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In the history of Jewish culture, the emphasis has been mainly placed on the history of Jewish literature, and its development. It has been accepted as an historical axiom, that Jews are the People of the Book, and their entire creativity manifested itself, so to speak, in written form. The dialectic of the Jewish intellectual development has been sought in the dialectic of the Jewish book. It was believed that the currents of the intellectual Jewish epochs could be found in the worldliness or sacredness of the Jewish book. As if to say, by comparison, that we did not have any other national Jewish life except the intellectual Jewish life, therefore, it was in the intellectual life of Jews that the full history of Jews was sought. – It was this line that Graetz pursued, for example. The intellectual Jewish life meant – throughout – the Jewish book. The Sefer.

The oral Jewish tradition has practically been ignored by Jewish historians. The attitude towards the oral tradition, in the history of Jewish culture, has been like the relationship of a stepmother. It stems from the fact, that Jewish cultural history sought for the development of Jewish intellectual thought in the path of the development of the written word. The written word was, indeed, the dominant and most stylized level of Jewish creativity. The written word was closer to academic scholarship, and to the abstract aristocracy of the soul, more so than the spoken word. To distance one's self from life, and to live on the paper pages of volumes, was a major and continuous tendency in the history of Jewish intellectual development. Perhaps, it was easier to believe, that in this paper-based atmosphere, it would be possible to rescue one's self from the storms of the era. On paper, one can hope to isolate one's self permanently. The spoken word, no matter how ecstatic and lofty it might ring, is nevertheless still entirely wedded to real life, and cannot isolate itself from the day-to-day flow of events. The living word demands the living, acting human being, who will articulate it. It takes a complete part in the pulsing warmth of action. The orator cannot forego his interaction with life itself. The writer, sitting at his desk, real life can sometimes be no more that grayish, like a reminiscence or an illusion. Nothing more than an abstract presentation. The window of the academic workroom that would look out onto real life, is closed most of the time. The written word exalts in its solitude of intellect. Solitude is the atmosphere of the art of writing. The atmosphere of the spoken word is communal, and the feeling of communal interaction. In the spoken word, intellectual processes assume the burden of [dealing with] the living human being, and with his needs.

It is clear as the day, that the history of Jewish intellectual development did not stop only at the experientially instructive pages of books. It played itself out, to no less an extent, in the middle of living events of Jewish activity, that is to say in the middle of the roiling events of daily Jewish life. The history of oral Jewish intellectual development, is certainly no less interesting and no less important than the history of written Jewish intellectual development. One only has to remind one's self of the Prophets of Biblical times, to see how great the power and influence of the spoken word was, for the development of Jewish history, and for the development of the historical line of Jewish spirituality. Most of the Prophets spoke in the courtyard of the Temple, and in the open places of the city in Judah and [The Kingdom of] Israel. Most of the documented prophecies were only sermons, which were put down on paper. Jeremiah, for example, later dictated his moving prophecies to his disciple, Baruch ben Neriyah. The same was true of other prophets. Prophets, who documented what they said, were the rarer ones. Such, perhaps, were the prophets in Babylon, for example, the Second Isaiah^[1], and Ezekiel. They were prophets that documented what they said, because their prophecies ‘emit the odor of the pen.’ The notion that Amos wrote down his prophecies, flies in the face of reason. Also, in later times, we find folklore tellers and preachers to be very active, the translators in the synagogues, and other public speakers, whose sermons, over long periods of many generations, were collected into all manner of Medrashim, and folios. The translators translated and freely told the written stories in the Torah to the Jewish masses. They added tales and images from folk life and from folk fantasy. These stories have remained with us in the various translations and folios, for example, the wondrous folk tales of Targum Shayni. “And it was the custom from the days of Ezra, to translate what was read in the Torah, in order that they understand what the words had to say.”… “The essence of the translation is to

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communicate to the womenfolk and the unlettered, who have no facility with the Holy Tongue.” (Rashi, Megilla 21). The Targum was preached orally throughout, and was not read from the written source (Yerushalmi, 20. The reader stands, Halakha א' Rambam, Tefila, 12). Philo of Alexandria, in his book, The Life of Moses, writes, that the custom to preach, and to speak in the synagogues, comes from the time of Moses himself, and it continues to this day, meaning until the time of Philo. Josephus Flavius in his essay, Against Apion (17.2), presents Jewish oratory as being quite an ancient practice. In the Gospels, one often finds images of The Nazarene periodically preaching in the synagogues. We have even recognized the names of Talmudic preachers, for example, such renown preaching personalities as Ben Azza, or Ben Zoma. “ R' Levi said, among the preachers, there was to be found, Azai and Ben Zoma” (Bereshit Raba, 5). “ Because of Ben Zoma, the preachers have all ceased.” R' Huzpit the Translator, one of the Ten Martyrs, was a popular oratorical figure among the Jews, and it was said of him, that pearls fall from his mouth – פה מפיק מרגליות”” In Yalkut, we find the name of a great preacher, Levi bar Siti. “Take things with you, good writers, good preachers, such as Levi bar Siti.” (Yalkut Hoshea, sign 533). Levi bar Siti was known as a complete storyteller. His personal characteristics were famous. It appears that the Talmudic Aggadot [sic: Legends] were publicly told in front of the people. The Sages, of Blessed Memory, explicitly commented on the sentence, “And so shall you say to the House of Jacob, and tell the House of Israel.” It is possible that this is the source of the appellation, ‘Maggid,&8217; {sic: one who tells]. ‘Amorah’ also means to say: “אמר' ”. Basically, the Talmud consists of recorded protocols that emerged from spoken disputations and speeches. Even if we do not let ourselves be drawn to the historical appearance of the Zohar, and if we move off to the time of the Sephardic era of R' Moshe de Leon, it is almost certain – that R' Moshe de Leon was nothing more than an editor and compiler of this wondrous book of poetry. He either had it in hand, or found it in a cache that only he had access to, or in some other Genizah^[2] (Is it not the case that, not long ago, old texts were discovered in the famous Cairo Genizah. This Genizah was found in 1898 in the Synagogue of Ezra the Scribe, in Cairo). Extremely old Kabbalistic writings, that date from the Alexandrine period, and even before the destruction of Jerusalem. They were put together by Jewish mystics. It is certain that there is, in the Zohar, sermons by exalted Essenes, and from the first of the Jewish-Christians. The language of the Zohar looks like the language of the common people of the times before the destruction. This also provides support to believe that the Zohar-texts were spoken in front of a gathering of the people, by mystical dreamers. We have the language of those Jewish mystics in the language of the Zohar, who awaited the coming of the Messiah , and the redemption of the Land of Israel, and who did battle against the Roman legions on behalf of His kingdom. And it is in this fashion, that we also find, during the entire later period of the Diaspora – alongside the great Jewish writers – a chain of Jewish preachers. From many of them, that is, from those old preachers who also were writers, we have the books of sermons which they, themselves, wrote. It is only the books that were written in Hebrew that are known to us, and were counted for the educated world and the intelligentsia. The sermons that were given by the folk preachers, which were spoken in the local language [sic: Aramaic, etc.] and for the simple [sic: uneducated] people, were not written down. And if it is true – that those very compilations were lost to the remainder of the world, and what remains of them – as an indicator – are single examples in the cabinets of a few libraries. The received wisdom, that the course of Jewish history flows in the Jewish book, and not in the Jewish street, that is, among the simple day-to-day Jewish people, crystallized as a certain axiom with the entire Jewish writing intelligentsia.

