Studia Rosenthaliana 42 (2010), 161-178

dio: 10.2143/SR.42.0.0000000

Juda Palaches History of Hebrew Literature

Yaniv Hagbi

Introduction

o a large extent, Juda Leon Palaches (1886-1944) work is a scien

tific mediation between Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Judaism,
of course, was for Palache more than just a field of expertise, as Islam
and Arabic were. As the son of Isaac Palache, the chief Portuguese Rabbi
in Amsterdam, and a graduate of the Ets-ayyim rabbinical Seminary,
his point of departure towards Christianity and Islam was indeed Judaism. Both his academic and popular work revolved around the Semitic
languages, Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic (and hence, Judaism and
Islam),1 and often negotiated links between Judaism and Christianity.2
1. Palaches Ph.D. dissertation was titled Het Heiligdom in de voorstelling der semietische volken
(Leiden 1920). During his studies in Leiden Palache was influenced by Hebraists such as Gerrit
Wildeboer (1855-1911) Gerard Jacobus Thierry (1880-1961), and Arabists such as Christiaan Snouck
Hurgronje (1857-1936) and Arent Jan Wensinck (1882-1939), for more information see J.H. Kramers,
Jehuda Lion Palache, in Analecta Orientalia. (Leiden 1956), p. 319-323. As the chair at the University of Amsterdam for the Semitic languages, Palache emphasized the role of Arabic (H.J. Franken,
J.L. Palache (1886-1944), Hoogleraar in de Semitische Talen, in J. de Roos, A. Schippers, and J.W.
Wesselius (eds), Driehonderd Jaar Oosterse Talen in Amsterdam [Amsterdam 1986], p. 88). Palache,
keeping with conventional practice, considered Hebrew studies to be an integral part of oriental
studies. In an interview to a Jewish journal, aimed at Jewish ears Palache declared that the study of
languages related to Hebrew is in more than one aspect of the outer importance (J.S. da Silva Rosa,
J Het Hebreeuwsch als universitair leervak: een interview met prof.dr. J.L. Palache De Vrijdagavond, 4:32, [1927 ]). The titles of many of his articles in the same popular Jewish venue can testify
as well to that fact: Haman in den Koran, De Vrijdagavond, 4:29 (1927), or the four parts of De
Volken van van Oud-Palestina, De Vrijdagavond 6:1; 6:2; 6:3; 6:4 (1929). We can safely presume
that Palache would claim the same on the importance of Hebrew, speaking to students of the other
Semitic languages.
2. In 24 January 1922, two years after taking his doctoral degree, as a high school teacher in
The Hague, he gave a public lecture titled De Talmoed en het Christendom, Het Vaderland, 25
Januari 1922. A lecture he gave to a Jewish audience at the Genootschap voor de Joodsche Wetenschap in Nederland examines the Sabbath idea outside Judaism. It was published as a booklet, De
sabbath-idee buiten het Jodendom (Amsterdam 1925). As Franken testifies, holding the chair of

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In this vein Palache introduced the Talmud to the broad Dutch

public. His Inleiding in den Talmoed (Introduction to the Talmud,
1922) was published as part 15 of the Volksuniversiteitsbibliotheek.3 The
last chapter of the Inleiding in den Talmoed portrays the history of the
Talmud after its completion. Palache often assumes here an apologetic
tone, raising and dismissing in the same breath historical claims against
the Talmud. Though Palache claimed it is not his intention to defend
the Talmud and some of the remarks made by some of its rabbis against
non-Jews,4 he immediately does just that. He is quick to discard these
utterances as antiquities, but more fundamentally, he makes the difference between the heathens, the non-Jews, of whom the Talmud speaks,
and Christians and Christianity, towards which, he stresses, the Talmud
and its students show no hostility.5
De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur van den na-Talmoedischen tijd tot op onze
dagen in schetsen en vertalingen (The Hebrew Literature: from the PostTalmudic Era until our Days in Outlines and Translations, [Amsterdam
1935]) was Palaches next and last book-length work to be published in his
lifetime. As in the case of many works aimed at the wider public, especially
Jewish anthologies and textbooks published during the interbellum, De
Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur was a commissioned project.6 In 1934 Hollandia,
the Bnai Briths lodge in The Hague, Palache tells us, and Hilleel, its sibling organization from Amsterdam wished to commemorate their 10 year

