The Chronicles of the Rabbis

An actor reads from The Chronicles of the Rabbis…:

Now it came to pass when Episcopus was the chief ruler of the rabbis of the city of Gotham, and the rabbis were pious servants of the Lord, and their love for each other exceeded that of the love of David and Jonathan, and jealousy and envy were unknown between them. And they said, one to another: Behold the number of the years of our chief. Even Episcopus will soon be three score and ten, and for piety he standeth like Saul, the son of Kish, head and shoulders above all the other rabbis of the congregations of Israel. Now let us gather and prepare a banquet in his honor.

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Host Aaron Henne: Welcome to Episode Three of the third season of theatre dybbuk’s The Dybbukast. I'm Aaron Henne, artistic director of theatre dybbuk. We're excited to begin our five-episode series in partnership with the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. In this first episode, we explore a satirical text from 1897 titled The Chronicles of the Rabbis: Being an Account of a Banquet Tendered to “Episcopus” by the Rabbis of New York City upon the Anniversary of his 70th Birthday. Written by J.P. Solomon, the editor of a popular Jewish newspaper of the time, the text spoofs the banquet thrown that year on the occasion of the 70th birthday of New York's foremost Reform rabbi, Gustav Gottheil.

You heard actor Joe Jordan read a selection from the satire at the top. He will continue to read portions of it throughout the episode. Dr. Jonathan Sarna, University Professor and the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History, translates the tensions the text presents of a rabbinate on the cusp of change and also discusses its intersections with the popular culture of its time.

And now, Season Three, Episode Three: “The Chronicles of The Rabbis.”

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Dr. Jonathan Sarna: So Chronicles of the Rabbis is really a spoof on a remarkable historic event, which was the 70th birthday banquet tendered to one of the greatest rabbis of New York. His name was Gustav Gottheil. He was the rabbi of Temple Emanu-El. Contemporaries compared him to the Episcopal priest of New York, and, indeed, in The Chronicle, he is referred to as “Episcopus”.

Actor: And unto Episcopus, it was as the savor of sweet frankincense, and his soul rejoiced that he should be chosen as the man whom his brethren delighted to honor.

Jonathan: So it's one of the most remarkable texts that I have ever read of its type, and when all of the names and events are decoded, it really presents an unrivaled portrait of the late 19th century in the rabbinate of New York. You can see many of the tensions in the rabbinate of that time peeking through in this remarkable and funny and cleverly written spoof produced by Jacob P. Solomon —

Actor: Solomon the scribe.

Jonathan: — who was the editor of the largest Jewish newspaper of the time, The Hebrew Standard. Naturally, he was not a rabbi. He was a learned lay leader and a lawyer. He and Gottheil are approximately the same age. It's easy to see that he was somewhat contemptuous of many of the rabbis of his day. But at a deeper level, he is an adherent of an older model of the rabbinate, and he understands that there's a new model of the rabbinate aborning.

Actor: Episcopus was dear unto Solomon the scribe even as the apple of his eye, but he despised the Amhaaratzim, having sworn in his wrath: I will utterly put out the remembrance of every Amhaaretzi rabbi from under heaven.

Jonathan: His own son would move over to the Reform movement and be at Central Synagogue. And I mentioned that because it's really thanks to his son, who left a single copy of an annotated Chronicles of the Rabbis, where he identified many of these individuals and confirmed that his father was the author of this pseudonymous text.

Actor: And there assembled all the rabbis of Gotham and the City of Churches, both great and small, from Kaufman the Bethelite, who was learned in the books and writings of the Jews, to Alexander of the tribe of Amhaaratzim, who knew not the difference between one Hebrew letter and another.

Jonathan: We've talked about Gustav Gottheil, who was the leading rabbi, and there are a few other leading rabbis who appear. The most important was Kaufman Kohler.

Actor: Kaufman the Bethelite.

Jonathan: Kaufman Kohler was the son-in-law of David Einhorn, meaning he goes back to the great radical Reform rabbi who arrived in America prior to the Civil War. He has experimented with Sunday services, and yet Kohler is a man of vast learning, and a deep Jewish and cultural education.

