Page:Jewish Encyclopedia Volume 2.pdf/668

618 Beautiful

in metals, to carve and chisel, to refine the precious metals, to engrave precious stones and gems, and were proficient in music and the dance. Dramatic

genius was not theirs; but the}' shared this want with their Semitic kinsmen, and, by way of compensation, excelled in story -telling, gnomic wisdom, and the lyrics. The parable is their preeminent domain. And these artistic leanings, clearly brought out by the study of Biblical civilization, did not

The contrary is the truth. in later days. The Jews, with modifications conditioned by their changed situation, developed them steadily.

atrophy

may

It

be doubted whether in architecture the

Jews can be credited with inventive

The

genius.

Bible seems to indicate that whatever of the building art they had, had come to them from their neighbors, Still, in Alexandria and elsewhere, the Phenicians. unless the law of their rulers interfered, they saw to it that their public edifices had a dignified, even a luxurious, character. The Talmud speaks of the glory of the synagogue in Alexandria (Suk. 516). That the Jew was ever alive to the appreciation of beauty may be learned from the fact that the rabbis did not hesitate to accord the palm in the strife for the beautiful to the Greek so that to them the Aryan races, the sons of Japhet, were typified by the Greek as representative of beauty J"lB'> being explained as nVS'S' (Meg. 9b). When Aquila had finished his Greek translation of the Pentateuch before K. Eliezer and R. Joshua, they lauded him applying to him the words, " Thou art fairer than the children of men " (Ps. xlv. 3 [A. V. 2]). On the other hand, the rabbis claimed that ninetenths of the beauty of the world were bestowed





as the seat of God's majesty (Kid. accordance with Ps. 1. 2). One of the highest angels in rabbinical angelology bears the name of " Yafefiah " (beauty of God) (Targ. Yer. In fact, it is declared by R. Ishto Deut. xxxiv. 6). mael to be a duty enjoined on the Israelite, in the fulfilment of any of the ceremonial laws, to aim at beauty of form, to have a beautiful "lulab," "sukkah, " " tallit, " or " tefillin, " wherewith to praise God, God; according to Ex. xv. 2 (Hebr.), "This is that is, " I will make everything I will extol Him " consecrated to His service appear beautiful" (Mek.,

upon Jerusalem

4% Yoma

618

THE JEAVISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

Bebai

54b, in

my



Beshallah, Shirah, 3). Especial stress is laid on moral beauty and the avoidance of ugliness in speech and conduct (Yoma It has been asserted that the Jews 86ft Shab. 33a). were without a sense of the beauties of nature (" NaYet that very feeling is evinced in alturgefiihl "). most every line of the Psalms, while the descriptions in the Book of Job and man}' graphic similes in the writings of the Prophets challenge comparison with the best produced by the Homeric poets. It differs, however, from that of the Greeks in so far as it responds to the larger totality of the universe, the might and majesty of nature as a whole. It is not the individual star, nor the particularized flower, nor the local sunset, that inspires the Hebrew singer but it is the heavens as the throne to articulation of God, the mountains as melting under the touch of His will, the earth in the throes of a God-ordained destiny, and similar general appreciations of the sublime and exalted in God's handiwork that impels



the Jewish bard to sing. Homer's description of the bee tribe is offset by that of the ant in the Proverbs. Rhetorical art certainly reached a high development among the Jews in Bible days. Nor, though general opinion to the contrary, is Talmudic literature barren of literary beauty. The study of the Midrash from this point of view has indeed never been attempted but it would be an undertaking full of promise. In their analogies derived largely from court life, in their illustrations taken freely from the operations of a builder and the like, the homilists of the rabbinical age showed a keen insight into the implications of rhetorical beauty and Some even in the reported text, ornamentation. full though it is of corruptions due to the misunderstanding of the dialect in addition to other failings of the copyists, must be assigned high place among the coiners of original phrases through the employ;

ment of the

methods of

finer

literary composition,

such as Alliteration, assonance, and even rime. Bacher, in his work on the Haggadah, has paid some attention to this aspect of the subject.

That

later

Jewish poetry

not unworthy a niche on account of

is

in the temple of literary beauty, both

be said to be now speak on the matWinter and Judische Poesie " ter Emma LazaWiinsche, "Judische Literatur"). rus' and other versifications in English or German of Hebrew originals Einhorn's prayer-book, "Olat Tamid," and especially his memorial services, are proofs of this. Modern writers of Jewish extraction or faith have contributed to the literatures of the peoples among whom they lived, and whose nationality and language, since the middle of the nineThis is sufficient teenth century, have been theirs. proof against the assertion that the Judaism of these writers has operated to the detriment of the quality its

form and

its

recognized by

contents,

all (Delitzsch, "

may

competent

to





of their style.

As in music so in poetry it has been contended that Jew is always beset by the love of the extrava-

the

gant and the disproportionate that his criticism runs his poetry to the to acid dissolution and sarcasm absurd, baroque, and dissonant. They who have enriched modern literary canons with this discovery of the pernicious effect of Judaism on style are igno;



rant of the literature which under the direct inspiration of Jewish thought and ideals took on form and shape. Only to a very limited extent is their dictum in accordance with facts. Under the exclusive dominance of the pilpul and owing to the sad conditions socially and politically prevailing in their European Eg}'pt a veritable house of bondage the Polish and Russian Jews may with some show of justice be said to have lapsed into literary barbarism. What tendency to the same effect there may have been in the German Jewries during the centuries following upon the epidemic of the Plague and upon the Crusades was effectually checked by the influence of the Mendelssohnian era; while the Sephardic Jew never fell a prey to this disorganization, which anti-Semitism, with a pretense at scientific generalization, traces to the irradicable mental bias and inartistic obliquity of Judaism and Jewish association. Giidemann's work on the " Erziehungswesen und Kultur der Juden" contributes many significant proofs of the

—

—