The Sentinel, v.043 no. 01, 1921

              One of the funniest exhibits of Prus-sianism
was an order issued by King
Frederick William III. against the intro-duction
of modernism in the synagog and
especially against preaching. The Jews
ought to be grateful for this manifestation
of autocratic stupidity because we owe to
it Zunz's masterwork on Jewish homiletics.
Zunz proved correctly that sermons or
some pulpit instruction which took the
place of the modern sermon were always
customary in Israel. Yet, historic sincerity
compels us to admit that the modern ser-mon
as it developed since the beginning
of the nineteenth century, was a decided
departure from tradition.
In order to understand the real meaning
of this innovation we must go back to the
latest development of old-fashioned De-rashah
for which I would quote the last
representatives in western lands who were
contemporaries of the innovation. I select
for this purpose Rabbi Meshullam Zalman
Cohn, the last rabbi of the old school in
Fuerth (1740-1820). In his collection of
sermons published in 1811, he takes as a
model another collection by Judah Rosa-nes,
who lived in Constantinople in the be-ginning
of the eighteenth century and
whose sermons were considered the classic
type of this literature. Meshullan, like
his predecessor, adapts Talmudic dialect-icism,
if we may term it so, to momiletics.
lie would, for instance, discuss the opin-ions
of various authors on the question.
whether the concubines mentioned in the
Bible in the stories of Abraham and David
are to be considered as legal wives. He
first attempts to' prove the affirmative by
stating the fact that David separated from
these concubines after Absalom's usurpa-tion
and then again, the negative from a
statement in the Talmud that he did so to
make atonement for his adultery in the
case of Bathseba. He would seriously
present David as discussing the merits of
one opinion presented by one authority in
the Talmud against that of another just as
his model, Rosanes, seriously presents the
view that God and the angels discussed in
a similar manner the merits of the opin-ions
of two medieval authorties, God sid-ing
with Ibn Habib while the angels de-fended
the au1thority of Maimonides.
One can easily understand that a cul-tured
generation such as grew up at the
end of the eighteenth century under the
influence of the so-called Mendelssohnian
movement, felt repulsed by such degen-erate
dialecticism which, aside from its
effect on the learned minority of a congre-gation,
was entirely unintelligible to the
great majority. In this way, the modern
sermon which first of all adopted the lan-guage
of cultured people and then pre-sented
ideas of a chiefly ethical. nature,
arose as a necessary evolution. Its pioneer
seems to be Israel Jacobson (1768-1828),
a wealthy banker and noble philanthropist,
whose life was devoted to the task of rais-ing
the cultural standard of his co-religion-ists.
Jacobson, while not a professional
rabbi, was a man of solid Jewish learning
and liked to appear in the pulpit. Through
his influence in various modern synagogs
in whose establishment he was directly or
indirectly interested, as the chapel of a
school founded by him in Seesen (1810),
at the services held in the parlor of his
Berlin home (1815) and in the temporary
synagog established during the fairs of
Leipsic (1816) and finally, in the first reg-ular
reform temple established in Ham-burg
(1818), the sermon delivered in cor-rect
German and abandoning the ideal
of olden times which was mainly a learned
Talmudic discourse, was introduced. Ja-cobson
encouraged a number of young
men to devote themselves to the preach-ing
profession. There was not yet the idea
that these men should take the place of
the rabbi but they were rather to be teach-ers
of the adult congregation and were
therefore officially called preachers.
The movement spread rapidly for, as
was stated before, it filled an existing need.
The oldest preachers whose sermons have
come down to us took the German Pro-testant
manner as their model. They speak
of generalities, mostly of a moral nature,
leaving Jewish problems usually aside and
showing their opposition to the old Jewish
models in such a decided manner that
they hardly ever quote a rabbinic text. It
took some time before the modern Jew-ish
pulpit realized the idea that it had to
be Jewish as well as modern. In this re-spect
Adolph Jellinek occupies a promi-nent
position and for a long time his ser-mons
were considered a classic model of
Jewish homiletics. Even now, under con-siderably
changed conditions, they must
still be acknowledged as a milestone in the
development of modern Jewish homiletics..
