When Louis XVI was Still Exalted

History remembers Louis XVI as the husband of Marie Antoinette and king of France during the French Revolution, which stripped him of power then his crown and finally his head. Because of this Louis XVI's reputation has tended to vacillate between the tyrant overthrown by the people of France to the incompetent aristocratic living in a fantasy world, who failed to realize that he was on the wrong side of history. It is difficult to imagine a Louis XVI without the French Revolution as an absolutist monarch and not necessarily a bad one at that. He had his budget problems, but that was not completely his fault and modern democratic governments seem hardly better in that regard. As did many monarchs of his era, he supported the Enlightenment on the assumption that it supported strong centralized states. In that he was correct; his only mistake was to assume that a hereditary monarch would remain at the helm.  

Here is the title-page of Hakham David Nieto's Kuzari Sheni, printed in Metz 1780.

Stated at the bottom is "with the kindness of our master the exalted king Louis XVI, the king of France and Navarre."

Kline Books at the San Francisco Book Fair

Kline Books had booth at this weekend's book fair in San Francisco. (Come see us this coming weekend at the 45th California International Antiquarian Book Fair in Pasadena.) Steve Schaefer ran into Eric mentions and mentions him in his blog Test Driving Life:

I was impressed by the Judaica I found at Eric Chaim Kline's booth. Kline is a longtime expert in this field, and he kindly showed me some amazing old Hebrew bibles, books on Hebrew typography, and, two special treasures from his display case. The first was a Passover Haggadah from 1946, a slim paper volume printed right after World War II. It contained some shocking and painful depictions of concentration camps and the other horrors of the day. On a happier note from that period, a 1948 colorful book presented the story of emigration to an Israeli kibbutz for children, with sweet illustrations that would have helped the kids adjust to the move. 


I actually helped prepare both books he mentions. The Haggadah was the most gut wrenching inconspicuous little pamphlet I have ever seen. It was printed for survivors in the DP camps after the war and brilliantly reconstructs the entire Seder experience around the Holocaust. There was one particular piece that got to me. It took the caption of complaint by the Israelites in the desert "we remember the fish" and placed it under a picture of a concentration camp soup kitchen. Anyone who sees no value and only sacrilege in rewriting sacred texts in the light of current issues, I challenge you to take a look at this Haggadah. The Aliyah book was cute and stands as a monument to a specific time and place. It pictures people making aliyah by boat. Within a year of this book being published, Israel was bringing thousands of Yemenite Jews to Israel on Operation Magic Carpet by plane.     

Kline Books Contest for Latin Manuscript Specialists

We recently came across a letter from Pope Clement XII (r. 1730-40) pasted inside a fifteenth century incunabulum.

Eric has agreed to put this letter up as a contest for all Latin manuscript specialists. $25 for anyone who can work their way through this bit of eighteenth century handwriting and transcribe the letter. If I am reading him correctly, he seems to refer to war with Islam.

A Jewish Isolationist Plan to Stop Anti-Semitism

One of the fascinating things about the Republican Party today is the growing fracture over our military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Contrast this to the lead up to the Iraq war in 2003, which saw a united Republican Party standing behind their president against a Democratic Party caught between its Vietnam era anti-war wing and the "New Democrats" of the Bill Clinton era. The attitudes to the two parties to foreign interventions have gone in cycles over the past two decades. In the early twentieth century, up until the Cold War, the Republican Party was consistently the more isolationist party.

With World War II held up today by both parties as the "good war," it is difficult to appreciate how strong the opposition was to American entrance was. The Republicans were against it as were most Democrats. President Franklin Roosevelt supported the war, but was a highly isolated political figure. It is easy to forget these facts, because the isolationist party in America mysteriously collapsed over the course of a single day, December 7, 1941, leaving an America that supported war not just with Japan, but with Germany even though they did not attack us.  
There was strong Jewish support for the war, certainly far above the general American population, before Pearl Harbor. This was hardly an unmixed blessing for Roosevelt. For all the hindsight talk about how American Jewry sold out Jews in Europe during the Holocaust, it is important to understand how difficult a situation the Jewish community was in. Jews knew that Roosevelt was the best man they could reasonably hope for and that he was going out on a limb politically and legally to aid the British war effort against Nazi Germany. The most counter productive thing they could do was to openly lobby for such actions, making it "the Jew's war."

As it should surprise no one there were isolationist Jews. For example we have the Communist affiliated Jewish People's Committee led by Rabbi Moses Miller, Ben Gold and William Weiner. We have a pamphlet, A Jew Looks at the War, by Miller, written in 1940. Miller declares:

The American people do not want to get involved in this war. They were fooled once before by nice phrases. And it was a costly mistake. Thousands of America's finest youth were killed in that war. The American people want no more of such bloodshed.

The Jewish people of America likewise are against this war. The Jewish people do not want one single American young man to lose his life over there. The Jewish people know that War No. 1. did not solve the Jewish problem but created a Versailles Treaty, created a Hitler, and led to War No. 2 which can only create an even worse Versailles, more Jewish suffering, and can only lead to War No. 3. The Jews of America therefore join with all of the American people in demanding that America stay out of this war. (Pg. 30.)

This pamphlet was written before the invasion of the Soviet Union so I would be curious as to how that might have effected Miller's views.





Miller main concern was anti-Semitism. I am certainly willing to accept that he believed what he was saying, though his arguments, particularly in hindsight, appear rather ironic. For example, at one point in the pamphlet, he quotes Rev. Asher Perlzweig of the British section of the World Zionist Congress as saying that if the war were to continue for another year a million Jews would starve to death in Poland. Miller took Nazi anti-Semitism as a given and assumed that they would do nothing to protect Jews and that as long as the war went on, Jews would disproportionately suffer from the natural depredations of war like starvation and disease. The possibility that the Nazi leadership had a "Final Solution" planned never entered his mind as the possibility failed to register with just about everyone else.

In thinking about American involvement in World War II, I must admit a conflict. Obviously if the United States had not fought against Hitler, I, as the grandchild of Hungarian Holocaust survivors, would not be here today. For that matter, American action saved European Civilization. That does not mean that it was in the interest of the United States to have fought this war at the cost of over a half a million servicemen.    

Suing Julius Streicher for Anti-Semitic Libel

 Julius Streicher was the editor of Der Sturmer, a Nazi tabloid that most Nazis apparently were embarrassed by. Streicher's hate filled preaching against Jews would earn him a spot at Nuremberg, where he was hanged. I my mind he serves as the ultimate example of the limits of free speech. From the perspective of the Nuremberg prosecution, Streicher was not merely a journalist, who held anti-Semitic opinions and used the press to make his opinions known, but part of a conspiracy to facilitate the murder of Jews by dehumanizing them.

