The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) | Page 7

Jews themselves. The Meassefim took as their
sphere of activity the reform of the education of the young and the
revival of the Hebrew language. The two schools agreed that to elevate
the moral and social status of the Jews, it was necessary to remove first
the external peculiarities separating them from their fellow-citizens. A
new translation of the Bible into literary German, undertaken by
Mendelssohn, was to deal the death blow to the Jewish-German
(_jüdisch-deutsch_) jargon, and the _Biur_, the commentary on the
Bible mentioned above, produced by the co-operation of a galaxy of
scholars and men of culture, was expected to sweep aside all mystic
and allegoric interpretations of the Scriptures and introduce the rational

and scientific method.
The results achieved by the Biurists tended beyond a doubt toward the
elevation of the mass of the Jews. One of these results was, as had been
hoped for, the dislodgment of the Jewish-German by the spread of the
pure German. The influence wielded by the Biurists, so far from
stopping with the German Jews, extended to the Jewish communities of
Eastern Europe.
* * * * *
In 1784-5, two Hebrew writers, Isaac Euchel and Mendel Bresslau,
undertook to publish a magazine, entitled _Ha-Meassef_ ("The
Collector"), whence the name Meassefim. The enterprise was under the
auspices of Mendelssohn and Wessely. A double aim was to be served.
The periodical was to promote the spread of knowledge and modern
ideas in the Hebrew language, the only language available for the Jews
of the ghetto; and at the same time it was to promote the purification of
Hebrew, which had degenerated in the Rabbinical schools. Its readers
were to be familiarized with the social and aesthetic demands of
modern life, and induced to rid themselves of ingrained peculiarities.
Besides its success in these directions, it must be set to the credit of
_Ha- Meassef_, that it was the first agency to gather under one banner
all the champions of the Haskalah in the several countries of Europe. It
supplied the link connecting them with one another. [Footnote:
Properly speaking, the term Haskalah includes the notion at once of
humanism and humanitarianism.]
From the literary point of view _Ha-Meassef_ is of subordinate interest.
Its contributors were devoid of taste. They offered their readers mainly
questionable imitations of the works of the German romantic school.
The periodical brought no new talent truly worthy of the description
into notice. Whatever reputation its principal writers enjoyed had been
won before the appearance of _Ha-Meassef_. They owed their fame
primarily to the favor acquired for Hebrew letters through the efforts of
Luzzatto's disciples. [Footnote: Since the appearance of _La-Yesharim
Tehillah_ by Luzzatto, imitations of it without number have been
published, and for the eighteenth century alone allegorical dramas by

the dozen might be enumerated.] Of the poems published in
_Ha-Meassef_ but a few deserve notice, and even they are nothing
more than mediocre imitations of didactic pieces in the style of the day,
or odes celebrating the splendor of contemporary kings and princes. A
poem by Wessely forms a rare exception. It extols the residents of
Basle, who, in 1789, welcomed Jewish refugees from Alsace. And if
we turn from its poetry to its historical contributions, we find that the
biographies, as of Abarbanel and Joseph Delmedigo, are hardly
scientific; they occupy themselves with external facts to the neglect of
underlying ideas. On the whole, _Ha-Meassef_ was an engine of
propaganda and polemics rather than a literary production, though the
campaign carried on in its pages against strait-laced orthodoxy and the
Rabbis did not reach the degree of bitterness which was to characterize
later periods--moderation that was due to its most prominent
contributors. Wessely exhorted the editors not to attack religiousness
nor ridicule the Rabbis, and Mendelssohn devoted his articles to minor
points of Rabbinic practice, such as the permissibility of vaccination
under the Jewish law.
The French Revolution precipitated events in an unexpected way. The
tone of _Ha-Meassef_ changed. It held that knowledge and liberty
alone could save the Jews. More aggressive toward the Rabbis than
before, it attacked fanaticism, and gave space to trite poems, glorifying
a life, for instance, in which women and wine played the prominent
part (1790). Six years after its first issue, _Ha-Meassef_ ceased to
appear, not without having materially advanced the intellectual
emancipation of the German Jews and the revival of Hebrew as a
secular language. [Footnote: The first series of _Ha-Meassef_ ran from
1784-1786 (Königsberg), and from 1788-1790 (Königsberg and Berlin).
An additional volume began to appear in 1794, at Berlin and Breslau,
under the editorship of Löwe and Wolfsohn, and was completed in
1797. The second series ran from 1809 to 1811 at Berlin, Altona, and
Dessau, under Shalom Hacohen. [Trl.] ] So important was this first
co-operative enterprise