The Broken Staff
Wilken, Robert L.
BOOKS Dark side of the Enlightenment 11mong the many things THE BROKEN STAFF learning was rare, but not absent,...
...were driven by a desire to master arcane loftiest authority of the Germanic world "The Jews," in the words of Vatican II, languages and saw in the study of Hebrew left his fellow citizens and their progeny "still remain most dear to God...
...Ages has been carefully studied in the last Scholarship which sometimes began from several decades, and it is now possible to polemical motives took on a life of its own...
...Like other Christians they had difination to be a profound and, one might ficulty seeing Judaism as anything more add, quite untraditional theological claim: than an inferior forerunner to Christianity...
...I never act sick...
...trace, with some care, the influence of the Manuel begins his account in the fifteenth Bible, or theological conceptions, or so- century with the writings of Giovanni cial setting on Christian perceptions of the Pico della Mirandola and Johannes Jews, and to chronicle what changes took Reuchlin, both of whom were humanists place as Christians related to Jews in dif- who used their knowledge of Hebrew and ferent places and in varying political cir- Aramaic to explore Jewish Kabbala and cumstances...
...that even the maligned phrase "JudeoJewish sources these scholars and the gen- Secularism is no friend of the Jews, for Christian" has promise as a way of speakerations that followed had to turn to Jewish it has no way of conceiving of the Jew as ing about the unique bond between scholars and publishers (without the great Jew...
...We also must think gle him...
...For it is apparent that even the the root, but the root that supports you" Septuagint, a translation into Greek made most erudite scholars who not only knew (Rom...
...Whatever one's view Jewish publishing families in Italy, at done to Jews over the centuries, and the on that matter, his book opens up an unSoncino for example, there would have persistence of anti-Jewish attitudes among explored avenue to continue a long-standbeen no books to study), and as they had Christians today, Christians alone have the ing discussion within the Christian closer contact with Jews they discovered spiritual and theological resources to see communities...
...the Jews in antiquity and in the Middle Yet that is only one side of the story...
...But there is another chapter to draw from it a fresh source of illumiin Christian views of the Jews, and that is nation to fructify Christian philosophy Commonweal 15 January 1993: 21 and mysticism...
...No other period in Christian history was as well informed about the Talmud and the Midrashim as the seventeenth century...
...There is an etiquette to being sick...
...virus that ran out of control for nearly two this way, but in his final pages he suggests To learn Hebrew and to have access to hundred years...
...the revelation of the Old Testament through the scholarly study of Judaism, what is Unfortunately the early modern period the people with whom God in his inex- sometimes called Christian Hebraism, and when Hebrew Christian scholarship flourpressible mercy deigned to establish the its role in shaping Christian understand- ished is almost wholly ignored in genAncient Covenant...
...I toss him about...
...What about the doctor's absolute obligation ed that Kant advised him to return to the In Intoxicated by My Illness, Anatole to be compassionate...
...But it was not until the Renaispassage from the decree Nostra aetate of Robert L. Wilken sance that Hebrew scholarship established Vatican lI stands out in my mind: "The itself firmly within the Christian intellecChurch...
...Voltaire, for example, was no- Madeline Marget to heart, a damaging one...
...When he ary source of modern prejudices toward him a little more than a year later...
...the tunately, in Broyard's case, the result is doctor, he starts with the advice of friends 22: 15 January 1993 Commonweal...
...Prior to that time Christians, if does not make it any less interesting or sig"remember that it is not you that support they spoke Greek, had to rely on the nificant...
...Broyard was in the summer of Doctor," Broyard says, "If a patient exWhat comes clear from Manuel's sur- 1989, when he discovered he had pects a doctor to be interested in him, he vey is that the Enlightenment is a prim- the prostate cancer that would kill ought to try to be interesting...
...Yet, when Solomon Maimon, them and try to cure them, in order to form to do with me...
...This collecChristian scholars subjected Jewish beliefs And Other Writings on Life and Death tion of essays, jottings, book reviews, and to criticism, they displayed "an inquisi- Anatole Broyard, edited by Alexandra an autobiographical story reveals a sutiveness about the Jews themselves...
...With Broyard percilious, superficial, and affected man, the coming of the Enlightenment, however, Clarkson Potter, $18, 135 pp...
...Both portant to acknowledge these truths in said, I have been accelerated by my illKant and Herder agreed that the ritual rab- order to honor the brave people who strug- ness, and when my doctor comes in, I jugbinic code alienated Jews from their fel- gle against them...
...Victor, Roger Bacon, or Nicholas several decades one of Lyra...