It is important to keep in mind the distinction advanced by John Stuart Mill. Speech in of itself causes no empirical harm to others and therefore is a protected liberty. Being able to pursue one's own good in one's own way as long as one does not cause physical harm to others means that one is free to hold any opinion, from the virtues of cannibalism to putting Jews into ovens, no matter how offensive they might be to others and engage in theoretical discussions with others about them even for the purpose of convincing others of the rightness of such opinions. The moment, though, that one speaks with the intention that other people act in a certain way, such speech ceases to be speech and becomes an action. If such "speech" leads to physical harm, such as people being stamped upon in the rush to exit a crowded theater after someone shouted fire, then it is no different from any other action that leads to physical harm. In the case of Nuremberg this principle was important as without it none of the defendents could likely have been charged; the criminal actions in question where actually carried out by other people. Most of the defendents simply gave orders; in Streicher's case he simply helped convince people to carry out those orders.

It should be noted that this restriction on speech is different from modern notions of banning hate speech. Hate speech is defined based on its ability to cause non-physical harm, such as feeling hurt and dehumanized, to others. For the purposes of hate speech it is irrelevant whether the speech actually caused physical harm or if it was intentional.      

Streicher had an earlier brush with Jewish "censorship" in January of 1935 when Rabbi Solomon Gliksman of the Orthodox Congregation Ohel Yitzchak in Danzig attempted to sue him for libel. For those of you not familiar with post World War I Eastern European politics, Danzig was a politically oddity hanging between Germany and Poland. While Danzig was a German city, the Treaty of Versailles made it a "free city" under Polish control. Danzig fell under Nazi control in 1933, but because it technically was not German territory, it became the one "German" city in which Jews could legally strike back. 
Gliksman wrote to the police chief and the attorney general, denouncing Streicher and Bruno Schnorkowski, the main distributer of Der Sturmer in Danzig:

They have transgressed against paragraph 166 of the Penal Code insofar as they have allowed to circulate about 300 copies of the "Sturmer" number 2, 1935, which contained expressions blaspheming God and His laws, in the period of the 7th till the 15th of January 1935, in the Free City of Danzig. There is no doubt that the abominable manner in which the "Sturmer" attacked Jehovah and the Bible has also offended the circles of the Churches existing within the jurisdiction of the Free City of Danzig. For Jehovah is obviously not only the "Jewish God", as the "Sturmer' informs his readers but the Universal God. "Jehovah" is the original pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton, the group of four letters representing the ineffably holy name of the Supreme Being in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, which as is well known, forms the basis of the New Testament.

The assertion that the Holy Scriptures  are a horribly criminal romance is then to be considered a detestable defamation of the Old Testament which constitutes preeminently the basis of all prevailing theological social and ethical concepts. Concerning this I call to witness the experts Count O'Rourke, Bishop of Danzig, Dr. Kalweit, the emeritus General Superintendent at Danzig, and Dr. J. Gruen, the Rabbi of the Jewish Community of Danzig. (Shlomo Gliksman, The Forgeries and Falsifications in the Antisemitic Literature and My Lawsuit against Julius Streicher & Co. pg. 86-87.)

Unfortunately for Gliksman, this attempt to, at the very least, stop the distribution of Der Sturmer in Danzig did not come to much. In April the attorney general wrote back:

A lawsuit against the Editor-in-Chief, the assistant editors and publishers of the "Sturmer" cannot be conducted in Danzig, since the accused live in Germany and are obviously not citizens of Danzig.


Concerning the worker Mr. Schnorkowski, the law-suit against him had to be discontinued for subjective reasons: As the "Sturmer" is not forbidden in Danzig, there is no reason to suppose that the defendant had even the slightest idea of becoming criminally liable by circulating these periodicals.


Finally, the conduct of an objective proceeding of confiscation, according to paragraph 42 of the Penal Code, is unnecessary as the editions of the "Sturmer" challenged by you are no more in stock circulation. For the same reason it is unnecessary to take a stand on the question of the guilt liability of the contents of the periodicals." (pg. 92.)

Note that Gliksman argument was not based on the liberal principals of Mill used at Nuremberg. Instead he argued based on a hate speech principles. Considering that the speech in question was against the Bible and that he wanted to call Catholic priests as friendly witnesses, it should be clear that hate speech is really just the traditional charge of blasphemy brought up to date to make it palatable to modern values.    

Father Schmutz Vs. Sabestian Munster's Hebrew Bible

I have an affinity for playing games with children that they tend to appreciate. I take the basic chase children around and to keep things interesting for all involved, mainly me, I monologue about such deep topics as the virtues of medieval surgery and mine labor for children. For playing with the local rabbi's kids I have developed the character of Father Schmutz (lit. dirt). The name comes from a rebbe I had when I was a child, who told great stories, but which usually featured as their stock villain a Christian priest, who was always given the name Father Schmutz. Looking back I would say that this rebbe was brainwashing children into anti-Christian prejudice. If any teacher tried to do that to a child of mine, I would remove my child from the institution on the spot. In the meantime I think the best way to actively undermine such a worldview is through satire. Thus I have created my own comic super villain priest, who is everything one would expect from a Haredi super villain priest taken to absurdity. Since Father Schmutz is a Haredi super villain priest, he thinks and speaks just like a Haredi would. For example: "Yiddisha kinderlach (Jewish children). I have actually no need to chase you down. With my koychos ha-tumah (powers of impurity), once you hear the kifirah (heresy) spouting from my lashon hara (evil speech) drenched lips you will be unable to resist me and your nishamas (souls) shall be mine." Maybe what we need is a plush huggable talking Father Schmutz doll.

Someone actually objected to this style of play on the grounds that confronting kids with a priest who sounds Jewish is only going to confuse them. Christian priests should sound one way and rabbis should another. Part of the problem with this is that, as someone who works with Christian Hebraists, I deal with Christians who sounded like rabbis on a daily basis. For example, here is a little piece from the introduction to the Tanach of that "gadol," early "acharon" and contemporary of the Beis Yosef, "Rabbi" Sebastian Munster:              


The Jewish Sages also erred in this that they added other stringencies on their descendants. The nation ceased to go after the straight path in their studies and enquieries. Their students came after them and drank from their bad water and got up and also piled decrees upon decrees and were stringent upon the multitude with other stringencies to blind the eyes of Israel until the Messiah of the Lord came and opened the eyes of the blind and opened the ears of the deaf and wrote his Torah and new covenant not with tablets of stone like was done before. Rather they were placed in the heart of man like it says: "I will make Israel and Judah a new covenant not like the the covenant which I made with their ancestors for this covenant I will give inside them and upon the heart I will give it." He [the Messiah] came to redeem man not from Egypt like Moses did, but from sin and the judgment and imprisonment in Hell that we may have the peace of the World to Come as it says: "His well being was upon us and by his wounds we were healed." He removed from us the harsh commandments and laws that are not in nature and reason does not support. He was stringent with us with all the stringencies like it says in the Gospel that he warned the children of man as to the commandments and laws that are in nature like stealing, murder, adultery and the like.


