History of the Jews, Vol. 5 (of 6). Graetz Heinrich
Afterwards his Christian disciple Gaffarelli had this work, entitled "The Hebrew Rites," printed in Paris, and dedicated it to the French ambassador at Venice. In this work, eagerly read by Christians, Leo Modena, like Ham, uncovered his father's nakedness, exposed the inner sanctuary of the Jews to prying and mocking eyes. To the uninitiated, that which within the Jewish circle was a matter for reverence could not but appear petty, silly, and absurd. Leo Modena explained what ceremonies and statutes Jews employ in connection with their dwellings, clothing, household furniture, up-rising and lying down, physical functions, and in the synagogues and schools. Involuntarily the author associated himself with the despisers of Judaism, which he as rabbi had practiced and taught. He showed that he was conscious of this:
"While writing I in fact forgot that I am a Jew, and considered myself a simple, impartial narrator. However, I do not deny that I have taken pains to avoid ridicule on account of the numerous ceremonies, but I had no intention to defend and palliate, because I wished only to communicate, not convince."
However, it would be an error to infer from this that Leo Modena had at heart completely broken with Rabbinical Judaism. He was, as has been stated, not a man of firm and lasting convictions. Almost at the same time when he exposed the rites of Judaism to the Christian public, he composed a defense of them and oral teaching in general against attacks from the Jewish side. A Hamburg Jew of Marrano descent had raised eleven points to show the falsehood of Talmudic tradition. Of these arguments some are important, others frivolous. The Hamburg sceptic laid chief stress on the point that Talmudic and Rabbinic ordinances are additions to Pentateuchal Judaism, and the Pentateuch had expressly forbidden additions of this sort. At the wish of certain Portuguese Jews, Leo Modena confuted these objections, raised by a sciolist. His confutation was a feeble performance, and contains nothing new. With Leo Modena one never knew whether he was earnest in his belief or his unbelief. As in youth he had brought forward reasons for and against games of chance, had finally condemned them, and nevertheless freely engaged in them, so he behaved with regard to Talmudical Judaism. He attacked it, defended it, made it appear ridiculous, and yet practiced it with a certain degree of honesty.
Some years after his vindication of Talmudical Judaism against the Hamburg sceptic he composed the best work (1624) that issued from his active pen. On the one side it was a weighty attack on Rabbinical Judaism, such as had hardly been made even by Christians and Karaites, on the other side, an impressive defense of it. He did not venture to put his own name to the heavy charges against Judaism, but used a fictitious name. The part which contains the attacks he called "The Fool's Voice" (Kol Sachal), and the defense, "The Roaring of the Lion" (Shaagath Aryeh). Leo Modena allotted to two characters his own duplex nature, his varying convictions. He makes the opponent of Judaism express himself with a boldness such as Uriel da Costa might have envied. Not only did he undermine the Rabbinical Judaism of the Talmud, but also biblical Judaism, the Sinaitic revelation, and the Torah. But the blows which Leo Modena, under the name of Ibn-Raz of Alkala, in an attack of unbelief, inflicted on oral teaching, or Talmudical Judaism, were most telling.
He premises that no form of religion maintains itself in its original state and purity according to the views of its founder. Judaism, also, although the lawgiver expressly warned his followers against adding anything, had many additions thrust upon it. Interpretation and comment had altered many things in it. Ibn-Raz (or Leo Modena in his unbelieving mood) examines with a critical eye Jacob Asheri's code, and at each point marks the additions made by the rabbis to the original code, and where they had weakened and distorted it. He goes so far as to make proposals how to clear Judaism of excrescences, in order to restore genuine, ancient, biblical, spiritual Judaism. This was the first attempt at reform: a simplification of the prayers and synagogue service, abolition of rites, omission of the second day of the festivals, relaxation of Sabbath, festival, Passover, and even Day of Atonement laws. Every one was to fast only according to his bodily and spiritual powers. He wished to see the ritual for slaughtering animals and the laws as to food set aside, or simplified. The prohibition to drink wine with those of other creeds made Jews ridiculous, as also did the strictness against alleged idolatry. All this, observed Ibn-Raz, or Leo Modena, at the close, does not exhaust the subject; it is only a specimen of the evil of Rabbinical Judaism. He knew well that he would be pronounced a heretic, and persecuted on account of his frank criticism, but if he could open the eyes of a single reader, he would consider himself amply rewarded.
