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368 — Alexandria, Louisiana

THE JEWISH EN'CYCLOPEDIA

Alexandrian Philosophy

the president of the community, who was supported l)v vnrious other generous members. The sum, which amoiMitcd to £1,785 (§8,U"'5K has been aujrmiutcd by later collections. Aged Hebrews without means of support, as well as convalescents from the hospital, the former are thus provided for in this real " Home for life; the latter until they have regained their strength. E. H. ''



AliEXANDBIA, Louisiana

City on the south bank of the l!i.(l rivc r. oCill miles northwest of New Orleans. The foindatiiin of a Jewish community in Alexandria took place in 1S48 when several Jews settled there. The total Jewish population in 1!)(I0 was 600, or about one-fourteenth of the entire pojiulation of the city. Among the occupations followed by the Jewish citizens are banking, brokcnige, and

There arc besides a number of tmdesmen and a few artisans. The congregation was probably founded in lH(i4. In llSOfi a benevolent as.soeiation was established liere by the Jews, and four years later (1870) the first synagogue was cotton-planting.

erected. Other institutions were founded after the lapse of a few years. In 1882 a Voing Men's Hebrew Association was established, and this was followed by a lodge of the Order of H'ne U'rith, which received itscharter in 1884. Furlheradvance in the development of the community was marked by the opening of a Sunday-school and Bible-class in 1890, and a branch of ihc National Council of .Jewish Women in 1896. The following were rabbis of the comniunitv of Alexandria from its foundation to 1900: M. Klein. L. Meyer. J. C. M. Chumaeciro, S. Saft, I. Heineberg, J. 8chieiber, and Alex. Rosen" spitz.

there were

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ALEXANDRIAN PHILOSOPHY



R.

While

Jewish immiwas reserved lor King Ptolemy

earlier settlements of it

to establisli a large .Jewish colony in Alexandria,

eompidsory deportation or Ijy the encourof voluntary settlers, and thereby to lay the foundation of the historically important developmcnt of the .Jewish diaspora in that part of the world. If Palestinian Judaism, up to the time of the Maccabees, failed to maintain rigid barriers against the powerful onslaught of Hellenism, and found it could not restrain the tide of foreign influences, still less could this distant Alexandrian colony avoid reckoning with Greek culture and intelligence. Constant intercourse with non-Jews would alone have led to the abolition of many religious observances, impracticable under the new conditions, and so liave brought about a species of adaptation, voluntary as well as involuntary, leading, moreover, to the modification of all nationalist and separatist conceptions or prejudices. Although such influences would naturally first find expression in the affairs of daily life, particularly through the ensuing neglect of the national language and the adoption of tlie Greek tongue, higher departments, especially literature, could not long thereafter escjipe the effect of this contact with foreign culture. From the time of Ptolemy I., Greek writers evince a keen interest in Jewish history and Judaism. And the latter likewise, on its side, for its own edification and for purposes of propaganda, is soon found adopting the outward forms of Greek literature. The Greek translation of Influence of the Torah, which is probably the oldest Hellenism, example of .Jewish-Hellenic literature. arose essentially, no doubt, out of the religious requirements of the diaspora, and certainly had not that exclusively polemic purpose which later legend loves to see in it. It laid the foundation. cither by

agement

368

however, of the free development of a literature no longer bound tonaliimal forms: and in addition it provided the linginslic material for such development. .soon began to reprodiueand amplify their sacH'd annals in the approved style of the Greek historians. The oldest fragment of the Jewish "Sibyl-

Jewish writers

lines" exemplified, in the middle of thi' second century ii.c. the imitation of Greek poetical forms. Variotis attempts in epic and even di-amatic form soon followed. According to some critics, indeed, the "Sibyllines" themselves were modeled after the considerably older fra,sments of Ps<>udo-Heaita;us, likewise composed for the jmrposes of Jewish propaganda and in the form of forged poetical "extracts" (Schiirer. "Gesch.'' pj). 461 d mr/. It took a long time, of course, for Judaism, under the influence of cosmopolitan Hellenism, to rise to the highest altitudes of Greek intelU'ctual life, and to recast its own world-conceptions in the molds of Greek philosophy. One cjin readily understand that .Judaism felt it.self powerfidly attracted by Greek philosophy. Wellhausen (" I. J.G.'' pp. 217. 218) lias very rightly noted how the intellectual development of .Judaism, with its tendency to become a purified monotheism, moves in the same direction toward which Greek thought tends, in occupying itself with speculative consideration of the universe. In monotheism, as well as in the abstract God idea of Greek philosophy, the Jew cnulil see the logical result and completion of that which his own great jirophcts had yearned for and declared. His delight in the purity of the Platonic conception of (Jod.or the strict logic of the Stoic theodicy, would blind him to the fact that both in the Platonic transcendentalism and the Stoic pantheism the living personality of the Deity a self-understood axiom of his conception was well-nigh lost. In many respects, Greek philosophy must have appeared to him far superior to anything which the Jewish mind had ever evolved. There, in Judaism, was a .scheme of thought concentered in the relation of God to the world and to His chosen people. Here was a philosophy which W!js not only a tlieology at the same time, but which, in response to a broader interest felt now by Judaism too, sought to penetrate with its investigations into every department of the universe and Judaism of life. There, in Judaism, was a colandHellen- lection of sacreil books, of different ism. ages and differing views: a disconnected mass of proverbial wisdom an abundance of ceremonial usages which were tending more and more to resolve themselves into mere unintelligible customs: a system of casuistry regulated more by ritual than by ethical considerations. Here, on the other hand, was a logical system, ruling moral life through sound and noble principles; there, a Siicred literature written in popular and unsophisticated form, without regard to artistic rules or laws of logic: here, a language which exhibited the influence of centuries of artistic development, and whose skilfully constructed periods charmed the ear. It is. however, a very dilticidt question to decide just when .Judaism attained to the dignitj' of a sy.stematic ideaof the universe (cosmogony) in the sense of the (ireek philosophy, and under its influence. refer, of course, to a perfect adaptation to Greek philosophy, not to the adoption of a few- stray conceptions, or of a few trite commonplaces of proverbial wisdom. Let that opinion be first presented which until recently w-as the generally adopted one (see especially GfrOrer and Diihne: Zellerand Drummond inaugurated a reaction against this view, ,

).

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which ters).

still, however, predominates in many quarAccording to this theory, Philo's philosophical