Even a modern historian like Graetz had constructed the spirit of Jewish history only making use of the ideas from the history of the Jewish book. It is because of this reason, that those simple sermon books for the common people, may not have proceeded along the same way as the Jewish [literary] book. They were still tightly bound up with Jewish daily life – and ignored by the historians along with the ignored day-to-day Jewish life.

The [works of the] preachers of the medieval period, and of the periods that followed them, were, as was said, bequeathed to us in the form of recorded speeches. Most intended to be left in this way. Jewish writers. Throughout, they wanted to have their sermons united with the written word. They directed the living word to the style and mode of the written book; Simply, they edited out everything from their later sermons that were written down, that had a

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relationship to the portrait of the active and animated life of Jews. They considered life to be a barrier to remaining in contemplation of what would come in future generations. Also, orators such as Demosthenes, and Cicero, created a written literature out of their oratory.

I believe that the sobriquet, “People of the Book” is more appropriate to the Greeks than to the Jews. This alone says much for the Greek and Roman awe and respect for the nobility of the written mode of communication. The written mode of communication was utilized less by the Jews than by the ancient Greeks and Romans. The ancient Jews has less reverence for the written word than the Greeks. It suffices to compare two immortal works like the Tanakh and Homer, to see where there was reverence for the [spoken] word, and where there was reverence for writing.

Under the direct influence of the Arabs, and under the indirect influence of the ancient Greeks, the devotion to the written book began to grow among the Jews of the Middle Ages. In the intellectual circles of Jews, the book began to assume the role of the Alpha and Omega of Jewish life, and Jewish existence. This, in the normal course, had no small effect to minimize the intellectual recognition and devotion to the vibrancy of Jewish life, and the living Jewish person. It is therefore no wonder, that it is so difficult to reconstruct the images of historical Jewish activity, from the meager sources that have been left to us – how that life was lived in the long centuries of early Jewish history. It is only now, in the modern Jewish literature, together with the artistic renaissance of real Jewish life, and together with a concern for the living Jewish person, that attempts at such reconstruction have been made, such as , Sholom Asch's, Witch of Castile, and Kiddush HaShem, and Y. Opotashu's A Day in Regensburg.

The later preachers went even further in the direction of reverence for the written word. The turned away absolutely from Jewish life, and the entire substance of their preaching was built into the booty of the rulings and commentaries of the written literature. The literature became the only foundation. In its form, and it is own way, took absolute control and surveillance over the preached word. The sermon, blundered away entirely into the forest of Jewish writing. It became exactly as analytical, hair-splitting and casuistic as the rabbinical texts. The official sermons of the rabbis in the synagogues – the sermons for the masses – became clever demonstrations of Talmudic sophistry, and were really intended only for highly erudite people. In Poland, the rabbis even sermonized about plain Halakhic matters. The masses of ordinary Jewish people, would gather on the Holidays in the synagogues to hear sermons from the rabbis. The rabbis, wrapped in their prayer shawls, would stand on the high balustrades, and spoke in highly analytical dialectics. Simple, ordinary Jews, however, had no understanding of these sermons from the Rabbis.

Along with this scholarly and book-oriented eloquence, folk preachers also spoke to the needs and aspirations of ordinary, unlettered Jews. These hearty folk preachers, however, remained in the shadows.

Modern times, especially due to the new Yiddish literature, and the revolutionary Jewish labor movement, pushed the realistic and ordinary Jewish man into the headlines of Jewish history. In those previous times, it had not yet occurred to the consciousness of the Jewish masses that these positive relationships to Jewish life would be the means of conveying the Jewish story. The preachers, who had remained inside of the Jewish masses, and were spiritually tied to the Jewish masses, declared upon themselves the bitter verdict, that they do not belong to the dialectic way of Jewish cultural history, and that they must, exactly like the real body of Jewish life, anonymously vanish from the historical fabric.

That such preachers existed, and that they were together with the Jewish masses, both in times of happiness and times of sorrow, is certain. We know little about them, and their traces are faint.

In the history of Jewish literature, we now even know that there was a substantial number of women authors, who wrote booklets in translation from Hebrew [sic: into Yiddish], for [use by] women and for the uneducated masses.

It was not only with the goose quill pen, but also the spoken Jewish word was a part of the activity of observant and God-fearing Jewish women. Deep inside the workings of Jewish life – where everything had not yet been cast in the mold of the genteel abstraction of the book – there, all manner of forces, all the classes, and from [people from] all walks of life in the Jewish populace, took part in the creation of the spiritual framework. There, relation to Jewish

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life, Jewish values and ethical living, stood out with pride, as also the relationship to the Jewish God. Notwithstanding the fact that the incomprehensible Torah scholars stood on the first landing with the Master of the Universe, He, nevertheless, also accepts the entreaties and the words that emanate from simple Jewish hearts. In the spoken and written translated Hebrew, we still heard the breath, the hopes and yearning of the living Jewish masses. The simple Jews lived in those deep, heartfelt words in Yiddish-Taytch,^[3] just as if they were living in an exalted and stylized manner in the new Yiddish literature. We know, for example of the Rabbanit, Darshanit^[4] Rivka bat R' Meir. She even had a small book published, called Mineket Dvora^[5], Tradition collected from the Gemara and Sermons in the Ashkenazic^[6] Language (Seder-HaDorot 69 ‘ג). Generally, she preached only in the women's places of worship^[7], before women listeners. Also Rabi Yaakov Maza, in his Memoirs (Published by Yalkut, Tel-Aviv) indicates that his grandmother, Gittl, was a lady preacher, and she explicitly preached in the women's place of worship. Possibly, the renown Sarah bat Tovim may have originally appeared in the places of women's worship, and there, in front of the women, read her wondrous supplications – those delicate Yiddish outpourings of the heart, which tell us so much of the striving and the needs of the Jewish woman. It appears that the sobriquet of Zogerin does not mean someone who repeats things, but really a lady preacher, a Jewish woman with an oratorical capacity, who preached the Tradition, and in a God-fearing way, preached before the women in these places of worship for the women. Zogerin^[8] is the translation from the Hebrew of the word Maggid – Zoger.

And in this brief treatment, there is insufficient place to go through the entire long, and interesting history of the spoken and written Hebrew-Taytch word. It is a pity that this subject has throughout, been neglected by our prominent historians. No, the Word in Yiddish did not play a small part in the history of Jewish cultural life. The Maggid of Dubno was, so to speak, a figure in counterpoint in the story of the Jewish word. He belongs to our era. His appearance has a special interest also in regard to the history of Yiddish literature. Principally, he belongs to the history of its ideas and renaissance-like minds. The renaissance-idea, and the historical priority that Jewish reality obtained through the blossoming in the literature, and through the revolutionary Jewish labor movement in life – and in that very great historical process, the Maggid of Dubno was almost a pioneering personality. Despite the fact that his pioneering was largely unknown, both for the Maggid of Dubno himself, and for the environment in which he existed.

When one wants to write the spiritual history of the modern Jewish renaissance, the Maggid of Dubno – in his fashion – must be stood in his proper place.

In the following chapter, I will give a short biographic characterization of the Maggid of Dubno. First-of-all, I wish

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to make the effort, to depict the real spiritual portrait of him, and to present the products of the pioneering efforts of the Maggid of Dubno, on behalf of the viewpoints and the objectives of modern Jewish culture.

It is completely self-evident that the Maggid of Dubno did not undertake any innovative means in going in a new direction on behalf of the culture of the Yiddish [sic: spoken] word. He was only an innovator in style, and in the manner in which he related to Jews, and to the Jewish way of life. Even though he had a complete sense and understanding for Jewish reality – he, the Maggid of Dubno, absolutely did not have a revolutionary innovative impulse within him, like the Hasidim, for example. The Maggid of Dubno was planted, with both feet, firmly in the old Rabbinic culture. He lived with the sentiments of the conservative Jewish way of life, and did not want to stir from there, nor diminish it by a hair. It was specifically along the path of the conservative, observant pathway, that the Maggid of Dubno wanted to approach the [sic: ordinary] Jewish person.