Semitic languages, both at the faculty of letters and philosophy and at the faculty of theology,
Palache knew how to maintain a scientific approach while dealing both with students holding Jewish and Protestant orthodox notions (Franken, J.L. Palache, p. 88).
3. Besides some bibliographic updates and biographic notes on Palache himself as introductions, this work was published without any changes in 1954 and in 1980 (R.J.Z. Werbolowsky, Ten
Geleide, in J.L. Palache, Inleiding in den Talmoed [Amstelveen 1980], p. vii-viii).
4.Palache, Inleiding in den Talmoed, p. 192.
5. Ibid. Palache, for example, interprets R. Abahus famous remark that non Jews are protected by Jewish civil law. R. Abahu explains this discrimination by the fact that the peoples of
Canaan neglected to keep the seven universal laws and hence are not worthy of the protection of the
law. Palache stresses that this harsh measure applies to any transgressor of the Jewish law, Jews and
non-Jews alike (Palache, Inleiding in den Talmoed, p. 191).
6. Sendung und Schicksal: aus dem Schrifttum des Nachbiblischen Judentums by N.N. Glatzer
and L. Strauss for example, was commissioned by Der Ausschu fr Jdische Kulturarbeit who
decided to publish a popular textbook (Berlin 1931), p. 347. J. Hxters Quellenbuch zur jdischen
Geschichte und Literatur (Frankfurt am Main, 1927-1930), a work simply known as Der Hxter, was
sponsored by the Preubischer Landesverband jdischer Gemeinden. Palache names both work in
the introduction (De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur, p. V n. 1).

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jubilee.7 For the translation and selection of the religious extracts Palache8
was assisted by Abraham Salomon Levisson (1902-1945), who will become
the chief Rabbi of Drenthe and Friesland. Sallie Pinkhof (1893-1945), a poet
and a translator on his own right9, helped Palache to choose, translate and
even introduce, as we shall later see, the more literary oriented extracts.10
Here Palache takes upon himself, yet again, the role of the mediator,
and relates his new book to his introduction to the Talmud:
It is the same idea that I had in mind by publishing my Inleiding in
den Talmoed (): to give a notion of these constantly much discussed
texts () to a greater public, which can read Dutch but not Hebrew,
and which, as experience shows, is interested in this matter.11

An inherent part of any brokering is the setting of borders, defining the

different parties and defining the object, knowledge in our case, exchanging hands. Writing history of literature, especially of diasporic literature
such as Jewish literature, requires not only definition of time and place,
but, as well, of issues such as language and audience. The procedures by
which an author of a given work defines his scope, can disclose much of
his cultural premises, of his generation, and of the intellectual communities in which he lived and worked.
The Construction of the Book: Between Anthology and History
The subtitle of De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur is van den na-Talmoedischen
tijd tot op onze dagen in schetsen en vertalingen. Vertalingen, translations,
shall determine the character of the book as an anthology. Though the
act of selection, by itself, bears critical insights, the other part of the title,
schetsen, the outlines, is of the outmost importance to establish the critical character of the book.
7. Actually, according to the official site of Bnai Brith in Europe, the Hollandia lodge, the
first lodge in the Netherlands, was inaugurated in 1923 and its establishment was officially published
in the press in 1924 (<http://www.bnaibritheurope.org/bbe/content/view/405/83/lang,en_GB/>).
8.Palache, De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur, p. VII.
9. De wachtwoorden (Amsterdam 1930); Versen (Bussum 1920).
10.Palache, De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur, p. VII. Pinkhof already published translations of
Judah Halevis philosophy and poems, respectively, Naar uw jeugd van vroeger: Jehoeda Halevis
Coezari en wij (Bussum 1923) and Gedichten van Jehoeda Halevi (Amsterdam 1929). Palache incorporated extracts from both books into De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur (p. VII).
11. Ibid., p. V.

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The broadest definition of a history of literature is a critical (in different measures) account of a given literature in a given time span. Titled
The Hebrew Literature from the Post-Talmudic Era, one would expect
Palaches book to be some sort of history of Hebrew literature. Marking
the timeline, and the precedence the outlines take over the translations,
one would expect De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur to provide us with an
account in which criticism and evaluations of texts will be dominant.
This is however not the case. Though the word anthology is nowhere
to be found in the title of Palaches book, it seems that he did grasped
his work as such.
Within the genre we can see different variations, mainly on the axis
between criticism and anthology. Anthologies, in most cases, are textbooks for students and pupils. As we shall further see, Palache does not
clearly distinguish between Jewish and Hebrew literature. The distinction between anthology and criticism in De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur is
similarly blurred. In spite of the critical expectations raised by the title,
Palache names as its predecessors, not critical accounts of Jewish or
Hebrew literature but anthologies.12 Reading the content, it seems
indeed, that what Palache had in mind is a historical anthology, divided
into chapters, each of them introduced and placed within a culturalhistorical context. Palache is by no means a literary critic, nor does he
pretend to be. He usually does not offer aesthetical insights or provides
his readers with judgments of the literary value of the texts. The scarce
moments of literary judgments were made, we may safely presume, by
Sallie Pinkhof. Firstly, at the introduction, Palache writes that Pinkhof
did not only help with the selection and translation of the excerpts, as
he writes about Levisson, but that Pinkhof, also provided the discussions on the poetry and the belles-lettres in chapters II, III, VIII and X.13
Moreover, the extent of Pinkhofs share is easy to verify. If we, for
example, examine the introduction to the third chapter discussing the
Spanish era and compare it to the introduction of his translation of
12. Palache names the following works: J. Winter and A. Wnsche, Die jdische Literatur seit
Abschluss des Kanons, 3 vols (Trier 1894-1896); B. Halper, Post-Biblical Hebrew Literature, 2 vols
(Philadelphia 1921); E. Fleg. Anthologie Juive. 2 vols. (Paris 1923); Glatzer and Strauss, Sendung und
Schicksal; Hxter, Quellenbuch, 5 vols. One exception is the last item, The Schiff Library of Jewish
Classics which Palache notes as an ongoing series. This series, obviously not a literary criticism, is
actually also an anthology, as a series, acting on a much broader scale.
13.Palache, De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur, p. VII.

