The History of Jewish Education and Culture in France and Germany from the Expulsion of French Jewry to the Enlightenment

Preface

The behavior of the Jews in most places generally follows the behavior of the [local] Christians—(Sefer ḥasidim [Book of the Pious, 13th century] § 1106)

The present volume is a continuation of the studies that began with my book Jewish Education during the Spanish-Arab Period (Vienna: Carl Gerold’s Sohn, 1873). Since it has no inner connection to the earlier work, there was no reason to indicate the fact of the continuation on the title page. The present work differs from the earlier one also in its structure. This time I did not confine myself to pedagogy, but included cultural history in my account, which, I believe, is to the advantage of the subject matter. Schooling and the system of instruction are so intimately connected with the general culture that neither can be fully understood when separated from each other.

Since I am dealing here with European Jews, it would have been historically more correct to begin with Italy because it was from there that the seed of science spread to the Jews in Germany and France. However, the literary achievements of the Jews in those two countries are at a higher level than those of the Italian Jews. Guided by this principle I also presented French Jews before German Jews. I am now considering beginning the next volume with Italy and pushing the description of its Jewry to the point where the present volume concludes and, from that point forward, presenting the history of Jewish teaching and pedagogy of Western Jews synchronically. The terminus ad quem [or starting point] of the present volume was determined quite naturally by the expulsion of the Jews from France and the upheaval caused by the Black Death among German Jews a few decades earlier.

While working on the present volume I made use of, in addition to printed materials, numerous manuscripts. They are indicated in the appropriate places. I want to thank all who lent me manuscripts or helped me obtain manuscripts and copies. They are Messrs.: Dr. Lei-the, director of the K.k. Universitäts-Bibliothek, and Dr. Jellinek here [in Vienna], A. Neubauer in Oxford, S. J. Halberstam in Bielitz, J. Perles in Munich, M. Mortara in Mantua, Abbé P. Perreau and A. Segré in Parma, and the director’s office at the k. Hof- und Staatsbibliothek in Munich.¹

Here I could conclude my preface. However, the currents of our time are forcing me to furnish my book with a letter of protection.

When I started it, I did not expect that a time would ever return when a Jew could not speak and write freely about what he thinks and feels. But such a period is now recurring. The martyrdom that Jews have to endure these days, by which I mean the literary persecution of Jews initiated by Mr. Marr² and carried on by other writers, makes me fear that isolated sentences taken from my book could be given a vicious spin and that the general intention that propelled me to undertake this work could be nastily interpreted and slandered. I want to protect myself and my book against such attacks.

My plan was to sketch the pedagogical and scientific situation of European Jews between the tenth and the fourteenth centuries against the backdrop of the general cultural conditions in these periods. In pursuing this plan it was hardly possible to avoid discussing social relations between Jews and Christians. Since I cited venomous comments about Jews that appear in Christian literary works and sermons, historic fairness seemed to me to demand that I also cite similar remarks made by Jews about Christians. Occasionally they match [those of their Christian counterparts] in spitefulness and bitterness; but readers who have the capacity to perceive human occurrences with a human sensibility will understand these remarks as the utterances of oppressed and tortured human beings and will not twist them into national antipathies. That someone, like myself, who is reproducing such remarks for scientific purposes now finds it necessary to deny explicitly any possible identification of these remarks with his own views, I would have considered a completely ridiculous imposition only a few years ago. Today it is a sad necessity to reject strongly any such identification. Those remarks belong to a time that lies five, six centuries and even longer behind us. We Jews of today, and certainly those of us in Austria, have no reason at all to renew religious conflict and to nurture among ourselves a hostile attitude toward people of a different faith; we are happy when this is not happening on the other side, [and hostility is not] directed against us. Since the end of the Middle Ages, Jews have learned a lot but forgotten even more, especially the hatred of the “goyim” (now sniffed out only by Mr. Treitschke³ and company), which has turned into the sincere effort of friendly rapprochement on the basis of patriotism and love of humankind, an effort from which even the current literary Jew-baiting must not deter us.

Incidentally, even in the old days that are the subject of this book, there is testimony of humane attitudes and unbiased casts of mind on both sides. Christian preachers point out to their listeners what they can learn from the Jews; rabbis recommend that their fellow Jews practice justice and love also toward Christians. How unreservedly the influence of the latter two on the Jews was acknowledged by them is proven by the epigraph at the beginning of this preface.

No friend of truth will demand that I include only what is pleasant in this study and ignore or soften what is unpleasant. Whitewashing and covering up serve no good purpose. It is better to learn how it was: it will sway one to preserve and cultivate what was good in the old days and to get rid of what was bad, to the greatest extent possible, and to replace it with the good. Only on the basis of a communal effort of this kind can peace and humane rapprochement among followers of different faiths be fostered. This effort can only be of service to a contemplation of history that is as impartial as possible.