Great sensation was aroused throughout Christian Europe when this Jewish physician and diplomatist was appointed by the Porte to conclude the peace which he had for several years been trying to bring about with Venice, and thus to stand forth as a person of the highest official importance. The Jewish ambassador was not accepted without opposition by the illustrious republic. The subject was eagerly discussed in the senate, and the members of the government were against him. But, on the one hand, the grand vizir, Mahomet Sokolli, was resolved upon it, because Solomon enjoyed his unreserved confidence, and he wished through him to establish diplomatic relations for other purposes. On the other hand, the words of the Venetian consul, Mark Antonio Barbaro, who repeatedly assured his state that the Jewish diplomatist cherished the warmest sympathy with Venice, made a great impression. Under these circumstances, "Rabbi Solomon Ashkenazi," as he was termed, went to Venice in the capacity of envoy extraordinary from Turkey. When once he was acknowledged, the dignitaries of the republic, the doge, and the senators, paid him the greatest honor and attention, because the Turkish court was very sensitive on this point, and would have regarded want of due respect to its representative as an insult. Solomon was, therefore, received in state audience at the doge's palace, and there the act of peace between Turkey and Venice was signed by him on behalf of the former. The signoria showed him the most polite attentions during his stay in Venice (May to July, 1574), and all the European ambassadors in Venice paid him court.
Solomon was an angel of deliverance to his fellow-believers in Venice. Their joy at the honor shown by the authorities to one of their race was mingled with anxiety and sorrow on account of threatened expulsion. The doge Mocenigo had insisted upon the fulfillment of the decree of banishment previously issued against the Jews. Many Jewish families had already departed without waiting for the term to expire. Solomon had arranged with Jacopo Soranzo, the Venetian agent in Constantinople, to receive these unfortunates. On his return to Venice, Soranzo at once brought the question of the Jews to the consideration of the council of the doge and the Ten. He made them understand the injury to the republic which would arise by the expulsion of the Jews. Those driven out of Spain and Portugal had manufactured guns and other arms for the Turks, and it would be a serious matter to make enemies of a people who constituted a power in Turkey. To maintain friendship with this country would be the surest guarantee of peace, as neither the pope nor Spain could be trusted. This earnest appeal of Soranzo in favor of the Jews effected a change in the disposition of the doge and the Dieci (ten) towards them. The decree of banishment was revoked (July 19th, 1573), and Solomon's presence in Venice served to increase the joy of his fellow-believers, as he obtained for them the promise that they should never again be threatened with expulsion. Loaded with honors and enriched by a gift of ten pounds (weight) of gold, Solomon returned to Constantinople, where his position became more assured and his importance greater than ever. His son, who was residing in Venice for his education, was treated by the doge with the greatest consideration.
In consequence of the influence of Joseph of Naxos over Sultan Selim and of Solomon Ashkenazi over the prime minister, Mahomet Sokolli, the foreign Christian courts strove yet more earnestly to obtain the favor of the Turkish Jews in Stambul. If one of them wished to effect any object with the Porte, it first of all sought a Jewish negotiator, because without this aid there was no prospect of success. Even the morose Philip II of Spain, that incarnate hater of Jews and heretics, was obliged to turn to Jewish mediators in order to obtain peace with the Turks. The position of the Jews in Turkey, and above all in the capital, under the very eyes of their powerful protectors, was, therefore, extraordinarily favorable. They were able to put forth all their powers freely, and thus earned the wealth which then meant power, as it does now. The wholesale trade and customs dues were mostly in their hands; they also carried on wholesale shipping, and emulated the Venetians. They owned the largest and best houses, with gardens and kiosks, in Constantinople, equal to those of the grand vizir.
This prosperity, freedom, and security of the Turkish Jews could not fail to produce an exalted frame of mind, to open a prospect beyond the actual present, and to stir up their minds to activity. The mental fertility of the Spanish Jews, which brought so much that is beautiful and true to the light of day, was not exhausted or extinct in Turkey. The taste for history and events outside the Jewish world was not yet lost to them. Moses Almosnino, a favorite preacher at Salonica, while on a visit to Constantinople to procure privileges for the community of Salonica, described life in the Turkish capital, with its contrasts of glowing heat and benumbing cold, its astonishing wealth and terrible poverty, its enervating luxury and severe privations, its extravagant generosity and heartless greed, exaggerated piety and callous indifference, which followed one another abruptly, without any gradual transition. In his Spanish work on the "Contrasts and Greatness of Constantinople," Almosnino described the power and development of the Turkish empire with the pen of a master. He had a taste for the sciences and philosophy, and worked out his sermons as well as his expositions of the Scriptures in a scientific shape.