Now I will speak to you the Jews. Why are you doing this great evil upon your souls to cut off from you man and woman, child and baby from Judah so that there will be no remanent for yourselves to anger Hashem with the work of your hands by not believing in the words of the prophets that their prophecies were fulfilled  in this that [the Messiah] was sent to you in [his] name to save you and how do you refuse to believe in his signs that no prophet or seer performed. And behold you see that your prayers are not heard and you call out in vain for you have passed through all thorns and you have no more expectation of the salvation that you were relying upon to come to you. And behold the time has already passed which God promised you through his prophets and all the comforts which the prophets prophesied were fulfilled during the Babylonian exile.

For those not familiar Munster, he was a leading early Protestant Hebraist. Early modern Protestantism was quite good at producing Hebrew scholars. This often led to philo-Semitic attitudes toward Jews. By this I mean the belief that Jews just might be savable if missionized instead of expelled. Imagine the danger posed to Jewish children just glancing at this page of Hebrew text that looks like a nice Jewish book, which, as this is the Bible, it technically speaking is. Who else can save them, but Father Schmutz? (Coming to a Jewish store near you.)  

A Sermon against Racism

To continue a little with Hermann Baar and his sermons to orphans, he does confront the issue of racism in strong terms:

My children, a sickly outgrowth of the human heart is that feeling of contempt with which many people look down upon their fellow-citizens, who differ from them as regards race, descent, and nationality. Thus we see that the Mongols, from whom, for instance, the well-known Chinese descend, are treated with a deep-rooted prejudice, while the Hamites or Africans, having been emancipated from slavery only in late years through the noble interference of the Federal government, have joined that bright ring of humanity which forms of all being a large chain of brotherhood. Even the great wars in the Middle Ages and recent times between the Latin and Saxon nationalities have been partly instigated - although questions of a more religious and political nature have served for a pretext - through nothing else but race animosities. The present bitter feeling between England and Ireland, between people of Saxon and Celtic origin, has, besides economical reasons, its main source in the different individualities of both these great nations. (Addresses on Homely and Religious Subjects: Delivered Before the Children of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum vol. II pg. 369-70.)

Baar takes the opportunity to comment about German anti-Semitism, noting that Moses "uttered such humanizing sentiments in a dark and unrefined age when no classical studies were taught in colleges, and no German professors of history and theology like [Heinrich von] Treitschke and [Adolf] Stocker were in existence." (Pg. 370.) 

What I find interesting about Baar's take on racism in America is that he equated racism against blacks with racism against the Chinese and for that matter the Irish. This seems odd and even obtuse to modern ears because we know that the history of black civil rights turned out to be very different and much more difficult. Blacks remain the chief racial issue in this country. Most Americans, unless they know something about American history (or have seen the movie Gangs of New York) are unlikely to have even heard of discrimination against the Irish. The Chinese remain an identifiable minority group, but have largely, following the path set by Jewish immigrants, managed to work their way into upper middle-class respectability.

Baar lacked the benefit of knowing twentieth century history. In the America of the 1880s prejudice against the Irish and Chinese was quite real. It was reasonable for a liberal of the post Civil-War generation to assume that the essential problem with blacks had been solved with the Emancipation Proclamation and the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. Now that blacks were to all appearances just another minority group like the Irish, Chinese or for that matter Jews all that was left to do was replace race with American nationalism, which could be open to all races, and all racial problems would soon fade away. What Baar could not know was that the South, freed from occupation by Federal troops, would strike back with a renewed regionalist ideology. As refighting the Civil War was not an option, the South made its stand through segregating blacks. As long as the Emancipation Proclamation and the civil rights amendments remained unenforceable the South could claim the victory lost to them at Appomattox Courthouse. This line of thinking is very explicit in the Birth of a Nation movie where the defeated South finally wins the war when the Ku Klux Klan fights off the "mobs of negros" and stops them from voting.


         

Contrary to Birth of a Nation, the post war years saw tremendous gains for blacks in the South. That tide only began to turn in the 1890s with the passage of Jim Crow laws and the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision of 1896. In essence blacks became the sacrificial victims of the late nineteenth century northern and southern reconciliation, a process which would not become obvious for several further decades.

Orphange Sermons: Christian Missionaries are Like Nimrod, Haman and Philip II

When I started at Ohio State a few years ago, for my first quarter, instead of teaching, I was assigned to do research for one of the professors for a book on the Ohio Soldiers and Sailors Orphanage in Xenia, OH. This orphanage, which operated until 1997, was originally founded to service the children of Civil War veterans. Most of the boys and girls who passed through were not actually orphans, but adolescents and teenagers from troubled homes, whose parents were not able to take care of them. This project led to many afternoons and evenings looking through back issues of the Xenia Gazette from the 1880s. It is amazing the sort of things you learn from such a paper such as the health benefits of blood thinner, why it would not be appropriate for the widow of a deceased senator to take her husband's seat and that poverty and crime would disappear if only the consumption of alcohol were made illegal. In terms of civil rights, I would summarize the newspaper's attitude as follows: the negro is naturally deceitful, lazy and prone to crime and we would never actually want him in our schools and neighborhoods. But because he is such lowly pathetic creature it is incumbent upon Christian society to aid him and it is absolutely detestable what those treasonous southerners are doing to him. Think of this as Victorian liberal paternalistic racism.

There was also quite a bit about the orphanage. For example the paper printed the departing sermon given by the orphanage head, who apparently lost his job to a political appointee. The next head did not last long as it was discovered that he was carrying on an "inappropriate" relationship with one of the girls. There are reports of children running away; this is blamed on the children reading too many adventure novels. (Amazing how children managed to get themselves into trouble without the aid of television.) One kid, whose father was on death row, ran off to Columbus and somehow managed to make friends with the governor, who commuted the father's sentence. The father killed someone in a drunken brawl thus the moral lesson to be learned from the story is that alcohol can send you to the gallows, but a robust liberal reform of the penal system and having a child who is friends with the governor may just save your life.   