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Judah Halevi (1929) we can see that in both texts Pinkhof maintains
similar aesthetical ideas, such as considering Judah Halevi to be the
most important poet of his era14 or the comparison between him and
Heinrich Heine.15
De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur opens with a historical introduction,
a chapter describing Jewish history along two major lines, the persecution of Jews and Jewish intellectual life. Each of the following nine chapters usually begins with a short introduction, sometimes with additional
genres definitions. Thus, chapter two, The Era of the Geonim, opens
with a short introduction after which Palache defined each of the four
genres he chose to advance under the following headings: Responsa,
Midrash and Drosh, Poetry and Philosophy. Each of the genres it
then, correspondingly, represented by the selected texts. Chapter three,
Poetry and Philosophy in the Spanish Era, is fashioned in a similar way.
Palache divided it into poetry and philosophy and gave a short introduction to each of the subchapters. Palache and Pinkhof selected here
famous poems written by figures such as Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Moses
Ibn Ezra and, as mentioned above, Judah Halevi. For the philosophy
part, besides the obvious choice of Maimonides and his Guide for the
Perplexed, Palache made again use of Pinkhofs good service and used
excerpts from a translation of Halevis The Kuzari, the latter had already
published.16 In chapter four, Bibles Exegeses, Palache chose some
famous Bibles commentators such as Rashi, David Kimchi, Ibn Ezra
and Nachmanides. He picked some verses and laid out the different
interpretations for each verse. Here we can see an interesting editorial
choice. Palache tried to move simultaneously along a timeline and along
genres. From his historical introduction we would expect him to move
in a linear chronological line. He started therefore with the Geonim
(600-1000) followed by the Spanish era (700-1200). Though Bibles
exegeses never seize Palache chose commentators from the period
between the 11th and 16th centuries. He makes the same manoeuvre in the
next chapter, chapter five dealing with The Treatment of the Law:
Codices and Responsa: 12th to 16th Century. We can see that already in
14.Pinkhof, Gedichten van Jehoedah Halevi, p. 6; Palache, De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur, p. 91.
15.Pinkhof, Gedichten van Jehoedah Halevi, p. 5-6, 13; Palache, De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur,
p. 91.
16.Pinkhof, Naar uw jeugd van vroeger.

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the title the period is designated. Chronologically, this chapter is almost

parallel to the two previous chapters. The two key figures here are the
authors of two classic codices. Joseph Karo is represented by his Shulchan Aruch and, again, Maimonides by samples taken from his responsa
and his monumental work, the Mishneh Torah.
The sixth chapter, titled Ethics and Preaching, depicts Jewish ethical literature, beginning with 11th-century Bahaya ibn Paquda, working
his way through figures such as 18th-century Moshe Chaim Luzzato and
ending with Rabbi Avigdor Amil, then (1936) the chief Rabbi of Antwerp. The chapter dedicated to History and Travel Writing, the seventh
chapter, contains some obvious choices such as David Ganss Tzemach
David and The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela. Chapter eight brings forwards the Poetry of Ashkenazy Jews. As opposed to the poets of the
Spanish era, this poetry is almost dismissed here as relatively artificial
liturgy of lesser artistic quality.17 Again we may presume these literary
judgments were made by Sallie Pinkhofs whose influence here is felt
once again. We can see it in another comment on the unequivocal nature
of the texts,18 of their indifference to art-form,19 or the reference to Dutch
poets such as Vondel, Bredero and Hooft,20 a reference made earlier in
chapter three21 and in Pinkhofs translation of Judah Halevi.22 Chapter
nine depicts The Kabala and its literature. Besides the Zohar, originally
written in Aramaic and not in Hebrew, and another classic kabalistic
book, Sefer Raziel, Palache selected the 16th-century Isaia Horowitzs
Shnei Luchos haBris, the 17th-century Dutch, Menasseh ben Israel and his
Nishmat Hayim and, from the 18th century, the famous Rabbi Nachman
of Breslov and his Likutey Mohara. The tenth and last chapter depicts
The Belles Lettres in the Era of Hebrew Revival. This chapter is divided
into three subchapters. The first part begins with Moses Chaim Luzzato
and ends with Mendelssohn and his school. Histories of Hebrew literature are usually divided between those who choose to mark the genesis of
Modern Hebrew literature with the work of Moses Chaim Luzzato (170717.Palache, De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur, p. 309.
18. Ibid., p. 310.
19. Ibid., p. 312.
20.Ibid.
21. Ibid., p. 8 9.
22.Pinkhof, Gedichten van Jehoeda Halevi, p. 11.