The physician, Samuel Shulam, likewise a Spaniard by birth, also had a great taste for history. He led a life of adventure until he was taken up by a Jewish woman in Constantinople, named Esther Kiera, in high favor with the sultana. He published Zacuto's poor but useful chronicle at her expense (1566–1567). This favorite of the court-Jewess also translated from the Latin the interesting work of the old Jewish historian Josephus against the attacks of Apion, the Alexandrine enemy of the Jews, being the first Jewish writer to make use of it. The dark side of Jewish history, the thousand years' martyrdom of the Jewish race, was at the same time described by a more competent historian, the now venerable Joseph Cohen, of Spanish descent. His "Vale of Weeping" presents a long series of mournful scenes, tortures, death, and distress in every form, but he was enabled to conclude his history with the joyful tidings that the Venetians were eager, if only from policy, to pay honor to and distinguish a Jew, the Turkish ambassador Solomon Ashkenazi.
Even Hebrew poetry bore some blossoms at this period in Turkey, and although but autumn flowers, showing traces of damp mists and a pale sun, they form an agreeable contrast to the joyless wintry waste of other regions and times. But we are more interested in the originator of these efforts than in the productions themselves. He was a certain Ibn-Yachya of the Turkish branch of this widespread family. This family preserved nobility of heart and mind throughout a long line of generations. The great-grandfather Jacob Tam, the grandfather Gedalya Ibn-Yachya, the grandson Moses, and the great-grandson Gedalya Ibn-Yachya II, with all collateral branches, were without exception friends of learning, and shared their property with the poor. Moses Ibn-Yachya not only spent thousands of ducats on sufferers at the time of the plague, but even exposed himself to the risk of death in his attendance upon the sick. His son Gedalya, a wise man and an agreeable orator, imitated his father in all his virtues, and by his love for poetry excelled him in gifts of the mind. He formed a sort of school or circle of poetry, that is to say, he assembled from time to time, at his own expense, all those interested in neo-Hebrew poetry, to recite their poems, and urged those at a distance to send him the fruit of their muse in order to encourage their zeal for this beautiful but neglected art. Two poets distinguished themselves in this numerous circle, Jehuda Zarko and Saadio Longo. To them we may add Israel Najara, the prolific versifier, living in Damascus. It is true that the verses of these writers do not contain much real poetry, and that the authors deserve the name of poet only on account of the smoothness and euphony of their style. As a matter of course this group of poets extolled Gedalya Ibn-Yachya, their patron and protector, in their verses.
The Jews of Turkey also wrote Latin verses in the security and comfort of their present life. The writers were, of course, immigrant Marranos, who had learnt the language of their oppressors in the dungeons of Spain and Portugal. When the conscientious physician, Amatus Lusitanus, whose aid had been sought alike by kings and beggars, and who, on account of the intolerance of the reactionary policy, emigrated from Italy to Salonica, and there acquired new friends and admirers, fell a sacrifice to his devoted energy, and died of the plague, one of his friends, the Marrano Flavio Jacopo de Evora, composed a memorial to him in beautiful Latin verses to the following effect:
He who so often recalled the breath well-nigh gone from the dying, and was, therefore, beloved by kings and peoples, lies far from the land of his birth, beneath the dust of Macedonia.
The exaltation of the Turkish Jews and their contentment with their present condition imbued them with thoughts of independence. Whilst the Jews of Christendom had no such thought, and from time immemorial considered themselves in a condition of subjugation to their masters, the Turkish Jews became familiar with the idea of regarding themselves as independent men.
