Читать книгу Prophet in a Time of Priests - Janice Rothschild Blumberg - Страница 7
ОглавлениеI - WUNDERKIND AND THE PROMISE
OF AMERICA
On Saturday afternoon, May 27, 1884, a stocky, five-foot five Hungarian immigrant ascended the platform of the United States Senate to invoke God’s blessing upon the decisions to be made that day. A year later the same man represented the Jewish citizens of America as one of the fourteen honorary pall bearers for President Ulysses S. Grant, walking rather than riding with the others because the elaborate state funeral took place on the Jewish Sabbath.
The man was Rabbi Edward Benjamin Morris Browne, called “Alphabet” by his colleagues because he signed his name “E. B. M. Browne, LLD, AM, BM, DD, MD.” He had earned all of the academic degrees—three before the age of twenty—yet his contemporaries more often pronounced “Alphabet” in derision than in admiration. Controversial as much as charismatic, Browne inspired either love or hate, but rarely indifference. A prominent Christian clergyman declared him “the stoned prophet of our day” and a notable Orthodox rabbi eulogized him as “a great-hearted Jew,” yet he attracted powerful enemies among the leaders of Reform Judaism in America.
Deeply patriotic as most immigrants were, and profoundly moved by the promise of America, Browne devoted his formidable talents to testing that promise wherever he perceived it to be threatened. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he believed that here one could be both fully Jewish and fully American without compromising Jewish values or jeopardizing credentials of citizenship. Likewise, he accepted the scientific advances of his age as completely compatible with religious belief, embracing Darwinism and biblical criticism as enhancements rather than denials of religion—this despite the fact that most other ministers and rabbis, including his teacher, Isaac Mayer Wise, initially opposed them. An outspoken loner and independent, oblivious to personal considerations, his frequently unorthodox means of pursuing human rights drew public attention frowned upon by Jewish community leaders, who preferred their own brand of quiet diplomacy. The wide diversity of his activism and the range of people whose lives he touched present a rarely seen image of Jewish life in America during a period of formative growth in American Judaism as well as in the nation itself.
During the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, American Jews strove to identify themselves both as Americans and as Jews. The vast majority were immigrants, and few, even among the highly successful, were thoroughly free of the fears that informed their lives in Europe. Most of them came from areas where, although legally included as citizens and partially acculturated, in reality they were largely excluded and treated as pariahs. In America where their skills were needed and generally welcomed, city councils, Masonic lodges and literary societies opened to them. Their Christian neighbors, many of whom also came from Germany and shared their nostalgia for its culture, found them congenial and respected them as descendants of the “Old Testament” Prophets. Together they enjoyed German music, German literature, and German dance.
On the other hand, it was difficult to practice Judaism in America. While many Jewish communities provided makeshift Sunday schools for the children, until the mass immigrations of the 1880s there was little opportunity for more than the most basic Jewish education. Nor was it easy to obtain kosher food, and it was all but impossible for most Jews to keep the Sabbath because they could not afford to remain idle on Saturday—payday and the busiest workday of the week. In such an environment, the problem for these western European Jews who had begun to enjoy emancipation was no longer how to be accepted by their Christian neighbors, but how to remain Jewish.
In the pre-modern Europe from which these immigrants came, Jewish communities were ruled by a chief rabbi appointed by and answerable to the civic government. Unless a Jew dared to break tradition, every aspect of his or her life was regulated by the local rabbi’s interpretation of Talmudic law. With the beginning of emancipation in western and central Europe in the late eighteenth century, attempted reforms—including modern interpretations of the law—began to loosen the rabbinic stranglehold for many Jews. Most of them were only too happy to interpret those rules for themselves upon arrival in the “Jewish wilderness” of America. This absence of control along with fluctuations of the economy resulted in significant instability, affecting both the congregations and the rabbis who served them. Also there were hardly any Jewish educational institutions in America, none as yet for the training of rabbis. The situation invited charlatans and fly-by-nights as well as true exponents of Jewish learning.