And then we have other New York rabbis. There is a Reform rabbi who really did not go to Hebrew Union College. He had what we would call today private ordination, and Jacob Solomon has contempt for his ignorance, although his contemporaries found him very jolly and liked him a lot. And that was Maurice Harris.

Actor: And when Maurice the boycotter heard the words of Rudolph the Rodefer, he lifted up his voice and exclaimed, “Rats!” for he was afraid that he might be called upon to pronounce the blessing, and he knew not the language of the Jews in which it should be spoken, for he belonged to the tribe of the Amhaaratzim and was a chief thereof.

Jonathan: There is Raphael Benjamin, who is an interesting rabbinic figure originally from Australia, who really is very handsome and that comes through.

Actor: Now Raphael the Benjaminite was the handsomest rabbi in the city, and the daughters of Zion worshiped him for his beauty.

Jonathan: There's a kind of interesting mention of one of the most surprising figures in the religious life of Jewish New York. That was Cantor William Sparger of Temple Emanu-El. He was apparently a brilliant cantor, but he had, we would now say, very significant mental illness, perhaps bipolar. Some of that is hinted at astonishingly in The Chronicles. And a few years later, he would literally disappear. He clearly committed suicide, but his body has never been found.

Actor: And William, the chief musician of the temple, bowed his head for shame, and mourned and refused to be comforted.

Jonathan: Some rabbis who would later become immensely famous in New York, including the great Stephen Wise —

Actor: Stephen the young man.

Jonathan: — make appearances in this 1897 document. Steven S. Wise will be one of the foremost rabbis in New York and in the United States, really during the interwar period. He's only in his twenties. He begins at a very young age, but everybody knows that he is a man to watch. There are a few other rabbis from the period who have bit parts. Rabbi Mendes is there.

Actor: Pereira, of the House of Mendes.

Jonathan: He's going to be the head of the Orthodox union and he, like Rabbi Drachman —

Actor: Bernhard the Zichronite.

Jonathan: — are folks who are still trying to straddle: Can we get all these rabbis together? Can we have a single, unified American rabbinate? So he comes, and Drachman, who had actually been Gottheil’s student many years earlier, also comes. Rabbi Bernard Drachman is an interesting figure because he begins life at Temple Emanu-El and in the Reform camp and ends life as a modern Orthodox rabbi. And — moving, in other words, in the opposite direction that we imagined Judaism was going to move.

Actor: But Episcopus was a thorn in his side, for he had strayed from the paths of his fathers and had gone after the inclinations of his own heart and after the desire of his own eyes.

Jonathan: At Temple Emanu-El, everybody knows that Gustav Gottheil — trained in Europe and a man of very substantial learning — was being replaced by Rabbi Silverman.

Actor: Joseph the Trilbyite.

Jonathan: — American-born, may well have been the first native-born rabbi in New York. He’s a very handsome man. He's tall. His voice fills Temple Emanu-El. But from the perspective of those who wanted a scholarly rabbi, Rabbi Silverman was wanting. He read novels. He spoke nicely, but he did not have the depth of a Gottheil. Does that matter? And that's one of the questions that this text asks.

Actor: The songs of Miriam and Deborah are things of the past. Hannah and Esther are antiquated relics, but the echo of the voice of Trilby shouting, “Milk,” shall ring through countless ages, typical of the milk of human kindness; of the milk and honey which floweth in the treasuries of congregations that have no mortgages upon their temples.

Jonathan: The birthday party, which really is a way of honoring a rabbi at the end of a distinguished career — it’s fascinating. He’s the rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, but the party is actually held at the Tuxedo, which was a well known hotel. And it was kosher. The spoof makes fun of that, noting that many of these folks regularly did not keep kosher, but they wanted to observe it for the sake of the minority that did.

Actor: And he communed within himself in the silent watches of the night and said, “Wherewith shall my stomach be satisfied, for the food which they set before me is strange unto me, and of which I have not partaken for years, and my heart delighteth not therein.” But Episcopus was wise in his generation and kept his own counsel.