More recently in my work here at Kline's I came across a two volume collection of sermons by Hermann Baar, the superintendent of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in New York from this same period. As you can see, a major part of Victorian era theory of moral reform was that children needed a good sermon to teach them useful values so that they could get out of poverty. To be fair to Baar he makes a point that "it is natural for children to become impatient when listening to elaborate and extended sermons."

One of Baar's major concerns, working with impoverished immigrant children, was that they would become targets for missionaries and devoted a sermon to the topic:

My children, no nation in the world had to encounter so many Nimrods as ours. From Haman, the Amalekite, to Philip II of Spain, our people were hunted down, on account of their creed, by fire, sword, and social degradation, and if you ask history, it will inform you that the instigators of such wicked crimes usually try to cloak and to palliate their malicious acts by the sophisticated argument that it was done for the honor of God.

There is, however, another class of "hunters before the Lord," who, I am sorry to say, with bad taste and shameless audacity make it their profession, either by bribery or by the promise of lucrative positions, to allure persons from the inherited faith of their fathers. These men, known under the name of "conversionists," apply all their zeal and energy in behalf of their object of drawing over unprincipled and weak-minded individuals to another creed. I warn you against such Nimrods, my children, whose aim it is to make converts in honor of God. Should they in the future venture to approach you, remember that your religion, which has stood the test of centuries and past ages, and for which your fathers lived, died, and sacrificed everything they possessed, is the highest revelation of God's truth on earth. (Addresses on Homely and Religious Subjects: Delivered Before the Children of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum Vol. I pg. 2-3.)

Baar was not completely hostile to Christians. In another sermon, he praised Christianity for having made contributions to civilization alongside Judaism.

Mankind is indebted to the Jewish nation for many blessings that have civilized the human race. The Jews have at first fostered and cultivated the the religious thought; they have ever led an active and laborious life; they have been at all times at the head of our financial and mercantile enterprises, and have shown in all ages an inborn taste for music and its refining and ennobling charms. The Christian world has equally contributed much for the improvement and advancement of society at large. It has been the custodian of the most precious manuscripts; it has invented printing, and thus raised the intellectuality of man's mind; it has made science applicable to practical life; it has opened to us fresh sources of pleasure and delight in the realms of poetry and fiction, and has laid down new modes and methods of teaching for our educational aims and ends. (Vol. I pg. 223-24.) 

On this topic of dealing with children from troubled backgrounds, I do find it interesting to note the shift in the societal response and that it goes against the generally perceived view of how social thought has evolved over the past century. In the nineteenth century, the general view was to place such children in workhouses and orphanages like the Soldiers and Sailors Orphanage and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum. To be fair to both of these institutions, they were most certainly better run and more humane than the Charles Dickens caricature. Despite their paternalism, Victorian era social reformers do not get enough credit for creating a system that was successful at allowing people to work their way out of poverty. The modern attitude to such children is to place them in foster homes where they can receive something resembling normal family life. In the case of the Ohio Soldiers and Sailors Orphanage, the institution was closed based on the conscious decision by the State to support the foster home system instead. I am inclined to think that this is progress. If the philosophy of our era is, as conservatives like to complain, to breakdown the family and replace it with big government then is why is there no movement to "standardize" childcare and put children into group homes instead of the reverse trend we see.       

A Reform Rabbi Defends the Sabbath

Rabbi Isaac Schwab (1840-1907) was a student of Rabbi Abraham Samuel Benjamin Sofer (Ktav Sofer) at the Yeshiva of Pressburg in Hungry before getting a doctoral degree in Germany and becoming a Reform rabbi in the United States. He served in Portland OR, Evansville IN and Williamsburg NY (long before it was a hotbed for Satmar) before becoming rabbi in St. Joseph MO. His introduction to The Sabbath in History testifies to the lack of Sabbath observance among nineteenth century American Jews, something that Schwab laments.   

The Sabbat, most sacred as it is in its significance, and as yet theoretically planted hard and fast in the consciousness of the generality of Israel as the "perpetual sign between them and God," has yet practically lost in modern days much of its pristine awfulness, and even of the fervid reverence paid to it in ages not so long gone by. Notwithstanding that it is yet generally exalted as a prominently distinctive mark of Judaism, and valued as one of the few remaining bonds of Israel's union, it is alas! too often made to yield to the so-called pressure of modern business relations, and thus compromised as to its sanctity and validity; or it is paltered with and bartered away on various grounds of expediency. On these painful issues of modern Judaism we cannot here dwell. It lies moreover beyond the purpose of these prefatory lines to find fault and point out the different manifest decrease of true attachment for the Sabbath in our day.


The writer is, on the whole, aiming at and inspired by the hope of quickening again, by the light of historical data witnessing to an incomparable self-devotion and loyalty of Israel in the past to the royal bride Sabbath, that sense of superior estimation of this sacred day, which should be the pride and glory of our people at the present, no less than it was in previous times. He aims to rekindle, by the various illustrations put forth in his work, a zealous concern for the Sabbath of the Decalogue in the minds of those, with whom it has slacked through an undue addiction to worldly things and business advantages, and to possibly arrest the Neshamah yetherah "additional soul," formerly sorrowful flight from those too deeply immersed in their temproal pursuits and the material strifes of our racing age, or those too flightily temporizing in their attitude towards the "sign" that is to be "perpetual," and on the perpetuity of which our forefathers, as well of the middle ages as of antiquity (Jewish new-Christians of Spain, who would continue to observe the Sabbath secretly despite the baptism forced on them, were by the inquisitors singled out by the ovservation, from elevated places, that no smoke came out of their houses on the Sabbath, even in rigorous winter; see 'Shebhet Jehudah,' pg. 96) staked their lives from their spontaneous piety and faithfulness to the Law. (Pg. 5-6.)

What I find interesting about this defense of Sabbath observance is that in the end he does not condemn those masses of American Jews no longer keeping the Sabbath even by Reform standards. Instead he turns to history as if to say "The Sabbath has served as a cornerstone of the Jewish people throughout its history. It is not being kept today, which is pity, but far be it from me as to actually talk about it or God forbid make anyone feel guilty."

Where is the Golem Buried?