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1746)23 and those who consider Mendelssohn (1729-1786) and the group he
gathered around Hameassef to be its first manifestation.24 In this respect,
the placing of the two departure points in one subchapter is almost as holding two opposite positions. This subchapter, as one unit, represents the
start of the revival of Hebrew literature in De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur. At
the same time, titled From M.Ch. Luzzato till the End of Mendelssohns
School, it starts indeed, with Luzzato. The second subchapter describes
Hebrew literature as part of the Haskalah movement in Eastern Europe.
The last subchapter lays out the development of Hebrew, by compiling not
only pure literary texts, but also an essay by Ahad Haam. Again we stand
before a problematic division. Shaul Tchernichovsky (1875-1943), for example, and Zalman Shneur (1887-1959) are placed in the second subchapter,
while Bialik, their contemporary (1873-1934), is placed in the last subchapter titled The Development of Hebrew in the last Decades.
The notion of a historical continuum is by no means absent from
De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur. One can encounter it in the historical
introduction, by the starting with the Spanish Era and ending with
Modern Hebrew literature and by the chronological unfolding within
the individual chapters. Nevertheless, the synchronic prism through
which Palache constructed his selection is most dominant. As we have
seen above, for example, the first four chapters to follow the historical
introduction cover more or less the same period.
In conclusion, we see that in editing his book Palache was less interested in linear history and more with the contents of the chosen texts,
i.e., their genres. Palache perceived his task as a literary historian to be
not the providing of aesthetical insights but rather the accommodation
of his readers with a variety of translated texts in the form of an anthological description. Though any compilation of texts may of course follow a linear timeline, the synchronic arrangement according to genres
and themes accentuate the anthological nature of a given work, in our
case here, Palaches De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur.
23. Famous examples are Y.S. Lahover,
( Tel Aviv 1929); N. Slouschz, The Renaissance of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885),
trans. H. Szold (Philadelphia, PA 1909).
24. Such as J. Klausner, : , vol. 1 (Jerusalem
1930); M. Kleinmann, : . (Paris
1928); C.N. Shapira, ( Tel Aviv 1940).

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The Implied Audience

The very choosing of history of literature, as a genre, means that the
author consciously assumes the role of mediator. Any history of literature is an arbitration between the expert, usually an academic, and a
wide audience, may it be university students or the general public.
Palaches De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur is a historical literary anthology. It
is another form of the genre. It is the most accessible, not to say patronizing (towards its audience) manifestation of the genre. By introducing
foreign literature, especially if it is not one of the major European languages, the author is usually also the translator or at least, very active in
the translation process.25 The author of historical literary anthology takes
upon himself not only to choose the works along a given timeline, but
he actively interferes with the poetical reception of the texts he chose.
Palaches intended audience is defined by two characteristics as the
lowest common denominators. Firstly, it is the public of the Dutch readers, een Nederlandsch publiek,26 not necessarily a Jewish public. Secondly, it is the public of laymen, for whose sake considering the purpose
of this book Palache knew his book should be popular-scientific.27
Time and again, in the introductions to the chapters, he mentions that
the framework of this book forces him to lessen his scope and to simplify
his arguments.28 The popular nature of the book, he adds, makes it
unnecessary to print the Hebrew texts next to the translations or to add
critical and learned explanations and notes.29
Establishing the popular nature of the work and the relatively low
level of knowledge expected from its reader is the easy part. A more
interesting and difficult question would be, did Palache aim his work at
the Dutch Jewish audience or at a wider public, Jews and non-Jews
alike? From reading the introduction of De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur it
seems the Jewish public was Palaches main objective. He tells us that
25. Edmond Flegs Anthologie Juive in 2 volumes (Paris 1923) cited by Palache as one of his
predecessors is an excellent example. Fleg translated not only from the Hebrew but from the Yiddish
as well (ibid., vol. 1, p. X).
26. Ibid., p. V.
27.Ibid., p. VII.
28. For example, ibid., p. 55, 87, 151, 183, 370.
29.Ibid., p. VII. Palache follows here all of the compilers and authors he names in the introduction (p. V n. 1).