Jacob Rader Marcus, the godfather of American Jewish history, dismissed the majority of nineteenth century American rabbis as being “of little learning and less character.” Almost entirely foreign born, most were loners who emigrated as individuals seeking job opportunities and freedom from government control. They tried to establish their own choice of reforms in order to sustain Judaism in America with its relatively open society, but with few amenities to facilitate maintaining Jewish tradition. Lay leaders, often with the same goals in mind, but also at times with an additional personal agenda, frequently disagreed with the paths favored by their rabbis. Tempers were volatile, synagogue membership fluid and financial support inadequate. As a result, historian Jonathan Sarna reminds us, “Most rabbis were quick to find jobs and equally quick to lose them.”1
Such a rabbi was “Alphabet” Browne. He did not fit the characterization described by Marcus, however, for he was unquestionably learned and of strong character. He was a maverick in a time and place of many mavericks. They came mostly from central Europe, where governments and their own religious hierarchies were grappling with the effect of the Enlightenment, tightening their grip on independent thought in order to preserve the status quo. America beckoned to individualists, especially the intellectuals among them.
In 1845, the year of Browne’s birth, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had for decades dealt with political turmoil, regional insurrections, and the movement of Jews from one province to another due to economic conditions and post-rebellion reprisals against those who had fought with the insurgents. At that time relatively few Jews had settled in Browne’s home town of Eperies, in Slovakia, barely enough to have recently built a synagogue within the town. They came largely from the west and north, from German states or the neighboring Austro-Hungarian provinces of Croatia and Bohemia, seeking better opportunity in less developed regions of the empire. Slovakia attracted them primarily because Jews there, having remained neutral during provincial revolts, escaped the backlash of reprisals against communities where Jews largely joined the insurgents.2
Later, during Browne’s youth, the Jewish population of Eperies increased due to heavy migrations of Hasidic Jews from Transylvania crossing the mountains westward into Slovakia to escape persecution and poverty in Rumania. As a child, however, Browne had encountered Jewish neighbors who were much like his own family, German speaking settlers imbued with the spirit of emancipation and Enlightenment, open to secular education and in some cases to religious reform.
Western European Jews, having been freed from the ghetto and given citizenship beginning with Napoleonic edicts at the close of the previous century, tended to embrace the intellectual questioning prevalent among their fellow citizens. Some even dared to interpret the Bible in the light of new scientific studies, which drew strong opposition from the Orthodox rabbinic establishment who viewed it as heresy and feared that it would lead to the breakdown of Jewish community structure and eventual assimilation. Believing the Talmud to be perfect, its laws immutable, they feared secular education as an invitation for scholars to challenge that precept. One rabbi notably declared that anyone who studied at a university was unfit for the rabbinate.3
Proponents of mild change often remained under the umbrella of Orthodoxy. Describing themselves as “modern Orthodox,” they sought to make peace with modernity, as historian Michael Meyer writes, while “attempting to establish the fully observant Jewish life within it.” They were willing to alter practices that were merely traditions, not rooted in Talmudic law. More radical reformers sought to change not only the liturgy and outward manifestations of their belief, but the very structure of the Jewish community itself. They became known as “Neologs.”4
By the 1840s, the call for decorum in the synagogue and a more intellectual approach to worship could be heard in many places. While notable controversy took place in the Germanic states, reforms occurred more quietly in the Austro-Hungarian empire, especially in the north and west. In Eperies where Browne lived, for example, the congregation held confirmation services for boys and girls together as early as 1846. This nod to gender equality was one of the earliest innovations of Reform.5