For the sake of appreciating his position
both the man and the situation of the con-gregation
of Vienna where he occupied
the pulpit for nearly forty years, have to
be understood.
Adolph Jellinek was born June 26,
1821, in a little village near Ungarisch
Brod in Moravia as the son of a "randar".
The position of such a village Jew who
was usually the only Jew living in that
place belongs to the much neglected eco-nomic
side of Jewish history. For our pur-pose
it is sufficient to present the fact that
men of this kind were usually devout Jews
without possessing any learning and per-haps
just for this reason, actuated by the
ambition to give to their children a rab-binic
education. The little province of
Moravia with 40,000 Jews has in the nine-teenth
century furnished us two prominent
Jewish scholars who were sons of such
"randars"; Leopold Loew (1811-1875)
and Adolph Jellinek (1821-1893) . The
town of Ungarisch Brod, called among the
Jews Broda, had a fairly large community
as conditions are reckoned in Moravia, was
always a seat of rabbinic learning. There
Jellinek received his first instruction.
Later he attended the Yeshibah in Pross-nitz,
one of the largest Jewish congrega-tions
of the province where, as was often
the case, a man who held no rabbinical
position devoted his life to the teaching of
the Talmud. This man was Moses 'Katz
Wannefried, named so for the place in
Hesse from which he originally came, the
last representative of these ideals in a city
which for some reason was considered a
home of modernism. Jellinek or, as he was
then called according to the custom of the
Yeshibah, Aaron Broda, distinguished him-self
as a promising pupil and his master
in later years when Jellinek became an au-thor
and wrote a book on Kabbala shook
his head at what he believed to be a ten-dency
to religious eccentricity. Like many
promising young men at that period when
the, hope of a removal of Jewish disabil-ities
depleted the Yeshibas and drove the
young men to secular studies, Jellinek
went to Leipsic where he entered the uni-versity
and became the preacher of the
then very small congregation. The city
while, as stated before, not important as
a Jewish community, offered to a young
man an unusual opportunity because of
the numerous visitors from all parts of Eu-rope
who came to attend the fairs held
there several times a year. So Jellinek's
fame grew rapidly, and he was called as
second preacher to the growing Jewish
community of Vienna in 1855.
The Austrian capital has an interesting
history for the Jews. Leaving the older
part of this history aside, though it is very
tempting to review it as a specimen of
Jewish misery and also Jewish vitality, we
begin with the expulsion in 1670 which
was the last expulsion of Jews on a large
scale in western Europe. This expulsion
did not last very long for, a few years
later, we find already some Jews settled
there on the ground of special grants is-sued
by the emperor and usually based
on the economic emergencies of the em-pire.
These few "protected" Jews were not
permitted to form a congregation. In this
way the government saved its dignity,
maintaining in theory the expulsion as a
law while it was abandoned in fact. Not
being, a community with corporate rights,
the Jews of Vienna could not engage a
rabbi nor maintain a synagog. Again,
showing the incongruity between law and
actuality, they were permitted to keep a
"religious advisor" which their religion re-quired
for the sake of overseeing the
dietary requirements. In time, a still
broader conception took place. Emperor
Francis II. (1792-1835) while a narrow-miedl
iand bigote eautocrat, believed i
they were permitted to have a teacher of
religion called by the Catholic term of
"Katechet", who was also permitted to de-liver
addresses ("exhortations") as the
official term read, for the adults. At the
same time, the influence of the jeweler,
M. L. Biedermann, who by his business
was well connected with the highest cir-cles
of the capital and-needless to say-also
knew where a little present would buy
the good will of the. officials, obtained per-mission
in 1826 to build a synagog. The
only condition was that the front of the
building must not show any design which
betrayed its object. This condition, how-ever,
was also incumbent upon the Pro-testants.
Isaac Noah Mannheimer (1793-1865)
was called as a preacher though nomi_ ally
(Continued on page 30.)