The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) | Page 8

in Hebrew letters, that it imposed its name on
the whole of the literary movement of the second half of the eighteenth
century, the epoch of the Meassefim.

Two poets and five or six prose writers more or less worthy of the
name of author dominated the period.
Naphtali Hartwig Wessely (born at Hamburg in 1725; died there in
1805) is considered the prince of the poets of the time. Belonging to a
rather intelligent family in easy circumstances, he received a modern
education. Though his mind was open to all the new influences, he
nevertheless remained a loyal adherent of his faith, and occupied
strictly religious ground until the end. He devoted himself with success
to the cultivation of poetry, and completed the work of reform begun
by the Italian Luzzatto, to whom, however, he was inferior in depth and
originality.
Wessely's poetic masterpiece was Shire Tiferet ("Songs of Glory"), or
the Epic of Moses (Berlin, 1789), in five volumes. This poem of the
Exodus is on the model of the pseudo-classic productions of the
Germany of his day; the influence of Klopstock's _Messias_, for
instance, is striking.
Depth of thought, feeling for art, and original poetic imagination are
lacking in Shire Tiferet. Practically it is nothing more than an oratorical
paraphrase of the Biblical recital. The shortcomings of his main work
are characteristic of all the poetry by Wessely. On the other hand, his
oratorical manner is unusually attractive, and his Hebrew is elegant and
chaste. The somewhat labored precision of his style, taken together
with the absence of the poetic temperament, makes of him the
Malherbe of modern Hebrew poetry. He enjoyed the love and
admiration of his contemporaries to an extraordinary degree, and his
chief poem underwent a large number of editions, becoming in course
of time a popular book, and regarded with kindly favor even by the
most orthodox-- testimony at once to the poet's personal influence upon
his co- religionists and the growing importance of the Hebrew
language.
Wessely wrote also several important works on questions in Hebrew
grammar and philology. The chief of them is _Lebanon_, two parts of
which appeared, each separately, under the title _Gan Na'ul_ ("The
Locked Garden", Berlin, 1765); the other parts never appeared in print.

They bear witness to their author's solid scientific attainments, and it is
regrettable that their value is obscured by his style, diffuse to the point
of prolixity. Besides, Wessely contributed to the German translation of
the Bible, and to the commentary on the Bible, both, as mentioned
before, works presided over by Mendelssohn, to whom he was attached
by the tie of admiring friendship.
Wessely's chief distinction, however, was his firm character and his
love of truth. His high ethical qualities were revealed notably in his
pamphlet _Dibre Shalom wa-Emet_ ("Words of Peace and Truth,"
Berlin, 1781), elicited by the edict of Emperor Joseph II ordering a
reform of Jewish education and the establishment of modern schools
for Jews. Though well on in years, he yet did not shrink from the risk
of incurring the anger of the fanatics. He openly declared himself in
favor of pedagogic innovations. With sage-like modesty and mildness,
the poet stated the pressing need for adopting new educational methods,
and showed them to be by no means in opposition to the Mosaic and
Rabbinic conception of the Jewish faith. In the name of _Torat
ha-Adam_, the law for man as such, he set forth urgent reforms which
would raise the prestige of the Law as well as of the Jews. He hoped for
civil liberty, the liberty the Jews were enjoying in England and in the
Netherlands. However, this courageous course gained for him the ban
of the fanatics, the effect of which was mitigated by the intervention of
the Italian Rabbis in favor of Wessely. On the other hand, it made him
the most prominent member of the Meassefim circle; he was regarded
as the master of the Maskilim.
Among the most distinguished of the contributors to _Ha-Meassef_ is
the second writer acclaimed poet by popular consent. David Franco
Mendes (1713-1792) was born at Amsterdam, of a family escaped from
the Inquisition. Like most Jews of Spanish origin, his family clung to
the Spanish language. He was the friend and disciple, and likewise the
imitator, of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto. What was true of Eastern Europe,
that the Hebrew language prevailed in the ghetto, and had to be resorted
to by all who would reach the Jewish masses, did not apply to the
countries of the Romance languages. Here Hebrew had little by little
been supplanted by the vernacular. Mendes, who paid veritable worship

to Hebrew literature, was distressed to see the object of his devotion
scorned by his co-religionists and the productions of the classic age of
France preferred to