Rabbi Judah Loew, the Mahral, was one of the leading thinkers of the early modern period. His integration of Kabbalah with the medieval philosophical tradition was critical for the triumph Kabbalah, largely a product of Sephardi culture, within Ashkenazic Judaism. Any attempt to tell the story of how it could come to pass that a rabbi could insist to me that not only is Kabbalah a part of the Jewish tradition, but is "the Jewish tradition" needs to include Loew. (See "A German Hebrew Alphabet Book Based around the Zohar.") Unfortunately discussions of Loew tends to get bogged down in the legend of the Golem, an artificial man of clay, who according to modern incarnations of the tale was created to defend the Jewish community against blood libel accusations. Part of the appeal of the legend is that it is grounded in history. It has the well known historical  figure of Loew as its protagonist, the city of Prague for the setting. The Golem even is buried in a major tourist location, the attack of the Altneu Synagogue under a pile of discarded religious writings. According to run popular story, during the German occupation, some Nazi went up to the attic, stuck his bayonet in the pile and died on the spot

The funny thing about the story of the Golem's burial is that it was refuted a century ago. The journalist Egon Erwin Kisch (the Kisch family is actually quite interesting and we are in middle of a project involving them) actually went up to the attic and found nothing. As Hans Ludwig Held notes:

For centuries the legend that the Golem was still kept in the loft of the Old-New Synagogue had been current and many delightful tales, some of them humourous ones, are connected with it. This enticed a well-known writer, Egon Erwin Kisch, a son of Prague, to the bold, I might also say hazardous undertaking of ascending into the loft of the Synagogue, in order to look for the "corpse" of the Golem. In a fine piece of word-painting, "On the track of the Golem" he gives us the description of his quest. His trouble was in vain! He did not find the Golem. Then he pursued another clue, supplied by a further legend which he heard of during the war, to the effect that the servant of the exalted Rabbi Loew had carried off the Golem secretly from the loft of the Synagogue and had buried him on the Galgenberg, outside the town.  (Chayim Bloch, The Golem: Legends of the Ghetto of Prague pg. 10)

Mickey the Israeli Children's Picture Book Magician (Not to be Confused with Mickey Mouse)

I finally got around to seeing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II, having missed it in theaters when it was out this past summer. (One would think that being in a dating relationship would be an excuse to see more movies.) Impressive film on almost all counts. I do have two criticisms to make.

The majority of the film covers the final battle at Hogwarts as the school fends of an army led by Lord Voldemort with Harry's friends giving their lives to buy time for Harry to solve the mystery of the final Horcruxes, the pieces of Voldemort's soul. (Good thing there have been no body counts for every hour I fail to finish my dissertation.) For all the intensity of the moment the filmmakers fail to understand chaos and panic. We are fed numerous scenes with Harry, Ron and Hermione running through corridors; nothing wrong with playing out dialogue with characters moving between scenes of action. In the background, though, we are constantly seeing students running back and forth. The normal human reaction to danger is to duck and cover unless that danger is coming from a vary specific and identifiable direction, in which case people will run in the opposite direction. The Muppets react to danger by running back and forth across the screen. That is a different movie that came out this past week. (Perhaps I will convince my wife to take me to see that.)   

The climax of the story is when Harry learns that part of Voldemort's soul lies in him. Harry therefore allows Voldemort to kill him in order to bring Voldemort one step closer to destruction. Harry does not quite die; Voldemort only destroys that part of his soul that resided in Harry. In the book, Voldemort's final downfall follows in fairly quick succession. The movie decides to add a pair of extended fight sequences that switch back and forth between Harry and Voldemort and Ron, Hermione and Neville and Voldemort's pet snake Nagini, who serves as Voldemort's final Horcrux. This sort of thinking while understandable in terms of Hollywood's action oriented sensibilities demonstrates a failure to understand the book. Harry's victory over Voldemort is his self sacrifice. Once that happens Voldemort already is finished even if he thinks he has won for a few moments longer. What happens next is almost incidental, an opportunity for the bumbling Neville to be a hero and for Mrs. Weasley to deliver the best timed use of a curse word in all fiction. (For more on the novel see my "A Final Goodbye to Harry Potter.")

On the topic of Harry Potter, I thought it would be worthwhile to take a look at an attempt by an Israeli children's book author to craft a story about a little boy and his wand. Meet Miki Ha-Kosem, Mickey the Magician.

This is a hand made illustrated picture book by Israeli artist Miriam Bartov, written in the early 1980s. It tells of a little boy named Mickey who discovers a wand and proceeds to abuse it with expected and comic results. Mickey starts off by making various things bigger and giving himself wings. His attempt at flight does not work out so well and he falls onto one of his recently created giant flowers.

Before much longer he is on the run from one of his giant frogs. 

With the book we have a letter in German from Bartov to a Mr. Bergmann of the Bundesverlag in Mainz, pitching the book to the publishing company.

Apparently Mickey the Magician was never published. One suspects that it might have something to do with it being too similar to another Mickey the Magician.  

 

As far as we can tell, there are two copies of this book in existence, our copy and one in the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin. 

The Exodus from Egypt and Modern Revolutions

Judah David Eisenstein was an unheralded pioneer in the field of American Judaica publishing. Working in the early twentieth century, he edited and published numerous collections of Hebrew source material such as Midrash and Jewish polemics anti-Christian polemics. His work remains useful if you can get your hands on it. Here is a piece from the introduction to his Haggadah. Eisenstein follows a common Jewish apologetic troupe troupe from the period, Judaism and democracy. The idea being that Judaism is not only compatible with American style democracy, but was the source for it. In the service of this cause, Eisenstein is even willing to put in a good word about the Puritans. The Haggadah first came out in 1920 so the Russian Revolution also is mentioned.     

The exodus of Israel from Egypt is the greatest event in history of Israel and also in the history of the entire world. The children of Abraham Isaac and Jacob were the first to teach the dwellers of the world that it was possible for men enslaved under harsh masters to throw off from them their yoke and leave for freedom. And from them others learned to do likewise. The story of the exodus from Egypt was studied by the enlightened pure people living in America (Puritans) and it came into their hands to rebel against the rule of England in the year 1776 and proclaim freedom to all those living in the United States. And this thought inspired the French in their rebellion against their harsh rulers in the year 1789. And from them evolved the rebellion in Russia against the oppressive Czar and his regime that had already decayed in the year 1917. Just that the idea of freedom and the spirit of freedom never came to the rebels in a straight path rather in a crooked manner. But there is no doubt that the first source to rebel flowed from the Israelites leaving Egypt. (Ozar Perushim we-Ziyurim el Hagada Shel Pesah pg. iv.)