Had Leo Modena been in earnest with this bold view, which would have revolutionized the Judaism of his day, had he uttered it to the world with deep conviction, he would no doubt have produced great commotion in Judaism. But criticism of the Talmud was only mental amusement for him; he did not intend to engage in an actual conflict. He composed a reply with as little sincerity, and let both attack and defense slumber among his papers.
Leo Modena was more in earnest with the attack on the Kabbala, which had become burdensome and repulsive to him. He felt impelled to discharge destructive arrows against it, and this he did with masterly skill. He called the anti-Kabbalistic work, which he dedicated to his disciple Joseph Chamiz, a Luryan enthusiast, "The Roaring Lion" (Ari Noham). From many sides he threw light on the deceptions, the absurdity, and the falsehood of the Kabbala and its fundamental source, the Zohar. Neither this work nor his attacks on Talmudical Judaism were published by him: the author was not anxious to labor in either direction. To a late age he continued his irregular life, without striving after real improvement. Leo Modena died, weary of the conflict, not with gods (i. e., ideas) and men, but with himself, and of the troubles which he had brought upon himself.
Apparently similar, yet differing fundamentally from him, was the third burrower of this period: Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (born 1591, died 1655). Scion of an old and noble family, in whose midst science and the Talmud were cultivated, and great-grandson on the female side of the clear thinker Elias del Medigo, he but slightly resembled the other members of his house. His father, a rabbi in Candia, had not only initiated him into Talmudic literature, but also made him learn Greek. Later Delmedigo acquired the literary languages of the time, Italian and Spanish in addition to Latin. The knowledge of languages, however, was only a means to an end. At the University of Padua he obtained his scientific education; he showed decided inclination for mathematics and astronomy, and could boast of having as his tutor the great Galileo, the discoverer of the laws of the heavens, the martyr to natural science. By him he was made acquainted with the Copernican system of the sun and the planets. Neither Delmedigo nor any believing Jew labored under the delusion that the stability of the sun and the motion of the earth were in contradiction to the Bible, and therefore heretical. Delmedigo also studied medicine, but only as a profession; his favorite subject continued to be mathematics. He enriched his mind with all the treasures of knowledge, more varied even than that of Leo Modena, to whom during his residence in Italy he clung as a disciple to his master. In the circle of Jewish-Italian semi-freethinkers he lost the simple faith which he had brought from home, and doubts as to the truth of tradition stole upon him, but he was not sufficiently animated by a desire for truth either to overcome these doubts and become settled in the early belief to which he had been brought up, or unsparingly to expose the false elements in Jewish tradition. Joseph Delmedigo was as little formed to be a martyr to his convictions as Leo Modena, the latter by reason of fickleness, the former, of insincerity.
With doubt in his heart he returned to his home in Candia, and gave offense by his free mode of thought, especially by his preference for secular knowledge. He made enemies, who are said to have persecuted him, and was obliged to leave his native land. Then began a migratory life, which drove him from city to city, like his model Ibn-Ezra. Like him, he made friends with the Karaites wherever he met them, and they thronged to his presence. At Cairo Delmedigo celebrated a complete triumph with his mathematical knowledge, when an old Mahometan teacher of mathematics, Ali Ibn-Rahmadan, challenged him, a youth, to a public combat, in which Ali was beaten. The victorious combatant was magnanimous enough to show honor to Ali before the world. Instead of betaking himself to Palestine as he had intended, Delmedigo traveled to Constantinople; here also he attached himself to the circle of the Karaites, and at last passed through Wallachia and Moldavia to Poland. There, mathematics procuring him no bread, he practiced medicine, of which, however, he had learnt more from books than by the bedside of patients. In Poland he passed for a great physician, and was taken into the service of Prince Radziwill, in Wilna (about 1619–1620). Here, through the excessive attention given