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the sponsor of De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur, Bnai Brith, who took

upon itself to promote a Jewish-cultural work, wished to publish a
book that would be useful, on the first place, to the Dutch Jews.30
Closely reading the introduction, and bearing in mind Palaches general
attitude towards Hebrew and Jewish studies, we may presume he had in
mind an audience much broader than the Jewish community.
Martin Premsela, later known for his translations from French into
Dutch, tries to define more specifically the possible contours of Palaches
public: at least one hundred thousand Jews for whom Dutch is the
think- and colloquial-language, and moreover, a large non-Jewish Dutch
public () with an interest in Jewish culture.31 Later Premsela takes the
trouble to describe this wide public more specifically: any self-conscious
Jewish family, any youth organization, such as the young Zionists,
the educated bourgeoisie and Christian theologists.32
Premselas point, though less explicitly expressed by Palache, attests
to the unique position held by histories of Hebrew literature written in
languages other than Hebrew. These works were aimed at the same time
at their natural public, namely, the Jewish community, and at the
majority of the interested non-Jewish audience. The major histories of
Hebrew or Jewish literature written towards on the second half of the
19th century and the first decade of the 20th century were not usually
written in Hebrew, and only in some cases, were later translated into
Hebrew.33
The first chapter of De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur, the historical
introduction, reveals another tone and another approach. Palache appropriates a nations rhetoric, speaking to his (fellow Jewish) reader in the
first person plural:
30.Palache, De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur, p. V-VI.
31. M.J. Premsela, De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur van den na-Talmoedischen tijd tot op onze
dagen in schetsen en vertalingen, HaIscha, 8:1 (1936), p. 14-15.
32. Ibid., p. 14.
33. At the end of the 19th century and the turn of the century Gustav Karpeles, also acclaimed
for his study of Heines work, was without doubt the historian of Jewish literature. His Geschichte
der jdischen Literatur, first published in 1886 (Berlin) had several editions and was translated into
several languages including Hebrew ( : , Warsaw 1887). The
translation into Hebrew raises a whole set of questions which cannot be addressed here. N. Slouzchz,
La renaissance de la littrature Hbraque, (1743-1885): essai dhistoire littrair (Paris 1902), the first
work to inaugurate the new field of Modern Hebrew literature, was translated into Hebrew in 1906
and English in 1909.

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() knowledge of history is a necessary condition for a good grasp of

a cultural development of a certain people; otherwise, the study of a
certain group has its own charm for those already persuaded by the
spiritual meaning of this community.34

Palache includes himself within the already persuaded as he immediately continues: () and it is valid to the highest extent when this people are our own people and this history concerns our own forefathers.35 It
is neither pluralis majestatis, nor the editorial we, neither the patronizing we, nor the authors we, it is rather, we as you and me, fellow
Jews, author and reader, members of the same ethnic and cultural group.
Completing his introductory duties, so it seems Palache turns to use a
more universal, sober, and academic tone. Henceforth, just as in his
Inleiding in den Talmoed, Palache will omit the use of the second person
when mentioning the Jewish people, and will restrict himself to the third
person.
Nevertheless, a closer reading will show that also in the first chapter,
the historical introduction, the Jewish readers are by no means Palaches
only target audience. If we continue reading, almost immediately,
Palache, though still talking to his people, assumes a universal, existential tone:
Indeed, the notion of the nothingness, of the meaningless of his existence as an individual, is deeply rooted in the soul of man () this
notion of our weakness and powerlessness could easily lead towards
indifference and indolence.36

Here Palache speaks of another we, a universal we. Even if he still

directly addresses his Jewish audience, it is from universal perspective.
The remedy for the existential nothingness is the belief in life after
death advanced already by primitive peoples, by many philosophers
and by all religions.37 Palache does not specifically name Judaism.
Moreover, he includes other thought registers besides monotheism, the
mythological perspective of primitive societies, or the logical insights
philosophy has to offer. They do it by energizing he speaks of our
34.Palache, De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur, p. 5.
35. Ibid.. Emphases are mine.
36. Ibid., p. 5-6. Emphasis is mine.
37. Ibid., p. 6.

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energy38 the eternity instinct, the belief in immortality.39 Palache