Jonathan: We are at a moment in the history of New York when Jewish immigration from eastern Europe is growing. A couple of decades earlier, lots of people thought, oh, all of American Jewry will be Reform. That will be what Isaac Mayer Wise, the great Reform rabbi of Cincinnati —

Actor: The Western Pope.

Jonathan: – called “Minhag America.” That will be the custom of American Jews. And Minhag America is the name of Isaac Mayer Wise's prayer book. But, lo and behold, the coming of East European Jews in larger and larger numbers punctures that balloon and overturns that prophecy. Actually, by 1897, the East European Jews have really overtaken the more aristocratic, formal, Central European Jews who had come in the middle of the 19th century. New Yorkers of the late 19th century knew that there would be at least two kinds of Jews: conservative and liberal; or, if you like, Orthodox and Reform. There may have been a spectrum of Orthodox, some reflected in the document and some Yiddish-speaking rabbis who wouldn't have been invited to this dinner. So it's a very interesting moment. And it's also interesting because we hear about Hebrew Union College —

Actor: Taught by The Western Pope in his school at Porkopolis.

Jonathan: — which of course is training Reform rabbis and was supported by Rabbi Gottheil. But suddenly there are two new seminaries. There's the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, which is much more traditional than Hebrew Union College and bids to compete with it for centrality in American Judaism. Indeed, just a few days before this celebration of Gustav Gottheil’s birthday took place, we now know — nobody knew it then — but we now know that the first invitation came to a rabbi named Solomon Schechter in England asking him whether he might be interested in taking over the Jewish Theological Seminary and molding it. And then there's a tiny little seminary that actually not a single Jewish newspaper in New York noticed when it was founded, but this Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary is going to become part, one day, of Yeshiva College and then Yeshiva University. And it is going to become the training ground for modern Orthodox rabbis.

So, to my mind, partly for reasons that the participants knew and partly for reasons that they could not possibly have known — but we know in retrospect — this is truly a moment when we can say that the American rabbinate stood on the cusp of change.

Actor: No longer should we be slaves to the past. Verily I say unto you, the outstretched hand is a relic of Orthodox bondage—it is the foot which is a fitting emblem of this age of our redemption from the yoke of the Shulchan Aruch.

Jonathan: We are seeing new models of the rabbinate just, by the way, as one is seeing new models of the Christian ministry. There is a desire for rabbis with titles, and what is very important is their ability to speak, to be a presence in the pulpit, to have ties to Christian leaders. There are new models of a rabbi as pastor, a rabbi as communal leader, that is very different from the model of the rabbi-scholar that once was prevalent. These rabbis are also pushing out the lay leaders who didn't have ordination at all. And even if it's hard to figure out how some of them got their ordination and who the rabbis were — that's true of Gottheil, that's true of even Isaac Mayer Wise; not quite clear who ordained him — they always wanted to be known as rabbi-doctor, and that was their title.

Particularly significant in this document and in this era is the clash between classically trained European rabbis — rabbis who came to America with the title rabbi – and the new young graduates of the Hebrew Union College, which produced its first ordainees in 1883. So, these younger rabbis don't have the benefit of the kind of deep, European, immersive rabbinic training that even liberal rabbis in Europe often had, but they do have the benefit of knowing how to interact with Americans and with the American-born children of immigrants, and they know the surrounding culture.

Actor: Verily, thy words are bosh (which signifieth in the vernacular the expressions of foolish men).

Jonathan: And, indeed, in the late 1890s, some of the great 19th century rabbis, including Rabbi Benjamin Szold and Rabbi Jastrow — they are essentially pensioned off by their congregations so that young, American-trained, English-speaking — meaning native English-speaking — rabbis can replace them, and you can really feel the tension.

Actor: The foot of progress upon the neck of Rabbinism; oh, how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger that has brought the glad tidings of Reform to all young rabbis who, otherwise, could never have entered a Jewish pulpit.

Jonathan: One of the very striking features of this document are the many jokes made about Gustav Gottheil’s salary, which apparently was common knowledge. He earned $10,000 a year, which was the envy of all of his colleagues.

Actor: Peradventure, if I had received his salary, I might also have had to confess my evil doings.