Joseph of Naxos long cherished the thought of founding a Jewish state. The Jew and the statesman in him yearned for this, and the enormous wealth of his mother-in-law, over which he had control, was to serve him as the means for its execution. Even when a fugitive Marrano he had seriously put before the Republic of Venice the request that it give him one of its numerous islands, so that he might people it with Jewish inhabitants. But this was refused either on account of the narrow-mindedness of the Christians or the fear of mercantile competition. When later on Joseph stood high in favor with Prince Selim, and also with Sultan Solyman, he obtained from them, besides seven villages, the ruins of the city of Tiberias, for a small Jewish state to be peopled only with Jews. He sent one of his agents to superintend the re-building of Tiberias. The Turkish prince gave the pasha of Egypt strict orders to assist the building in every way. The Arab occupants of the neighboring villages were compelled to render forced labor, and the new and beautiful houses and streets of the city of Tiberias were completed in a year. Joseph of Naxos wished to make it a manufacturing town to compete with Venice. He planted mulberry-trees for the cultivation of silk-worms, and introduced looms for the manufacture of silks; he also imported wool from Spain for the making of fine cloth.
Joseph does not seem to have directed his full energy to the little Jewish state; his plans were far more extensive, and thus New Tiberias never became an important place. He next endeavored to obtain the island of Naxos as a dukedom, together with the adjacent islands of the Ægean Sea, and when he was fortunate enough to be appointed duke by Sultan Selim, he thought no more about peopling his little island state with Jews; perhaps it was not practicable. His mind was next set on becoming king of Cyprus. It is possible that he might have transformed this island of the goddess of beauty into a Jewish state had he obtained possession of it, but his enemy, the grand vizir, Mahomet Sokolli, prevented this. Thus his dreams of founding an independent Jewish state were dispelled. In reality, Joseph of Naxos did nothing of lasting importance for Judaism. He made various attempts, and then relaxed in his endeavors, or misspent his means.
The fact that Jews occupied an exceedingly favored position in Turkey for so long a period did not result in correspondingly enduring progress. They did not produce a single great genius who originated ideas to stimulate future ages, nor mark out a new line of thought for men of average intelligence. Not one of the leaders of the different congregations was above the level of mediocrity. The rabbis and preachers were deeply learned in their particular subjects, but kept to the beaten track, without making a new discovery or bequeathing an original contribution, even in their own department. Only one rabbi left to posterity an epoch-making work, which even yet possesses significance, disputed though it be; but even this work contained nothing new or original. Joseph Karo, chief rabbi of the city of Safet, in Palestine, completed, after many years of toil, a new book of religious ordinances, the "Shulchan Aruch." Religious impulses, mystical fanaticism, and ambition, had equal shares in the making of this book. For Joseph Karo was still subject to strange visions: he still believed that he would be recognized everywhere as the highest authority by the compilation of his religious code, a norm for Jewish religious life; and that, by this means, he would accomplish the revival of rabbinical ordination, in which Jacob Berab had failed; restore, in fact, the unity of Judaism, and thereby hasten the coming of the Messiah. He spent the whole of his life in collecting the vast material, in weighing the pros and cons of arguments, drawing conclusions and arranging them in their proper places. By doing this he supplied a serious want. There was no manual that embraced the whole field of religious observance. As the Talmud and the later religious codes to an even greater extent favored differences of opinion upon nearly every single point in matters of religion, ritual, law and the marriage state, disputes constantly occurred which led to altercation and divisions in the communities, for it rarely happened that two rabbis agreed upon any question that came up for discussion. Each was able to adduce reasons for or against any argument from the vast mass of rabbinical literature.
It was this confusion and divergence of opinion that Joseph Karo wished to check by means of his new religious Code. He embraced the whole of the vast field of Talmudic and rabbinical literature, although his intellect could not master it. By birth a Spaniard, he involuntarily preferred the views of Spanish authorities to those of French and German writers. Hence he allowed partiality to creep into his compilation. As a matter of course, too, Karo admitted various elements of mysticism, though only sparingly, as if unwilling to place the Zohar upon a level with the Talmud in matters of practical religious observance. He has embodied in his Code excellent precepts in regard to sanctity, chastity, brotherly love, morality, and honesty in business, drawn from the Talmud and the rabbinical writings; but they disappear in a sea of casuistical details and mere externals, in a patchwork of divisions and subdivisions, of "ifs" and "buts." In this work there appears an altogether different kind of Judaism from that revealed on Sinai, announced by the prophets, or even taught by Maimuni. But this Judaism thoroughly suited the ideas of the Jews of that period, and therefore Karo's Code was immediately hailed with delight, disseminated, and received as the infallible standard authority in Turkey, throughout the East, in Italy, and even in Poland.