As a member of the generation of the burgeoning Hasidic movement, he did not even apprehend the powerful – historic – closeness between himself and Hasidim. For – Hasidism also began to see all the qualities to be found in the living Jewish person, all the levels and all the exaltations of Jewish existence, and of Jewish history. Only that Hasidism was temperamental and revolutionary. In an entirely critical manner – though very carefully – it began to minimize the value of the written book, in contrast to the worth of the living Jew. Hasidism was throughout antagonistic, and throughout belligerent, towards many accepted concepts, and opposed to many customs that had been taken as holy. In conflict with the conservative Rabbis [who led the] Mitnagdim,^[9] the Hasidim wanted to diminish the role of the written Rabbinical word. The Jew, that is, all Jewry, – that was the historic outlook of Hasidism. Hasidism began to carry out its idea, that the living Jewish person is the principal vehicle for carrying Jewish Spirituality. That in him, in a single Jew, there resides everything that is historic, of historic-spirituality, and of the Jewish story of survival. And the entire value of Jewish writing – according to Hasidism – is no more than a secondary accompaniment on the historic journey of the Jewish person. All the profound forces lie within the body of the single Jewish person – dialectical – mysteries of Jewish existence in the world. This new and revolutionary [idea] was the fundamental principle of Hasidism. The Hasidic movement no longer looked at the individual from a visionary and mystical point of view. The Hasidim began to insert the ways of life of a microcosm – from the wondrous “little world,” meaning the Jewish person, into the mysterious arguments about a super-cosmos. Kabbalistic pan-theism.

The Maggid of Dubno was a realist in his relationship to the Jewish life in the real world, socially-realistic, and ethically-realistic. He stood entirely on the platform of the theological dualism of ancient Jewry. He did not see man in terms of a mystical construct in the world. In the higher aspects of human life, he saw the harmony of the means and moral imperatives as concerns himself and his fellow man. And in regards to the absolute – he was simply the one who submitted himself to the Creator of the world. The [Maggid of] Dubno did not fly off into the heavens with his people, and did not place him in the middle of the planes of mystical pan-theism. He had the deepest of affection for the plain Jewish person, but he did not exalt him pantheistically. As a great and ironic preceptor of human beings, the Maggid of Dubno looked at man from the viewpoint of his unchanging human vulnerabilities. As a religious dualist, he approached man, not as a mystical world-phenomenon, but rather as, God's creation, a creation that has put upon it only moral duties, and in his vulnerable helplessness, barely has the power to discharge some part of those duties. Man sins more out of his weakness than out of any evil in his nature. The love of fellow human beings, and compassion for their helpless fate, is the highest principle for the ethical person. Only a rare righteous person can, as-it-were, vanquish his human frailties and discipline himself into submission to the Creator of the world. Human submission means, according to the Maggid of Dubno, awareness of the insignificance and incidental nature of the human being, in the context of the great deeds of the Creator of the world. And even if a great [gifted] individual is able to cross over the boundary of the great world-submission, meaning, a great awareness of the world, he must still know that he cannot place his own victory over human frailty as an axiomatic demand for people in general. The inner self-attainment for the individual is not a possible path for everyone to take. One must show compassion

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for the human being, and forgive him lovingly, because, in the end, the human being cannot ultimately conquer his instincts, and the impulses of his blood. All of man's fate is to struggle against his own inclinations. What is man? A wraith [tossed about] on the stormy winds of the world.

In regard to this detail, the Maggid of Dubno belongs to the [ranks of] the psychological-ethical researchers. To the ranks of those who understand human thinking. It is precisely through this understanding of human beings, that he arrives at a people-oriented love for his fellow man, to that great global compassion for people. The human being – these are the daily human activities, small concerns and small activities.

It is these small activities that occur day-to-day, that the Maggid of Dubno to as [a basis for] parables, whether for the characterization of humanity, or for describing the fate of humanity. The simple life, the daily activities of a human being, provide the inner reflected image of human thought, from his core. It is only there that the person can be understood, and in understanding him – offer him compassion and love him. In the context of the small mid-week day, we see the man more readily than in the abstract conceptual portrait of the book. In our activities, we reveal ourselves in a truthful manner, just as we reveal ourselves in our thoughts, that the sum total of all human existence is not more than an image taken from a dream, and a play of shadows of the blind. We go about our activities with a sense of security that we have talked ourselves into, that the possessions of the world that we have in our hands are really something of substance. No. From the world, we have nothing more than the wind of our desires. Profound human submission and ethical imperatives – this is the single reality and single concern of our lives. Truthfully – when we fall away from these, our own, world imperatives, and when we are seduced by the enticing call of the egoistical impulses in our blood – whom do we resemble then? Those blind foolish beggars, about whom the Maggid of Dubno tells this wonderful parable:

A Jew, who was a jokester, was walking in the street, and he encountered a group of blind beggars. They were standing alone, without their seeing guide. The ‘gentile-thinking’ Jew thought to make sport of them. In a loud voice, the Jew addressed the blind beggars:

– Here is a Gulden for you, and divide it so that each of you gets ten groschen.

In reality, this jokester of a Jew didn't give anyone a Gulden.

A quarrel broke out among the blind beggars, and a conflict. Each of the blind thought that some other blind person had taken the entire Gulden for himself, and does not want to give anyone else their share. The blind beggars bruised and beat each other; the jokester stood at a distance and split his sides laughing because of his ‘gentile’ caper.

Until the seeing guide of the blind beggars arrived, and began to explain to them, that all of them are tearing at each other without reason, over nothing. The truth was that nobody among them had received a Gulden. That ‘gentile-like’ Jew had just derived a laugh from them at their expense.

The blind beggars are all of humanity; the ‘gentile-like&@8217; Jew is the Evil Impulse [within us all]; the seeing guide is the wise man.^[10]

Yet another tale, about a parable comes down to us from the Maggid of Dubno. These are among the parables that are not found in his books. They are [found] among Jews, transmitted orally. They give us, as it will be possible for us to demonstrate later, a key to the style of the epic form of the parables of the Maggid of Dubno:

The Truth once went about in the streets bare-naked. No person wanted to admit the naked truth over his doorstep. Whoever encountered the truth would run away in fear. The Parable was adorned in beautiful garb, dyed in brilliant colors. The Parable asks: Tell me, Reb Truth, why are you wandering about in the streets, looking so glum and afflicted? Truth answers: it's bad, Brother Parable, I am old, very old, and nobody wants to know me. Says the Parable: it is not because you are old that people

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do not love you. See, I am also very old, and despite the fact that I grow even older, people love me even more. I will trust you with a secret about people. They love that every thing should be adorned, and set on a pedestal. I will lend you such colored garments like mine, put them on, and you will see how people will love you.