understood history in a positivist, enlightened, and humanistic manner.
Man should consider himself as a chain in history, and consequently he
has to appropriate thousands of years of history of development.40
This is the charm of history he continues, emanating from our clear
gaze at our own reflection in the mirror of time, showing us what we
humans have prepared, what is now ours, humans, is, physical and spiritual (both words are italicized in the origin).41 His speaking of history
in such a planetary fashion, his own italicizing of the we and ours, the
doubling of the notion of us human, cannot but be described but as
aimed at a universal ear.
His next move would be to cite the French and world acclaimed
Ernest Renan (1823-1892) and a local Dutch intellectual celebrity, Allard
Pierson (1831-1896). Both recognize the influence Judaism had on western civilization,42 both non-Jews, outsiders to the we he earlier established with his Jewish reader and hence reliable and objective in the eyes
of Jew and non-Jews alike.
There are times in which Palache takes pains to explain the most
trivial things in such a way that one has to suspect he had not perceived
his public to be exclusively Jewish. For example, in the chapter depicting
the Poetry of Ashkenazy Jews Palache defines the differences between
Ashkenazy and Sephardic Judaism.43 Such a definition is surly meant
to non-Jewish eyes since it is redundant for any Jewish reader.
To summarize this point we can see that, especially in the preface
and in the first chapter, Palache often speaks directly to a Jewish public,
sometimes even using a plain, direct, nations rhetoric. Nevertheless,
38. This somewhat spiritual vocabulary is in accordance with the Frankens description of
Palache as a liberal theologist (Franken, J.L. Palache, p. 87). Kramers testifies as well how Palache
incorporated deep sentiment towards spiritual tradition in his scientific work (J.H. Kramers, Analecta Orientalia, p. 320). His introduction to the Kabala in De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur shows a true
ambivalence. Palache respects the mystical dimension of the Kabala but at the same time notes that
it lead to a lot of superstition, to unhealthy zealotry and far-fetched ideas, dead-end messianic
movements, and even, more than once, to the abandonment of Judaism (Palache, De Hebreeuwsche
Litteratuur, p. 340).
39.Palache, De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur, p. 5.
40. Ibid., p. 7.
41.Ibid.
42.Ibid.
43. Ibid., p. 308.

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consciously or subconsciously, he frequently employs also a universal

rhetoric, addressing at the same time the broad non-Jewish public and
the universal sentiment of his Jewish readers. Only history would be able
to create such an irony in which Palache was deported to the camps, as
many of his readers, only nine years after writing the following sentence:
what was left unfinished by the individual will be completed by
humanity.44
Palaches Style in De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur
According to his declaration of intent, Palache adapted not only the
contents but also the style of De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur to the ear of
the reader he had in mind. Let us observe the following example quoted
from the first chapter:
This people, that wrote the Hebrew Bible, the crystallized prose of his
historical books, the scalding language of the prophets, the marvellous
poetry of the Psalms, the sharp proverbs, that all its wealth of thoughts,
that exerted so much influence in the world, this people, that always
kept on reading this Hebrew Book, always kept on studying [it] with
rare love and piety, this people, that held in great esteem not only the
contents but also the language of the book, as holy, as sacred (emphases are mine).45

To catch his readers eyes, ears and heart, Palache does not spare the use
of various rhetorical repetitions in this typical excerpt. He repeats words
and expressions such as This people, that or always. Palache does not
refrain himself from using synonyms and synonymic expression such as
as holy, as sacred. Moreover, describing the various qualities of the
Bible, Palache, this usually sober scholar, is now using the most magnificent adjectives in a recurring construction: the crystallized prose of,
the scalding language of or the marvellous poetry of.
Another distinct characteristic for Palaches popularized language is
his punctuation. He often does not refrain from using exclamation
marks, a rhetorical means frown upon in scientific discourse. Introducing the Cabalistic texts Palache tells his readers how the cabbalists, with
44. Ibid., p. 6-7.
45. Ibid., p. 8.

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the use of amulets and letters combinations were able to kill the living
and to revive the dead!46 Let us examine another illustrative example.
Admiring the richness of the Spanish golden era, Palache claims that
Jewish intellectual achievements were much more profound and enlightened than in his days. One finds here [the Spanish golden era] much
deeper understanding of God and of sin, and independence in respect to
Him he asserts than one could ever find in our days, when the Jews are
doing well!47
In the same manner one can see the frequent use Palache makes of
the three suspension points. Introducing the chapter of History and
Travel Writing Palache describes the need for travel writing: traveling
was so slow, and the connection between inhabited and known countries was so difficult, that it was worthwhile to tell the stories of what one
saw and () heard in his travel!.48 One can easily note the use here of
the suspension points is unessential. The only possible reason to use it is
to attract the readers attention, a task aided by the similarly redundant
exclamation mark. He then enumerates reasons for the popularity of the
genre amongst Jews: () and because Jews travelled for specific Jewish
affairs, such as acquiring Jewish knowledge in famous centres, collecting
donations, immigrating to Palestine and avoiding persecutions.49 In
the same manner he thus concludes his introduction: May this book
shall further speak for itself and shall find its way.50 The redundancy
of punctuation, as almost any communicational redundancies, is rhetorical, made here to appeal to the popular ear. Palache had not only to
decide on his style and tone of writing. He had much more fundamental
issues regarding language in De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur.
The Hebrew in De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur
Discussing histories of Jewish or Hebrew literature and bearing the popular nature of the genre in mind one must address two issues concerning
the language. The first aspect is the language in which a given work is
46. Ibid., p. 336.
47. Ibid., p. 90.
48. Ibid., p. 277.
49.Ibid.
50. Ibid., p. VII.