Thus religious life received a certain finality and unity, but at the expense of spirituality and freedom of thought. From Karo Judaism received the form maintained up to the present time. His dream was partially fulfilled. His rabbinical writings became the common property of Judaism, and gave it religious unity. But he himself did not become the leader and head, as the "Spirit of the Mishna" had repeatedly promised him: he was only honored as one authority among many others. Still less did he restore the ordination of rabbi-judges as members of a Synhedrion, or hasten in any way the coming of the Messiah.
At that time there was a man in Italy, who not only surpassed all his Jewish contemporaries in his spirit of inquiry and desire for truth, but who would have been able to purify Judaism from the dross of centuries of hardship, if the tendency of the age had not run counter to this endeavor, or if he had had greater courage in opposing it. Azarya ben Moses deï Rossi (born at Mantua about 1514, died in 1578), descended from an old Italian family, had buried himself so deeply in books, that his body bore traces of severe suffering from over-study. Feeble, yellow, withered, and afflicted with fever, he crept about like a dying man. Yet in this living corpse a powerful and healthy mind worked with great activity. He had thoroughly mastered the whole of Jewish literature, besides being well read in Latin historical works, and he had also practiced medicine. At the same time he led a wandering life. He dwelt for some time at Ferrara, then in Bologna, had to leave that city in consequence of the persecution and expulsion of the Jews under Pius V, and finally settled again permanently in Ferrara. He held intercourse with the greatest Jews, Christians, and Marranos of his age, and was regarded by all with astonishment as a marvel of learning. He did not allow the treasures of his knowledge to lie dead within him, but let them grow and spread luxuriantly. Ancient history possessed special attraction for him. But even more admirable than his vast reading was the use he made of it. He was the first to bring into contact and connection with one another two provinces of literature which were far apart – the Talmud and its offshoots, with Philo, Josephus, and the works of the Church Fathers, proving the truth of historical narratives from the mouths of many witnesses. Deï Rossi, too, was the only one not satisfied with the data of tradition; he accepted nothing as truth till he had subjected it to a searching examination.
Chance brought to light the mental treasures of Deï Rossi. Ferrara, where, after leaving Bologna, he had settled shortly before, had been visited by a terrible earthquake (November 18th, 1570), and the inhabitants were compelled to leave their ruined and crumbling houses and seek places of refuge outside the city. In one of the villages Deï Rossi happened to meet a learned Christian, who was trying to overcome the gloomy thoughts caused by the earthquake by reading a Greek book of Jewish antiquity. In conversation Deï Rossi became aware that his co-religionists, even those possessed of some culture, owing to their one-sided absorption in the Talmud or obsolete philosophical writings, knew nothing of their own brilliant literature of the period of the Second Temple, whilst Christians resorted to it to dispel melancholy thoughts. Encouraged by his Christian friend, he determined to translate into Hebrew the "Letter of Aristas," supposed to be the discourse of a Greek king about the wisdom of the Jews, in order to make it accessible to his fellow-believers. He completed this task in twenty days. This was the first-fruit of his learning, and it led him on to further undertakings. His principal work, "Light of the Eyes," consists chiefly of parallel passages from Talmudic and profane sources upon the same subjects. Deï Rossi's distinction rests upon the fact that he did not adhere to tradition, but applied the methods of scientific inquiry to what the multitude regarded as unassailable truths, and that he used profane sources in elucidating them. The actual results of this historical investigation, for the most part, have proved unsound. Strong as Deï Rossi was in removing obstructive rubbish, his power of reconstruction was small.
The value of his efforts appears in its proper light only if we compare them with the circumstances of his time, or with the works of contemporary writers on the same subject, as, for example, those of Gedalya Ibn-Yachya; to these they form a complete contrast.