And so, Truth listened to the advice of Parable, and decked himself out in the garb of the Parable. Since that time, Truth and Parable go hand-in-hand, and people love them both.^[11]

Rabbi Yaakov ben Ze'ev Krantz, known as the Maggid of Dubno, was born in the year 5500 (1839)(he died in 5565 [1804]), in the shtetl of Zhetl near Vilna. His father was a great scholar, and a son-in-law of the renown Rabbi Nahum, the Bet-Din Senior of Kobrin. The oratorical talent of the Maggid of Dubno showed itself while he was still young. At the age of eighteen, he preached from the Bimah of the synagogue in the city of Miedzyrzec (Siedlce Canton of Poland). The Yeshiva of Miedzyrzec was renown throughout Poland, and the young Yaakov Krantz came there to study. The Jews of Miedzyrzec were great fans of sermons. They immediately recognized the great preaching talent of “The young man from Zhetl.” They asked him to preach. The “young man from Zhetl” preached to the Jews of Miedzyrzec, and was enthusiastically received. In the end, he became the preacher of the city of Miedzyrzec. He was the Maggid there for barely two years. He immediately became well-known in all corners of the Jewish world, as an exceptionally righteous man, and as an exceptional preacher. He [then] became the Maggid of Zolkowa, and later in Dubno. There, he was the Maggid for a full eighteen years. After that, he became a Maggid in other cities, in Wlodawa, Chelm, and in Zamość. In Zamość , he was the Maggid for fifteen years, and he died there.

The Maggid of Dubno traveled to preach in various Jewish communities in Russia, Poland, the lands of the Austrian Empire, and Germany. In Berlin, the renown Moses Mendelssohn came to hear him. Mendelssohn characterized the Maggid of Dubno as the “Jewish Aesop,” but this comparison is not a good one. The Maggid of Dubno was not a fabulist, and in his parables, never made use of examples from the lives of animal creatures.

In Zamość, the Maggid of Dubno was the Head of the Yeshiva. Even a difficult passage from the Tosafot, he would explain to the sharp, scholarly young men, with a nice parable from Jewish life, outside of the walls of the Bet HaMedrash (Rabbi Yitzhak Flamm in the introduction to Sefer-HaMidot).

The simple masses of Jews felt themselves much uplifted through the parables of the Maggid of Dubno. In the images that reflected the daily Jewish life in the street, in the marketplace and in the store – also in the simple lives of the Jewish family – the Maggid of Dubno saw the symbols of the moralistic movement of the world. He lifted the poverty and needs of the Jewish masses up to the level of bright heights of spiritual gentility, and to the great wisdom about life derived from rational processes. The activities and tales of ordinary Jewish life, became analogies for the eternal truths of the Torah, in the mouth of the Maggid of Dubno. Even after the death of the Maggid of Dubno – his son, Rabbi Yitzhak Krantz writes in the introduction to Ohel Yaakov – Jews would throng to the synagogues en masse, in order to hear the parables of the Maggid of Dubno, which he, Rabbi Yitzhak Krantz, and other succeeding preachers, would tell from the [parables of the] Maggid of Dubno.

But it was not only for the simple masses that the tales of the Maggid of Dubno were deep reservoirs of uplifting. In the earthy and modest righteousness of his words, and in the acute apprehension of the human condition, which stood out in his tales of real Jewish life, the sages and Gaonim of the period also perceived the accompanying symbolism of the highest concepts of the Jewish intellect.

The degree to which the Maggid of Dubno drew the great morals of the Jewish spirit close to the tone and feeling of the simple Jewish person, is told by his disciple, Rabbi Berish Flamm (the future Maggid of Miedzyrzec) in his introduction to Sefer-HaMidot:

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On one occasion, the Maggid of Dubno came to Yaroslav. The local Rabbi, Rabbi Hirsch Wohl, known as Rabbi Hirsch Meitzess, received the Maggid at his home, gave him a separate room, where the Maggid would be able to sit quietly and study for the entire period of two to three weeks that he had contemplated staying in Yaroslav. At the home of the Rabbi of Yaroslav, there was a son-in-law, living on support while he studied, Rabbi Yaakov Einstein, the future Rabbi of Lemberg. The scholarly son-in-law had a friend, Reb Herscheleh, who later became the Rabbi in Banhard. The son-in-law, Rabbi Yaakov, along with his friend, spent a great deal of time with the Maggid of Dubno. Every time that he preached at the synagogue, they accompanied him, in order that they could hear the sermon. When it came time for the Maggid of Dubno to give his last sermon, he said to these two exceptionally gifted young folk: it is better that you do not accompany me on this day. It would be a sin for you to take the time away from your studies. When the young folk replied: …why, specifically does this apply to this occasion, that you do not want us to hear you?' – the Maggid told them, that with every one of his parting sermons, he always brings his listeners to intense tears. The reason being, that he wants to awaken the Jewish soul to submission and to the teachings of tradition; and since these two young people have faint hearts, he wishes to spare them the weeping. The young people replied: Have no fear, Rebbe, we are not ordinary Jews. We will not cry. What then followed, I will leave for Rabbi Berish Flamm to tell in his tortuous Hebrew. Rabbi Berish Flamm relates what Rabbi Yaakov Einstein told him personally about that highly notable scene. Let the reader himself see with what an awesome trembling respect the students of the Maggid spoke of the Maggid of Dubno:

After the Mincha Prayers, when the Tzaddik ascended the pulpit that was in front of the ark, I immediately began to weep. When I saw him ascend, and I looked into his face and saw his expressions, I was seized with fear and trembling, and even before he opened his sacred mouth, and my comrade stood next to me stubbornly trying with all his might, and stood for about a half hour and did not cry, and afterwards, when he began to cry, he cried with a bitter heart, for about fifteen minutes to the point that he became dangerously ill, because he was a frail and delicate person, and seriously weakened.

The Vilna Gaon, who in his time was the greatest authority among the leading Torah scholars, demonstrated an exceptional sympathy and vulnerability to the Maggid of Dubno and his activities. While I am here, I would like to remark about one of the historical errors: the posture of the Mitnagdim toward the Hasidim has often been characterized as a conflict between the dry rationalists against the Jewish irrationalists; a war between Jewish law and Jewish feeling. In regard to this detail, a revision most certainly must be made in the historical record. Above all, a revision is required with regard to the historical record in connection to the person of the Vilna Gaon. But the Vilna Gaon stood at the point in the conflict with Hasidism. No, in ideological conflicts one can never clearly demonstrate the boundary between thought and feeling. On the side of Jewish feeling, we find many rationalists such as, for example, the author of Tanya, who sought the synthesis between rationalism and mysticism; the Vilna Gaon stood on the side of Jewish thought, who wanted to synthesize his casuistic rationalism with the mythos of the plain folk life of the simple Jew, and with the sanctified love of that simple Jew. The Maggid of Dubno was the ideal person for the Vilna Gaon to effect that synthesis. Even though the Maggid of Dubno undoubtedly belonged to the class of the leading Torah scholars of his day, he was nevertheless able to wondrously synthesize his modesty and folk-righteousness with sensible directives from the Torah. He applied himself to see, in the way of the lives of simple Jews, the hidden methods and the compassionate thoughts of the Creator of the world. The Vilna Gaon thought of the Maggid of Dubno's visit to him as an occasion of great spiritual pleasure. The Vilna Gaon literally waited eagerly to absorb the stories about Jews from the mouth of the Maggid of Dubno.

There is a folk tale about a meeting of these two illustrious Jewish personalities, of that era. This story throws the character of the Vilna Gaon and the character of the Maggid of Dubno into sharp relief, from an ideological point of view:

The Vilna Gaon is, as is known, was very sedentary, not leaving the bounds of his house, sitting always by himself in his room, the windows closed, and the shutters closed, even during the daytime, and being occupied day and night in Torah and work.

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In those years, the reputation of the Maggid of Dubno was in ascendance. He was the wondrous preacher, and the great debater. So the Gaon sent for the Maggid of Dubno, asking him to come and engage in debate.

The Maggid of Dubno came, saw the behavior of the Gaon, how detached he is from the world, and doesn't even leave the four walls of his own home.

The Maggid of Dubno remained with the Vilna Gaon alone.

