Zionism added little to Herbst’s knowledge, beyond the words that are familiar to every Zionist: shekel, hovev ziyon, yishuv, Ahad Ha’am, the names of all the settlements in the Land of Israel. From Zionist literature, he learned that those weary, tormented Jews, considered uncultured in Germany, had two libraries in two languages — one in the language they spoke and one in the language of the holy books.
From the time Herbst heard about this, a tune began to sing out from his heart, playing itself in those two tongues. It sounded sometimes like the dirge of an exile lamenting his devastated domain, sometimes like a noble cry. Victims from every era appeared, pouring out their souls in epic poems and stories. Countless events, from the binding of Isaac to the Damascus blood libel and the most recent pogroms, all spoke to him in verse. God’s spirit hovered over these poems, stories, and liturgical works, some of which he read in German translation, along with visions of the End of Days, glimpsed only by poets who suffered Israel’s pain. When he first read Yiddish literature in German translation, he didn’t eat, drink, or go to class. He curled up in a corner and sat reading these stories and poems. His eyes swallowed the letters; he fingered the text, hoping there was more there than was being revealed to him. When he had read an entire book, he studied the title page on the chance that there had been an error, that this volume was actually not from the body of literature he was after. He didn’t find what he was after, and whatever he found was not what he was after. Whether it was merely fine or very fine, he knew its counterparts in other languages and was not impressed. This happened again and again. Whether the book was merely fine or very fine, he had seen the genre elsewhere. He tried his luck with Hebrew, to see if he could find there what he hadn’t found in Yiddish. No complete works were available in German, only fragments. It is easy to translate from Yiddish into German, because the languages are akin, but it is hard to translate from Hebrew into German, because they are so alien to each other. I can see, Herbst used to tell himself, that Hebrew poetry refuses to appear in borrowed finery.
In those years, the Hebrew high school in Jaffa graduated its first class. Many of the graduates went to Germany for advanced studies. Foreign students commonly support themselves in a foreign country by teaching their native language, which is what those Jaffaites did. Because of the good name of the Land of Israel and of the first Hebrew high school, many people were eager to study living Hebrew with them. As a result, Hebrew teachers from other countries were rejected, although they were endowed with Torah and good manners.
Manfred Herbst was among the first to study with these graduates. He began his studies in a group, but, realizing he wasn’t accomplishing very much, he hired a private teacher. He didn’t learn from his teachers, nor did he learn from their books. He didn’t learn from his teachers because their nationalist sentiments exceeded their learning. As for their books, they used anthologies filled with fragmentary texts in translation. Still, Herbst remained grateful, recognizing that, if not for them, all Hebrew books would have remained foreign to him.
Herbst’s relation to Hebrew might have led nowhere, as is often the case, were it not for something he heard from a Christian student, a professor’s daughter, whom I think I mentioned at the beginning of this story in a conversation between Herbst and his wife. Among the medical students, there was a short, shriveled Jew, shabbily dressed, altogether sloppy, as if asking to be scorned. In the clinic one day, in front of the entire class, the professor presented him with a copy of his book, Fundamentals of Pathology, and inscribed it “In honor of a marvelous human being, a true lover of learning.” The gift from this professor, one of the greatest doctors of his generation, made a great impression. His dictum was well known: If I could, I would publish only three copies of my book; I would keep one for myself, and I don’t know to whom I would give the other two. In the end, he gave his book to that man and wrote those complimentary words in it. They learned what he had done to deserve the honor. Before enrolling in the university, he had been a rabbi in Lithuania. He gave up the rabbinate and came to Berlin, literally on foot, to study medicine. No one in Berlin knew anything about him. One day, a patient from some town in Lithuania was brought to the professor, and by chance this student dropped in. The patient saw him and cried out, “Rabbi, you are here?” The rabbi whispered, “Hush.” The patient ignored him and told the professor the entire story.
Herbst heard about that rabbi and thought: I’ll go and study with him. He found him and presented his request. The rabbi said, “When a Jew wants to learn, someone has to teach him.” But he was baffled when he heard what the student wanted to learn. How could anyone need to be taught to read such flimsy books? After much coaxing, he admitted to Herbst that he was familiar with only three such texts: Mapu’s The Love of Ziyon, the poems of Y. L. Gordon, and Bialik’s The Talmud Student. He considered The Love of Ziyon a florid book that did neither harm nor good; Y. L. Gordon’s poems were heresy, and he wouldn’t consider teaching them; he was willing to read the Bialik poem, although the diligent scholar depicted in the poem was not the one our sages described. It would, of course, have been best to study the books of Israel’s true sages, whose wisdom generates wisdom.
Herbst did not have the opportunity to learn very much from him. The strain of study, malnutrition, and whatever else is involved in the pursuit of knowledge depleted the rabbi’s strength. He was taken to the hospital and from there to eternal rest. But Herbst acquired a great gift from him: the ability to open any Hebrew book and learn from any text. Once he achieved this, he lost interest in the poetry of his own time. “What’s the point,” he used to say. “It doesn’t move me.”
It would be worth knowing why he wasn’t moved by our modern poetry. He did, after all, love poetry, and he was acquainted with the poetry of several nations in languages new and old. When he was weary with work and worry, he would soothe his soul with a poem, being truly fond of poetry. He said nothing explicit about our poetry. Still, if one can infer one thing from another, I am almost certain that a comment he once made explains why he said, “It doesn’t move me.” But first, a story.
The Friends of the University were honoring a Hebrew poet on the occasion of his birthday, and Herbst was among the guests. As is customary at such events, everyone who spoke lavished praise on the poet and his work. Finally, the poet himself took the floor. He spoke, not in praise of himself, but in praise of Hebrew poetry and those who created it.