A descendant of the Italian branch of the noble Ibn-Yachya family, Gedalya inherited taste for knowledge. He was born in 1515, and died in 1587. His wealth enabled him to satisfy his taste by collecting a magnificent library. In his voluntary and compulsory journeys in northern Italy – for he was a preacher, and owing to the intolerance of the popes had to lead an unsettled life – he had seen and read much, both in sacred and profane literature, but without independent judgment, without discrimination, and without appreciation of the essence of truth. Ibn-Yachya's abbreviated "History of the Jews," together with a chronicle of the world, called "The Chain of Tradition," at which he worked for nearly forty years, is a confused medley of authentic historical narratives and mere fables. But in spite, or perhaps because, of its legendary contents, his book has found more acceptance among Jews than the researches of Deï Rossi. When the first edition of the latter's "Light of the Eyes" found its way to Safet, the orthodox of that town declared its contents to be heretical. Joseph Karo commissioned Elisha Gallaico, one of the members of his rabbinical college, to draw up an indictment, to be distributed amongst all Jews, ordering Deï Rossi's work to be burned. The people of Safet likewise had an inquisition. But Joseph Karo died (in Nisan, i. e., April, 1575) before he had signed the indictment. The Italian Jews were not so fanatical as to condemn Deï Rossi, for they knew him to be a pious and pure Jew. But the rabbis of Mantua employed the procedure of Ben Adret concerning the study of profane literature, that is, they forbade the reading of Deï Rossi's works by young people under twenty-five years of age. In consequence of this semi-official sentence of heresy, the book exercised but little influence upon the Jewish world of that day, or the generation immediately succeeding it, and has been appreciated only in quite recent times, when it created a new, enlightened view of history in Jewish circles. But in the Christian world Deï Rossi's work was noticed much sooner, and was annotated, and translated into Latin.
How, indeed, could a sober, critical method of inquiry have found favor in an age when the mystic, dazing Kabbala was the first authority, bidding men esteem blind credulity as the highest virtue, and exciting visionary enthusiasm to the highest pitch of fanatical intoxication? The visions of Solomon Molcho and Joseph Karo and their fond enthusiasm about the Messiah were sober compared with the excitement which reigned after their death, and celebrated a veritable witches' Sabbath. During the last three decades of the sixteenth century the Kabbala gained sole mastery in Palestine, conjured up apparitions, and encouraged orgies of mysticism. It spread thence over the whole of Turkey, Poland, Germany, and Italy, darkening and confusing men's minds, having an evil influence even upon their hearts, allowing no healthy thought to appear, or branding such thought as heretical and sinful. Once again, as in the early days of Christianity, Galilee, especially the district of Safet, became the scene of a host of evil spirits, of people possessed with devils, which challenged mystic exorcism, and revealed profound mysteries; and it is impossible to say whether the possessed appeared in consequence of the exorcisers, or the latter of the former. It was a period of Kabbalistic mania, coincident with profligacy and moral degradation, and its victims despised not only the sciences, but even the Talmud with its exhortations to sobriety. Then for the first time the Jewish world entered on a "dark age" of its own, with all the appropriate credulity, while only the last traces of such darkness were visible in Europe generally. This tendency was exaggerated by two men, who by their fanaticism and visionary extravagance infected a continually widening circle. These were Isaac Lurya and his disciple Chayim Vital Calabrese.
Isaac Lurya Levi (born in Jerusalem in 1534, and died 1572) was descended from a German family. Left an orphan at an early age by the death of his father, young Isaac came to Egypt, to the house of a rich uncle, Mardochaï Francis, a tax-farmer, and began to study the Talmud. The dry study of the Talmud, which filled the mind with voluminous learning, unfruitful hairsplitting, and mere formulas, yet failed to satisfy the wants of the heart, seems to have become repugnant to Lurya, and to have driven him to fantastic mysticism. He preferred the awful loneliness of the Nile country to the noise of the school; abstraction in worlds of mysticism and devout praying to working out intellectual problems. He was greatly attracted by the Zohar, which had then been printed for the first time, and, widely spread abroad, had become accessible to everybody. The more familiar he became with the Kabbala through his absorption in the sounding emptiness of the Zohar, the more did he seek solitude, and the less intercourse had he with men. He even neglected his young wife, only visited his house from Sabbath to Sabbath, and spoke little, that little being only in Hebrew. Lurya is said to have spent several years in solitude in this manner, and the result was that like all whose reason is weaker than their imagination, he became a confirmed visionary. The mystic book, the Zohar, his constant companion in this seclusion, aided in exciting his imagination. Firmly convinced of its authenticity as the work of Simon bar Yochaï, and also of the divine character of all the fantasies and follies therein revealed, Lurya persisted in seeing in it high allusions and profound wisdom. In his heated imagination he even saw Elijah, the teacher of mysteries, face to face.