An Original Handwritten Letter from Victor Hugo

Every once in awhile one comes across a truly unexpected treasure. At Kline Books we recently came into possession of the complete works of Victor Hugo (1802-85)  in English printed in the nineteenth century. One of the volumes contained a letter from none other than the author himself, written in 1864 to an American named Charles Havens Hunts. At this point in Hugo's life he had been in exile from France since 1851 when Napoleon III declared himself emperor. Hugo lived on the island of Guernsey in the English Channel where he took up residence in the Hauteville House. Hunts had recently written a biography of Senator Edward Livingston (1764-1836), an American political reformer and advocate of prison reform. Victor Hugo wrote to Livingston as a young man in 1834, when the latter was serving as the United States minister to France, praising him for his humanitarian efforts. Hunts included this letter in his book and sent Hugo a copy. Hugo is writing back to express his thanks and his admiration for both Livingston and Hunts.    

Hauteville House - 15 Mars 1864. Monsieur, precisely 30 years ago, in March 1834, I sent the letter you have mentioned in your remarkable book to Senator Livingston. Today, I stand closer to him and you. It is called "Law of Progress." The honest and sincere men that walked before them, often coming from opposing factions, always end up united. You too, are sending me an excellent book. This is the work of a noble and serious mind. I wish you all my best for the appeasement and enlargement of your illustrious republic. It will triumph for liberty. Acknowledge the expression of my sincere cordiality.

Victor Hugo 

Monsieur Ch. Havens Hunts, author of the Life of Edward Livingston. 

Letters like the ones written to Livingston and Hunts should give one pause from thinking of Hugo simply as a French writer. Much of Hugo's work, including Les Miserables (1862) was written in exile in English territory. Furthermore Hugo's interest in humanitarian causes led him to take an interest in the United States and form friendships with Americans.   

Yiddish Edition of Charles Darwin's Descent of Man

We have here a Yiddish translation, done by Y. A. Merison, of Charles Darwin's 1871 follow up to Origin of Species, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. It was published in 1921 in New York by Max N. Maisel (1872-1959), who ran a publishing company, The Grand Street Press of Literature and Knowledge, devoted to printing and disseminating scientific literature in Yiddish. Organizations like Maisel's are a side of Yiddish culture that is very easy to overlook today when Yiddish is almost the sole dominion of the Ultra-Orthodox. There was a time when Yiddish was a powerful secularizing force.

Merison also wrote a childcare guide titled Muter un kind (1912) What does Darwin have to do with parenting? Well the Grand Street Press also distributed birth control literature by Margaret Sanger and Ben Zion Liber so clearly there was a connection in Maisel's mind. Now it makes sense to me to, if you are a good Darwinist, hand out birth control literature to immigrants to keep their population in check. But why would you then turn around and let them in on the plan?

To the best of my knowledge, Darwin did not get the company into trouble but the birth control literature did run afoul the obscenity laws in force at the time. I guess the tactic of saying things in Yiddish as a way of dodging gentile censors, so beloved by later generations of Jewish comedians, did not cover contraceptives.

Presumably our secularizing immigrant Jew would also desire to learn English and would soon be able to read Darwin in the original. Thus one assumes this is for people fresh off the boat. Why would someone think that new immigrants, with all of their concerns in adapting to a new country, first and foremost of them being to learn English, needed to make their way through Darwin. I could understand translating Israel Zangwill's play The Melting Pot or Uncle Tom's Cabin (this book actually helped by great-grandfather learn English as an immigrant) to teach people about American culture, but a scientific treatise that few English speakers ever read?

One can only imagine:

Dear Ma,

I have successfully reached the United States and am adapting very well to my new environment. Not to worry, I am using protection. I have my copy of Darwin's Descent of Man. Yes it is in the Mama-lashon. And I have some Margaret Singer (Sanger, Singer what's the difference) as well. So not to worry about grandchildren; I have that all under control.

Your beloved yingilah,

Chaim Dovid  Horowtiz (soon to be Harvey Drew Howard)

Moses Mendelssohn and the Rabbi David Frankel Sermon

In regards to my previous post on Rabbi David Frankel's sermon of thanksgiving after the Prussian victory at Leuthen, S. kindly pointed out that the sermon was likely the product of Frankel's famous student Moses Mendelssohn.

I managed to track this to Alexander Altmann's biography of Mendelssohn. Here is the relevant passages:

No account of Mendelssohn's exercises in ars poetica would be complete without some mention of his synagogal hymns and sermons. The young bel esprit was by no means averse to putting his talents at the service of the Berlin community. The chance to do so was provided by the Seven Years' War. When Austria and Saxony opened hostilities against Prussia toward the end of 1756, the Jews of Berlin added to their daily prayers the recital of certain appropriate psalms and a special prayer composed in Hebrew by Hartog Leo and translated into German by Mendelssohn. Frederick II's surprising victory at Rossbach caused great jubilation and was celebrated by a thanksgiving service in the synagogue on November 12, 1757. Mendelssohn, again, translated a Hebrew text, a hymn written by Hartog Leo, into German. It was published by the community, and it seems that it has also been planned to publish Mendelssohn's German version of a sermon preached by Chief Rabbi Frankel. Another great victory, at Leuthen, was duly celebrated on December 10. 1757. The same pattern was repeated, but this time both the hymn and the sermon were published in German. According to the title page, the sermon had been "delivered" by Frankel and then "translated into German" (omitting Mendelssohn's name). In fact, however, Mendelssohn had written the sermon, as he remarked in a letter to Lessing that, on internal evidence, can be dated about December 15, 1757: "I shall no longer swear to anything in the world after it has come to pass that I write a sermon and praise a king. I also translated some Hebrew thanksgiving hymns into German, and these are printed." This sermon, which is the one praised in Lessing's letter of December, 1757, is the earliest known specimen of modern Jewish preaching in the German tongue. It has a slightly philosophical flavor and reflects the spirit of the Enlightenment. (Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study pg. 67-68.)

So Mendelssohn authored the sermon and translated it into German. This still leaves the question of who translated the sermon into English and how did it come to be published in London and in New York?

Thanking God for Prussian Victories

To continue our earlier topic of Jews taking a positive attitude towards German rulers, here is the title page for an address of Thanksgiving for a Prussian victory in the Third Silesian War (1756-63).

(See A. S. W. Rosenbach, An American Jewish Bibliography pg. 49.)

The Third Silesian War was part of the Seven Years War, known to American audiences as the French and Indian War. The Seven Years War was essentially a struggle between England and France for control over the North American continent and other colonial possessions around the world. This war is important for American history as it brought the area of Pittsburgh under British control (I went to a middle school in Pittsburgh so the teacher made a big deal about this in American history), gave George Washington his military experience and Britain's later attempt to pay for this war by taxing the colonies eventually helped bring about the American Revolution. Non-Quebecian Canadians can be grateful for this war as it stopped all of you from having to speak French.  

