Nachman Krochmal

Nachman Kohen Krochmal (1785-1840) was the first Jewish historian to treat Jewish history as an integral part of all human history.

When Nachman Krochmal was born at Brody, Galicia, Poland, on Feb. 17, 1785, the Age of Enlightenment was reaching its height and German idealism was still in ascendant vogue. The messianic expectations of the previous centuries had been all but extinguished. A certain intellectual malaise affected European Judaism, thrown as it was into open contact for the first time with the mainstream of European thought and culture.

Krochmal disliked the philosophizing of Maimonides, which he felt had led Jewish thought to contemplate abstractions of reason. He disagreed with some of the basic tenets of the Enlightenment, particularly the belief in infinite human progress, hero worship, and the natural or innate goodness of man. He was also repelled by the inbred views of die-hard Jewish traditionalists, who viewed the history of the Jewish people as a development totally separate and distinct from, as well as superior to, general human development. He detected the malaise of his time and set out to be the new Maimonides. He called his major work More Nevukhei Hazeman (Guide for the Perplexed of the Time), in imitation of Maimonides's earlier work, More Nevukhim (Guide of the Perplexed). Krochmal died on July 31, 1840, in Ternopol, and his masterpiece was published posthumously and in incomplete form in 1851.

Krochmal's chief aim in the More Nevukhei Hazeman was to show that studies in Judaism, far from being an independent and free-floating area of inquiry, could be understood only in conjunction with other historical religions and cultural studies and that the history of the Jews was governed by the same laws of change and development that governed all peoples and cultures. Krochmal thought that the history of any people must be characterized by a cycle of youth, maturity, and decline. However, in Jewish history he detected several such cycles. What enables Judaism to begin anew after each decline and thus not perish is the presence of what Krochmal calls the Absolute Spirit, the religious genius, or the specific national individuality, of Israel. In fact, Israel's mission is to spread knowledge of this abiding Absolute Spirit, which has been especially entrusted to it.

In his theories Krochmal was a child of his day in many ways, but in other ways he was ahead of his time. His views did reflect a certain Hegelian cyclical structure of history. With J. G. Fichte and the Baron de Montesquieu, he viewed religion as a reflection of the soul of the people. On the other hand, his ideas suggest certain aspects of social Darwinism, which arose a century later, and he formulated the concept of Jewish mission so dear to later reform thinkers. Above all, his emphasis on the historical reality of the Jewish people gave a first formulation to tenets that later were adopted by Zionist thinkers.

Further Reading

Krochmal is discussed in Meyer Waxman, A History of Jewish Literature from the Close of the Bible to Our Own Days, vol. 3: From the Middle of the Eighteenth Century to the Year Eighteen-eighty (1936).

Krochmal's interests were philosophy and history, but his chief aim was to explain Judaism against the background of its developing history through the ages. Somewhat reluctant to commit his teachings and ideas to writing, he was finally persuaded by his friends to do so and his great work, Moreh Nevukhé ha-Zeman ("Guide for the Perplexed of the Time") is the result.

Krochmal's philosophy expounds the idea of God and Creation. In this he comes close to adopting several central kabbalistic ideas. God is the Absolute Being and nothing exists without Him. The transition from this Absolute Being, without Whom nothing exists, is explained as a process of Divine self-confinement. The conclusion is that God created the world out of Himself. It was this idea which led some critics of Krochmal to claim that his philosophy approaches pure pantheism.

In his philosophy of history, he explains that in the record of every nation three stages are to be discerned: birth, vigor, and decline. Every nation's history is influenced by countless social and cultural factors, but they can all be examined and explained in the light of these three stages. Krochmal believed that Jewish history also follows these three stages, but that Jewish history is different from the histories of all other nations because Israel's decline in its third stage is followed by a rebirth and renewal to continue in a new process of birth, vigor, and decline. Israel's constant renewal derives from its special relationship with God and from its intense spiritual life. These factors in Jewish history make the Jews an eternal people.