Jonathan: True, the greatest Protestant minister of the day, Henry Ward Beecher, earned $15,000, but 10,000 was at least in his league. And for a rabbi to be in the league of Henry Ward Beecher was really something. Many rabbis in America earned 1/20 of his salary. Their salary was closer to $500 a year than to 10,000.

Actor: And when the rabbis heard of the feast, some of them were in sore travail, for they said:

Whence shall come my help, for I have neither gold nor silver, and my lot is cast among those who have not been blessed with an abundance of riches. How can I go up unto the feast when there are no shekels in my purse?

Jonathan: I have to say that I myself was surprised in researching the article to realize that The Hebrew Standard was actually the best-selling American Jewish newspaper in New York. The Hebrew Standard was a popular newspaper, not with long, learned articles for the elite, but with really much lighter reading. And Jacob Solomon, who had a very quick, but also a very sharp, wit reflected in this document, but also reflected in his newspaper. And The Hebrew Standard really was a highly traditionalist paper. It had great respect for orthodoxy. Its circulation exceeded that of all of the other Jewish newspapers combined.

Actor: But the people flocked to his Standard, and they strengthened his hands.

Jonathan: I do think that this text is fascinating for reminding us about some of the cultural texts that Jews and non-Jews are reading in the late 19th century. There's Trilby by Maurier, the best-selling novel in 1894. And it has a Jewish character. That has a big impact.

Actor: Oh, Trilby! Oh, Trilby! so beautiful and sweet,

In soldier’s jacket and unslippered feet,

I, thy Svengali, will awaken thy lyre
And touch men’s hearts with thy celestial fire.

Jonathan: A reminder that the novel is beginning to have a shaping influence. And, in addition, the concluding chapter is really supposed to be sung to the music of “Tit-Willow,” in The Mikado.

Actor: Air: “Tit-Willow,” in The Mikado.

We hear music from The Mikado.

Jonathan: The Mikado was just the most popular operetta in the English-speaking world. It was of course itself a spoof on the British aristocracy. Yes, I know it's about Japan, but everybody understood it was really about England, and the vast influence of The Mikado has its impact on this text. And it's so interesting because we see that the surrounding culture actually influence both the traditionalists and the reformers. Indeed, the concluding “Tit-Willow” song here is sung in the satire by the traditionalist Rabbi Drachman.

Actor (singing): The Tallis like poison or Hebrew he shuns,

Good fellow, good fellow, good fellow;
And all hats are removed by this biggest of guns,
This good fellow, good fellow, good fellow

Jonathan: So this serves as a reminder that in America, Jews are not today, and were not in the 19th century, cut off from the surrounding culture. Quite the contrary. They are deeply influenced by it. They read it, they know it, it has a shaping influence upon them. And that's very clear from this text.

Actor (singing): In his temple he teaches his numerous band

Bare-neck’d and bare-faced and bare-headed to stand,
Like the Goyim that visit each church in the land,
Good fellow, good fellow, good fellow.

Jonathan: We've covered a great deal of ground, but it's worth remembering that two religious themes come through, and these tended to be the areas that divided Jews from one another. One has to do with the Sabbath. To what extent are Jews going to keep their traditional Sabbath on the seventh day? Gottheil has allowed his congregants to be very liberal. Kohler has played with the Sunday Sabbath. Jacob Solomon is a very strict Sabbath observer. That's an important issue.

Actor (singing): Of the troublesome Sabbath he breaketh the spell.

And its suffering victims he kindly does tell,
That a service on Sunday will do quite as well —

Jonathan: And of course the second issue has to do with food, and how important is Kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws. What is fascinating is that this text actually is 14 years or so after the so-called Trefa Banquet in Cincinnati, at the first ordination of Hebrew Union College actually. Gustav Gottheil was there. That was not kosher.

Actor: And straightways they prepared the feast, but did not provide any of the creeping things and other abominations with which the rabbis who had forsaken the laws of their forefathers delighted in.

Jonathan: There is much discussion of Hebrew and knowledge of Hebrew as a kind of measure of general learning. And that is going to be a very important theme as the Hebraist movement grows, and then it's gonna disappear, meaning that Hebrew is actually going substantially to decline.

