Babylonian Talmud

Rodkinson 1918 — source 19, scan section 40

Brimanus, or Justus, all of which names are identical, is now behind the bars, and the newspapers are now recounting his sins one by one. We, however, say that he and all his literature are not worthy of such an honor. There is no doctor, nor learned man, no distinguished being, no Satan, but a simple, ordinary swindler, who endeavors by everything that comes to his hand to deceive the people. He (according to his biography which is pubHshed in the dailies of this week) has made a study of the Talmud and the Schulchan Aruch only that they might serve as his business schemes. He was a student in the college of Hildesheimer, where it was easy to imbibe * At the time he was imprisoned for many crimes and the dailies wrote con- tinuously about this in long articles. 112 THE HISTORY OF THE TALMUD. santification and really become sanctified in the city of Hague. To be still more purified he washed himself in the holy waters of Protestantism. Seeing, however, that this act would not bring him much fruit, for to be a "Pfarrer" (minister) one must labor diligently, and this he would not do, he set all this deed aside at one stroke and swerved over to the Catholic faith. And then he followed his nature to catch in his net some young girls, who had confidence in him, and going further in this way the attention of the police was called to this, who put a stop to him. For whom then such a fuss? We are neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but nevertheless we recognized his character from his so-called literature even as far back as 1883. As the following are our words in our pamphlet " Krit- ischer Ueberblick uber den Judenspiegelprozess in Munster," December, 1884, page 8, footnote 11, (when we were not aware who the author was) : "If such would be written by a Jew he would be named criminal, deceiver, misanthrope, etc." True, that when we wrote this, we did not know that he was a Jew, and now we see that he was. For this, how- ever, we have only to be grateful to him because he left the Jewish fight before he wrote his hateful " Judenspiegel," and also before he gave his miserable material to Rohling. This, because the anti-Semites can no longer blame the Jews on account of this person as they brought him over to be- come their ally. But what became of the suit of Rohling against Bloch? We have to give the full credit to Dr. Kopp who forced Rohling to withdraw his complaint seeing that according to the tes- timony of his co-religionist scholars he could not win his case. And this may be seen from the book which Kopp has pub- lished in Leipzig, 1886, second edition, (See criticism of it in Strack, page 95.) We, however, deem it necessary to give the details of this book, in order to defend the Talmud, as this will throw light upon all past and present accusations against the Talmud. As we have done this in our Hebrew monthly " Morgenblitze," Vienna, 1886, we have only to translate here a part of our review to the book of Kopp named ** Zur Judenfrage nach den Akten des Prozesses Rohling-Bloch KOPP AND HIS BOOK. 113 von Dr. Joseph Kopp Hofgerichtsadovkat Zu Wien," Leipzig 1886: " Many books are lying before us for review or for announce- ment. However, the book named above is imique in every respect. It cannot be criticised either way, and the same is true of the author of this book as he himself does not give his own opinion concerning the subject matter of the book. Nevertheless, we may fully say that it is a scientific book in every respect. " The author of this book is a Gentile, a prominent member of the bar in Vienna, and, according to his own testimony, he knows neither the Hebrew language nor the talmudic and post-talmudic literature at all. Notwithstanding this, the book, as a whole, sanctifies the Talmud and all post-tal- mudical literature. It can not be taken as a defender of the Talmud because of arguments, as the whole book contains merely facts which can never be denied and which prove clearly that the Talmud and its banner-bearers are clear of every accusation and of every suspicion concerning the love of man, be he who he may, even according to the present laws and estabHshed etiquette. " The above facts were not given by the author himself, but by two well-known Gentile Hebrew scholars, upon whom the Supreme Court of Vienna threw the burden of translating four hundred passages and quotations. These the Jew- haters have used as a sample of the wretchedness of the Jewish literature. The chief aim of the Jew-haters was to belittle the Talmud, which is the pillar of the Jewish race. The author of this work, whom the Israelite congregation of Vienna choose to defend Bloch in the case of Rohling- Bloch, has done his work well. He gathered all the quo- tations quoted by Rohling in his writings from both the Tal- mud itself as well as from post-talmudical literature, those which were written in the Hebrew language and also in other languages, by converted Jews who reached then the dignity of Catholic priests. All these quotations he divided into two groups, (a) the quotations in Hebrew he brought before the vSupreme Court, who appointed Gentile Hebrew scholars to translate them correctly under oath, into the German 8 114 THE HISTORY OF THE TALMUD. language; (b) the quotations in the living languages he ex- amined himself. However, when he found a quotation in another language besides German he submitted it to the sworn interpreter of the Supreme Court for translation. Then, when both the translations of the quotations by the Jew^- haters and the translations of the same by those who were appointed by the Court appeared before the court, it was revealed that the alleged quotations of Rohling were not quotations of the Talmud at all, but merely falsehoods. And thus was it proved that every line written by Rohling in his "Talmudjude," "Antichrist and Das Ende der Welt," "The Catechism des 19 Jahrhundert fur Juden und Prote- stanten " (in which he praises the Spanish Inquisition, de- claring it holy to the Lord and to the Catholic Church), " Das Salomonische Spruchbuch," "Meine Antworten an die Rab- biner," "Die Polemik und die Menschenopfer des Rabbinis- mus," and also in his letter to Ghetza Anhadi of June 19, 1883, were all fabrications which never existed since the creation of the world. " If such a falsehood would not be revealed by the learned Christians under oath it would be impossible to believe that a man whose dignity came from a professorship of a university should act so. The contents of this book are as follows: All quotations which were translated by the experts as well as those which Rohling himself falsely quoted,* Dr. Kopp arranged them thus, preface, instruction, the story proceeding the trial, the proceedings of the trial, the conclusion derived