– Is it a trick to be the Vilna Gaon, at the time that one sits closed off and isolated, in the innermost of rooms and being occupied with Torah? – the Maggid asked of the Vilna Gaon. To go out into the streets among the people, to engage in the experiences of life in the world, to engage in bargaining, and then still remain the Vilna Gaon – now that would be a good trick.

The Gaon listens to the Maggid of Dubno, and provides a short, sharp reply: I am not a magician that I do tricks. If at one time, the Maggid of Dubno had – as a result of his efforts and travels to various Jewish communities – did not come to the Gaon in Vilna, the greatest Talmudic authority of his day wrote a letter to the Maggid of Dubno, which is touching in its modesty and sense of longing for the folksy Tzaddik from Dubno, and his tales Jewish daily life.

I cite, in total, for the reader here, the letter from the Vilna Gaon to the Maggid of Dubno. I present it in the original Hebrew, as it was printed in an old Haggadah (Seder Haggadah shel Pesach, im payrush hadash, Zera Gad, Vilna, 5612 (1852),

Greetings to our honorable brother, the Rabbi and Gaon, outstanding in Torah, and renowned by praise and adulation the honorable Rabbi, our Teacher Yaakov the Rabbi and Preacher of the sacred community of Dubno.

After a greeting according to protocol to my dear one, I beseech him that my heart would be gladdened if he would come to my side, and it is a dismay to my eyes that he has not been to see me now for thirteen years. Now, I have come to arouse him: To the soul of our honorable brother, and to his good fortune, Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman, a Tzaddik of Sacred Memory.

A multitude of greetings to my dear friend, the honorable wondrous Rabbi, the speaker of righteousness and of the true way, the honorable Rabbi, our Teacher Yaakov, may his light burn brightly.

I will tell, if it please, to my friend about events that the Lord has caused to me in His goodness. My soul has been depressed by the onset of serious illness that He has seen fit to send to me. Let my friend come to my home, and let him not tarry to restore my spirit and to amuse me as he has done from time to time. When he sees this writing, let him accelerate his travel plans, and let him not be late.

These are the words of one who loves him, and is true to him, and who looks forward to his arrival in peace, Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman, a Tzaddik of Sacred Memory.^[13]

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Despite the fact that the Maggid of Dubno was exceptionally popular in all areas of Jewry, nevertheless, he wrote very little. It appears that he believed the writer's pen places an intellectual barrier between him and ordinary Jews, to whom his heart always burned with an indebtedness and love. He did not want to lift himself out of [contact with] the Jewish masses by using anything. He always saw in them the living, deep reservoirs, of all the highest forms of Jewish spiritual elevation. He fled the isolation of the book-oriented writer. Jews tell: the Maggid of Dubno was once asked why he did not compose a collection about Torah, the prophets, or sermons, which would contain [sic: preserve] his sermons and simple explanations. [For], this was the practice of other Gaonim and preachers; to which he said: I will reply to this with a parable:

A wealthy man was preparing to make a wedding for his child. Many guests came to the wedding feast, rich Jews and poor people. They eat and drink, and make merry. The difference however, is: the invited rich guest, sitting at the table, eats the delicacies and drinks the beverages in a certain order. First he eats fish, afterwards, he takes a little bit to drink, and afterwards, soup with noodles, meat and tzimmes. At the end, he also drinks a small glass of wine. The poor person stands to the side, and quickly wolfs down the leftovers from the dishes. The poor person cannot, unfortunately wait on any sequence. He mixes the fish with the soup, meat with the herring, hot with cold, in order to be able once again to snap up what is thrown at him.

The same is true of me. The great Vilna Gaon sits constantly at his sacred desk, [engaged in] Torah and worship. He can partake of the wisdom and acuity that is presented to him in sequence and with order. But I, a Jew, that wanders through towns and cities – must content himself with what is thrown to me from time to time. Here, a simple explanation comes to mind regarding a line from [the prophet] Habakuk, and immediately afterwards a parable concerning the dialogue between Balak and Balaam, or altogether, a sermon on the portion of Noah. Also, all of these things must be done in a sprightly fashion, emphasizing them without any order, and then preparing one's self to once again get ready to go out on the road to travel.^[14]

It happens that most of the parables and sermons that we have from the Maggid of Dubno, were only small and short items, which he had, from natural discourse, brought out as a synopsis of his sermons. I am even persuaded to accept the supposition that the synopses of the parables were written by the Maggid of Dubno in Yiddish. Whereas, in Ohel Yaakov, they are provided by the editors as very dry, and in an officious Rabbinical Hebrew. It is not the language of the Maggid of Dubno. In the Sefer HaMidot, the one little book that he most certainly wrote by himself, there the Maggid of Dubno expressed himself in a better and in an epic, emotion-filled Hebrew. In any event, being a written author, and the calling of the pen, did not lie among the ambitions of the Maggid of Dubno.

Even though he constructed his sermons both from the Jewish written word, and from Jewish life, he personally held himself only as a part of the simple, unadorned Jewish reality, and identified himself with it both in spirit and destiny. Throughout, he wanted always to remain in the midst of the substantive events of Yiddish writing. Also, in connection with this specific detail, we find a folktale about the Maggid of Dubno, and it too, characterizes in a sharp and outstanding way, the entire style of life of the Maggid of Dubno:

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One fine Sabbath, the Maggid of Dubno stood in the pulpit and was speaking. The synagogue was packed with an audience that swallowed every one of his words. Pearls fell from the mouth of the Maggid of Dubno, brilliant thoughts. The Maggid of Dubno, raised himself in his feeling, to the divine levels in the heavens, and to the golden footstools of the greatest of the Tzaddikim. Suddenly, he heard a cross word coming from on high. He examined his deeds, and he felt, that with this, that he had drawn near to the golden footstools of the Tzaddikim, he had actually come down from his actual position.

In order to repair this attempt at elevation that he had made, within which lay his downfall, the Maggid of Dubno undertook to go into exile.

The Maggid of Dubno vanished anonymously for a couple years, among the great anonymous mass of poor Jews and wandered all over the Jewish world, like a common pauper. Along with other poor Jews, he wandered from town to town, dressed in rags, with a walking stick in his hand, and a knapsack over his back. He spent the night in charity accommodations, accepted pennies from Jews of means, and on the Sabbath, along with other poor stricken folk, sat at the rearmost tables of Jewish balebatim. He hid his popular and beloved identity from everyone. He endured the wants, exigencies, and degradations of the poverty-stricken Jews. In this bitter Jewish assembly, with coarse, anonymous and poor folk, he purged and purified himself spiritually. He immersed himself and raised himself in his incomparable love of [his fellow] Jews. He extracted new strengths. His wealth of new Jewish life-experiences, he transformed into the form of new tales. From these anonymous wanderings of the Maggid of Dubno through the lowest depths of Jewish life, we obtain a booty of tales, tales which are models for higher ethical concepts about the order of creation, and about human life. But there are also found portraits of the Jewish way of life of those former times. Verily, these parables are a bona fide treasure for the culture - and the circumstances of Jews. There, we see all the various classes of the Jewish community. The head of the community, wealthy leaders, teachers and their assistants, wagon drivers and Jewish hotels, settlers and land estate managers, the strong and the controllers, workers and tradespeople, servants and poor people, door-to-door beggars, and the crippled, delicate young people, balebatim, Shammashim, marriage brokers, grooms, brides, parents of the wedding couple. There we see the wealthy Jews, that ride around in heavy, fully packed vehicles to Leipzig and Danzig, for the great fairs. Through these parable-stories, we are even able to gain a glimpse into the economic status of the Jewish populace of that former time,[the status of] Jewish merchants, and storekeepers, Jewish shopkeepers and traders, Jewish wagon drivers, Jewish carriages and Jewish horses, and also about the one time garb of Jews, the jewelry, and precious things of Jewish wives. During the years of voluntary assimilation among the dispersed Jewish peoples, the Maggid of Dubno acquainted himself with the haughtiness and might of Jewish magnates and community leaders – and he has very few good words to say on their behalf. In his stories, the top ten thousand come out under a major shadow. The years of the wanderings of the Maggid of Dubno have remained as an image in the memory of the Jewish masses. Later on, many stories and anecdotes circulated throughout the Jewish world about this sacred and wondrous time, when the beloved Maggid of Dubno was one of the unrecognized and anonymous Jews. As to their epic style, their acuity, their reflection of the wisdom of life, and the deep love for the simple, poor Jewish folk, these oral tales stand – as a monument to these people – certainly not from the tales, which the Maggid's son, Rabbi Yitzhak Krantz, and the Maggid's disciple, Rabbi Berish Flamm, constructed out of the residual vignettes and synopses. No, they supersede them. It is especially the oral tales, with their character, that give us a key and a revealing look into the stories that have been committed to writing, which are woven in, like examples and parables in the sermons of the books of the Maggid of Dubno. There, they are dry and without force, documented by editors. The oral tales have survived in their fuller simplicity, and the wondrous and pithy epic form, with which the Maggid of Dubno would tell them for the masses of attentive Jews.