Only in the capital city did tensions rise to a boiling point. There a group of young people had established a service with mild modernization, similar to one being used in Vienna. For a while they were allowed to practice as they wished. In 1847 a brilliant young rabbinic candidate, Ignaz Einhorn, became their leader and took them speedily into the more radical reforms being carried out in a few synagogues in Germany, mainly in Hamburg and Berlin. Einhorn and his followers formed the Central Association of Hungarian Israelites, hoping to create a league of like minded congregations. This failed, but they continued locally, renaming their group the Pesth Israelite Reform Association. Emboldened by the revolution of 1848, they went even further, holding worship services on Sunday, abandoning the wearing of hats, instituting the use of an organ and choir in their synagogue, and preaching in the vernacular, even reciting some of the prayers in Hungarian. When this also failed, Ignaz Einhorn fled to Germany.6
Whereas the revolution inspired Magyarization (Hungarianization) among Jews, its failure brought a fierce backlash against them. This caused the Orthodox leaders to become ever more nervous about Jewish radicalism and increasingly harsh in suppressing it. In 1852, they persuaded the government to close the synagogue of the Pesth Reform Association. This sent an unmistakable message to Hungarian Jews that changes would not be tolerated. The winds of change continued to blow, however, and more strongly in some outlying communities than in the capital city. Initial movements of reform were felt in Eperies in 1845, the very year that Moshe ben (son of) M’hader Yaakov–subsequently Rabbi “Alphabet” Browne—was born.7
Moritz and Katje Sonnenschein Braun (pronounced “brown”) enjoyed high standing in their community. Moritz was a judge and president of the synagogue, a man of means and influence. Katje came from a family able to provide her with lasting indications of affluence, one of which was a set of huge, intricately carved ivory cufflinks bearing the monogram of her father, probably later worn by her husband and their son. Their home displayed such elegant accouterments as tall monogrammed silver candlesticks, fine linen damask towels, and oil on canvas portraits of themselves as bride and groom.8
As customary in the German speaking social stratum to which the Brauns belonged, Moshe and his two sisters, Teresa and Ilona, were initially educated at home by private tutors. They were taught French as well as high German, in addition to which Moshe studied Hebrew as every Jewish boy was required to do. He later learned Yiddish and Magyar (Hungarian), the languages spoken on the streets of Eperies.
The boy could read Talmud—the books of exegesis and commentary on the Torah—at a very early age. This was an astonishing feat because, while custom demanded that all Jewish boys learn Hebrew initially by memorizing the Torah, then by memorizing the entire Hebrew Bible, they were rarely permitted even to begin the complicated study of Talmud with its arguments and legalisms until after becoming bar mitzvah, at age thirteen. As a very young child, Moshe Braun was frequently called upon to recite randomly designated Talmudic passages in public, which he did verbatim, for charitable events in the synagogue. Being so encouraged to show off, this adored only son of prominent parents received ongoing adulation from the entire community. The exploitation may have affected his character for his adult ego appeared to be over-developed, but apparently it did not detract from his popularity as a child. One elderly woman remembered him as bold and outspoken “but always beloved by all,” and another as “a hard student” and very kindhearted.9
During Moshe’s bar mitzvah year, a new rabbi, Mayer Austerlitz, came to Eperies. A disciple of Rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer, renowned teacher of modern Orthodoxy before Reform became an established movement, Austerlitz may well have sparked the boy’s interest in becoming a rabbi dedicated to reforms.10
Both science and religion fascinated young Moshe. This was not surprising because German culture placed special importance on the study of science. It was likewise not unusual for German speaking Jews to combine this discipline with the study of Judaism. For millennia great rabbis were known to combine medicine with religion. Now the prescient among enlightened nineteenth century Jews foresaw the risk of assimilation, the logical antidote to which was an increased emphasis on Jewish education.11