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written. At the inaugural stages of the development of the genre in

Hebrew literature, histories and anthologies of Hebrew and Jewish literature were written almost exclusively in the languages of the majority
in the countries in which a given author lived. Writing a history of a
certain literature in a different language is not a phenomenon restricted
to Hebrew literature though the reasons however may be quite different.51 As we have seen above, observing Palaches De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur, even works explicitly aimed at the Jewish public but written in
a non-Jewish language, might have a universal, sometimes even apologetic undertone. It is as if the author, usually Jewish, tries to anticipate
not only the reception of his book, but of the Jewish people, by the nonJewish reader.
The second aspect is the language of the sources the author chose.
While the Hebrew of Hebrew literature is self-explanatory, the Jewish of Jewish literature is much more elusive.52 However, reading De
Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur we can see that even the definition of Hebrew
can pose difficulties. Well aware of the eclectic impression his books
title may cause, Palache freely admits:
The title promises too little and too much. Too little, because besides
Hebrew texts also some texts written in Aramaic had to be taken
under consideration () Too much because the Hebrew Literature
[De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur] fills a whole library and cannot be rendered by a single volume.53

Palache makes two interesting choices in respect to the Hebrew. First, it

is his choice to include Aramaic the Zohar! he exclaims -54 testifies to
51. Already at the beginning of the 19th century Friedrich Bouterwek (1766-1828) published
twelve volumes history of European literature, Geschichte der Poesie und Beredsamkeit seit dem Ende
des dreizehnten Jahrhunderts (Gttingen 1801-1819). Bouterwek, a Kantian philosopher, used this
monumental work as praxis for his theories. Hippolyte Taines Histoire de la littrature anglaise
(Paris 1864), another famous work, was written as well as part of its authors attempts to present a
universal aesthetic theory.
52. This article is dedicated to Palaches work on Hebrew literature so the question of the
positive markers of Jewish literature will remained here untouched. It is crucial for anyone writing
on Jewish literature to formulate his parameters. For more on this complicated subject see for example: D. Miron, From Continuity to Contiguity (Stanford, CA 2010), esp. p. 3-19, 20-56, 57-89; G.
Shaked, :( Haifa 2006); R. Wisse, The Modern Jewish Canon: A
Journey Through Language and Culture (Chicago 2003), p. 1-29.
53.Palache, De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur, p. VI.
54.Ibid.

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the fact that he did not have a purist notion of Hebrew literature. Even
though the Zohar, strictly speaking, was not written in Hebrew, Palache
could not exclude it.
The inclusion of the Zohar is interesting in a work dedicated to
Hebrew literature, but there is an interesting exclusion as well. It is not
so much the act of exclusion itself that draws our attention as it is the
mentioning of the excluded. Karaite literature Palache tells us, though
written in Hebrew, was principally omitted.55 We do not know which
principle Palache adheres to in his exclusion of Karaite Hebrew literature. Elsewhere, in the introduction to the second chapter, depicting the
literature of the Geonim, Palache notes their struggle against the sect of
the Karaites.56 The last chapter of his Inleiding in den Talmoed is, to a
large extent, a historical apologia, defending the Talmud from attacks
outside Judaism and from what seems to be the inside, i.e. the Karaites.
Though Palache tries to maintain an indifferent, academic tone, he cannot abstain from saying that Karaite literature actually embodies, all the
Karaites are against, in their view of the Talmud and rabbinical Judaism
in general. Moreover, he claims, the Karaites tried to create an instant
hermeneutical system while rabbinical Judaism already developed one in
hundreds of years of painstaking processes.57
The principle which left the Karaites outside Palaches De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur might have been part of the spiritual constitution of
the son of the Chief Rabbi of Amsterdam who does not want to waste
the limited space he has on texts of a sect casted out of Judaism for refusing to accept the oral law. Maybe it was the influence of Rabbi Abraham
Salomon Levisson, one of Palaches two assistants in the compiling and
translation of the book. It might also simply be the voice of Palache, the
practical editor who regrettably had to exclude the works of figures such
as Alharizi, Immanuel the Roman, Gersonides, Crescas and many others.58 It is however, the very mentioning of the omission of the literature
of the sect of the Karaites that attracts our attention. There were indeed
many others that Palache did not even take the time to name. He had

55.Ibid.
56. Ibid., p. 39.
57.Palache, Inleiding in den Talmoed, p 148.
58.Palache, De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur, p. VI.