While England and France were fighting overseas, over on the European continent Austria attempted to take back the region of Silesia in what is today the western part of Poland from Prussia. (It gives you a sense how badly off Poland was at this point as it essentially played no major role in this regional struggle largely over its territory.) To do this Austria switched its alliance from England to the Hapsburg's traditional opponent, Bourbon France. (This alliance would have long term consequences in the bringing Marie Antoinette to France.)  Russian and Sweden also joined in against Prussia. Despite being heavily outnumbered Prussia, led by Frederick the Great, managed to fight off the combined forces of Austria, France, Russia and Sweden to a standstill, earning Frederick the Great the reputation as being one of the greatest military commanders in history.

The battle referred to here is the Battle of Leuthen where Frederick the Great annihilated a much larger Austrian force. Naturally the Jewish community in Berlin took a positive view of this victory. What is interesting is that the sermon preached by Rabbi David Herschel Franckel was translated and printed in London and then in New York. England was allied with Prussia against France. It is good to remember that there was a time in American history when it was good and patriotic to say "God Bless the King of England and the King of Prussia."          

Laurence Oliphant on the Baha'i

One of the interesting features of the modern day State of Israel that usually gets overlooked, with all the talk about Jews versus Arabs and the land being holy to three religions, is that Israel is sacred for a fourth religion, the Baha'i, who have their headquarters in the Northern city of Haifa.

Baha'i is an offshoot of Shiite Islam, though unlike modern day Shiism, Baha'i is non violent and preaches tolerance for other religions. How the Baha'i, who mostly live in India, came to be involved with Israel is an interesting story. Essentially after the founder of the religion,  Siyyid `Alí Muḥammad Shírází , the Bab, was executed by the Persian government in 1850, (this seems to be a pattern in the founders of majors religions) his successor, Ṣubḥ-i-Azal, was exiled to Palestine from where he served the nascent Baha'i movement.  

Laurence Oliphant, the nineteenth century Christian Zionist met Azal's son and talks about the Baha'i in his travelogue book, Haifa or Life in Modern Palestine.

It is now forty-eight years since a young man of three-and-twenty appeared at the shrine of Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet, who made a martyr at Kerbela. He was said to have been born at Shiraz, the son of a merchant there, and his name was Ali Mohammed. It is supposed that he derived his religious opinions from a certain Indian Mussulman, called Achsai, who instituted a system of reform, and made many disciples. Whether this is sor or not, the young Persian soon acquired a pre-eminent reputation for sanctity, and the boldness and enthusiasm of his preaching and the revolutionary sentiments he uttered attracted many to his teaching. So far as I have been able to judge, he preached a pure morality of the loftiest character, denouncing the abuses of existing Islam as Christ did the Judaism of his day, and fearlessly incurring the hostility of Persian Phariseeism. A member himself of the Shiite sect of Moslems, he sought to reform it, as beign the state religion of Perisa, and finally sent so far as to proclaim himself at Kufa the bab, or door, through which alone man could approach God. At the same time he announced that he was the Mahdi, or last Imaum, who was descended from Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet, and whom the Shiites believe to have been an incarnation of the Deity. Mahdi is supposed by all Persian Moslems not to have died, but to be awaiting in concealment the coming of the last day. 

As may be imagined, the sudden appearance after so many centuries of a reformer who claimed to be none other than the long-expected divine manifestation, created no little consternation throughout Persia, more especially as, according to tradition, the time had arrived when such a manifestation was to be looked for, and men's minds were prepared for the event. The Persian enthusiast, as soon as his preaching became popular and his pretensions vast, roused the most violent hostility, and he was executed at Tabriz in 1849, after a brief career of fourteen years, at the early age of thirty-seven. The tragic circumstances attending his death enhanced his glory, for he was repeatedly offered his life if he would consent to abate his claims, or even leave the country. He preferred, however, a martyr's crown, and was executed in the presence of a vast multitude, leaving behind him a numerous and fanatic sect, who have since then been known as the Babs, and whose belief in the founder subsequent persecutions on the part of the government have only served to confirm.
 

The Bab before his execution gave it to be understood that though be was apparently about to die, he, or rather the divine incarnation of which he was the subject, would shortly reappear in the person of his successor, whom, I believe he named secretly. I do not exactly know when the present claimant first made known his pretensions to be that successor, but, at all events, he was universally acknowledged by the Bab sect, now numbering some hundreds of thousands, and became so formidable a personage, being a man of high lineage — indeed, it is whispered that he is a relative of the Shah himself that he was made prisoner by the government and sent into exile. The Sultan of Turkey kindly undertook to provide for his incarceration, and for some years he was a state prisoner at Adrianople. Finally he was transported from that place to Acre, on giving his parole to remain quietly there and not return to Persia, and here he has been living ever since, an object of adoration to his countrymen, who flock hither to visit him, who load him with gifts, and over two hundred of whom remain here as a sort of permanent body-guard.
 

He is visible only to women or men of the poorest class, and obstinately refuses to let his face be seen by any man above the rank of a fellah or peasant. Indeed, his own disciples who visit him are only allowed a glimpse of his august back, and in retiring from that they have to back out with their faces towards it. I have seen a lady who has been honoured with an interview, during which he said nothing beyond giving her his blessing, and after about three minutes motioned to her to retire. She describes him as a man of probably about seventy years of age, but much younger- looking, as he dyes both his hair and his beard black, but of a very mild and benevolent cast of countenance. He lives at a villa in the plain, about two miles beyond Acre, which he has rented from a Syrian gentleman of my acquaintance, who tells me that he always turns away so that his face shall not be seen. Indeed, the most profound secrecy is maintained in regard to him and the religious tenets of his sect. 

Not long ago, however public curiosity was gratified, for one of his Persian followers stabbed another for having been unworthy of some religious trust, and the great man himself was summoned as a witness.
 

"Will you tell the court who and what you are?" was the first question put. "I will begin," he replied, "by telling you who I am not. I am not a camel driver" this was an allusion to the Prophet Mohammed "nor am I the son of a carpenter" this in allusion to Christ. "This is as much as I can tell you to-day. If you will now let me retire, I will you tomorrow who I am."
 

Upon this promise he was let go; but the morrow never came. With an enormous bribe he had in the interval purchased an exemption from all further attendance at court.
 