At seventeen Moshe Braun entered a government technical college to study science. He gave some lectures on the subject while there, and graduated two years later. Then, perhaps influenced by the Modern Orthodox background of his home town rabbi, he enrolled in an early outpost of modern Judaism, the Fünfkirchen Theological Seminary. Its director, Rabbi I. H. Hirschfeld, gave him a theological degree after only one year. Then Braun came to America.12
There is no sure answer as to why he came. His daughter, having heard that he charmed the ladies during his bachelor years in America, imagined that he had perhaps done so to excess in Europe, departing in order to escape the consequences of a careless romance. This, however, went contrary to the view of the elderly woman from his home town who had known him since his childhood. She recalled that he was a straight-laced young man whose friends often chided him for not joining in their student revelries. A contemporary who came to America with him remarked on his “uprightly and independent behavior,” noting that he “never cared for money... never buys on credit, never owes a cent... never asks for a favor... never drank and is not a society man” a characterization backed by accounts of his future life. Many years later, Browne described his lifestyle in approximately the same words to Theodor Herzl, the visionary of modern political Zionism. “I find it important to tell you,” he wrote in support of his offer to work for Zionism, “that I do not drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t gamble, I am not a gourmet, make no visits and receive no guests and work 18 hrs a day.”13
Although such testimonials do not disprove the possibility that he fled Europe to avoid a shotgun wedding, it seems far more likely that he left in order to pursue a career in a progressive form of Judaism. Many others from Central Europe, among them the renowned liberal rabbis Samuel Adler, Max Lilienthal, Isaac M. Wise, and David Einhorn, did likewise during the middle and late nineteenth century.
Einhorn, no relation to the fiery Ignaz Einhorn of the Pesth congregation, had in fact followed his namesake as rabbi in Pesth in1852, but had to leave after two months because the government closed his synagogue. Having so inflamed the powers governing European Judaism, David Einhorn came to America as rabbi of Temple Har Sinai in Baltimore, where he became known as this country’s uncompromising leader of radical Reform. A generation older than Braun, he shared much of the younger man’s temperament, possibly because both were influenced by their native environment in Hungary.14
When Moshe ben M’hader Yaakov Braun came to America in late August, 1865, he became Edward Benjamin Morris Browne—Ed to his intimates. At least one of his friends was among the many young men who traveled with him that year, just a few months after the American Civil War ended. Adding to the attraction of new opportunities for work and individual enterprise was the novelty of crossing the Atlantic by steamship which had just begun when the war ended. Although this radically improved mode of travel was launched in the early 1860s, it was used exclusively for government priorities and not available to the public until after the war. Thus did the voyage hold exceptional promise for young men like Browne who were embarking not only on a new form of transportation, but on a new life as well.15
Such an experience remains a milepost in memory, easily becoming romanticized and embellished. Years later Browne recalled standing on the docks in Hamburg, “with a longing look [toward] this land of freedom... watching in wonder the many different kinds of ships “ungearing, loosening their tackles, heaving anchor, developing steam, setting sails and saluting with a cannon ball a farewell to old Europe.”16
Musing on the destinations of so many ships, the young rabbi asked an old mariner on a small schooner where he was going. “New York,” the man answered.
Next, Browne noticed a bark and asked its skipper, “Where to, good friend?”
He, too, replied “New York.”
Then Browne spied another ship, the “Red, White and Blue.” It was manned by two sailors and a dog, also going to New York. Browne considered this an indication of American foolhardiness.
Then, according to his memoir, the young emigre watched hundreds of vessels start for New York, “with proud or humble masts, with swelled or baffled sails, with steam, with screws, and with side wheels....” Following them in the distance as they scattered in different directions, he saw them “float on for awhile, and finally rise and sink and recede in the mist....”
