbinical Judaism. Nay, in order to dissipate the rumor from Poland, which represented him as a heretic, he was not ashamed to praise the Kabbala, which he had shortly before condemned, as the highest wisdom, before which philosophy and all sciences must be dumb. For this purpose he prepared his defense of the secret doctrine, in refutation of the crushing arguments against it by one of his ancestors, Elias Del Medigo. His work was of the kind to throw dust in the eyes of the ignorant multitude; it displayed a smattering of learning on all sorts of subjects, but no trace of logic. He was too clever to maintain the sheepish style of dull, stupid credulity, and could not refrain from satire. He defended the genuineness of the Zohar as an ancient work by Simon bar Yochaï, or at least by his school. He argued that one must not be shocked by its many incongruities and absurdities; the Talmud also contains not a few, and is yet a sacred book. To save his reputation with the more intelligent, Delmedigo intimated that he had defended the Kabbala only from necessity. We must not, he says, superficially judge the character of an author by his words. He, for instance, was writing this defense of the Kabbala at the desire of a patron of high position, who was enamored of it. Should this friend come to be of another mind, and require an attack upon the Kabbala, he would not refuse him. In conclusion, he observes that philosophical students would no doubt ridicule him for having turned his back on wisdom, and betaken himself to folly; but he would rather be called a fool all his life than for a single hour transgress against piety.

This work, commenced in Hamburg, Delmedigo could not finish there. A pestilence broke out, and drove him, physician though he was, to Glückstadt. In this small community, where, as he said, there was neither town (Stadt) nor luck (Glück), he could find no means of subsistence, and he traveled on to Amsterdam about 1629. He could not attempt to practice medicine in a city where physicians lived of even higher eminence than at Hamburg, and so was obliged a second time to apply himself to the functions of rabbi. To show his importance, he printed his scientific replies to the questions of his Polish admirers, with the fulsome eulogies, clouds of incense, and foolish homage which the young Karaite Serach had offered him. It is a work of truly Polish disorder, in which mathematical theorems and scientific problems are discussed by the side of philosophical and theological questions, in a confused way. Delmedigo took care not to print his attacks upon the Kabbala and the Talmud, and his preference for the Karaites – in short, all that he had written to please the rich Serach. Instead of publishing an encyclopædic work which he boastfully said he had composed in his earliest youth, and which embraced all sciences and solved all questions, he produced a mere medley.

The Amsterdam community was then full of suspicion against philosophy and culture owing to the reckless behavior of Da Costa, and therefore Delmedigo thought it advisable to ward off every suspicion of unbelief, and get a reputation for strictest orthodoxy. This transparent hypocrisy did not answer well. He was, it is true, appointed preacher, and partially rabbi, in or near Amsterdam, but he could remain in Holland only a few years. Poor and unstable as he was, he went with his wife to Frankfort-on-the-Main about 1630 to seek means of subsistence. But here, in a German community, where Rabbinical learning was diffused, he could not obtain a rabbinical office; but he could turn his medical knowledge, scanty as it was, to account. As he felt no vocation for the office of rabbi, nor for medical practice, it was a matter of indifference if he changed the preacher's gown for the doctor's mantle. He was engaged, under irksome conditions, as communal doctor (February 14, 1631). How long he remained at Frankfort is not known; his position cannot have been favorable, for he removed to Prague (about 1648–1650), and in this most neglected community he settled. Later (1652) he was at Worms, probably only temporarily, and ended his life, which had promised so much, and realized so little, at Prague. Nor did he publish any part of his great work, which he had announced with so much pomposity.

In a measure Simone (Simcha) Luzzatto (born about 1590, died 1663) may be reckoned among the sceptics of this time. He was, at the same time as Leo Modena, rabbi in Venice. Luzzatto was not an eminent personage; but he had more solidity than his colleague Modena, or than Delmedigo. By the latter, who knew him personally, he was praised as a distinguished mathematician. He was also well read in ancient and modern literature. His uprightness and love of truth, which he never belied, distinguished him more than his knowledge and learning. A parable which Luzzatto wrote in Italian in his youth shows his views, as also his maturity of thought, and that he had reflected early on the relation of faith to science. He puts his thoughts into the mouth of Socrates, the father of Greek wisdom. At Delphi an academy had been formed to rectify the errors of human knowledge. Reason immediately presented a petition from the dungeon, where she had been so long kept by orthodox authority, to be set at liberty. Although the chief representatives of knowledge, Pythagoras and Aristotle, spoke against this request, and uttered a warning against her liberation, because, when free, she would produce and spread abroad most frightful errors, yet the academy set her at liberty; for by that means alone could knowledge be promoted. But the newly liberated minds caused great mischief; and the academicians were at a loss what to do. Then Socrates rose, and in a long speech explained that reason and authority, if allowed to reign alone, would produce only errors and mischief; but if mutually limited, reason by revelation, and revelation by reason, they mingle in the right proportion, and produce beautiful harmony, whereby man may attain his goal here below and hereafter. This thought, that reason and faith must regulate and keep watch over each other, which, in Maimuni's time had passed into a commonplace, was at this period, under the rule of Lurya's Kabbala, considered in Jewish circles a bold innovation.

Simone Luzzatto did not suffer himself to be ensnared by Kabbalistic delusions; he did not cast reason behind him; he was a believer, but withal sober-minded. He did not share the delusion of Manasseh ben Israel and others that the lost tribes of Israel were existing in some part of the world enjoying independence as a military power. With sober Jewish inquirers of former times, he assumed that Daniel's revelation does not point to a future Messiah, but only reflects historical events. He composed a work on the manners and beliefs of the Jews, which he proposed to exhibit "faithfully to truth, without zeal and passion." It was probably designed to form a counterpart to Leo Modena's representation, which cast a shadow on Judaism.