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Page 47
At these conclusions, G�nzburg arrived only after a long, severe, though
silent, struggle in the seclusion of his closet. His active mind would
not at first surrender unconditionally to the coercion of custom. But
his conception of ceremonialism served him in good stead on many an
occasion in his eventful life. Being an expedient to preserve harmony,
it may and must vary with change of conditions. Accordingly, G�nzburg
always accommodated himself to his environment. In Vilna he subscribed
to the regulations of the _Shulhan 'Aruk_, in Mitau he quickly and
completely became Germanized. Such adaptability rendered him conspicuous
wherever he went, and as early as 1829 his name was included among the
learned of Livonia, Esthland, and Courland in the Biographical
Dictionary then published by Recke and Napyersky.
His claim to fame, however, consists in the influence he exerted upon
Russian Jews. Like Levinsohn, he was a constructive force. In his
younger days, he had inveighed against the benighted rabbis and the
antiquated garb, but moderation came with discretion. He would not sweep
away by force the accumulation of hundreds of years. Judaism needed
reforms of some sort, but these could not be brought about by the
Russo-German-doctor-rabbis, men who could rede the seven riddles of the
world, but whose knowledge of their own people and its spiritual
treasures was close to the zero point. "For a rabbi," writes he, "Torah
must be the integer, science the cipher. Had Aristotle embraced Judaism,
notwithstanding his unparalleled erudition, he would still remain a
sage, never become a rabbi." But he was as little satisfied with the
exclusively Talmudistic rabbis. "O ye modern rabbis," he calls out in
one of his essays, in which he stigmatizes Lilienthal's plans as the
"gourd of Jonah," "you who stand in the place of seer and prophet of
yore, is it not your duty to rise above the people, to intervene between
them and the Government? And how can you expect to accomplish it, if the
language and regulations of our country are entirely unknown to you?"
The impress G�nzburg left upon Hebrew literature is of special
importance. Until his time, despite the examples set by Satanov and
Levin, Hebrew was stamped with the hallmark of medievalism. Like the
Spanish entertainment in Dryden's _Mock Astrologer_, at which everything
at the table tasted of nothing but red pepper, so the literature of that
day was dominated by the style and spirit of the Talmud and saturated
with its subtleties. Astronomy, philosophy, mathematics, and poetry
swarmed with puns, alliterations, pedantic allusions; they were
overladen with irrelevant notes and interwoven with quaint and strained
interpretations. G�nzburg was the first, with the exception of Erter
perhaps, to try to remedy the evil. "Every writer," he maintained,
"should guard himself against the fastidiousness or stiffness which
results from pedantry, and take great pains not only with the content of
his thoughts, but with the language in which these thoughts are
couched." Simplicity, perspicuity, and conciseness, these he taught by
precept and example, and though he was accused of "Germanizing" the
Hebrew language, he persisted in his labor until he attained the
foremost rank among the neo-Hebraic litterateurs.
In G�nzburg we find the artistic temperament developed to a degree rare
among Hebraists of even more recent years. He wrote only in moments of
inspiration. At times he passed weeks and months without penning a line,
but when once aroused he wrote unceasingly until he finished what he had
begun. He was careful in the choice of his words, careful in the choice
of his books, and would recommend nothing but the best. "I may not have
genius enough," he would say, "to distinguish between better and best,
but I do not lack common sense, to differentiate tares from weeds."
Above all, he possessed a sense of honor, the greatest stimulus, as he
maintained, to noble endeavors. "For as marriage is necessary to
perpetuate the race, and food to sustain the individual, so is honor to
the existence of the superior man."
Of the fifty years of his active life more than one-half was spent in
literary labor. His books obtained a wide circulation, and, though they
were rather expensive, became rare soon after their publication. Yet,
strange to say, this eminent Hebraist seldom, if ever, lauds the
beauties of the "daughter of Eber" (Hebrew) like his fellow-Maskilim
since the days of the Meassefim, nor does he even think it incumbent on
a Jew to be conversant with it.
Three periods have passed over me--he writes to a friend--since
I dedicated myself to Hebrew. As a youth I loved it as a Jewish
lad loves his betrothed, not because he is enamored of her
charms, but because his parents have chosen her for him; as I
grew older, I continued to love it as a Jewish man loves his
wife, not because of real affection, but because she is the only
one he knows; now that I am old, I still love her, as an elderly
Jew loves his helpmate: he is aware that she lacks many of the
accomplishments of which more educated women can boast, but, for
all that, remembering her faithfulness in the past, he loves her
also in the present, and loves her till he dies.
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