Krochmal also made significant contributions in the study of Halakhah (Jewish law), which he explains as an organic unity which developed naturally from the Mosaic laws through various stages of growth, calling for timely rabbinic interpretations, new ordinances, restrictions, and customs. Krochmal's work in the study of halakhah as an evolutionary system had a great influence on many later talmudic scholars.

Not to be confused with Menahem Mendel Krochmal.

Nachman Kohen Krochmal (born in Brody, Galicia, on February 17, 1785; died at Tarnopol on July 31, 1840) was a Jewish Austrian philosopher, theologian, and historian.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Career 2.1 Moreh Nebuke ha-Zeman 3 External links

Biography

Title page from Nachman Krochmal's Guide for the Perplexed of the Time.

He began the study of the Talmud at an early age. At age fourteen he was married, according to the custom of the time, to the daughter of the wealthy merchant Habermann. He then went to live with his father-in-law at Żółkiew, near Lemberg, where he devoted himself entirely to his studies, beginning with Maimonides' The Guide for the Perplexed, and studying other Hebrew philosophical writings.

Krochmal then proceeded to study German and the German philosophers, especially Immanuel Kant, to read Latin and French classics, and Arabic and Syriac books. After suffering a breakdown from overwork in 1808, he went to Lemberg for medical treatment; and the friendship he there formed with S.L. Rapoport, whose teacher he became, was most fruitful for Jewish science. On his return to Żółkiew, after having partially recovered, he again took up philosophy, reading Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, and subsequently Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, whose system chiefly attracted him and exerted a great influence on his views. Aside from Rapoport, who often visited him in Żółkiew, he gathered around him a group of young students.

In 1814, after the death of his wife's parents, he was compelled to earn a livelihood, and he became a merchant. Twelve years later he lost his wife, and his health became very poor. In spite of failure in business, poor circumstances, and loneliness, he refused an invitation to the rabbinate of Berlin, and instead obtained a position as bookkeeper in Żółkiew, which he held from 1836 to 1838. A serious illness then compelled him to retire to his daughter's house in Tarnopol; and here two years later he died.

Career

Krochmal was a brilliant conversationalist and an exceedingly careful student. For a long time he could not be persuaded to publish any of the results of his studies, in consequence of aspersions cast upon him on account of his friendly correspondence with the hakham of the neighboring Karaite community of Kokusow. Krochmal defended himself in a circular letter against these accusations.

He was not a prolific writer. Besides some Hebrew essays in periodicals (Sulamith, 1818; Ha-Ẓefirah, Zolkiev, 1824; and Kerem Ḥemed, vols. iv., v.), he wrote only one Hebrew book, namely, Moreh Nebuke ha-Zeman (Lemberg, 1851), edited, according to the author's last will, by his friend Leopold Zunz. Other editions appeared in Lemberg in 1863 and Warsaw in 1898.

Moreh Nebuke ha-Zeman

Moreh Nebuke ha-Zeman (Guide for the Perplexed of the Time) is divided into seventeen chapters, of which the first six deal with religion in general.

Ch. vii describes Israel's spiritual gift as the desire for and faculty of seeking God. The next three chapters contain a philosophical analysis of Jewish history, which, corresponding to Israel's attachment to the Lord, that is, to its religious development, is divided into three epochs. These epochs terminate respectively: (1) with the death of Gedaliah after the destruction of the Temple; (2) with the death of Bar Kokba (ca. 135); and (3) with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492). The author does not characterize the modern period in which he himself lived.

Ch. xi-xv deal with the post-exilic Biblical and the Apocryphal literature and with the various religious movements. The author discusses also the necessity of tradition and gives a critical résumé of the development of the Halakah and Haggadah.

Ch. xvi gives a brief sketch of the future development of Jewish religious philosophy based on the principles of Hegel. The work finishes with an exposition of Ibn Ezra's philosophy. The historical digressions in the book touch the profoundest problems of Jewish science; and it remains their indisputable merit to have paved the way for critical studies in Jewish history. The work really became, as intended by the author, a "guide" to students of Jewish science in the nineteenth century.

External links

• Moreh Nebuke ha-Zeman from Google Books (pages scanned in reverse order)
• Moreh Nebuke ha-Zeman study in English from Google Books

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