These tales are divided into two parts: oral tales that the Maggid of Dubno told in the midst of a sermon, or related in an encounter situation that he planned to participate in. In these specific stories, there is a lot of sarcasm, a lot of irony, and in addition, satirical portraits of the powerful and wealthy Jews. The haughtiness of wealthy Jewish people, in contrast to the simple, spirituality of the poor folk. There are, however, tales that Jews tell about the Maggid of Dubno. In these stories, eager for his fantasies, they attempted to stress in the presentation, the wondrous modesty and the good-hearted persona of the Jewish folk base. The modest man, who did not take heed of his own scholarliness (in all, the Maggid of Dubno was also a Head of a yeshiva), took no heed of his own importance, and the regard shown him by the Vilna Gaon, and by the other great Torah scholars of his day, he nevertheless held as his most sacred duty, and as

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the highest ethical calling, to go among the simple, poor people, to become one of them, to lighten their needs and exigencies – indeed, this very self-effacing scholar and Jewish intellectual, took the impoverished life of the simple Jew as a model for the greatest ideals and spiritual concepts. Poor Jews felt themselves uplifted by the base of the Maggid's teachings, who constantly strived to be one of them, a Jew among the Jewish masses, to speak to Jews in their day-to-day language, in a manner that is simple and comprehensible to them.

In his own spirituality, the Maggid of Dubno identified himself entirely with the spirit of the Jew from the ordinary masses.

The concept of equality stands out among the great ideals and spiritual values of democracy: Equality with collective humankind. There are two ways to achieve spiritual equality. First: pantheistic self-effacement and pantheistic goodness. It is the dimension of elevation, in which every single individual sees in the general populace a dimension of existence of the highest worlds and highest being. Love of fellow man as a pantheistic mythos – this was the self-effacement and the love of a fellow Jew [that characterized] Hasidism. Hasidism does not possess the love for the poor and powerless individual, but rather [a love for] the divine substance in man. Love of the God-mythos in man. The love of a fellow Jew, manifested in Hasidism, was at its heart, the unrequited ecstasy for the love of God. Second, there is however, another way, a realistic self-effacement, a realistic love. A love of fellow man, that comes from a recognition of human fallibility. What is Man, but that which you put upon him… etc. What is often said, what is Man in the great cosmic scheme of things? What is this drop of water in the endless and storm-tossed oceans? Throughout life, Man fonds himself in a state of helplessness. He is constantly powerless against the impulses and instincts of his very being. Those very impulses and instincts that make up the majority of the fabric of the human being. Complete powerlessness against one's very own being – that is man. Not in the fantastic divinity of the human being, but rather in the primitive and animal underworld of humanity – there is where one must find human impotence in dealing with his own impulses. Every attempt, made by a human being, to free himself from the animal hell within him, is worthy of high praise. Man – is firstly sinful, and engaged in heroic struggles with sin. In the end, one cannot expect too much from Man. One must be adamant with him. It is necessary to believe rather his good nature than in the reality of his ethical achievements. Being good to a person, because he is powerless against the world. Being good to a person – because man is tragic in his helplessness, and helplessness is the dialectic of human existence. Such a goodness is more ironic than ecstatic; more resigning than demanding. Many great moralists traveled along this path. Not along the path of the godliness of Man, but along the path of trying to understand Man. This is the essential difference between the righteousness of man as practiced by the Hasidim, and that of the general class of the righteous Mitnagdim. With regard to this specific detail, the Maggid of Dubno was fully in the camp of the righteous thinker of the Mitnagdim. In his relationship to people, and in his practice of charity, he was very discreet, and hid the sad irony of someone who understood humanity [so well]. In his parable about the blind, he tells of his relationship to people and their helplessness. We have yet another parable in this genre. A parable about someone who is deaf, and someone who is lame:

A deaf person and a lame person, who went from house-to-house, went into partnership. The lame person sat up on the deaf man's back. Both went around all over the city, from house-to-house begging.

On one occasion, the two partners pass a house, where a wedding was in progress. The lame person heard the musicians playing. He had a desire to dance. But how can he dance, since he has no legs? Pity the deaf man, who didn't even hear the music. – Dance a little, jump a bit, I'm happy – the lame man shouted to the deaf man. The deaf man – hears neither the lame man, nor the music. What does the lame person do? He takes a bottle of strong drink out of his pocket, and he gives the deaf man a swallow. The deaf man partakes of the drink, gets a bit happy, and his legs begin to dance. The lame man gives him another swallow, and yet another swallow. The deaf man began to dance with all his might. The lame person, who was sitting on his back, raised himself up and down. And so, in this manner, they both danced. The lame person, because of the music, and the deaf man because of the liquor.

How ironic this is for the thoughts of people! How ironic this is for the play of the illusions of his will and the illusions of his possibilities! No. One cannot demand too much of Man. He needs to be loved for his faults This is the moral core of the preaching of the Maggid of Dubno. His tales have only meant to illustrate the character and the condition of

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human activity. Loving Man in the state of his unaided poverty!

When the Maggid of Dubno stood in the pulpit, wrapped in his prayer shawl, and spoke to Jews, he did not frighten them with the fires of Hell, as did the later, renown Kelemer Maggid. The Maggid of Dubno offered solace to Jews. He wanted to set them on the path of righteousness with the deepest love. On the right way. This is the path of inner tranquility and the world happiness of the upstanding human being. Righteousness – this was the single activity for Man, which is attached to achievement.

The Maggid of Dubno conducted himself like a holy ascetic and demanded the most stringent of discipline from himself. But this only – and throughout – pertained to him alone; to his own person. From others, he demanded less. As much as a Jew was able to do good, the Maggid of Dubno would elevate this to the highest ‘golden’ state of Jewish [good] works, and had a positive relationship to it. Eliciting such occurrences for Jews, the Maggid of Dubno thought to be his highest calling. The full hearts of the simple Jews opened to him in their efforts. In the midst of a congregation of simple attentive Jews, he would tremble with inner reverence.