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the same troubles in the chapter on The Spanish Era, though there he
gives us more concrete reasons.59
The inclusion of originally Aramaic excerpts from the Zohar and the
exclusion of translations of Hebrew Karaite sources, and moreover,
Palaches acknowledgment of this already in the introduction, suggest the
following. Although Palache intended to use the Hebrew as the protagonist
of his book he could not completely ignore a tacit wish to write the history
of Jewish literature at the same time. In any case Palache blurred the distinction between Hebrew and Jewish literature. There are many possible
reasons. He might have been influenced by his predecessors, by his assistants or by the book initiators, or maybe by his own spiritual-religious
constitution. Until now we discussed various facets of his choice language,
namely, the Hebrew. Now we have to examine the second part of the De
Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur and to address the question of literature.
The Literature in De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur
Already at the end of the turn of the 20th century, Modern Hebrew Literature was defined as an independent and legitimate field. Palaches
work, however, published in 1935, takes upon itself to describe Hebrew
literature, as a whole, starting with the Geonim, i.e., with post-Talmudic
texts. The main question would then be, relating to Palaches project,
why not starting with the Bible, or post-biblical texts such as the Mishnah
and the Talmud.
Since 1637 the bible was already available in Dutch. As for the Talmud, we already mentioned, Palache himself supplied the Dutch reader
his 1922 introduction. We may conclude that the post-Talmudic era
would be the natural field for anyone wishing to provide the general
Dutch reader with a historical continuation of Hebrew-Jewish texts.
Earlier we said that the first part of the term Hebrew literature is
easy to discern. However, glancing at the contents of De Hebreeuwsche
Litteratuur will show us that the second qualifier, literature, can be
much more intangible. It was not easy Palache openly confess to
remain sober in the midst of this abundance [of Hebrew literature].60
59. Ibid., p. 87.
60. Ibid., p. VI.

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From the end of the 18th century at least until the forties of the 20th
century, the notion of literature was much more confined than
before.61 Until then literature was an all-inclusive term which banded
together, alongside les belles letters, philosophical, historical and even
legal texts. Only histories of Modern Hebrew literature dealt exclusively with the narrow, artistic in nature, denotation of the term.
Authors of Jewish literary histories perceived their field in broadest
sense.62 This understanding of the term literature was of course not
confined to historians of Jewish and Hebrew literature. Henrik Schck,
for example, the famous historiographer of Swedish literature did the
same when he sketched the period until 1718, the end of the Swedish
empire. One reason, which may not be applied to Palache, or to other
historiographers of Jewish literary history, was that Schck wanted to
solve in this way the problem of insufficient sources.63Another possible
reason is that a given author wishes to show the variety and richness of
the given literature he depicts. It is in this vein that Palache declares his
intention: One may find our selection to be arbitrary () the selection was mainly guided by the striving to illustrate the versatility of the
written Hebrew literature.64
Palache claims that his main guiding principle is diversity; others
might call it an eclectic selection. He wishes to illustrate the variety of
the literature written in Hebrew, literature meaning in its broadest
sense. So, it is not only literature with artistic value but also, for example,
bible commentaries and law sections.65 The works of Immanuel the
Roman were therefore left out and an answer for wither one may have
false weights in his house became an integral part of De Hebreeuwsche
Litteratuur. Again we have to add that Palache was well aware of this
61. The contours of literature are still ambiguous as ever. It is an ambiguity inherent to the
term, as Robert Escarpit concludes his notable article: Cest une srie dambigits qui a fait sa
fortune (see in his La dfinition du terme Littrature , in Le Littraire et le social [Paris 1970],
p. 272).
62. Some other the famous examples are: I. Zinberg,
(Vilna 1929-1937); Karpeles, Geschichte der jdischen Literatur; M. Waxman. History of Jewish Literature from the Close of the Bible to our own Days. (New York 1930-1941).
63. E. Trnqvist, Henrik Schck as Historiographer of Swedish Literature, in M. Spiering
(ed.), Nation Building and Writing Literary History. Yearbook of European Studies 12 (Amsterdam/
Atlanta 1999), p. 13-26.
64.Palache, De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur, p. VI.
65.Ibid.

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flaw but he was willing to sacrifice the principle of quality in favor of the
principle of diversity of genres.66
Conclusion
In his memoires, in a chapter dedicated to his publishing house, Menno
Hertzberger, the books publisher,67 does not mention Palaches De
Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur. On its own merit this work contains neither
deep critical insights nor innovating theoretical ideas. It does not redeem
neglected voices forgotten in dark corners of the history of Hebrew literature and does not offer new periodizations.
It is, as it states, a commissioned work, written to achieve a certain
goal and to reach certain audience. Palaches De Hebreeuwsche Litteratuur has of course a bibliophilic value. It is also evidence of the rich
cultural Jewish life in the Netherlands before the war. In fact, its power
and appeal lies in its very mediocrity. Students of literary history in general, and Jewish and Hebrew literary history in particular can find here
issues and problems characteristic for their respective fields.

66. Ibid., p. VI-VII.

67. M. Hertzberger, Boeken, veel boeken en mensen (Nijmegen 2008).

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