Studies in Judaism, First Series. S. Schechter

a few who did not know all these things, among them Ibn Ezra, Azariah de Rossi, and the two Delmedigos.40 But they were merely a miserable historical blunder, men who had no right to be born when they were. But the philological method has swept away all this knowingness as by a deluge from heaven, and men find that they know nothing. True, there linger on a few who still know all these things, but it is they who are now the anachronism. These, and such as these, are the perplexities of our time, to the resolution of which the labours of Krochmal and of a noble band of scholars have been directed in this century.

      Have these perplexities, we must ask, and these puzzles been solved by Krochmal and his coadjutors? We may with all certainty answer: They have only pointed out the way, it is for ourselves to proceed by it. It would be unreasonable to expect that difficulties which have been accumulating during the course of thousands of years should be solved by the men of one or two generations. Again, we live in a century in which excavations and discoveries in other fields have added at once to our knowledge and to our uncertainty. Each country, we might almost say, over and above the perplexities that trouble mankind in general, has its own special difficulties which are entirely unknown to those who dwell outside its frontiers. I am not disposed to discuss these difficulties [pg 072] in this place. Nor have I the ability to do so. But of two things I am perfectly certain: the first is, that for a solution of these difficulties which, in the language of Maimonides, “confuse the notions of all intelligent and religious persons,” the only hope is in true knowledge and not in ignorance; and secondly, this knowledge can only be obtained by a combination of the utmost reverence for religion and the deepest devotion to truth. The poor old Rabbis who have been so foully decried by their calumniators as hedonists, and so foolishly praised by sorry apologists as materialistic optimists, strongly insisted that when a man woos the truth, his suit can only prosper if he is influenced by the purest and most single-hearted affection. “A man,” says the Siphré, “must not say: ‘I will study the Torah in order that I may attain the title of Rabbi or savant, or that I may become rich by it, or that I may be rewarded for it in the world to come.’ He must study for love's sake.” Such a knowledge, which is free from all taint of worldliness and of other-worldliness, a knowledge sought simply and solely for pure love of God, who is Truth—such a knowledge is in the highest sense a saving knowledge, and Nachman Krochmal was in possession of it.

      [pg 073]