Apart from the great demands that he made of himself, and apart from the profound insights and compassion in connection with others, we have yet another portrait that Rabbi Berish Flamm wrote in the introduction to Sefer-HaMidot. Rabbi Berish Flamm portrays a typical day in the life of the Maggid of Dubno. It is very much like a characteristic portrait of the day in the life of a Jewish Tzaddik. It is an unforgettable portrait, whether for a cultural-historian, or a writer of belle lettres, who wishes to write about those times and about those Jews. I do not want to translate the text to Yiddish, and prefer to leave it in the sacred, untrammeled, but reverent holy tongue of the original, as written by Rabbi Berish Flamm, so that the reader may enjoy all of the nuances:^[15]

His time and minutes were limited to the Tzaddik, of blessed memory, and he did not want to squander time to record in writing all of his the new ideas, as would be the usual custom, and to explain it all for every reader. And he did not record each and every one, in order that it be a memorial to himself, his goodness, his devotion and piety, for he rose, like a lion at the middle of every night (also on the Sabbath and Holidays), and went to the Bet HaMedrash to pray at midnight, and wept with a bitter soul over the destruction of the Temple of our Lord. Afterwards, he would study until the hour of dawn drew nigh, when he would go to the mikva for purification, and then when the light of day arrived, he would don his tallit and tefillin, and he would continue to wear them until after the [afternoon] Mincha service. And he would pray in the manner of the Tzaddikim of old, of whom it was said, ‘Let the people see [in] you a [veritable] sun.’ And when he donned his tallit and tefillin, he would turn himself into the wall, and despite the fact that he was a man of considerable physical stature, he would bend his entire height, and stood bowed [in this manner], until he had completed his prayers, not raising a hand, and not moving a leg, facing neither right nor left, like a slave who is standing before his master. And the seat that was in front of his visage on the eastern wall was always as like a stream of water flowing before him, and this was done faithfully also on the Sabbath and holidays, to the point that for every minute out of all the minutes of the day, his eyes would be pouring forth water [sic: tears]. And after the morning Shakharit prayers, he would learn a Mishnah lesson, and Gemara until midday.

And afterwards, he would go to take some food, and would do so while wearing tefillin, with his face covered, until he arrived at his home. And there he would uncover his face, and eat his meal in this way. Afterwards, he would return to the Bet HaMedrash, and study with the Yeshiva. And his custom was on every day, in the midst of his study, to walk from the Yeshiva to the prayer stand on which lay a Siddur Kol Bo^[16] and he would recite several chapters from the Psalms, with much weeping, and he would then return to the Yeshiva and study a lesson that was his, with them (Baal HaTurim). And he did this every single day of the year. And he took no notice of what this was all about. And when this ‘holy ark’ of a man departed this life, and they escorted him to his final resting place in the cemetery, the Shames of the Bet HaMedrash said, that he thought he knew what his weeping was

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all about. The departed, of blessed memory, had secretly ordered him, that if he is informed of anyone in the city who has become distressed, that he should be informed. Now the city of Zamość is city with a large population, is it not, and many they continue to increase. And he would then advise him every single day, that so-and-so was sick, may the Lord spare us, or such-and-such a woman was having difficulty in delivering a child, and similar incidents as they came to pass. These things were said by the Shammes. And when he was occupied with the study of the Gemara and the Tosafot commentaries, his [intellectual] power and strength was readily apparent, as was his wisdom and understanding, because many times he would explain a particularly difficult Tosafot^[17] by using a weighty parable.^[18]

We have already related how the Maggid of Dubno wished to spare the sickly and weak scholars from hearing his sermons – sermons that elicited tears, and spiritual human emotions of being moved, from the listening audience, and the need for taking stock of one's own self. But as much as the Maggid of Dubno wanted to spare others, he made the greatest demands of himself, and spared himself of nothing. In order to deepen his own understanding, he took upon himself the burden of suffering an anonymous exile. This also belongs to the ethical characteristics of that old Jewish way of life. The modern man has accustomed himself to the notion, that it is entirely possible that double bookkeeping can take place between the demands of the mind, and the experienced reality of personal life; That the word has nothing to do with the deed. Than no one needs to look into another's personal books, and that spiritually, it is permissible to allow oneself to be led by people whose life is a screaming contradiction to the ideals that they disseminate. The refined man of culture accepts words at face value, as if they are as good as gold. This has had no small impact on the frightening deterioration of modern culture.

Those Jews, in former times, knew nothing of this double bookkeeping. The truth of, and the deep responsibility of a person for, his word and thought, was held very high and was profound to them. Man yet had a sense of the importance of his ability to understand. He, the person, that is, is not a bare windmill, which rotates in the wind and doesn't grind any flour. No matter how talented or oratorically gifted a Maggid among the Jews might be, if the substance of his personality and his deeds, are not in alignment with his words, he was not allowed to ascend the pulpit to speak before a Jewish audience. In the Pinkas of the Va'ad Arba Aratzot, there is a special amendment against immoral preachers. This amendment is signed on Monday, 9 Ellul, 5383 (1623).

The larger the persona of the Maggid of Dubno grew, the louder his name rung out among the Jewish masses, the more rigorously and attentively he conducted his own personal self-scrutiny, and weighed his deeds and his deepest feelings and thoughts. If he felt a moral necessity to abruptly abandon the ringing heights of his reputation, and anonymously blend in with nameless people – he would do so immediately. But this did not suffice for him. He did not document his sermons and parables. He did not hold himself worthy of writing books. Books would have exuded the odor of popularity and fame. The Maggid of Dubno saw his life's goal only in the context of a living, loving relationship with Jews.

With himself, in the focus of his efforts, he did take an accounting. A demanding accounting. He kept, so to speak, a diary. Not to be published. He wrote it up only for himself. For himself to take account, and for himself to occupy the quiet, self-effacing personal expressions of a man with his kind of soul.

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A Fragment of the ‘Rynek,’ an entrance between the covered walkways

Yiddish literature has one principal critical tendency: this very tendency served as the formative concept of our great writers. It was very pronounced in the case of I. L. Peretz. To this day, it remains as the [essential] historic concept of Yiddish literature. Through every substantive literature, a specific historic concept runs through it like a red thread.

This very tendency was a radical challenge to the entire to-date ideological outlook of the minds of Jewish history.

The new Yiddish literature took upon itself to push r e a l Jewish life, and the living Jewish masses, as the principal vehicle of historical Jewish development. It was up to the new Yiddish literature to demonstrate that Jewish spirituality is only, so to speak, the conceptual superstructure over the vital continuity of the Jewish collective. The Yiddish authors attempted to portray the Jewish person, and through him – meaning the Jewish person – portray the Jewish Ideal. It was desired to give the historical concept of Jewish history an historical [physical] body, and a corporeal vehicle for its conveyance. The Jewish Person carries – psychologically – the Jewish Ideal. The concept of Jewish history does not swim through the air like some disembodied abstraction, and like some astral manifestation. The principal tendencies of the new Yiddish literature were: to bring out the Jewish person out to confront the idealistic demands of Jewish history. These are the great contributions of Yiddish literature, and its historical achievements. The most important task of the history of Yiddish literature would specifically have been to research, and to discover and unearth, the well springs and pools from which this very exceptionally positive and important and over-arching tendency emerged. In connection to this matter, the personality of the Maggid of Dubno – as well as others, who had similar personalities – were muted in the context of our cultural history, with an incomprehensible casualness. To this day, the incorrect interpretation continues in our cultural history, namely that: culture in Yiddish has to do with popular folk culture, and the genesis of humanistic Yiddish literature must be sought only in folk-primitives, such as Purim plays, and the general ‘close-to-the-people’ Yiddish literature – in the literature for women, and the Yiddish of the unlettered. This interpretation originates from the atavistic feeling, that Yiddish is some sort of an unrefined, living handmaiden. Never mind that we, the radicals – hold this handmaiden in higher regard in both taste and status. A culture in Yiddish is indeed the embodiment of the struggle of the people against the ‘top ten thousand’ of the ‘aristocratic’ culture. But there is nothing if not an injustice in the one-sidedness in the dialectic of history. History, indeed, consists of uncompromising battles, but it also consists of internal compromises. Especially in the dialectic, these compromises partially play no small role in these battles. The syntheses are not any less important than the antitheses. Perhaps even more important. The syntheses are in part even more revolutionary than the antitheses, insofar, that they push the history further, and open up new perspectives. Throughout it is true: the humanistic tendencies and the deep historical feel, that Jewish life is the essential vehicle of Jewish history, assumed a radical and colorful form in the lower classes of the Jewish people. A form that took a position against the official Jewish spirituality, a form of a will to show the values of the true goodness of the people. The spirituality of the uneducated Jews. But it is also true throughout, that up in the spheres of the official spirituality, not everything was held to be negative with regard to the lower classes. We find a more complete [view] among the official Jewish intellectuals, who had a more profound look and an assessment: that is, that the well springs of all Jewish spirituality flow entirely in the living Jewish reality and in the living and middle-class Jewish person. In the history of the general