...BOOKS Dark side of the Enlightenment 11mong the many things THE BROKEN STAFF learning was rare, but not absent, and that have been written Judaism Through Christian Eyes there were a number of distinguished about the Jews by Frank E. Manuel Christian Hebraists, for example, Andrew Christians in the last Harvard University Press, $34.95, 363 pp...
...It is im- I never act sick with my doctor...
...In spite of all that Christianity has Christians and Jews...
...I throw him from lows in society and made coexistence about the afflicted and those who care for hand to hand, and he hardly knows what unfeasible...
...11.18), but the use of the present by Jews before the beginning of Chris- Greek and Latin but Hebrew and Aramaic, tense in 1965 carries quite different over- tianity, or Latin translations based on the and often Arabic and Syriac, men who were tones than it did in Paul's day almost two Septuagint...
...This of that good olive tree onto which have theology, they have also helped form pop- new book by Frank Manuel, university probeen grafted the wild olive branches of the ular attitudes and prejudices...
...For blaming the sophical acumen Kant esteemed, broke more likely to help people who suffer victim, I've never seen the equal of this...
...of St...
...fessor emeritus at Brandeis University, is Gentiles...
...Without a way of recovering another ancient tra- a poisoned heritage...
...0 that Jewish practices and institutions of the day helped illuminate the ancient sources...
...cannot forget that she received tual tradition...
...fold...
...Such the impact his privileged position had on stated ex cathedra that Judaism in its rab- an effort could be admirable, but unfor- the care he received...
...who offers his self-centered musings as scholarship and writing on the Jews took prescriptions, making his book, if taken a new turn...
...A puling the refugee from the ghetto whose philo- expectations and make demands that are person is not appealing...
...Judaism, living Judaism, not simply the As Manuel shows, great learning was history of ancient Israel or the Old often put at the service of extravagant ideas Testament, is a continuing source of sus- of Jewish beliefs and practice or deployed tenance for the Christian church...
...For ev- shows nothing but a greediness for care, the Jews...
...The timate bond between Christians and Jews...
...Manuel would not put things Latin antiquity...
...And though INTOXICATED BY MY ILLNESS wrongheaded and offensive...
...When looking for a binic form had to be abandoned...
...Kant had not appreciated the predica- Broyard, instead of confronting the real- Throughout the book, Broyard ignores ment of the Enlightenment Jews when he ity of illness, tried to rise above it...
...In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries religious and theological as well as TAINTED ELIXIR historical and philological interests inform the work of scholars...
...Of course the lical scholar, translated the Hebrew Bible not a history of popular attitudes, but that words are from Paul's letter to the Romans, into Latin...
...In the Middle Ages Hebrew well traveled and conversant with the latthousand years ago...
...torious in his contempt of the Jews, and Style was all-important to Broyard, and as one critic observed, his writings on the he judges himself, other people, and matJews were not only filled with malicious t is an awful thing to be stricken ters of life and death by their veneer...
...What is remarkable about this In antiquity few Christians knew an account of Christian scholarship on Jews passage is the use of the present tense in Hebrew and it was not until the early fifth and Judaism from the Renaissance up to the phrase "she draws sustenance" from century that Saint Jerome, the great bib- the present time...
...to expose the errors of the Jews and demonThe history of Christian attitudes toward strate the superiority of Christianity...
...For learned perceptions eral histories and is little known to that she draws sustenance from the root of the Jews have not only shaped Christian contemporary Christian scholars...
...In errors but were designed to "render this with a lethal illness, as Anatole his essay "The Patient Examines the nation odious and despicable...
...In rendering their judg- the ongoing sustenance of the Jewish peodition just as the Renaissance had reap- ments on Judaism, Kant and Voltaire may ple, Christian life and faith would be impropriated the inheritance of Greek and have infected a continent with a rampant poverished...
...with ritual Judaism, he became so isolat- from dreadful diseases...
...It is a book about books, the domesticated olive tree...
...enlightened ideals that now were sup- come is death, grief is inevitable...
...Others such as Joseph philosopher of the absolute moral way on their own terms and to discern the inScaliger (1540-1609), a French humanist, could envisage no mixed solutions...
...What may appear to est ideas, shared conventional views of the be an uncontroversial citation of a famil- Jews that are deeply rooted in Christian iar biblical text, appears on closer exam- piety...
...As scholarship became more sec- eryone I have ever met or heard of, the di- nothing but the coarser forms of anxiety, ular, it found the particularity of Judaism agnosis of cancer is terrifying, the treatment it's only natural for the doctor to feel an and the form of Jewish life inimical to the is disturbing and painful, and if the out- aversion...
...Nor can she forget ing of the Jews...
...As I've posed to mark bourgeois society...
Vol. 120 • January 1993 • No. 1