Weaving this image into a sermon years later, Browne noted that his ship had reached New York before the others. After three weeks ashore he returned to the docks and encountered the skipper of the “Red, White and Blue,” which had just arrived. Greeting him, Browne mentioned that this crossing had taken much longer than his own, whereupon the seasoned seaman replied, “You traveled by steam.... I had to travel by sail.... The steamer can no more deride the sail than the sail the rudder, for they are the developments of each other. First the rudder, then the sail, then the steam, next electricity. Or the sunbeam, for all we know.”17
Even assuming that Browne concocted the story to enhance a sermon, the words provide evidence that his early interest in science and technology continued throughout his life, as indeed it did. In 1912 he designed an airplane which, after the United States entered the first World War, he offered to the War Department. Even more revealing was his reference to sailing toward the same place by different routes and diverse sources of power, which became a metaphor for his entire life. As shall be seen, he sought the same basic goals as others did, but by different vehicles and different routes. More often than not, he plied the waves alone on uncharted seas, powered solely by his own resourcefulness.18
Browne stayed a short while in New York before departing for Cincinnati at the invitation of Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, a leader of Reform in America, then in its initial stages of development. Reform had no national organization, no standard of observance, and no American-trained rabbis. Wise, who became its chief organizer and institution builder, emigrated from Bohemia in 1846, and after a stormy eight-year tenure in Albany, New York, accepted a call to Congregation B’nai Jeshurun (now known at Wise Synagogue) in the well established German Jewish community of Cincinnati. Soon renowned throughout the country, it was he whom most congregations other than those in the large Jewish centers of New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore consulted when they needed a rabbi. In this capacity Wise was constantly on the lookout for promising young scholars with rabbinic potential.
Wise probably heard of Browne from mutual friends or colleagues in Europe. The renowned rabbi soon took the neophyte under wing and into his home, treating him like a member of the family. Theresa Bloch Wise, the rabbi’s wife, became a surrogate mother to Browne, and he became the brotherly confidant of her children, especially the rebellious son Leo who was only a few years his junior. I. M. Wise nurtured and instructed Browne, supervised his secular education, and masterminded his moves for the foreseeable future.19
The Wises mingled freely in gentile society and introduced Browne to it as one of their own. They were the only Jews living on College Hill, so named because of several institutions of higher learning located there, including Farmer’s College, the Medical College of Ohio, and the Ohio Female College. Browne, while studying privately with Wise for the Reform rabbinate, enrolled in Farmer’s College to further his general education and entered the medical school to follow his interest in science. At the Ohio Female College, where the Wise daughters were the only Jewish students, he spent a sufficient amount of time to become friends with some of more literary minded ladies.20
Although he did not study English before coming to America and later claimed to have had little fluency in it during his initial stay in Cincinnati, Browne made himself understood well enough by members of the Hesperian literary society of the Ohio Female College for them to invite him to contribute to their publication, The Hesperian Gazette. He obliged by submitting a number of humorous, romantic verses. In 1869, Browne inscribed these poems along with others in a 276 page handwritten album entitled “Floral House Weeds,” which he dedicated to Wise and presented to him and Theresa on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Browne’s first body of work in English, it also included four items in other languages that Wise understood—one in Hebrew, one each for Rabbi and Mrs. Wise in German, and a translation of Lord Byron’s “Maid of Athens” in Hungarian. The verses were mostly romantic and about women, probably tongue-in-cheek. One that was both serious and touching he dedicated to his sister Ilona.21
Despite a disclaimer that his views, “religious or otherwise, should by no means be inferred from these writings,” they often foreshadow issues that he would espouse in the future. In one that suggests the rising voice of organized labor, which he vigorously supported as the movement grew, he seemed to be scolding those who demanded higher wages without having earned them.
We are always complaining, we have less than our neighbor,
Why man! do compare your reward with your labor!
If he works more than you, more reward he may claim;
And he receives that reward. ‘Tis yourself you must blame.
Certainly no Walt Whitman, the would-be bard tended to imitate Algernon Charles Swinburne and Edgar Allen Poe, often emulating their meter and rhyming schemes as well as their flowery romanticism. Yet for all his sophomoric versifying, the ardent youth revealed an astonishing breadth of knowledge and interests. His metaphors ranged from copious use of scripture to such references as mythology, ancient and modern history, astronomy, botany, and Dalton’s law on the use of gasses. He also displayed, for one so recently arrived in America, a surprising knowledge of national politics. The impeachment of President Andrew Johnson inspired him to write the last poem in his collection, entitled “North and South.”
