Separation From The World
The oppressions under which the Jews suffered encouraged an austere view of life. They lived in fear in their Jews' streets, subsisting on what they could earn as peddlers and as dealers in old clothes. Cut off from all participation in public and municipal life, they had to seek in their homes compensation for the things denied them outside. Their family life was intimate, beautified by faith, industry, and temperance. They were loyal to their community. In consequence of their complete segregation from their Christian fellow citizens, the German speech of the ghetto was interladen with Hebraisms, and also with Slavonic elements since the 17th century, when the atrocities of Chmielnicki and his Cossacks drove the Polish Jews back into western Germany. As the common people understood only the books written in this peculiar dialect and printed in Hebrew characters, a voluminous literature of edifying, devotional, and belletristic works sprang up in Judæo-German to satisfy the needs of these readers. Although this output was one-sided, presupposing almost no secular knowledge, its importance in the history of Jewish culture must not be underestimated. The study of the Bible, Talmud, and halakic legal works, with their voluminous commentaries, preserved the plasticity of the Jewish mind, until a new Moses came to lead his coreligionists out of intellectual bondage toward modern culture.
Read more about this topic: German Jews
Famous quotes containing the words separation from, separation and/or world:
“... imprisonment itself, entailing loss of liberty, loss of citizenship, separation from family and loved ones, is punishment enough for most individuals, no matter how favorable the circumstances under which the time is passed.”
—Mary B. Harris (1874–1957)
“On a subconscious level your child experiences separation from you as a “punishment.” And if he is to be “rewarded” with your return, he must be very good.... Eager for you to come back, your finicky son would probably eat liver if your baby-sitter served it, and he wouldn’t dream of resisting her at bathtime.”
—Cathy Rindner Tempelsman (20th century)
“Education must, then, be not only a transmission of culture but also a provider of alternative views of the world and a strengthener of the will to explore them.”
—Jerome S. Bruner (20th century)