Actor: And Frederick the tiller of the soil read it aloud; and save Pereira of the House of Mendes, Kaufman the Bethelite, Adolph the Assurimite, and Episcopus, none who were at the feast understood what was read, for it was in the language of the Hebrews, and they were of the tribe of the Amhaaratzim.

Jonathan: So those are some of the kind of side points that this text reminds us of — what we might call lived religion of that period and how you quickly were able to judge people by knowing where they stood on those kinds of issues — the Sabbath, kosher food, Hebrew. You quickly judged what they knew and what the nature of their Judaism was.

Actor: Now Falk the Bikurcholemite was well versed in the language of the Hebrews and in the learnings of the sages of Israel, and he meditated upon the law day and night whenever he had time.

Jonathan: It is rather interesting to note that Gustav Gottheil is distinctive from most Reform rabbis of his day in that he actually is going to come out in his late years as a strong supporter of Zionism. And his son, Richard, is really going to be the leader of American Zionism. This is a mistake in the text. That is to say, Jacob Solomon, for all that he thought he knew New York rabbis, he assumed that Gottheil, like most Reform rabbis, did not support the Zionist ideal, but actually he was quite wrong.

Actor (singing): Their past as a nightmare he bids them forget,

Nor think of their Zion with pangs of regret,
For America sure is their Zion, you bet,
Good fellow, good fellow, good fellow.

Jonathan: I have a sense that we are again at the cusp of change, and it's kind of easy to see that. There are tensions between older rabbis who remember the Six Day War and younger rabbis who have a very different view of Israel; older rabbis who have big libraries, younger rabbis who have big computer discs. “But I wonder why are you worried about these books? It's all available online.” Even the style of sermons is changing from older rabbis to younger rabbis. Well, we saw the same kind of transformation at the end of the 19th century when the old-style rabbi who always had a biblical text gave way to new preachers who found different kinds of texts.

Actor: Why should I preach upon religious themes,

Which are at best but foolish dreams,

Why speak of heaven or talk of Paradise,

When thou standeth lovely before my eyes?

Jonathan: And I think that in the late 19th century, there was a sense perhaps that people were looking for a different style of leader than the traditional rabbi had been. And I think many synagogues today when they interview are looking for quite different kinds of rabbis than, you know, the rabbi who's retiring after 50 years. They may be looking for someone of a different gender today. And they're probably looking for someone who will have a somewhat different affect. So there are fascinating parallels. History doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes, and the value of understanding an earlier moment is: A. That we realize, oh, there have long been changes. We're not the first generation to experience these kinds of massive changes. And second, we made it through those changes.

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Aaron: Thank you for listening to this episode of The Dybbukast, “The Chronicles of the Rabbis.” The text featured in this episode was read by Joe Jordan. Thank you to Dr. Jonathan Sarna for sharing his insights. Our theme music is composed by Michael Skloff and produced by Sam K.S. Story editing on this episode was led by Julie Lockhart, with support from me, Aaron Henne. This episode was edited by Mark McClain Wilson.

Please visit us at theatredybbuk.org, where you will find links to a wide variety of materials, which expand upon the episode’s explorations. And if you want to know more about theatre dybbuk’s work in general, please sign up for our mailing list on that same website.

This is the first in a multi-episode series presented and produced in collaboration with the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. This season of The Dybbukast is generously supported by a grant from Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah, and this episode is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. The Dybbukast is produced by theatre dybbuk.

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Actor: And when the daybreak came, they arose and girded themselves about the loins and took their staffs in their hands and went to their dwelling places. And when Stephen the young man arose the next morning, his head was greatly swollen and he came nigh perishing with thirst; for he was but a stripling and unaccustomed to the drinking of much wine. But Maurice the boycotter continued in the land as an Amhaaretz, and the people gazed with astonishment at the immensity of his gall, that he should appear before them as a rabbi. And after this, Episcopus renewed his vigor and became like unto a young man. Now, the acts of his strength and of his might and the exposition of his greatness, behold they are written in the book of The Chronicles of the Rabbis, even unto this day.