Morlok, EJJS 14 (2020 ), Satanow on Moral and Intellectual Perfection

European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 brill.com/ejjs Isaac Satanow (1732–1804) on Moral and Intellectual Perfection Elke Morlok Abstract Isaac ben Moshe Halevi (Isaac Satanow, 1732–1804) serves as an interesting example of how Jewish intellectuals offered alternative ways of entering the new era. Unlike other authors, Satanow does not explicitly concentrate on secularization or assimilation in his writing, but instead intends to revive traditional values and writing by putting them into a new cultural and intellectual framework. Satanow combines relevant topics from Jewish tradition with scientific discoveries, philosophical reasoning, and kabbalistic thought. An analysis of Satanow’s unique combination of literary and intellectual corpora from various periods and backgrounds offers a more nuanced picture of European Jewish intellectual history and challenges the grand narratives of scholarship. Furthermore, an awareness of the deep impact of German philosophy and natural science on Satanow’s thought provides insight into his relationship with the majority culture and his Eastern European background and also shows how his concept of modernity seeped in via complex networks. Keywords Kabbalah – Haskalah – Isaac Satanow – universal wisdom – Jewish-Christian relations – ethics – natural sciences – Moses Mendelssohn 1 Introduction1 The notion that modernity is primarily rooted in secular rationalism and that it emanated outside the bounds of religion is still accepted among most scholars 1 The research for this article was undertaken within the framework of the “Religious Positioning: Modalities and Constellations in Jewish, Christian and Muslim Contexts” © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/1872471X-bja10013 Isaac Satanow (1732–1804) on Moral and Intellectual Perfection 301 of the Jewish Enlightenment. However, the most recent studies have begun to investigate the role of religion and its ethical norms in maskilic treatises and how early modern religious thinkers began to integrate innovations in science and philosophy into their attempts to reform Jewish society. Isaac Satanow can serve as a prime example of this twofold movement of reform, which was also occurring in the field of musar. In recent scholarship on kabbalistic literature, we can observe a revival of academic interest in the complex entanglement of Jewish mysticism and ethical perspectives related to the so-called sifrut ha-musar or sifre ha-musar.2 A specific kabbalistic musar literature first developed in Safed in the sixteenth century, with a strong emphasis on human self-perfection based on the human encounter with the divine and the reciprocal relationship between the human actor and the divine object of his contemplation. This genre has played a significant role in the Jewish tradition until this day and it marks a specific step in the transition to modernity, the Jewish enlightenment or so-called Haskalah.3 research hub at Goethe University Frankfurt and Liebig University Gießen, which is funded by the Hessian Ministry for Science and Art. I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments, which have helped to improve this article tremendously. All remaining faults and shortcomings are my own. 2 On the history of the term musar and its development in academic studies, see Patrick B. Koch, Human Self-Perfection. A Re-Assessment of Kabbalistic Musar-Literature of Sixteenth-Century Safed (Los Angeles: Cherub, 2015), 1–45. On the mistranslation of musar as ‘Jewish ethics,’ compare to Elliot R. Wolfson, Venturing Beyond. Law & Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 14–15. 3 To mention only a few studies of this period, see David Ruderman, “Why Periodization Matters—On Early Modern Jewish Culture and Haskalah,” in Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 6, ed. Dan Diner (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 23–32; Shmuel Feiner, “On the Threshold of the ‘New World’—Haskalah and Secularization in the Eighteenth Century,” in idem, A New Age: Eighteenth-Century European Jewry 1700–1750 (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2017), 33–45 [Hebrew]; idem, The Jewish Enlightenment, trans. Ch. Naor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). On musar and modernity, see also David E. Fishman, “Musar and Modernity: The Case of Novaredok,” Modern Judaism 8(1) (1988): 41–64. Fishman examines the relationship between musarism and modernity, with special emphasis on its relationship to the complex social changes within Eastern European Jewry in the nineteenth century. By borrowing select ideas and practices from modern Jewish political movements, the yeshiva of Novaredok revitalized itself, turning from introverted isolation to aggressive expansion, from an educational institution to a movement, attempting to gain control over the newly established educational institutions for the children of wartime refugees. The movement was restructured, and it adapted its organizational tools to modern conventions, although it remained a pietistic sect, which nevertheless rejected the materialistic worldview of political activity. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 302 Morlok It has been shown that premodern musar literature displays no obvious affinity with kabbalistic literature of the same period.4 Early figures such as Solomon ibn Gabirol, Maimonides, and Baḥya ibn Paquda tended to include the philosophical ideas of their era rather than nascent kabbalistic trends. This changed radically in the sixteenth century with the appearance of musar books stemming from Safedian kabbalists such as Moshe Cordovero and others. Therefore, we should regard kabbalistic musar literature as a major player in the development of Jewish modernity and the intensification of Halakha observance therein.5 Isaac ben Moshe Halevi from the town of Satanow, known as Isaac Satanow (1732–1804), serves as an interesting example of how Jewish intellectuals offered alternative ways of entering the new era.6 Unlike other authors, Satanow did not explicitly concentrate on secularization or assimilation in his numerous writings,7 but rather intended to revive traditional values and writings 4 Jonathan Garb, “Musar as a Modern Movement,” Third International Conference on Modern Religions and Religious Movements in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Babi-Bahai Faiths, March 2011, Hebrew University, Tikvah Working Paper 01/12, Lecture 6; Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, 186–285; Mendel Piekarz, Hasidic Leadership. Authority and Faith in Zadikkim as Reflected in the Hasidic Literature (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1999), 346–352 [Hebrew]; idem, “Why did the Spanish Exile Perish? A Forewarning of the Dangers of the Enlightenment,” Da‘at 28 (1992): 87–115 [Hebrew]; idem, Between Ideology and Reality: Humility, Ayin, Self-Negation and Devekut in the Hasidic Thought (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1994), 29–46 [Hebrew]; Ronit Meroz, “And I Was Not There? The Complaints of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai According to an Unknown Zoharic Story,” Tarbiẕ 71(1–2) (2002): 163–193 [Hebrew]; Joseph Dan, On Sanctity: Religion, Ethics and Mysticism in Judaism and Other Religions (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1997), 322–354 [Hebrew]. 5 Jonathan Garb, “The Modernization of Kabbalah: A Case Study,” Modern Judaism 30(1) (2010): 1–22. Whereas Maimonides assumes the authority of Halakha and attempts to show how halakhic obedience harmonizes with the Aristotelian concept of perfection, Mendelssohn observes that the authority of Halakha is in question and tries to uphold its authoritative status by showing how halakhic obedience coheres with the ideals of political liberty, religious tolerance, and increased sociability between Jews and Gentiles; see Michah Gottlieb, Faith and Freedom. Moses Mendelssohn’s Theological-Political Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 42–58, especially 43. 6 On Satanow, see Nehama Retzler-Bersohn, Isaac Satanow, the Man and His Work: A Study in the Berlin Haskalah (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1976). On Satanow’s literary activities, see Moshe Pelli, Yiṣḥaq Saṭnov. Ha-min ha-ma’amin be-sifrut ha-haskalah ha-ʻivrit begermania (Be’er Sheva: typescript, 1973); Shmuel Werses, “Al Yiṣḥaq Saṭnov we-ḥibburo Mishlei Asaf,” Tarbiẕ 32(4) (1963): 370–392. 7 In contrast to Jonathan Israel’s statement in his Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), vi: “The Enlightenment marks the most dramatic step towards secularization and rationalization in Europe’s history.” For a more recent discussion of secularization as constitutive of European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 Isaac Satanow (1732–1804) on Moral and Intellectual Perfection 303 by putting them into a new cultural and intellectual framework. In a unique fashion, Satanow combined relevant topics from the Jewish tradition with scientific discoveries, philosophical reasoning, and kabbalistic thought.8 For Satanow, this ‘art of combination’ signified a decisive step towards the new conditions of modernity and the Jewish entrance into it. Like many other writers of this period, Satanow displayed a profound pedagogical interest in attracting a broad audience.9 This interest not only established the intellectual basis for his grammar and schoolbooks, but also shaped his commentaries10 and his treatises on ethics, literature, and Kabbalah.11 Therefore, writing on the cusp of modernity, Satanow does not present a case study for Katz’s famous thesis of the ‘crisis’ and discontinuity at the rise of the Jewish Enlightenment.12 An analysis of his unique combination of literary and intellectual corpora from various periods and backgrounds gives us an opportunity to gain a more nuanced picture of European Jewish intellectual history and to challenge grand narratives of scholarship such as those of assimilation, secularization, and crisis. An understanding of the deep impact of German philosophy and natural science on Satanow’s thought not only provides insight into his relationship with the majority culture and his Eastern European background, but also shows how his concept of modernity seeped in via complex networks.13 8 9 10 11 12 13 modernity, see Shmuel Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). See my habilitation thesis: Elke Morlok, Kabbala und Haskala—Isaak ben Moshe Halevi Satanow (1732–1804) (Habilitation thesis, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, 2017). On educational reform and social ideals during the Haskalah, compare Britta L. Behm et al. (eds.), Jüdische Erziehung und aufklärerische Schulreform. Analysen zum späten 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert (Münster: Waxmann, 2002); Uta Lohmann and Ingrid Lohmann (eds.), „Lerne Vernunft!“ Jüdische Erziehungsprogramme zwischen Tradition und Modernisierung. Quellentexte aus der Zeit der Haskala, 1760–1811 (Münster: Waxmann, 2005). Irene Zwiep, “From Perush to Be’ur: Authenticity and Authority in Eighteenth-Century Jewish Interpretation,” in Studies in Hebrew Language and Jewish Culture, eds. Martin F. J. Baasten and Reinier Munk (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 257–269. Morlok, Kabbala und Haskala, chap. 5. Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1957/1958) [Hebrew]; English translation by Bernard Dov (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000). Morlok, Kabbala und Haskala, chap. 4 and 5. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 304 Morlok Isaac ben Moshe Halevi was born in 1732 in Satanow, Podolia,14 one of the centers of the Frankist movement.15 In 1756, the tensions between the Frankist movement and the rabbinic authorities culminated in the ḥerem [ban] on the Frankists being issued in Brody.16 We know hardly anything about Satanow’s time in Podolia except that he was a salesman with connections to Frankfurt (Oder) and other cities.17 According to Nehama Retzler-Bersohn (who based her suggestion on Moses Mendelssohn Frankfurter’s Pnei Tevel [Amsterdam, 1872]),18 he settled in Berlin in 1771 or 1772 for professional and educational reasons. He nevertheless retained a lifelong connection to his homeland and its traditions,19 as he constantly commuted between these culturally and religiously very different areas of Western and Eastern Europe throughout his entire lifetime, for both economic and intellectual reasons. The misapprehension that Satanow moved to Berlin in 1771 has recently been corrected by Adam Shear, who argues that according to the testimony of Joseph ben Meir Teomim (1727–1792), Satanow must have already arrived 14 15 16 17 18 19 Isaac was the son of Moses Halevi, as we may conclude from the list published by Shmuel Yoseph Fuenn, Knesset Israel (Warsaw: Sacks & Zuckerman, 1886), 643, and from material in the Czartoryski archives in Warsaw: Biblioteka Czartoryskich Krakow 8562 Ew 177, transcript from the year 1741, last page (unpaginated). On this phenomenon, see Pawel Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755–1816 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011); Gershon D. Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century. A Genealogy of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 153–159, especially 156. Hundert is among the first scholars to propose a close relationship between Jewish and Christian spiritual awakening in the eighteenth century; namely, between Hasidism and Pietism (ibid., chap. 8). See also Bernard Dov Weinryb, The Jews of Poland: A Social and Economic History of the Jewish Community in Poland from 1100–1800 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1972), 236–261. A testimony of the trials of adherents to Jacob Frank (1726–1791) that took place in Satanow can also be found in the works of Isaac Bashevis Singer, see Chone Shmeruk, “The Frankist Novels of Isaac Bashevis Singer,” in Studies in Contemporary Jewry, vol. 12, Literary Strategies: Jewish Texts and Contexts, ed. Ezra Mendelsohn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 116–128. Jacob Emden (1697– 1776) reports on these trials in his Sefer Shimmush (Altona: Defuse Emden, 1762), 5a–7a. For the exact wording of the ban, see Maciejko, Mixed Multitude, 79. See Retzler-Bersohn, Isaac Satanow, 7–9. On Satanow’s literary activities, see also Pelli, Yiṣḥaq Saṭnov. Moses Mendelssohn (Frankfurter), Pnei Tevel (Amsterdam: Defuse ha-aḥim Levisson, 1872), 251. Retzler-Bersohn, Isaac Satanow, 3; see also Alexander Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn. A Biographical Study (Oxford: Littmann Library of Jewish Civilization, 2011), 351–354. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 Isaac Satanow (1732–1804) on Moral and Intellectual Perfection 305 in Berlin by the late 1760s.20 In the haskamah [approbation] to Satanow’s edition of Judah Halevi’s Kuzari (Berlin, 1795), Teomim writes that the latter was already held in high esteem among the maskilim in 1772. We should therefore infer from this fact that Satanow had arrived in Berlin before 1772. Teomim further states in this haskamah that he and Satanow had studied the Kuzari and Maimonides’s Moreh ha-Nevukhim [Guide of the Perplexed] together in the beit midrash of Daniel Itzig. Satanow had first rented a printing press from Mordecai Lentzburg in 1770 and had then lived off his savings. Being left with no money, he had had to search for wealthy Jewish patrons, whom he had finally found with the help of David Friedländer (1750–1834), the son-in-law of one of the wealthiest financiers in Berlin, Daniel Itzig (1723–1799). In the introduction to his 1802 work Megillat Ḥasidim, Satanow himself records that he had come to Berlin forty years previously; that is in 1762. However, that date should be considered symbolic rather than factual.21 The well-documented mobility of early maskilim like Satanow led to a unique interaction between various cultural and religious corpora in both written and oral traditions from East and West alike.22 Like his contemporary Israel Zamosc (1700–1772),23 Satanow often traveled between the Eastern and Western parts of Europe in order to publish and collect data for his studies alongside his activities as a salesman. Between 1780 and 1784 he made several journeys to Podolia, where he was involved in printing kabbalistic books such as Isaac Luria’s Eṣ Ḥayyim, the first edition of which was published in Koretz 20 21 22 23 Adam Shear, The Kuzari and the Shaping of Jewish Identity, 1167–1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 226–227; Ḥayyim Dov Baer Friedberg, History of Hebrew Typography in Poland from the Beginning of the Year 1534 and its Development up to our Days (Tel Aviv: Defus Gutenberg, 1950), 95 [Hebrew]. Joseph Klausner, Historiah shel ha-sifrut ha-‘ivrit ha-ḥadashah (Jerusalem: Ahiasaf, 1960), vol. 1, 165n2. On the mobility of maskilim, see David Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry. A New Cultural History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 41–55, 198–206. On Israel Zamosc, see Gad Freudenthal, “Hebrew Medieval Science in Zamosc, ca. 1730: The Early Years of Rabbi Israel ben Moses Halevi of Zamosc,” in Sepharad in Ashkenaz. Medieval Learning and Eighteenth-Century Enlightened Jewish Discourse, eds. Resianne Fontaine et al. (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2007), 25–67; idem, “Jewish Traditionalism and Early Modern Science: Rabbi Israel Zamosc’s Dialectic of Enlightenment (Berlin 1744),” in Thinking Impossibilities. The Intellectual Legacy of Amos Funkenstein, eds. Robert S. Westman and David Biale (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 63–96; Yehuda Friedlander, Hebrew Satire in Europe, vol. 2, The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1989), 9–110 [Hebrew]. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 306 Morlok in 1782.24 Together with Anton Krüger (c. 1705–1779), a salesman from the textile industry with a printing press in Nowydwor (Neuhof) near Warsaw who was in close communication with the Polish government,25 Satanow printed the manuscripts under the patronage of Prince Joseph Klemenz Czartoryski (1740–1810), then magnate of Koretz and Pantler of Lithuania. This went against the prohibition on publishing Lurianic books, but unlike in Austria-Hungary, in those days there was no censorship in Lithuania.26 In 1784, Satanow became the director of the newly established printing press of the Jüdische Freischule in Berlin that had been founded by the Ḥevrat Ḥinnukh Ne‘arim [Society for the Education of the Youth].27 He remained the manager of that press (the Orientalische Buchdruckerey [Oriental Printing Press]),28 until 1788 and then again between 1794 and 1799.29 Through it, he published many of his own books and articles, ranging from grammars to studies of the Haskalah and kabbalistic works. In the 1790s, the printing house was mainly occupied with books written by its manager; more than one-fourth of all the books in print were either penned or edited by Satanow.30 For Satanow, 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 The date of 1784, which Scholem mentions, may also be an erratum. It was corrected to 1782 by Gerold Necker, as this is the date that appears on the front page of Eṣ Ḥayyim. Gerold Necker, Einführung in die lurianische Kabbala (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2008), 31, 170, 175. On Krüger, see Emanuel Ringelblum, “Johann Anton Krieger, der Neuhofer Drucker von hebräischen Sefarim. Seine Tätigkeit in den Jahren 1781–1795,” YIVO-Bletter 7 (1934): 88– 109 [Yiddish]. It was only in 1798 that a censor’s office was established in Vilna, when a man from Leipzig named Karl Tiele was appointed censor for Hebrew books. It started operating in 1800. Before this, Hebrew books had to be sent to Riga for approval. Compare Raphael Mahler, “The Austrian Censorship of Hebrew Books,” in idem, Hasidism and Jewish Enlightenment: Their Confrontation in Galicia and Poland in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, trans. E. Orenstein (New York: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1985), 105–119. For further details on this maskilic institution in Berlin, see the detailed study by Uta Lohmann, Chevrat Chinuch Nearim—The Berlin Jüdische Freischule between Maskilic Aims, State Requirements and Bourgeois Demands (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2006); Ingrid Lohmann (ed.), Chevrat Chinuch Nearim. Die jüdische Freischule in Berlin (1778–1825) im Umfeld preußischer Bildungspolitik und jüdischer Kultusreform. Eine Quellensammlung, 2 vols. (Münster: Waxmann, 2001). Feiner, Jewish Enlightenment, 322–327, 354. On this important organ of the Berlin Haskalah, see Uta Lohmann, “‘Sustenance for the Learned Soul’: The History of the Oriental Printing Press at the Publishing House of the Jewish Free School in Berlin,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 51 (2006): 11–40. During the years of its existence, the printing house published 226 books, including calendars; Josef Meisl, “Berliner Jüdische Kalender,” Soncino Blätter 2 (1927): 41–54. Feiner, Jewish Enlightenment, 324. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 Isaac Satanow (1732–1804) on Moral and Intellectual Perfection 307 business and literary pursuits were always intertwined—or, as Shmuel Feiner put it: “In the maskilic republic, there was no other man so obsessed with the world of books, writing, and printing as he was.”31 Most of his articles were published in ha-Me’assef [The Collector],32 the most important journal of the maskilic movement in Berlin. Satanow died on 24 December 1804 in his flat above the printing press in Jeckeholz in Berlin, and he was buried in the Jewish cemetery on the Grosse Hamburger Strasse in Berlin.33 In Satanow’s writings, musar topics are not only to be regarded as part of an entire set of daily practices, but also as part of the ‘inner life’ of the individual and his or her way to bliss.34 The religious ideal of musar literature was transformed into a universal secular ideal: the moral individual. However, maskilic musar writers such as Satanow, Wessely, Mendel Breslau, and others did not abandon religious tradition and faith. Their concept of the middot was broad enough to include commitment to the Torah and the miṣwot. The innovative aspect was the extension of the obligations to external spheres—the state, its ruler, the citizens of the state, and man as a human being. In this view, the Jews as citizens and loyal subjects of the modern absolutist state would contribute to the benefit of the political collective. Their unique culture would be expanded and enriched in the encounter with ‘the sciences,’ and it was hoped that the fusion of their identities as human beings, citizens, and Jews would bring about the yearned-for normalization. The Jews would be rehabilitated 31 32 33 34 Ibid., 245. For further details, see Andreas Kennecke, “Hame’assef. Die erste moderne Zeitschrift der Juden in Deutschland,” Das Achtzehnte Jahrhundert 23(2) (1999): 176–199; and the volumes on the journals of the Haskalah published by Moshe Pelli at Magnes Press, especially The Gate to Haskalah. An Annotated Index to Hame’asef, the First Hebrew Journal (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2000) [Hebrew]. For details, see Nathanja Hüttenmeister and Christiane E. Müller, Umstrittene Räume: Jüdische Friedhöfe in Berlin (Berlin: Metropol, 2005), 57–59. The ideal maskil, who observes nature and ponders the great wonder and beauty of divine creation, is also the subject of further development in the Hebrew periodical Kohelet Musar [The Preacher], published in Berlin in the 1750s by the young Moses Mendelssohn and his friend Tobias Bock; see Feiner, Jewish Enlightenment, 24, 45–47, 68–69. However, the authorship of this magazine and its possible co-author have been disputed in recent scholarship: see Moses Mendelssohn’s Hebrew Writings, trans. E. Breuer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 23. The journal preached morality in a literary form that was popular in the early Enlightenment: it imparted some of Christian Wolff’s and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s philosophical ideas to Jews and was an initial conscious attempt to suggest the writer as an alternative to the traditional preacher, and to depict him as a spiritual figure providing guidance and modeling proper behavior to the Jewish public. Satanow saw himself as the ideal incarnation of such a preaching writer. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 308 Morlok and revitalized, emancipated from their negative image in the eyes of nonJews, and the Jewish nation would restore its lost honor and be accepted into the family of enlightened nations.35 David Sorkin has shown that Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) promoted a broad, exoteric curriculum that includes the study of philosophy, biblical exegesis, the Hebrew language, and rabbinical literature, which rejects ‘the search for ultimate truths or secret wisdom.’36 This fitted perfectly into the religious enlightenment of the eighteenth century with its claim that reason could establish the truths of natural religion and its cultivation of intellectual as well as aesthetic perfection. It considered the practice of universal ethics to be the central aim of religion and incorporated the egalitarian impulse that eschews esotericism in the belief that all human beings are capable of knowing metaphysical truths.37 In this sense, Isaac Euchel (1756–1804), the “architect of the Haskala,”38 drew a distinction between philosophische and theologische Moral [philosophical and theological morals]. The latter provides a set of generally accepted moral principles, whereas the former only enables one to elaborate on the details. It was suggested that the Jewish educator should first teach philosophical morals and only thereafter return to religious texts to show that they are consistent with philosophical morals. The aim was to reach philosophical morals and to judge theological morals by philosophical ones.39 Perfection was considered the principle [av] of wisdom [ḥokhmah]. This principle had to be explored in its varieties in order to gain knowledge about the subject of each science. The principle of morals is neither pleasure nor ‘only the good of the soul and the improvement of the human spirit’ as they isolate the human being from society. The central argument in Euchel’s foreword to Me’assef 4 (1787) states that perfection is the principle of morals [ha-shlemut avi ha-musar]. God has created humans to be perfect with regard to their souls and imperfect with regard to their bodies. It is a human being’s duty to strive for conformity of body and soul and to use the instruments (the senses and reason) that the divine creator has given in order to achieve this.40 Therefore, the Jews have to reach three levels on their 35 36 37 38 39 40 Feiner, Jewish Enlightenment, 92–94. David Sorkin, Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), xxii. Ibid., xx–xxii. Andreas Kennecke, Isaac Euchel – Architekt der Haskala (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2007), 370–377. Isaac Euchel, “Introduction,” Me’assef 4 (1787): 1–12, dated October 17, 1787 [Hebrew]. Kennecke, Isaac Euchel, 373–374; compare Mendelssohn’s statements in Jerusalem and other treatises on the social condition of perfectibility, n. 43 below. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 Isaac Satanow (1732–1804) on Moral and Intellectual Perfection 309 path to perfection: a) the Torah (originating in divine revelation and containing all the relevant principles, which the sciences have to extract from it); b) wisdom/science (ḥokhmah, in the sense of the totality of knowledge accumulated by humankind), and c) rational morals (musar, which have been elevated through reason to philosophical morals). Only the science of musar, after a long period of study, can enable one to reach the highest level of perfection. However, reaching that aim is related to eternal strife. As a consequence, the maskilim envisaged three identities: the Jew, the human being, and the citizen. Jewish culture should be augmented in the essential encounter with the ‘sciences,’ accompanied by the revival of the Hebrew language and its literature and poetry and by the methodical approach to the ‘Torah of God’ to be adopted in the new schools.41 The natural sciences were expected to arouse in the Jew a sense of “majesty of the Lord, His power and greatness, so that the glory of the Lord will grow in his heart and he will fear Him.”42 This approach to happiness as the individual’s religious goal resembles that of Mendelssohn. According to Mendelssohn, God’s goodness is the basis for the belief that the aim of true religion is individual perfection and happiness.43 Simultaneously, Mendelssohn conceives Jewish ‘chosenness’ not as innate superiority, but as a responsibility to promote the perfection of society as a whole. By this, Mendelssohn presents the practice of Judaism as being compatible with living in a diverse, enlightened society.44 In the twentieth century, Israeli scholars studied the development of musar literature from the tenth to the twelfth centuries,45 and the umbrella term sifrut ha-musar was divided into either three sub-genres (Tishby: regimen vitae, ethical wills, and homiletic literature)46 or four historio-geographic stages,47 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 Feiner, Jewish Enlightenment, 92–93; see Euchel, “Introduction.” Naphtali Herz Wessely, Divrei Shalom we-Emet (Berlin: Jüdische Freyschule, 1782–1785), 17–21, especially 17–18. Gottlieb, Faith and Freedom, 10. According to Uta Lohmann, Mendelssohn’s and Friedländer’s idea of perfectibility via habitualization places a strong emphasis on social interaction. See Uta Lohmann, Haskala und allgemeine Menschenbildung: David Friedländer und Wilhelm von Humboldt im Gespräch: Zur Wechselwirkung zwischen jüdischer Aufklärung und neuhumanistischer Bildungstheorie (Münster: Waxmann, 2020), 58–67, 105, 133, 221, 552. Gottlieb, Faith and Freedom, 11. Isaiah Tishby and Joseph Dan, Hebrew Ethical Literature – Selected Texts with Introduction, Notes and Commentary: 10th – 12th Centuries (Jerusalem: Newman, 1970) [Hebrew]. Ibid., 12–13. Joseph Dan, Jewish Mysticism and Jewish Ethics (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986), 15–17; see Koch, Human Self-Perfection, 15–21. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 310 Morlok the last of which is defined as mystical or kabbalistic ethics—an amalgamation of an ethical exoteric tradition and a mystical-esoteric one.48 According to Dan,49 ‘spirituality’ embraces the character of the genre, but it is not intended to teach concrete social norms.50 However, Satanow and other writers of this period employ the term ‘spirituality’ and adopt this period’s typical twofold task of attaining moral and intellectual perfection by harmonizing the inner and the outer, the physical and the spiritual condition of man.51 Satanow inserts kabbalistic motifs into both pursuits of perfection as an overall narrative and matrix. The maskilim intended to combine the three identities of the life of the Jewish individual (Jew, human, citizen) and that of the entire Jewish society in order to produce a complete whole.52 With this move, Satanow transferred Mendelssohn’s adaptation of the Wolffian idea of providence53 and his interpretation of the imperative to seek perfection by supplementing the law of nature by knowledge of the truths of religion into a kabbalistic framework.54 The pursuit of moral perfection of the latter’s Sefer ha-Middot [Book of Ethics] (Berlin, 1784)55 completes the pursuit of intellectual perfection as demonstrated in his Imrei Binah [Words of Understanding] (Berlin, 1783). This 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 Ibid., 18–19. Tishby and Dan, Hebrew Ethical Literature, 88. Koch points out that Dan uses the term ‘Hebrew ethical literature,’ although he argues that the term musar should not be associated with ethics; see Koch, Human Self-Perfection, 19– 20, especially n81. He suggests redefining musar as a tradition that is essentially mysticalspiritual, which may include philosophical, rabbinic, and kabbalistic ideas with regard to ethical behavior (ibid.). Allan Arkush, Moses Mendelssohn and the Enlightenment (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 99–131. Feiner, Jewish Enlightenment, 93. On providence in Maimonidean thought, which served as a model for Mendelssohn, see Gottlieb, Faith and Freedom, 17. It is important to note that according to Maimonides’s medieval commentators Efodi and Shem Tov, in this passage, human beings are not guided to perfection through God’s intervention in nature, but only through the observance of the divine law, which facilitates the acquisition of intellectual perfection; see ibid., 18. Mendelssohn notes that ‘modern metaphysics’ is able to demonstrate key doctrines of natural religion including the existence of the divine, individual divine providence, creation, the immortality of the soul, and the obligatory nature of ethics; see Gottlieb, Faith and Freedom, 18. Satanow published three volumes with this title: two parts in 1790, which are a paraphrasing translation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and his own composition in 1784, with which he won the tender of the Jüdische Freyschule in Berlin. In the introduction, Satanow declares that this book is a continuation of his Imrei Binah of the same year and also of his 1775 Sefer ha-Ḥizzayon [Book of Vision]. For a complete list of Satanow’s real and alleged writings, see Morlok, Kabbala und Haskala, 34–41. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 Isaac Satanow (1732–1804) on Moral and Intellectual Perfection 311 twofold search is expressed by the metaphor of the twin sisters of Kabbalah and critical (scientific) investigation [ḥaqirah].56 2 Kabbalah and Critical (Scientific) Investigation as Twin Sisters As mentioned earlier, Satanow was among those who presented kabbalistic ideas in Mendelssohn’s circle in Berlin.57 Mendelssohn described Kabbalah as oriental philosophy,58 and similarly, Satanow equated ‘kabbalistic metaphysics’ with “oriental philosophy, accommodated to the notions of our era” on the front page of his work Imrei Binah.59 For Satanow, the pertinent question was not so much whether such oriental elements were found in Western or Eastern cultures,60 but rather their role and function in the search for universal wisdom. For both Satanow and his contemporary Salomon Maimon (1753–1800),61 oriental philosophy—that is, the science of Kabbalah—was closely connected to the idea that the secrets of nature were concealed within mystical knowledge, 56 57 58 59 60 61 On Satanow’s view of ethical perfection in comparison to Mendelssohn, David Friedländer, and Wessely, see Uta Lohmann, “2.6 Sittenlehren: Ethisches Wissen ‘nach jüdischen Grundsätzen’” and “2.7 Präferenz und Modernisierung der traditionellen musar-Literatur,” in eadem, Haskala, 58–73. For a comparison between Mendelssohn, Maimonides, and Spinoza, see Gottlieb, Faith and Freedom, 34–58. See Rivka Horwitz, “Kabbalah in the Writings of Mendelssohn and the Berlin Circle of Maskilim,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 45 (2000): 3–24. On the topic of the twin sisters, see also Elke Morlok, “Blurred Lines: Methodology and Kabbalistic Ideas Within the Berlin Haskalah,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 40 (2018): 33–59, especially 42–54. According to the testimony of Friedrich Nicolai, Mendelssohn’s close friend: “And then I heard from Mendelssohn his excellent ideas concerning the Kabbalistic philosophy of the Hebrews. He explained that the strange appearance and obscurity of the propositions of this oriental philosophy originated in the poverty of the Hebrew language in expressing philosophical concepts, combined with the use of vulgar imagery so characteristic of uncultivated languages.” See Gottlieb, Faith and Freedom, 94, with reference to Hermann Meyer, Moses Mendelssohn-Bibliographie: mit einigen Ergänzungen zur Geistesgeschichte des ausgehenden 18. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967), 113; Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn, 866n8. “Metaphysica cabbalistica sive philosophia orientalis, ad notiones nostri aevi accommodata.” On the reference to Kabbalists as ‘oriental philosophers’ echoing the label of ‘philosophia orientalis antiqua’ on the title page of Imrei Binah, see Moshe Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic (New York: State University of New York Press, 1995), 81n52. On this “up-and-coming kabbalist, temporary philosopher and future drunkard,” see Yitzhak Melamed, “Salomon Maimon and the Rise of Spinozism in German Idealism,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 42(1) (2004): 67–96. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 312 Morlok which must be raised from a literary to a rational level. For Satanow—in contrast to Mendelssohn, for whom the Torah does not teach natural science—the Torah contains the arcane wisdom of natural phenomena, which was already known to the wise of Israel. Such wisdom needs to be ‘rationalized’ and its ‘spiritual secrets’ must be uncovered. Spirituality is combined with the ideal ‘man of science’ reading the book of nature, the best way of learning to know God. The one who yearns to learn the secrets of nature is the human man who rises above all creatures: the kabbalist.62 The kabbalists are the only ones to reveal the metaphysical secrets of nature, its form without matter. Maimon expressed this idea in the following statement in his autobiography: Not satisfied with this surface-level knowledge of the Kabbalah, I wanted to penetrate into its spirit. Since I understood that this science, if it were worthy of the name, should contain nothing other than the secrets of nature—however cloaked in fables and allegories—I tried to uncover these secrets, and thereby deepen my knowledge to the level of rational knowledge. Back then, however, I could achieve this knowledge only in a very partial way, because I had very little idea about what science as such actually was. Nevertheless, by thinking things through on my own, I was able to come up with many ideas about how this science works. And so, for instance, I was quickly able to explain the first principle from which practitioners of Kabbalistic science commonly proceed.63 According to his testimony, Maimon was able to penetrate into the depths of kabbalistic knowledge in an autodidactic way and deduce further concepts from the ideas with which he was acquainted. Similarly, Satanow was inclined to ‘cipher’ ancient traditions as the true core of Jewish thought, pretending to have found ancient documents of wisdom (which he had actually composed himself). He proclaimed these concepts as the arcana of Jewish tradition and 62 63 See Feiner, Jewish Enlightenment, 268. “The force of the inventor […] will induce him to seek to know everything that happens under the sun and to discover the wonders and secrets of Nature […] and through the efforts and diligence of that force […] the benefits to the existence and glorification of the human race will greatly multiply” (Shimon Baraz, “Ḥaviv adam she-nivra be-ṣelem,” Me’assef 5 [1789]: 171). Yitzhak Y. Melamed and Abraham P. Socher, The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon: The Complete Translation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 57. See also the afterword in the same volume by Gideon Freudenthal, ibid., 245–261; and Moshe Idel, “On Salomon Maimon and Kabbalah,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 28 (2012): 67–105. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 Isaac Satanow (1732–1804) on Moral and Intellectual Perfection 313 the true secrets of nature. Many examples of such processes are found in his (partly faked) approbations.64 Like Maimon, Satanow followed Maimonides in the opinion that the secrets of Kabbalah were not only mentioned in the Torah, but were secrets of nature hidden in fables and allegories.65 Therefore, Satanow created his own fables and allegories, which had to be raised to the level of reason by his readers in their pursuit of intellectual perfection. These were part of his hermeneutic system for encouraging his readers to achieve self-perfection and his aim to reform Jewish education. With the help of kabbalistic paradigms, the Jewish religion and culture was to be recreated in accordance with both traditional Jewish and modern scientific and philosophical concepts.66 Satanow saw in kabbalistic material the potential to harmonize between the Jewish tradition, philosophy, and contemporary sciences. He applied those paradigms in order to show the common origin of all universal knowledge, which is expressed in its highest form in kabbalistic secrets, but is also detectable in natural sciences.67 In several places, Satanow describes twin sisters representing either ḥaqirah [critical investigation, science] and Kabbalah (as on the front page of Imrei Binah, see Fig. 1) or ḥokhmah [wisdom] and yir’ah [fear].68 The main part of 64 65 66 67 68 Morlok, Kabbala und Haskala, 132–137, 165–169; Avinoam Stillmann, Living Leaves: Printing Kabbalah at Korets, 1778–1786 (MA thesis, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Be’er Sheva, 2019), 63–104, especially 87–99 on Satanow. Compare also Maimon’s Ḥesheq Shlomo, Ms. Berlin, 142; Gideon Freudenthal, “Salomon Maimon: The Maimonides of Enlightenment?,” in Moses Maimonides (1138–1204). His Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Wirkungsgeschichte in Different Cultural Contexts, eds. Görge K. Hasselhoff and Ottfried Fraisse (Würzburg: Ergon, 2004), 347–362. On a similar hermeneutic regarding the creation of a circle of initiated maskilic readers in Maimon, see Gideon Freudenthal, “Salomon Maimon: Philosophizing in Commentaries,” Da‘at 53 (2004): 125–160 [Hebrew]. For additional information on Satanow and Kabbalah, see Morlok, Kabbala und Haskala. For more details on this idea, see Morlok, Kabbala und Haskala, chap. 3. Although Satanow repeatedly claims that both contain the same level of truth, he tends to put kabbalistic secrets above those of nature, as the former refer to the separate intellects before creation. Isaac Satanow, Mishlei Asaf, vol. 1 (Berlin: Jüdische Freyschule, 1789), 12a; vol. 2 (Berlin: Jüdische Freyschule, 1791), 69a. Whether there is an exact correspondence between investigation and wisdom and Kabbalah and fear in this context is not explained. This metaphor should also be compared to David Friedländer’s twin sisters of “truth and beauty” [Wahrheit und Schönheit]. Similarly, in 1798, when Satanow published a new edition of the Hebrew prayer book (which was originally published in 1786), he titled it Te’omei Ṣeviyah, following Friedländer’s German translation of Song of Songs 7:4 as “Zwillingspaar der Rehmutter,” metaphorically indicating a congruence and equality between the original and the translation. In a similar way, Mendelssohn modernizes and completes the teachings of Socrates and is regarded as his twin brother by some of his followers. See Uta Lohmann, “Socrates und Mendelssohn—Zur Bedeutung der Zwillingsmetapher im European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 314 Morlok figure 1 Front page of Imrei Binah, Berlin 1783 Imrei Binah, which he claims to have found in an anonymous manuscript,69 describes a reconciliation and synthesis between Kabbalah and philosophy/ natural sciences. Here, Maimonides and Luria are treated as giving analogous teachings, with both stressing the importance of the senses and physical experience in order to understand metaphysical concepts.70 Satanow’s 1783 book Imrei Binah is written in the literary form of a dialogue, which underwent a revival during the Haskalah like its Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew forerunners. This form enables an author to present at least two different, often conflicting opinions. Similar to Leone Ebreo’s (1465–1521) Dialoghi d’Amore, the reader is exposed as having the possibility to decide for himself which arguments he will accept and which he will reject.71 In fact, 69 70 71 Bildungskonzept von David Friedländer und Jeremias Heinemann,” in Zwischen Ideal und Ambivalenz. Geschwisterbeziehungen in ihren soziokulturellen Kontexten, eds. Ulrike Schneider et al. (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2015), 297–298. On Satanow’s specific mode of hiding his own authorship and claiming to have found ancient authoritative documents, see Pelli, Yiṣḥaq Saṭnov. See also Isaac Satanow, Zohar Tinyana (Berlin: Jüdische Freyschule, 1783). See Aaron Hughes, The Art of Dialogue in Jewish Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 5–8 and 107–137 on Ebreo (Juda Abravanel). European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 Isaac Satanow (1732–1804) on Moral and Intellectual Perfection 315 Satanow placed himself in the position of the Great Eagle, guiding the Jewish public through the perplexities of the early modern era.72 In Imrei Binah, he constructs an exemplary and educational dialogue for his own generation, guiding his fellow Jews through the manifold conflicts of late eighteenthcentury thought. Like in Socrates’s—and Mendelssohn’s—dialogues, the protagonist (and the reader) are to be led to the recognition of eternal truths by reflecting on opposing opinions. In various passages, Satanow describes a harmonious combination of scientific ideas and certain esoteric notions by which the readers have to elevate their thought to a higher level, moving from one sister to the other.73 This recalls Jan Assmann’s famous religio duplex in early modernity and the dual nature of the individual’s religion: belonging both to one’s traditional faith and to a universal ‘religion of humanity.’74 Satanow had not only mastered the vast Jewish source material from various epochs and genres (Kabbalah, philosophy, commentary, halakhic literature); he also proved to be familiar with contemporary scientific discoveries and their description in the works of Johann Gottlob Krüger (1715–1759),75 72 73 74 75 This epithet was applied to Maimonides by later scholars according to Ezra 17:3. On the names of Maimonides, see Joel L. Kraemer, Maimonides. The Life and World of One of the Civilization’s Greatest Minds (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 11–13; on Maimonides and esoteric Jewish lore, see also Moshe Idel, “Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed and Kabbalah,” Jewish History 18(2–3) (2004): 197–226; Elliot Wolfson, “Beneath the Wings of the Great Eagle: Maimonides and Thirteenth Century Kabbalah,” in Hasselhoff and Fraisse, Moses Maimonides, 209–237. On Maimonides in the Haskalah, see Irene Zwiep, “From Moses to Moses …? Manifestations of Maimonides in the Early Jewish Enlightenment,” in ibid., 323–336; see also Carlos Fraenkel, “Maimonides, Spinoza, Salomon Maimon and the Completion of the Copernican Revolution in Philosophy,” in Sepharad in Ashkenaz. Medieval Knowledge and Eighteenth-Century Enlightened Discourse, eds. Resianne Fontaine et al. (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2007), 193–220; Gideon Freudenthal, “The Philosophical Mysticism of Maimonides and Maimon,” in Maimonides and His Heritage, eds. Idit Dobbs-Weinstein et al. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009), 113–152. For example, Satanow, Imrei Binah, 29ab, on the brain, imagination, and thought as an archetypical sign/impression [typos] on the humid surface of the brain. See Elke Morlok, “Innovation via Combination? The Harmonious Synthesis of Mechanical and Non Mechanical Concepts in Isaac Satanow’s Imrei Binah (1783),” in The Role of Jewish Mysticism in Early Modern Philosophy and Science: Kabbalah, “Atheism” and Non Mechanical Philosophies of Nature in the 17th–18th Centuries, ed. Cristina Ciucu (Leiden: Brill, 2020 forthcoming), where Satanow’s exact German sources are identified. Further examples may be found in Satanow’s edition of Halevi’s Kuzari; see Shear, The Kuzari, index “Satanow.” Jan Assmann, Religio Duplex. Ägyptische Mysterien und Europäische Aufklärung (Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2010). Johann Gottlob Krüger, Naturlehre nebst Kupfern und vollständigem Register (Halle: Hemmerde, 1740). On Satanow’s intense use of Krüger’s textbook see Morlok, “Innovation via Combination?” European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 316 Morlok Michael Friedrich Leistikow’s presentation of Wolff’s physics,76 and Leonhard Euler’s Lettres à une princesse d’Allemagne sur divers sujets de physique et de philosophie.77 Leonhard Euler (1707–1783), a student of Johann Bernoulli, was one of the most famous mathematicians, physicians, astronomers, geographers, logicians, and engineers of the eighteenth century. He taught at the Berlin Academy after being offered the post by Frederick the Great of Prussia. He was also the private tutor of Friedericke Charlotte of Brandenburg-Schwedt, Princess of Anhalt-Dessau and Frederick’s niece. In the early 1760s, he wrote more than 200 letters to her and her younger sister Louise, which were later compiled into a best-selling volume entitled Letters of Euler to a German Princess, on Different Subjects in Physics and Philosophy originally written in French. The first two volumes appeared in print in St. Petersburg in 1768, where Euler had worked at the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences from 1727 to 1741. The third volume went to press in 1772. As early as 1769, the first two parts of the text were translated into German and printed in Leipzig under the title Briefe an eine deutsche Prinzessin über verschiedene Gegenstände aus der Physik und Philosophie. The third part appeared in St. Petersburg, Riga, and Leipzig in 1773. Satanow was intimately familiar with Euler’s description of the camera obscura and Krüger’s version of it. According to Satanow, kabbalistic knowledge had to be raised to a more rational—that is, scientific—level derived from such scientific treatises. As part of this process, which was considered an intellectual journey towards human perfection, Satanow valued secular studies and the study of Greek lore in order to facilitate the comprehension of the Torah and the esoteric secrets hidden in the text.78 For him, rational investigation and kabbalistic knowledge could never be rivals, as they both testified to the eternal truth, albeit on a different level of understanding. We might also speak of a (con)textualization of nature, an important step in man’s epistemic ascent, by decoding the naturalistic worlds according to a kabbalistic key, and vice versa. This is also expressed in Satanow’s Zemirot Assaf: “Sensual wisdom 76 77 78 Michael Friedrich Leistikow, Auszug der Versuche Herrn Christian Wolffens (Halle: Renger, 1738). Leonhard Euler, Briefe an eine deutsche Prinzessin: Über verschiedene Gegenstände aus der Physik und Philosophie (Leipzig: Junius, 1773/1774); see Morlok, Kabbala und Haskala, 197–219; Tal Kogman, “Intercultural Contacts in Maskilic Texts about Sciences,” in The Varieties of Haskalah, eds. Shmuel Feiner and Israel Bartal (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005), 29–42 [Hebrew]; eadem, The Maskilim in the Sciences: Jewish Scientific Education in the German-Speaking Sphere in Modern Times (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2013), 95–115 [Hebrew]. Satanow, Imrei Binah, 14a. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 Isaac Satanow (1732–1804) on Moral and Intellectual Perfection 317 should serve as an example of wisdom in the intellectual world, which is the origin of our world, the sensual one.”79 For Satanow, kabbalistic concepts serve an important function in one’s struggle for perfectibility. They serve as a means of achieving intellectual perfection, but they also enable one to conduct this in a social context and reach moral perfection. Kabbalistic knowledge serves as the principle [av] for both Jewish and universal wisdom and combines both in its secrets. Universal wisdom regulates the Jews’ relationship to their non-Jewish neighbors and puts both paths to perfection into a broader social framework. 3 Twin Sisters as an Auto-didactic Means of Self-education The metaphor of the twin sisters might not only be referring to different forms of knowledge, but also to Satanow’s two books written in 1783–1784, Imrei Binah and Sefer ha-Middot, as complementing each other like twin sisters. One book intends to lead its readers to intellectual perfection (Imrei Binah), the other to moral perfection (Sefer ha-Middot).80 In the context of the proclaimed pursuit of happiness,81 in which human beings naturally seek what is good for them, self-education and finally selfperfection becomes a duty incumbent upon all. The law of nature demands that humans do what renders them and their condition more perfect, both with regard to the body and to the soul. Wolff claims: “Therefore, we have to undertake three kinds of actions for our own sake, the first being those that further perfection of our soul, the second those that further the perfection of the body, and the third those which further the perfection of our outer condition.”82 These actions correspond to three goods (of mind, body, and fortune/wealth) that we are obliged to seek. The duty to perfect our soul is divided into a duty to perfect our understanding and a duty to perfect our will. In part IV of Wolff’s 79 80 81 82 Isaac Satanow, Zemirot Asaf (Berlin: Jüdische Freyschule, 1793), chap. 5, commentary 6. On the metaphor of Socrates and Mendelssohn as twin sages and a symbol of a modern self-image during the Haskalah, see Lohmann, “Socrates und Mendelssohn,” 280–302. The metaphor of twins with regard to both different fields of knowledge and different people who are ‘one in spirit’ seems to have fascinated many authors of the Haskalah and their interpreters. Arkush, Moses Mendelssohn, 100–102. Christian Wolff, Vernünfftige Gedancken von der Menschen Thun und Lassen zur Beförderung ihrer Glückseligkeit, vol. 2 (1723; repr., Hildesheim: Olms, 1976), 224; see Arkush, Moses Mendelssohn, 100; on Wolff, see also Lars-Thade Ulrichs, Die andere Vernunft: Philosophie und Literatur zwischen Aufklärung und Romantik (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2011), 217–226. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 318 Morlok Vernünfftige Gedancken, the nature of the duties towards oneself is discussed in the context of one’s duties to others. Wolff asserts that one is obligated to strive to perfect not only one’s own condition, but that of one’s neighbors as well, as far as this is possible.83 Religious knowledge is part of the natural law, as knowledge of God is itself something commanded by the law of nature. As human beings are obligated to strive for as much knowledge as it is possible for them to attain, and since God is the most perfect of all things, “man is obligated to know God.”84 This doctrine was also adopted by the maskilim and expressed in various forms of Mendelssohn’s doctrine of perfection.85 Mendelssohn therefore regarded philosophy as an educational practice aiming at and leading to self-awareness. Through philosophy, human beings become aware of their duties in the world and act accordingly. In his treatise Phaedon oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (Berlin, 1767), Mendelssohn followed the ideas of Socrates as transmitted by his student Plato, which later led maskilim such as David Friedländer86 to metaphorically indicate a “geschwisterliche Beziehung der Gleichheit” [sisterly relationship of equality] between both authors. Mendelssohn’s claims that human beings were capable of attaining the truths of natural or rational religion by themselves alone (without divine revelation) and that the Jews would have a significant effect on the 83 84 85 86 Wolff, Vernünfftige Gedancken, vol. 2, 88f; compare the discussion of the disagreement regarding this view, Hanns-Martin Bachmann, Die naturrechtliche Staatslehre Christian Wolffs (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1977), 84–89; see also Moses Mendelssohn’s Abhandlung über die Evidenz (Berlin: Haude und Spener, 1764): “Mache deinen und deines Nebenmenschen inneren und äußeren Zustand, in gehöriger Proportion, so vollkommen als du kannst” (Jubiläumsausgabe, vol. 2: Schriften zur Philosophie und Ästhetik II, eds. Alexander Altmann et al. [Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1972], 317). Wolff, Vernünfftige Gedancken, vol. 3, 657; see Arkush, Moses Mendelssohn, 102. On the shift of Mendelssohn’s later philosophical perspective in comparison to his earlier views, see Gideon Freudenthal, No Religion without Idolatry. Mendelssohn’s Jewish Enlightenment (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), especially 50–58: “Truth and Morals; Philosophy and Politics.” “In conclusion: moral practice is more important and moral judgment is more reliable than metaphysical speculations. Note, however, that this is not a justification for sacrificing truth for the sake of morals or societal life. Truth and morals cannot get into conflict” (ibid., 53–54). Friedländer produced an abridged Hebrew version of Mendelssohn’s Phaedon, which was printed at the Oriental Printing Press in Berlin 1787 under the title ha-Nefesh. With this little booklet, he intended to satisfy the desire of the understanding human who is searching for the origin of humanity [Urspung der Menschlichkeit], as he writes in his introduction. Parts of this version had already been printed in 1784 as an appendix to Satanow’s Sefer ha-Middot. See also Uta Lohmann, “‘Dem Wahrheitsforscher zur Belehrung.’ Die Herausgabe von Moses Mendelssohns Ha-Nefesh (1787) und Phädon (1814–1821) durch David Friedländer: Kontexte, Adressaten, Intentionen,” Mendelssohn-Studien 19 (2015): 45–77. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 Isaac Satanow (1732–1804) on Moral and Intellectual Perfection 319 common good and universal human bliss were also addressed in Satanow’s fictional dialogue in Imrei Binah. In a typical dialogue of this period, especially for baroque musar literature, in Imrei Binah Satanow presents a debate between two partners, Noam and Yedaya, each of whom represents a different religious awareness or sensibility. Similar to the 1770 book Ṭov we-Yafeh [Good and Nice] by the Galician rabbi Judah Leib Margalioth published in Frankfurt (Oder), religious, philosophical, and traditional topics are discussed.87 Satanow also adds extra-religious knowledge and the natural science of his era such as Newton’s concepts of gravity, light, and magnetism. Yedaya represents a person who knows of the existence of God through inquiry, but also through the ways of tradition and the philosophers. It soon becomes clear that Satanow’s sympathy lies with the inquiring philosopher, who resembles the author’s opinion through his own experiences and quandaries as an early maskil, editor, author, and printer.88 In the beginning of the book, Noam, the second, questioning protagonist, puts forward the question of why kabbalistic wisdom needs to appear in the forms of riddles and poetry. Why do kabbalistic writers employ allegory and not speak openly about their secrets? This esotericism, Noam claims, leads to many—often misleading—interpretations, especially by those who do not know the correct cipher. Noam presents Kabbalah as esoteric wisdom, which is only revealed to a few initiated ones, but whose knowledge has universal significance. According to Rivka Horwitz’s interpretation of this passage, Kabbalah and philosophy are employed as twin sisters who have a single purpose, but who appear in different literary tools: Kabbalah speaks in riddles and allegory, whereas philosophy speaks clearly and to the point.89 In other words, as Maimon stated in his autobiography: Kabbalah is a scientific body of knowledge in which the signifier is gradually replaced by the signified in an ascending process of intellection.90 We should take a closer look at this distinction. What is the specific role of kabbalistic imagery in this passage? 87 88 89 90 Interestingly, in Margalioth’s book, one of the protagonists is also called Yedaya; see Feiner, Jewish Enlightenment, 58–59. A comparison with Naphtali Herz Wessely’s Divrei Shalom we-Emet seems necessary but cannot be undertaken within the framework of this article. Horwitz, “Kabbalah in the Circle,” 11. Ibid., 12, with reference to Salomon Maimon, Lebensgeschichte, ed. Jakob Fromer (München: Müller, 1911), 152–153; see also Moshe Idel, “Salomon Maimon and Kabbalah,” and Yitzhak Melamed, “‘Let the Law Cut Through the Mountain:’ Salomon Maimon, Moses Mendelssohn and Mme. Truth,” in “Höre die Wahrheit, wer sie auch spricht.” Stationen des Werks von Moses Maimonides vom islamischen Spanien bis ins moderne Berlin, ed. Lukas Muehlethaler (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 70–76. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 320 Morlok Horwitz only refers to Noam’s question in Satanow’s writing, not to Yedaya’s response. In the mashal [parable] in his answer, Yedaya applies Maimonides’s famous interpretation of the metaphor of the ‘golden apples in silver settings’ (Prov 25:11) given in the Guide of the Perplexed.91 According to Yedaya, kabbalistic knowledge represents the golden apple, whereas philosophical reasoning is represented by the silver settings. In contrast to Maimonides, who identifies the gold with metaphysical truths and the silver with useful political/ethical teachings, Satanow relates the silver settings to scientific knowledge and philosophical reasoning, both of which lead to the true content of kabbalistic secrets—eternal truths. The ḥiddah [riddle] used in this passage reminds us of the famous parable from the Zohar (II:99b) of the maiden in the tower who has no eyes and who speaks to her lover from behind a curtain. In a similar way, the results of scientific investigation may lead to universal knowledge, which was already known to the kabbalists. The parable alludes to the four levels of interpretation, which are designated by the acronym PaRDeS.92 Yedaya’s answer is connected to the idea of tradition, the shalshelet ha-qabbalah [chain of (kabbalistic) tradition], and its mode of transmission.93 91 92 93 Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, vol. 3, trans. Sh. Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 43–45; on this topic in medieval Jewish thought, see Frank Talmage, “Apples of Gold: The Inner Meaning of Sacred Texts in Medieval Judaism,” in Jewish Spirituality: From the Bible Through the Middle Ages, ed. Arthur Green (New York: Crossroad, 1987), 313–355. Josef Stern discerns a tripartite structure of Maimonidean parables consisting of vulgar, external, and internal meanings corresponding to meaningless, exoteric, and esoteric levels. See Josef Stern, Problems and Parables of Law (Albany: State University Press of New York, 1998), 72–73; compare also James A. Diamond, Maimonides and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 58–59; Yair Lorberbaum, “‘The Men of Knowledge and the Sages Are Drawn, as It Were, toward This Purpose by the Divine Will’: On Maimonides’ Conception of Parables,” Tarbiẕ 71(1–2) (2002): 87–132, especially 107–109 [Hebrew]. The latter regards this structure as intrinsically indispensable to the oral transmission of esoteric knowledge. To name only a few discussions of this passage: Elliot Wolfson, “Beautiful Maiden without Eyes. Peshat and Derash in Zoharic Hermeneutics,” in The Midrashic Imagination. Jewish Exegesis, Thought, and History, ed. Michael Fishbane (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 155–203; Daniel Abrams, “Knowing the Maiden without Eyes. Reading Sexual Reconstruction of the Jewish Mystic in a Zoharic Parable,” Da‘at 50–52 (2003): lix–lxxxiii; Oded Israeli, The Interpretation of Secrets and the Secret of Interpretation. Midrashic and Hermeneutic Strategies in Sabba de Misphatim of the Zohar (Los Angeles: Cherub, 2005) [Hebrew]; Gerold Necker, Sohar. Schriften aus dem Buch des Glanzes (Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2012), 136–148; and the footnotes in Daniel Matt (ed.), The Zohar. Pritzker Edition (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), vol. 5, 33–37. On this term, see Hartley Lachter, Kabbalistic Revolution. Reimagining Judaism in Medieval Spain (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2014), 89–95. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 Isaac Satanow (1732–1804) on Moral and Intellectual Perfection 321 In order to illustrate his opinion, Yedaya relates the following parable. In Zur, there was a very rich man who was reluctant to leave all his property to his ill-mannered sons. Why should they inherit all his gold and use it for bad deeds, vain pleasures, and prostitutes (Prov 7:6–11)? He melted his gold into balls over which he spread perforated silver, almost completely covering the gold. Only people with visual acuity could discern what was inside. He commanded his sons to keep the balls and to only sell them in times of distress. The sons obeyed, but did not see the gold during their entire lifetime. Their sons, however, discovered the brilliance of the golden kernels and melted some of them in order to make instruments for the Temple. However, they preserved the rest for future generations. The following generation also adhered to their great grandfather’s command. Thus, wisdom was kept safely hidden throughout the generations, obeying the command without seeing the golden kernel, but using it when necessary in order to keep the chain of tradition alive. In explaining the story, Yedaya tells Noam that wisdom was clothed in festive attire. Some saw only the outer garment, but some discovered the inner light of God through the silver settings (i.e., the sciences). Some had true understanding and could enjoy their wisdom. Through the encoding and translation of divine secrets in parables and riddles, kabbalistic secrets were preserved until the generation of the maskilim who would be worthy of discovering the true kernel. Only they would be able to see the glory of God and his magnificence without any secrets being hidden from them.94 Only they would see without hindrances, enlightened by the splendor of the intellect. Kabbalah seems to contain higher truths than philosophy, but philosophy is needed to reach the same aim via intellectual reasoning. Satanow emphasizes time and again that Kabbalah and philosophy contain the same truths; it is only that the way of reaching them is different. Thus, in contrast to the widespread use of parables as an educational tool employed by the maskilim to enable man to understand [lehaskil],95 in Imrei Binah, the mashal is part of the secret knowledge itself, covering its golden kernel. The initiated may decode the meaning, raise the story to a rational kabbalistic level, and reach true wisdom. It demonstrates the human path to the ‘light of reason.’ Hidden allegory as a literary feature is simultaneously vital in the preservation of kabbalistic secrets, guaranteeing 94 95 See Zohar II:23b with reference to the concealed lights that Moses (on the level of Tif’eret) is able to see; compare Matt, Zohar. Pritzker Edition, vol. 4, 80. As used by Isaac Satanow in his Divrei Rivot (Berlin: Jüdische Freyschule, 1793), 38. On this book, see Moshe Pelli, “The Revival of the Literary Genre of Religious Disputation in Hebrew Haskalah: Isaac Satanow’s ‘Divrei Rivot,’” Hebrew Studies 28 (1987): 133–145. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 322 Morlok their continuation in the chain of tradition. According to Satanow, science may serve as a silver setting, a means of elevating literary knowledge to the level of rationality, with whose help true wisdom (the kabbalistic lore) may be discovered.96 In a similar vein, Imrei Binah discusses the chain of tradition/Kabbalah: The one who can elevate himself intellectually in order to understand the secrets of the upper world is able to descend to understand their similarity in the lower world. Such people are the divine kabbalists who received the divine knowledge about the mysteries of wisdom from the elders and sages of Israel, one generation after another, starting with Moses or even with Adam as told in Sefer Yeṣirah.97 The kabbalists ascend to the root of all emanation and creation and receive knowledge of the upper secrets before descending to the physical world, the book of nature. Their explanations are part of the chain of tradition, starting with Sefer Yeṣirah. Kabbalists understand the very beginning of creation and its secret axioms. In the continuation of the passage, we read that all creation combines maskil [knowing] and muskal [known] like matter [ḥomer] and form [ṣurah] in the separate intellects.98 Kabbalists reveal the inner meaning of physical phenomena as they understand the combination of maskil and muskal before creation and they read the book of nature before it comes into existence. Physical appearances are only secondary forms, but the kabbalists 96 97 98 The use of parables for educational reasons, especially in a Midrashic mode like the moral parable, was highly recommended by Haskalah authors. See Lohmann, Haskala, 82–87, 249. Satanow, Imrei Binah, 5a. This term was originally derived from Aristotelian philosophy (De Anima 3.5; Metaphysics Λ), signifying the movers of the celestial spheres. However, it became widespread (especially in Maimonides) in Averroes’s interpretation, which states that they are moved by God, that they generate the heat of the stars, and that they desire God, their final cause. In the emanationist notion of a neo-Platonic approach, like in the Theology of Aristotle, certain Aristotelian concepts of the cosmic separate intellects are incorporated in the divine overflow (compare Al-Farabi and Avicenna). See Herbert Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes on Intellect (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); idem, Proofs for Eternity, Creation, and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Richard Taylor, “Averroes’ Philosophical Conception of Separate Intellect and God,” in La lumière de l’intellect: La pensée scientifique et philosophique d’Averrès dans son temps, ed. Ahmad Hasnawi (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 391–404. On further transitions between kabbalistic and Greek literature via Arabic translations, see Tanya Werthmann, “‘Spirit to Spirit’: The Imagery of the Kiss in the Zohar and its Possible Sources,” Harvard Theological Review 111(4) (2018): 586–609. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 Isaac Satanow (1732–1804) on Moral and Intellectual Perfection 323 are aware of the primary archetypes, to which they allude in their esoteric allegories and ciphered riddles. Every creation is ordered according to the ‘order of concatenation’ (seder hishtalshelut),99 in which the material of the upper stage becomes the form of the lower level. Kabbalists are able to grasp this secret from its very beginning—before creation—and reveal the inner meaning of physical phenomena as they have insight into the combination of maskil and muskal in the separate intellects, the intellectual archetypes. They may therefore have insight into the divine secrets of creation by returning to the divine source of creation itself. Kabbalists may even turn into vessels of divine transmission from above, as we read further on in Imrei Binah and in Satanow’s Zohar Tinyana.100 Satanow also integrates scientific methods into his other works, such as Mishlei Asaf.101 This work, a collection of proverbs and parables composed in the style of biblical wisdom literature, aimed to instruct man in the paths of wisdom and morality.102 Satanow’s frequent use of recent scientific discoveries demonstrates his deep interest in sciences outside the Jewish sphere and represents a general aim of the early maskilim. His knowledge of colors and the spectrum, for example, is discussed in his commentary on Judah Halevi’s (1075–1141) Kuzari and in Imrei Binah.103 Satanow may have drawn his knowledge of chemistry from a book written by his son, Salomon Schöneman 99 100 101 102 103 Compare also the chain of tradition [shalshelet ha-qabbalah] mentioned above. On metaphors of cords and chains in kabbalistic thinking, see Moshe Idel, Enchanted Chains: Techniques and Rituals in Jewish Mysticism (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2005), 31–75. Satanow, Imrei Binah, 5b, 20ab. See Morlok, Kabbala und Haskala, section 3.1. On this work, see Moshe Pelli, “Isaac Satanow’s ‘Mishlei Asaf’ as Reflecting the Ideology of the German Hebrew Haskalah,” Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 25(3) (1973): 225–242; Shmuel Werses, “On Isaac Satanow and His Work ‘Mishlei Asaf,’” Tarbiẕ 32(4) (1963): 370–392 [Hebrew]; Ḥayyim N. Shapira, History of Modern Hebrew Literature (Tel Aviv: Massada, 1967), vol. 1, 317–333 [Hebrew]; Isaac Eisenstein-Barzilay, “The Ideology of the Berlin Haskalah,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 25 (1956): 4–5. In this treatise (I, 12a), Satanow propagates the idea that the fear of God and wisdom (as twin sisters) bring man to perfection. In II, 69a, he replaces fear of God with the Torah; Moshe Pelli, The Age of Haskalah. Studies in Hebrew Literature of the Enlightenment in Germany (Leiden: Brill, 1979), 158. Feiner, Jewish Enlightenment, 266. Isaac Satanow, together with Israel Zamosc’s commentary, published an edition and commentary on Judah Halevi’s Kuzari in Berlin in 1795. On page 31a, we find the reference to the colors and the spectrum; see Morlok, Kabbala und Haskala, 197–219. On the topic of the Kuzari as a defense of rational religion in Satanow’s eyes, see Shear, The Kuzari, 227–230. Shear makes the very important point that Satanow deals with social questions as well as scientific ones in his commentary; ibid., 228–229. The passage on colors is found in Imrei Binah, 16ab. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 324 Morlok (c. 1768–1831).104 Taking a similar approach, in Sefer ha-Middot, he stated that the scientific knowledge of the ancient Jewish sages had been lost during the galut [exile].105 Now, the task of the maskil was to re-establish that lost knowledge. Satanow was attempting to regain such knowledge and to spread it among his readers. In this process, he used a twofold pedagogical approach by intermingling natural sciences with kabbalistic thought. In showing their compatibility and applying examples from both fields of knowledge, he incorporated and manifested the twin metaphor.106 With this method, he intended to reach two different audiences: the Berlin maskilim, who were not intimately familiar with kabbalistic ideas, but rather with philosophical and scientific thought, and his Eastern European readers, who had grown up with kabbalistic thinking and did not always have direct access to latest developments in the sciences. Satanow’s concept of harmonizing between the two fields of knowledge was an attempt to ‘educate’ each group within the field that was less familiar to them by getting their attention with the material with which they were conversant. This education included both intellectual and moralistic aspects.107 The purifying, educational element of the sister of critical investigation [ḥaqirah] is defined in Satanow’s commentary on Judah Halevi’s Kuzari:108 And just as purged silver is melted by the seller for an examination and test in order that no one will doubt it when buying it, so too the believedin faith (Judaism) is examined for its truth using rational investigation [ḥaqirah], and we are commanded to undertake such an examination and investigation.109 In a similar vein to the mashal in Imrei Binah, faith must be tested/ melted by reason and religion should be investigated rationally. On the 104 105 106 107 108 109 Feiner, Jewish Enlightenment, 268. Satanow, Sefer ha-Middot, 36ab; see Maimonides, Guide, vol. 2, 289–290. Morlok, Kabbala und Haskala, 197–251. Ibid., 329–339. Compare Adam Shear, “Judah Halevi’s Kuzari in the Haskalah: The Reinterpretation and Reimagining of a Medieval Work,” in Renewing the Past. Reconfiguring Jewish Culture: From al-Andalus to the Haskalah, eds. Ross Brann and Adam Sutcliffe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 76. See the introduction on the page following the title page. For Satanow on the concept of blood circulation, see Isaac Satanow, Kuzari (Berlin: Jüdische Freyschule, 1795), 24ab; on electricity, see 29b–30a; on Newton, Leibniz, and the prism, see 30b; on mechanics and chemistry, see 40d; on electricity and magnetism, see 43b; on the air pump, see 53a. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 Isaac Satanow (1732–1804) on Moral and Intellectual Perfection 325 front page, we read “to investigate with understanding in the depth of faith” [‫]לחקור בבינה בעומק האמונה‬. Judaism passes the test and Jewish experience does not portend an absence of rational investigation, ultimately leading to moral and intellectual perfection.110 For Satanow, kabbalists are part of both the historical chain of transmission and the intellectual-philosophical elite, being able to understand the secrets of the upper world and discern their similarities in the lower one.111 Satanow is of the opinion that scientists, like the kabbalists, may establish a dialogue between the upper and lower worlds, discover the secret correspondences between the two, and integrate and benefit from their knowledge in their historical and intellectual Lebenswelt. The metaphysical truths of the material realm are located in the ‘upper worlds,’ to which only kabbalists have direct access. He explains that “the kabbalists understand this order of concatenation [seder histalshelut] […] as they understand the combination of maskil and muskal in the separate intellects.”112 We could conclude that in the moment of intellection, the twin sisters of ḥaqirah and qabbalah become one entity, one communicative act of intellection, before they are separated again in the descent of the initiated and their explanation of the physical appearances in the lower world. In his pursuit of perfection, the reader of Satanow’s treatise is led to one such blissful moment of understanding. 110 111 112 Similar statements are found in Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem oder über religiöse Macht und Judentum (Berlin: Maurer, 1783). Satanow, Imrei Binah, 5a. Ibid., 5b. On similar ideas in the ‘philosophical mysticism’ of Salomon Maimon and its Maimonidean counterpart, see Gideon Freudenthal, “Philosophical Mysticism,” 113–152; Florian Ehrensperger (ed.), Salomon Maimon. Versuch über die Transzendentalphilosophie (Hamburg: Meiner, 2004), vii–xlviii. On Maimon’s philosophical background, see also Fraenkel, “Maimonides, Spinoza, Solomon Maimon,” 193–220; Melamed, “Salomon Maimon and the Rise of Spinozism,” 67–96; Yossef Schwartz, “Causa materialis: Solomon Maimon, Moses ben Maimon and the Possibility of Philosophical Transmission,” in Salomon Maimon: Rational Dogmatist, Empirical Skeptic. Critical Assessments, ed. Gideon Freudenthal (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2003), 125–143; Achim Engstler, “Zwischen Kabbala und Kant. Salomon Maimons ‘streifende’ Spinoza-Rezeption,” in Spinoza in der europäischen Geistesgeschichte, eds. Hanna Delf et al. (Berlin: Hentrich, 1994), 162–192; idem, Untersuchungen zum Idealismus Salomon Maimons (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1990); Samuel Atlas, From Critical to Speculative Idealism: The Philosophy of Solomon Maimon (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1954). European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 326 4 Morlok Sefer ha-Middot In order to spread this knowledge and the ability of true intellection, Satanow founded the Ḥevrat Maṣdiqei ha-Rabim [Society for the Righteousness of the Many] in 1786 and later on, in 1794, the Ḥevrat Marpe’ la-Nefesh [Society for the Healing of the Soul], indicating the maskilic ideal and responsibility for curing ‘the sickness of the soul.’ These societies raised the financial backing for printing scientific, philosophical, and educational books in the Orientalische Buchdruckerey, the print organ of the Jüdische Freyschule.113 Like other authors of traditional musar literature, Satanow thought of himself as being responsible for curing ‘the sickness of the soul’; namely, identifying the illness and finding the proper balance between mental faculties and moral virtues.114 The centrality of the ‘healing of the soul’ is often reiterated as the process that completes the perfection of the intellect in Satanow’s writings. Therefore, we should regard these two treatises, Imrei Binah and Sefer ha-Middot [Book on Ethics] (Berlin, 1784), as describing the twofold way to intellectual perfection (Imrei Binah) and moral excellence (Sefer ha-Middot). In this twofold intention, Satanow follows Wolff’s call to perfect our understanding and our will. He also continues in Mendelssohn’s footsteps with the ‘habitualization’ of moral and rational principles in order to train our consciousness to spontaneously make correct decisions.115 However, Satanow does not strictly divide moral teaching into theory and practice, as the former seems to be deeply rooted in the latter. For Mendelssohn, moral philosophy needs a rational basis in order to reach a harmonization of the higher and lower powers of the soul. Satanow refers to Maimonides’s Eight Chapters, Halevi’s Kuzari, and Ḥayyim Vital’s (1542–1620) teaching in order to achieve this aim. However, the Jewish tradition goes beyond a scientific understanding of the soul, as only the Torah leads 113 114 115 Lohmann, “Sustenance,” 11–40. On the societies, see Feiner, Jewish Enlightenment, 322–324. Feiner, Jewish Enlightenment, 250 and 322: “[…] a physician who specializes in giving healing medicines to the illnesses of the enlightened soul as one does to the illnesses of the body.” Compare Maimonides’s description of the philosopher as the physician of the soul in his Eight Chapters. An example of a false versus a true ‘physician of the soul’ is illustrated in Satanow’s introduction to Sefer ha-Middot, where he describes a teacher of ‘law and ethics’ and one who misleads the nobleman to earthly desires and vain pleasures. Lohmann, Haskala, 58–73. One should also compare Satanow’s idea of habitualization in a social context with Maimonides’s concept of intellectual habitualization and the messianic age. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 Isaac Satanow (1732–1804) on Moral and Intellectual Perfection 327 to true virtue.116 Each miṣwah cultivates a certain property of the soul, such as, for example, the dietary laws leading to the perfection of digestion.117 With this book, Satanow had won a competition for the best musar textbook, which Isaac Daniel Itzig and David Friedländer had launched in their capacity as the directors of the Jüdische Freyschule in Berlin.118 They had published an open tender, offering a financial reward to the author of an original book on the subject. However, Satanow’s book, along with rabbinic approbations, had been completed ten years earlier (in 1774), and when the tender was published, Satanow merely had to take it out of the drawer where he had been storing numerous manuscripts.119 The date for the submission of the manuscript was the first day of Nisan 1784, and Mendelssohn, Wessely, and Marcus Herz were the judges. Although Wessely had energetically worked on his own book, he was unable to complete it in time due to his involvement in the cultural battle around him. To his great disappointment, the prize went to the manager of the maskilic printing press, Isaac Satanow.120 As in many other musar treatises of this period, Satanow approaches the traditional notion of ethics in a highly creative manner and insists on the primacy of ethics in the sphere of faith. He puts a strong emphasis on the ideal figure of the rationalistic and knowledgeable ḥoqer [philosopher/investigator], who is also the true believer—corresponding to his sister of ‘critical investigation’ [ḥaqirah]; that is, ‘philosophical inquiry.’ The book proposes a personal study program that leads to perfection. Similar to Imrei Binah and its metaphors and allegories, Satanow opens the book with an introductory parable on a nobleman with ‘dianoetic virtues,’ rational wisdom achieved by discursive reasoning rather than intuition or physical desire.121 Due to bad counsel, the 116 117 118 119 120 121 Harris Bor, “Enlightenment Values, Jewish Ethics: The Haskalah’s Transformation of the Traditional Musar Genre,” in New Perspectives on the Haskalah, eds. Shmuel Feiner and David Sorkin (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2001), 48–63, here 56–61. I follow Bor in defining the structure of the soul in Sefer ha-Middot below. Note that in his Eight Chapters, Maimonides primarily links dietary laws with moral virtue, not physical health. See Kenneth Seeskin, “Maimonides’ Appropriation of Aristotle’s Ethics,” in The Reception of Aristotle’s Ethics, ed. Jon Miller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 107–124. Lohmann, Jüdische Freischule, vol. 2, Dok. 50, 209. See Shmuel Feiner, Haskala—Jüdische Aufklärung. Geschichte einer kulturellen Revolution (Hildesheim: Olms, 2007), 317. Feiner, Jewish Enlightenment, 249–250. Naphtali Herz Wessely, “My teacher, my brother, my friend!,” Me’assef 1 (1784): 156–158 [Hebrew]. Aristotle divides the virtues into intellectual (dianoetic) ones and moral or ethical ones pertaining to the irrational part of the soul, which can partake in reason. Aristotle, European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 328 Morlok nobleman in the introductory parable transfers the authority over his army to a ‘voluptuary’; that is, he loses control over his body and soul and gives in to his desires. In the end, both his body and his soul become very sick. He then addresses a hermit, who had taught him ‘law and ethics’ in the past. As a remedy for his sick soul, the sage leaves him the moral teachings to be found in Sefer ha-Middot.122 With this method, Satanow follows Mendelssohn’s ideal of educating children in ‘the social virtues’ by presenting a moralizing story “[…] in order to make school instruction more appealing to the senses, entertaining, and comprehensive for children.”123 However, Satanow attributes particular importance to the intellectual effort of giving precise classifications of the various virtues and suggesting exact definitions of them by broadening Maimonidean definitions of the virtues of the soul using Halevi’s ideas on intellection and abstraction.124 Despite this, the climax of intellectual effort is preserved for the readers of his Imrei Binah. According to Satanow, the maskil’s major task is to formulate exact definition in ‘the light of reason’ that guides him. Therefore, his definition of the Haskalah, “for wonderment is the reason for Haskalah in God’s verities and deeds,” is much closer to the rational thought of the Middle Ages than to contemporary philosophy.125 As an example of Satanow’s ‘modernization’ of medieval argumentation on ethical behavior by adding scientific (in this case, medical) knowledge, I adduce one example regarding sexual repression. What makes this highly interesting is the parallel argument for repressing one’s sexual desire in order to 122 123 124 125 Nicomachean Ethics, Book 1, chap. 13 (1102a–1103a); see Jon Miller (ed.), Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics: A Critical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 31–35. Compare the German translation of the introduction in Lohmann and Lohmann, Lerne Vernunft, 87–91. See Behm, Jüdische Erziehung, 330. The special relationship between moral and social virtue in Satanow’s and Mendelssohn’s writings, especially with regard to educational ideals, requires a separate study and cannot be dealt with in this context. Much more needs to be said about the Aristotelian doctrine of philosophical wondering, its Maimonidean interpretation, and the revival of Maimonidean thought during the Haskalah; see Zwiep, “From Moses to Moses,” and Allan Nadler, “The ‘Rambam Revival’ in Early Modern Jewish Thought: Maskilim, Mitnagdim, and Hasidim on Maimonides’ ‘Guide of the Perplexed,’” in Maimonides after 800 Years. Essays on Maimonides and His Influence, ed. Jay M. Harris (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies, 2007), 231–256. Note the similarity to Satanow’s title of his introduction to Sefer ha-Shorashim. On the Aristotelian background of this motto in the Metaphysics, see Morlok, Kabbala und Haskala, 124; Feiner, Jewish Enlightenment, 250. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 Isaac Satanow (1732–1804) on Moral and Intellectual Perfection 329 preserve sexual purity, often found in kabbalistic sources and their contemporary Hasidic versions as well as in traditional books of morality such as Eliyahu ha-Cohen’s Sheveṭ Musar.126 Satanow writes in Sefer ha-Middot: When a man is infected by a feeling of passion for a strange woman, he should turn his mind to thinking of the elements of which she is composed—flesh, blood, sinews and bones, lungs, liver and intestines, phlegm, smelly bile, and filthy urine—and picture them in his mind as disgusting slabs laid out before him, and that organ for which he longs is the most repulsive of all, the place through which urine, the menstrual blood, and the odious discharges pass.127 In Sefer ha-Middot, the paradigm above uses well-known kabbalistic concepts in order to elevate the reader to moral perfection in a similar vein to how Imrei Binah seeks to elevate the reader to intellectual perfection.128 In the passage, the reader is morally instructed by thinking of the ‘scientific’ physical origin of what he desires in order to avoid possible seduction. In order to instruct his reader how to live according to traditional values and how to reach moral perfection, Satanow adds medical details in order to prevent morally incorrect sexual conduct. In these lines, he combines a well-known argument for suppressing one’s physical desires (also used in Hasidic sources) with scientific details of the human body.129 The personal path to the divine is understood in psychological terms and functions by certain modes of intellection. In other 126 127 128 129 Eliyahu Hacohen, Sheveṭ Musar (1712; repr., Jerusalem: Or ha-Musar, 1989), 74–75; see Gershon D. Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century. A Genealogy of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 123–129; Moshe Idel, “Female Beauty: A Chapter in the History of Jewish Mysticism,” in Within Hasidic Circles: Studies in Hasidism in Memory of Mordechai Wilensky, ed. Immanuel Etkes (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1999), 317–334 [Hebrew], with examples from both kabbalistic and hasidic literature; Elliot Wolfson, “Female Imagining of the Torah: From Literary Metaphor to Religious Symbol,” in idem, Circle in the Square – Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 1–28. Satanow, Sefer ha-Middot, 113. Translation according to Feiner, Jewish Enlightenment, 250. This passage may also illustrate why the book was never utilized by the students of the Freyschule. On the mystical and rabbinic sources for this passage, see Idel, “Female Beauty.” See also Howard Zvi Adelman, “Virginity: Women’s Body as a State of Mind: Destiny becomes Biology,” in The Jewish Body. Corporeality, Society, and Identity in the Renaissance and the Early Modern Period, eds. Maria Diemling and Giuseppe Veltri (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 179–214. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 330 Morlok passages, Satanow compares the desire for scientific knowledge and wisdom with that for seductive beautiful women, a very common metaphor in maskilic literature.130 With this metaphor of the ‘true’ seduction, Satanow constructs a counter-model to physical women. Satanow, therefore, attempts to educate his readers to choose the right woman, the one that leads to human perfection and strengthens the moral virtues, not seduction by the wrong female figure. On this path to moral (and intellectual) perfection, the reader finds various combinations of ancient philosophical theories from different periods, with a strong emphasis on Aristotle’s paradigms. In contrast to Aristotle and Maimonides, who do not have such a negative view of desire, as long as it is moderate, Satanow seems to have adopted a negative view of physical desire from different sources. This also reveals the deep impact of kabbalistic ethical literature, such as Elijah de Vidas’s Reshit Ḥokhmah (Venice, 1579), Isaiah Horowitz’s Shnei Luḥot ha-Brit (Amsterdam, 1648), Ṣevi Hirsh Koidanover’s Qav ha-Yashar (Frankfurt am Main, 1705), and Elijah ha-Cohen’s Sheveṭ Musar (Constantinople, 1712), mentioned above. In Satanow’s overall framework, Basedow’s twin sisters of virtue [Tugend] and happiness [Glückseligkeit] are combined into new pairs, the twin sisters of kabbalistic science and investigation, which are set in a Jewish framework moving between traditional faith and the new sciences.131 Like many of his Jewish contemporaries, Satanow interpreted yir’at ha-shem as “awe for His Majesty,” which could be autonomously detected in the book of nature by human readers. According to Sefer ha-Middot, man acts morally not out of fear of punishment, but out of his own sense of right and wrong (24a), a strong move towards individual autonomy. In his book on ethics, Satanow combines two principles with regard to the soul, an internal and an external: the knowledge of the soul is associated with anatomy (17b), but at the same time, modern ideas are refracted through the prism of earlier Jewish traditions. In addition to Maimonides’s theory of the five faculties of the soul (zan, margish, mit‘orer, medameh, and sikhli) and 130 131 This goes back to Plato’s notion of eros and is also found in Talmudic literature. See Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), chap. 6 “Wives,” 102–122; see also Moshe Idel, “Contemplating a Female: From Platonic Eros to Jewish Mysticism,” in idem, Kabbalah and Eros (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 153–178. We find further examples of metaphorizing the ‘forbidden sciences’ symbolized as beautiful women in the writings of Asher Anshel of Worms (1695–1769) and also Judah Leib Margolioth (1751–1811). See Shmuel Feiner, “Seductive Experience and the Emergence of the Secular Jewish Intellectual,” Science in Context 15(1) (2002): 121–135. Satanow, Mishlei Asaf, vol. 1 (Berlin: Jüdische Freyschule, 1789), 12a; vol. 2 (Berlin: Jüdische Freyschule, 1791), 69a. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 Isaac Satanow (1732–1804) on Moral and Intellectual Perfection 331 the two parts of the intellect (ma‘asi and ‘iyyuni), with the two forces of the practical intellect (koaḥ ha-middoti and koaḥ ha-malakhuti), Satanow extracts further concepts from Halevi’s Kuzari in order to distinguish between the contemplation of real objects and the consideration of abstract forms. He also introduces two subdivisions of the theoretical intellect; namely, the simple [pashuṭ] and the complex [murkav]. The murkav contemplates an object in its totality (both form and matter) and the pashuṭ considers abstract notions (9a–10b). The entire structure of the intellect exists twice, in the form of the internal and external intellects (10a), which need to be brought into harmony in order to reach perfection. In Imrei Binah, the two subdivisions of pashuṭ and murkav are applied to the divine will before the creation of the cosmos. The passage from Sefer haMiddot (9a–10b) might be compared to Satanow’s elaborations on ṣimṣum in the seventh gate of Imrei Binah (20a–23a), where he describes the concept of ṣimṣum as the restriction of the divine power by the divine will in order to induce the creational process.132 In a similar way, humans have to restrict their will and perfect their understanding in order to discover the divine secrets and perfect their soul.133 However, in order to avoid an overly scientific and philosophical view of the soul, Satanow stresses that his theoretical ideas regarding ethical perfection have their foundation in the Torah alone. Knowledge of the soul cannot be grasped clearly and therefore “tradition in this matter is better than research” (94a). He continues that the Torah provides knowledge, which is above rational understanding. Therefore, “[…] the will that chooses its actions according to the Torah […] is better than one that chooses them by applying its own reason (sekhel)” (27b). With an indirect reference to a common kabbalistic theme, he repeats: “One cannot know all that is in the heavens and upon earth until one has entered into the palace of the king” (34a).134 Such knowledge is elaborated upon in Imrei Binah, which is not intended for the masses, but rather for a small elite group. From this quote, one might infer that Satanow wrote these two treatises to complement each other, but aimed them at different audiences. This is also indicated by his statements on page 137. He explains that tiqqun middot is a highly complex issue that can be dealt with only partly. He adds a harsh critique of the community, which is not remotely interested in tevunah [understanding] or the Hebrew language. Therefore, he had to adapt his 132 133 134 Morlok, Kabbala und Haskala, 220–251. See Wolff, Vernünfftige Gedancken, discussed above. This is a clear reference to Maimonides’s famous parable in Guide of the Perplexed 3:51. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 332 Morlok elaboration to popular language so that people would buy the book. Chapter 13 on the soul talks to audiences interested in moral education, but not to the intellectual elite, educated in secret kabbalistic matters, as there is “no end to the wisdom of the soul”—‫אין קיץ לחכמת הנפש‬. Although Satanow repeatedly argues that both philosophical intellection and kabbalistic knowledge reveal the same truths, one cannot get rid of the impression that kabbalistic secrets, which Satanow never uncovers in detail, contain a higher knowledge than the philosophic wisdom. 5 Modernization in a Kabbalistic Key Kabbalistic knowledge had a specific place in Satanow’s attempt to harmonize traditional Jewish concepts with newly defined scientific approaches, such as chemistry, optics, mechanics, electricity, magnetism, medicine, and rational philosophy. A thinker like Satanow marks the Jewish tradition’s entrance into modernity on an alternative path to the one usually taken by Jewish intellectuals of this period and questions our postmodern academic points of view of ‘modernization.’ We should search for different perspectives when analyzing authors like Satanow135 by considering religious/spiritual revival as a pivotal mode of modernizing and reforming Jewish life and especially Jewish education. According to Satanow, due to its critical role in society, religious life is appreciated as a major factor for reform, alongside ‘enlightened rationalization’ and other shifts in early modern politics and economics, whether as parallel or related phenomena. Religio—in Satanow’s case, kabbalistic thought—is regarded not as an obstacle to modernization, but rather as an important factor for cultural renewal. Writers like Satanow, therefore, have the potential to challenge the still widespread notion that modernity is primarily rooted in secular rationalism and that it emanated outside the bounds of religion. These writers reveal the full complexity of modernity and its multi-faceted interrelation of religion, rationalism, and ethics. Recently, scholars have 135 Maimon proposed a similar, but much more complex stance towards kabbalistic literature. On Maimon, see the studies of Abraham P. Socher, The Radical Enlightenment of Solomon Maimon. Judaism, Heresy, and Philosophy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007); Freudenthal, Salomon Maimon: Rational Dogmatist; idem, “Salomon Maimon’s Development from Kabbalah to Philosophic Rationalism,” Tarbiẕ 80(1) (2012): 105–171 [Hebrew]; idem and Sara Klein-Braslavy, “Salomon Maimon Reads Moses ben-Maimon: On Ambiguous Names,” Tarbiẕ 72(4) (2003): 581–613 [Hebrew]; Moshe Idel, “Salomon Maimon and Kabbalah,” 67–105. European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333 Isaac Satanow (1732–1804) on Moral and Intellectual Perfection 333 shown that on the one hand, religion and its ethical norms played a vital role in the Enlightenment and revolutionary political thought, while on the other, early modern religious thinkers accepted innovations in science and philosophy even as they sought to reconcile these new modes with religious notions.136 Satanow is a prime example of such a twofold movement and its consequences—also in the field of musar. 136 See Jose Casanova, who proposes ‘multiple modernities’ in “Rethinking Secularization: A Global Comparative Perspective,” in Religion, Globalization, and Culture, eds. Peter Beyer and Lori Beaman (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 101–120; and idem, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). On the religious Enlightenment, see Sorkin, Religious Enlightenment; on the social and political implications of the religious stances of Enlightenment thinkers, see Jacob C. Margaret, “Epilogue: Dichotomies Defied and the Revolutionary Implications of Religion Implied,” Historical Reflections 40(2) (2014): 108–116. See also David B. Ruderman, A Best-Selling Hebrew Book of the Modern Era: The Book of the Covenant of Pinḥas Hurwitz and Its Remarkable Legacy (Seattle: University of Washington Press 2014); Feiner, New Age. For a similar phenomenon in Christianity, see Jonathan Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). European Journal of Jewish Studies 14 (2020) 300–333