To you in the North
Whose arrows go forth
To strike a fallen hero,
Whose venomous mouth
Denounces the South:
“Remember the end of a Nero!”
And the South in despair
I remind: “be aware,
There are roses enough among thorns.
Wade and Butler the beasts
The devil’s best priests
Have lost the power of their horns.
Though radical wrath
Presages but death
And sends you defying the challenge;
Up on high watches God
With righteousness’ rod,
Adjusting the uneven balance!”
Browne’s apparent sympathy for the South, particularly the allusion to Generals Benjamin Wade and Benjamin Butler as “the beasts,” probably stemmed from Wise’s influence. Although there is no evidence to suggest that either man ever condoned slavery—Browne, in fact, as shall be seen, displayed unpatronizing friendship for African Americans even while serving Southern congregations—it is likely that as Wise’s disciple he absorbed his teacher’s views that the South should have been allowed to secede unchallenged in order to avoid war. Browne probably dedicated the poem to Johnson out of personal sympathy rather than endorsement of the president’s political decisions.22
After one year Wise sent Browne to Savannah, Georgia, for “seasoning” and to improve his English while teaching Hebrew at the Savannah Hebrew Collegiate Institute. It is possible that he also wanted to divert his protégé’s attentions from Cincinnati’s social life. The wily mentor may even have tried to arrange a suitable marriage, a shittoch, for Browne, as he reputedly did for future rabbinic candidates at Hebrew Union College, cautioning them to take a wife before signing on with a congregation. He secured lodgings for Browne in Savannah at the home of the school’s superintendent, Rabbi Raphael Lewin, whose wife, Adeline, had an unmarried sister. They were daughters of Abraham Einstein, one of the city’s wealthiest Jews and a founder of the Hebrew Institute. According to rumor, the Einsteins encouraged Browne to become their son-in-law and never forgave him for declining the favor. Over a decade later, when false charges were brought against Browne in New York, his nephew believed that they had been instigated by the Einstein family in revenge.23
Besides teaching at the Hebrew Institute, Browne matriculated at the Savannah Medical College, and also gave several lectures there in chemistry. His experience in the laid-back city of colonial origins and wartime captivity enabled him to deepen his understanding of American history, to acquaint himself directly with a segment of the South under the burden of Reconstruction, and to intensify his sympathy for southerners of both races.24
Browne returned to Ohio the following year, resumed his medical studies at the institution that later became the Medical School of the University of Cincinnati, and earned his Doctor of Medicine degree by the end of the term. At the same time Wise gave him s’micha—rabbinic ordination—possibly the first and only one conferred in America before the first graduation at the Hebrew Union College in 1883.
Now Wise believed that his protégé was ready to test his skills as an American rabbi. Browne was well connected, well endowed intellectually, and no less well suited sartorially for the very visible position of Jewish leadership in the rising middle class communities of the United States. Photographs reveal him as a courtly youth with a full head of brown hair above a wide oval face, sporting a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee, garbed in black cutaway with a medal dangling from his watch chain, posed proudly in Napoleonic stance with right hand in vest and gray eyes determinedly forward. Although only five foot three and three quarters inches tall—slightly less than average height—he was slim, fashionable and debonair, suggesting affluence and sophistication, attributes much admired and eagerly sought by nineteenth century American Jewry.
Happily, Browne had none of the negative characteristics generally associated with the typical “greenhorn.” What he lacked was not visible, its absence not quickly detected. It was, however, an ephemeral quality highly necessary for success as a congregational rabbi. As Wise later expressed the need, one must be “very circumspect, particularly in an age and in a country where rabbis are looked upon as ice cream only.”25
Browne could not be compared to ice cream. His persona more closely resembled the culinary specialty of his native land. Hungarian goulash is highly seasoned, greatly nutritious, and for many people hard to digest.