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Jewish theology, revolutionary tendencies, and a revolutionary calling, to the simple Jewish person and to the Jewish street, manifested themselves not only once. These tendencies in Jewish theology also belong to the history of Yiddish literature. By and large, such tendencies are found in the mystic theology. Jewish mysticism had barely become pantheistic, when it was forced to see the living, real person within the ambit of the stuff of creation. Hasidism went even further. In many Hasidic books, we find a sanctification of the living language of the Jewish person. A reverence for Yiddish. The ecstatic Rabbis wove entire passages of Yiddish into the Hebrew of their books. In their divinely aroused ecstasy, they held the spoken Yiddish word to be on the same plane as the sanctified language of the Yiddish book. We find examples of this in the classic books of the Hasidic literature, as in the Bet Aharon of Rabbi Aharon Karliner, the Kedushat Levi of R' Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev, and the books of R' Nachman of Bratislav. Even though R' Nachman did not write his books personally, his scribe, R' Nachman's student, R' Natan, followed the style and the manner of R' Nachman's level. It would be an act of the greatest justice to issue an anthology of the wondrous ecstatic pieces of Yiddish in the Hasidic literature.

In the ranks of theses very synthesizers, and seekers of accommodation between the Holy Writ of the Torah and the reality of the living Jewish person, between abstract Jewish thought and real Jewish life – stood the Maggid of Dubno. He wanted to see the realization and embodiment of the lofty and abstract concepts of Jewish spirituality in the deeds of simple Jewish folk. ‘Israel and Torah are one and the same’ – was the conceptual view of the Maggid of Dubno. Love of his fellow Jew, was for him, the equivalent of love for the Jewish God. In this respect, he was completely one of the most important pioneers of the new Jewish humanism. The new Yiddish literature – in its faithfulness to principle – also sought to generate a synthesis between the historic Jewish spirit, the real Jewish spirit, and the living Jewish person. I would not want to count the Maggid of Dubno among those writers, whose inclination in the Yiddish literature was o n l y to see the naturalistic condition of life, the day-to-day realism of Jewish life. A Jewish realism, without an ideological perspective for the existence of Jews in the world. The Maggid of Dubno certainly had no taste for this kind of a Judaism. The Maggid of Dubno belongs – historically – to the class of Jewish writers, who wanted to see Yiddish literature and the elevation of the dialectic of Jewish history. [They believed in] the spiritual levels of the Jewish person. I am referring here to Peretz and the [entire] Peretz school. Peretz was the golden link in the chain, that stretched [starting from] the Maggid of Dubno. But with Peretz, the circle of development bent back on itself. The Maggid of Dubno sought the line of Jewish thought, that extends – in the depths – to the Jewish person. Peretz began to search for the line from the Jewish person that extends – in the depths – to Jewish thought. The Maggid of Dubno wished to see the Jewish personality in the form of the Jewish collective. Peretz began to wanting to see the form of the Jewish collective, in the elevated form of the Jewish personality.

Footnotes:

1. It is generally accepted, by Biblical scholars, that the ‘single’ Book of Isaiah, was very likely the work of at least two different people. Return
2. The Hebrew word for a ‘place of concealment.’ Used to designate repositories for old, worn out sacred books that did not require burial, but which could not be routinely discarded or desecrated by conventional destruction. Return
3. The translated Hebrew text, rendered in the vernacular Hebrew. Return
4. Feminine declension of the Hebrew for Rabbi and Darshan (a preacher) Return
5. Literally, Deborah the Nursemaid, implying a source of [sic: spiritual] nourishment Return
6. Very likely a contemporary way of referring to Yiddish. Return
7. It is difficult to specify a precise meaning for Veiberschul. A literal translation would yield ‘Women's Synagogue’ History is unclear as to whether separate physical buildings were constructed for the use of women. What we do know, is than every synagogue usually had sections allocated exclusively for the use of women (called the Ezrat Nashim in Hebrew). In larger synagogues, as in the main synagogue in Zamo__, these were substantial enough to accommodate separate services and events, that might not involve the men, or the use of the main sanctuary. Return
8. In the Dereczin Memorial Book, we encounter a variant of this sobriquet, rendered in Yiddish as Zogerkeh. The sense of that usage, however, appears to be someone who may have repeated the prayers being recited by the men. In this text, the author uses the sobriquet of Vorzogerin to describe such a person. Return
9. Literally, ‘opponents,’ in this case of the Hasidic movement. Referring to the Rabbinical establishment of Eastern Europe, led from the Jewish learning centers of Lithuania. Return
10. Parables of the Maggid of Dubno, A. L. Pearl (Aleph Katz), side 12. Verlag Aleph, Warsaw 1937. Return
11. op. cit. Return
12. A re-arrangement of the letters in the year 5556, to produce the word Tikkun, which in Hebrew signifies to repair, or make good. A reference to the Jewish imperative to engage in Tikkun Olam, i.e. to make the world a better place that when we found it. Return
13. “The Vilna Gaon passed away two years later, in 1797. Regarding the posture of the author about how the Vilna Gaon ‘really felt’ about the Hasidic movement, the issue is well summarized by Rabbi Dr. Stanley Nash, Professor of Bible and Hebrew Language, at Hebrew Union College in New York City: He says:
    

    The issue of establishing the posture of the Vilna Gaon on a number of issues--Haskala, Hasidism, etc.--seems to be as major an area for dispute as establishing how the Rambam really felt about certain things. I don't think there is any contradiction between the Gaon's affections for the Maggid and his participation in imposing various cherems against Hasidism that he did not like. Also, I can well understand how people with Hasidic leanings would pounce upon a story of this type--how the ascetic and withdrawn Gaon was finally stirred to learn an important lesson from a Hasid. It all sounds slightly apocryphal, and tendentious, as for that matter does the whole exaggerated picture of the Gaon's asceticism.” Return

14. Parables of the Maggid of Dubno, A. L. Pearl, Warsaw, 1937 Return
15. We will not abide by this restriction. The translation into English follows. Return
16. An especially comprehensive edition of the prayer book. Kol Bo in Hebrew literally means ‘everything in it.’ Return
17. These are one of the two major commentaries that accompany the plaintext of the Gemara. The majority of the other commentary, is that of Rashi, who did not, however, complete his work for the entire Talmud. Return
18. Sefer HaMidot of our Teacher Rabbi Yaakov Dubno…. 1862, Introduction, page 4. Return
19. I shudder to think what the writer considers a ‘comprehensive’ review ! -JSB Return

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