But what did the prophet Elijah, or the Zohar, or rather his own heated imagination, reveal to him? First he took the trouble to put system, unity, and logical order into the confusion and intricacies of the Zohar, as if connected thought could be expected in the idle chatter of a half imbecile. The hermit of Cairo sought to deduce from it how God had created and ordered the world by means of the mystic numbers (Sefiroth), or how the Godhead revealed itself in the forms of substances, or how it concentrated itself within itself in order to project the finite nature of created things from its own infinitude. Thus he evolved an extraordinarily complicated system of powers and opposing powers, forces and counterforces, forms and degrees (Parsophin), in the four spheres of Separation, Creation, Formation, and Transformation; and he clothed these empty abstractions with such wondrous names, that he afterwards complained, with reason, that no one could understand his mystic system. Yet Lurya looked upon this intricate and complex theory of the creation as only a kind of introduction to what seemed to him a much more important and practical part of the Kabbala, whereby the divine order of the world (Olam ha-Tikkun) could be brought about. This practical Kabbala of Lurya rests upon a not less marvelous doctrine of souls, also based upon the visions of the Zohar.
Our souls, he says, reflect the close connection between the finite and the infinite, and, therefore, have a manifold character. The whole of the soul material to appear in temporal life was created with Adam, but each soul, according to its higher or lower degree, was fashioned in, from, or with the first man, out of high or low organs and forms. Accordingly, there are souls of the brain, the eyes, the hands, and the feet. Each of these must be regarded as an effluence, or spark (Nizuz), from Adam. By the first sin of the first man – for the Kabbala finds original sin necessary for its fanciful creations – the higher and the lower, the superior and the inferior souls, good and evil, became confused and mingled together. Even the purest beings thereby received an admixture of evil and the devilish element of the "husk" (Kelifa). But the moral order of the world, or the purification of the first man, cannot be brought about till the consequences of original sin, the confusion of good and evil, are obliterated and removed. From the most evil part of the soul material emanates the heathen world; the people of Israel, on the other hand, come from the good part. But the former are not quite without an admixture of the original good, while the latter are not free from an admixture of the corrupt and demoniac. This imperfection gives the continual impulse towards sin, and hinders the chosen fragment of the human race from following the law of God, the Torah. The Messianic period will put an end to the disturbance of divine order arising from the first sin, or abolish the disorder which has since crept in, and will introduce, or see introduced, the divinity of the world. Therefore, a complete separation of good from evil must take place, and this can only happen through Israel, if it or each of its members will lose or cast away the admixture of evil. For this purpose, men's souls (especially those of the Israelites) have to wander through the bodies of men and animals, even through rivers, wood, and stones. The doctrine of the transmigration of souls forms the center and basis of Lurya's Kabbala, but he has a peculiar development of the idea. According to this theory even the souls of the pious must suffer transmigration, since not even they are free from the taint of evil; there is none righteous upon earth, who does only good, and sins not. In this way, Lurya solved the difficulty, which former Kabbalist writers could not overcome.
But this separation of the good and evil elements in the world's soul material, the expiation and obliteration of original sin, or the restoration of the divine order in Adam, would require a long series of ages, owing to the impulse towards sin continually present. There are, however, means of hastening this process, and this was the really original doctrine that Lurya enunciated. Besides the transmigration of our souls, sinful and subject to demoniac forces as they are, there is another mode of expiation, the elevation or impregnation of the soul (Ibbur, superfœtatio). If a purified soul has neglected various religious duties here on earth, or has had no opportunity of fulfilling them, it must return to the earthly life, attach itself to the soul of a living human being, and unite and coalesce with it in order to retrieve this neglect. Or again, the departed spirits of men freed from sin appear again on earth to support the weak and wavering souls which cannot attain to good by their own efforts, strengthen them and lead them to the final goal. These pure spirits combine with weaker souls still struggling, and form a union with them, provided that they have some affinity with one another, i. e., if they originate from the same spark or organ of Adam, since as a rule only similar (homogeneous) souls attract each other, while on the other hand dissimilar (heterogeneous) souls repel each other. According to this theory the banishment and dispersion of Israel have for their purpose the salvation of the world or of men's souls. The purified spirits of pious Israelites unite with the souls of men of other nationalities in order to free them from the demoniacal impurities that possess them.