That his wealth is fabulous may be gathered from the fact that not long since a Persian emir or prince, possessing large estates, came and offered them all, if in return he would only allow him to fill his water-jars. The offer was considered worthy of acceptance, and the emir is at this moment a gardener in the grounds which I saw over the wall of my friend's villa. This is only once instance of the devotion with which he is regarded, and of the honours which are paid to him: indeed, when we remember that he is believed to possess the attributes of Deity, this is not to be wondered a. Meantime his disciples are patiently waiting for his turn to come, which will be on the last day, when his divine character will be recognized by unbelievers. (Pg. 105-07)

An English Rabbi's Eulogy for Kaiser Frederick III

In German history Kaiser Frederick III is often seen as the failed last great hope for German liberalism. He supported the liberalization of Parliament along the lines of the English Parliament, was an Anglophile and was married to the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria. Unfortunately he died of throat cancer after being on the throne for just three months, handing Germany over to his son Kaiser Wilhelm II. Wilhelm II's expansionist policies and utter disregard for international treaties mark him, more than anyone, as responsible for the European arm's race of the early twentieth century, spiraling toward World War I. So Frederick III certainly stands as a historical question mark of what might have been, a liberal Germany with close ties to England with the possibility of World War I never happening and even of there being no Nazi Germany.

Considering this, it is interesting to note that we have a eulogy for Frederick III by Rabbi Hermann Gollancz of Bayswater Synagogue in London, which comes across, from our position of hindsight, as remarkably prescient even if the evidence Gollancz brings for Frederick III's philo-Semitism seems a little weak.

"What will the morrow bring, peace or war?" This question has a double bearing, as far as we are concerned. In the first place it asks: Will the peace of the wider world of Europe, which the remarkable individuality of "Frederick the Good" helped to secure, continue in the future, and for how long?

In the second place, this question has a deep significance for us as Jews. It must be apparent to every one of us that a great wave of intolerance, directed against our people, has been passing over the face of several countries during past years, and of these Germany has been one. 

...

Can we help calling to mind at the present moment how, as Crown Prince of Germany, he took every occasion to utter an emphatic protest against the attempts of anti-Semites? Do not the words still ring in our ears which his illustrious consort [Princess Victoria] but recently expressed in his name when visiting the flooded portions of Germany? "This anti-Semitic agitation is distasteful to my feelings to those of my husband." It is at the loss of a potentate so thoroughly imbued with the spirit of toleration and religious equality, that the nation of Israel has cause to lament and to inquire, "What will the morrow bring?" (Hermann Gollancz, Sermons and Addresses pg. 271-72.)

 

Rabbi Isaac M. Wise on Moses, Judaism and Democracy

At Kline books we have a large inventory of nineteenth century American Reform Jewish apologetics. (See "From the Hirschian Community in Frankfurt a. M. to American Reform.) What I find interesting about these, having grown up with Orthodox apologetics from Artscroll, is a vision of self-assured Reform movement that stood for something and was willing to go on the offensive with those beliefs, confident that the future of Judaism lay with them. This is not a Reform movement trapped by doubts over intermarriage and assimilation, a sitting target for Orthodox polemics. Of course like the present day Orthodox apologetics of Artscroll, nineteenth century Reform apologetics were perfectly capable of going overboard into farce.

I hope to present more examples in the future, but for starters here is Rabbi Isaac M. Wise's preface to his History of the Israelitish Nation (1854) where he beats the drum of the compatibility of Judaism and American Democracy with perhaps a little too much enthusiasm:

Traversing the pathless desert, Moses, the grandest character of antiquity, not only taught the purest doctrines of religion and morals in the midst of an age of idolatry, superstition, and general corruption of morals; but he also promulgated the unsophisticated principles of democratic liberty and of stern justice in an age of general despotism and arbitrary rule; thus becoming the progenitor of entirely new theories which revolutionized the ancient world, and lay at the foundation of modern civilization. Moses formed one pole and the American revolution the other, of an axis around which revolved the political history of thirty-three centuries. Trained in these principles, the Israelites took possession of their land, where they were obliged to contend with as many enemies as there nations around them. Still, after four centuries, we see them triumph over all their enemies, and David and Solomon the lords of the land from the Euphrates to the Red Sea and to the Mediterranean. Industry, commerce, art and science, flourish, and the nation was opulent, enlightened and free. (pg. iv-v.)

Medieval Jewish Art (Looks a Lot Like Christian Art)

As has often been noted, medieval Christian art had a tendency to draw biblical figures in contemporary dress. Underlying this perspective was a view of history that did not distinguish between past and present. To the medieval mind there was no real difference between King David and the king of France nor, for that matter, were the apostles really different from priests. If Peter was the first pope then it made perfect sense to paint him as one. One of the important revolutions within the Renaissance in the fifteenth century was precisely the gaining of such a historical perspective. It began in linguistics, when Italian humanists came to the realization that medieval church Latin, let alone Tuscan, was truly different from, and from their perspective inferior to, the Latin of Cicero. The practical implications of this new historical perspective began to be seen in biblical studies with Erasmus' attack on the Vulgate text. Underlying this was a realization that the Bible of the medieval Church was not the Bible of the early Church and not just in terms of Latin and Greek. This proved foundational to the Protestant Reformation; underlying Luther's attack on the Catholic Church was the argument that the Church itself was not the same Church as the one created by the apostles and held out to his followers the possibility of recreating that apostolic Church. For all the focus on the revolution of Renaissance art with its discovery of perspective, in terms of history the arts were behind the curve, continuing to draw biblical figures in contemporary dress for centuries.   

What is interesting is that Jewish art from this period shows the exact same tendencies. This should not be so surprising as medieval Jews, by and large, possessed similar values as their Christian neighbors. Furthermore the artists themselves were not necessarily Jewish. One could work on an illuminated Bible one day and a Hebrew prayer book the next.

Here are some examples from the fourteenth century I found from the introductory volume to The Bird's Head Haggada of the Bezalel National Art Museum of Jerusalem. 

The giving of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai from the Tripartite Mahzor. The Israelites look like medieval Jews with the traditional pointed Jewish hats. (No medieval Ashkenazi Jews did not wear shtreimels or black fedoras. Try your luck with the Sefardim.) Why the women look like demons is a mystery to me. But notice Moses dressed like a king and Aaron, the high priest, looking like, of all things, a bishop. This is particularly ironic as medieval Christians tended to draw positive biblical characters like Abel in Christian clothing while making villains like Cain look like Jews.

Here the Leipzig Mahzor gives us Pharaoh's army as a band of armored knights. One wonders about the crescent banner; are the Egyptians supposed to be Muslims?

The Duke of Sussex Pentateuch shows the four sides of the Israelite camp. What should the armies of Israel be dressed in to prepare to invade the Land of Canaan, but crusader armor. (See Jews and Art: Secret Transcripts.)