Michael Sachs

Michael Sachs belongs to that singular generation of nineteenth-century German rabbis who, trained in both traditional Talmudic scholarship and modern university erudition, had to reinvent the rabbinical function in the context of emancipation and the confrontation between Reform and tradition. The German rabbi Michael Sachs (1808–1864) was a contemporary of Rabbi Samuel Holdheim, yet held different views on Jewish religious practice and the role of a rabbi. His trajectory, from his native Silesia to the pulpits of Prague and then Berlin, illustrates the emergence of a middle path — neither radical Reform nor withdrawn orthodoxy — at the heart of Germanic Judaism.

A figure of refined preaching and philological erudition, Sachs united in his person the preacher capable of holding a community in faithfulness to rite, and the scholar who revealed to the German public the splendor of medieval Hebrew poetry from Spain. But he was also, as contemporary documentation now allows us to establish with greater precision, a tireless translator, who rendered into German the Psalms, the festival prayers, and the rabbinic legends, as well as a philologist whose work encompasses the study of Jewish languages and antiquities. The present work aims to trace this plural vocation, from his Silesian origins to the legacy of his œuvre, drawing upon reference encyclopedic and cataloguing notices. Where documentation proves lacunary, we shall note it according to historical practice, never filling silences with conjecture disguised as fact. A history of rabbinical elites, whether Ashkenazic or Sephardic, requires indeed this discipline of methodical doubt.

Michael Sachs — Michael Yechiel Sachs, in Hebrew מיכאל יחיאל זַקש, following the transmitted form of his name — was born in what was then Prussian Silesia, into a Jewish household shaped by tradition [according to Wikipedia, Michael Sachs (rabbi)]. Michael Yechiel Sachs was born on 3 September 1808 in Groß-Glogau, in Silesia, and was among the first Jewish graduates of the modern universities, earning a doctorate in 1836. His native city, Glogau (today Głogów in Poland), was home to an ancient and active Jewish community, fertile ground for an education that was at once religious and open to the knowledge of the age.

A biographical detail deserves to be noted here, one that illuminates the early flowering of Sachs's literary talent: as early as 1821, when he was only thirteen, he published a lengthy poem in the Hebrew anthology Reshit ha-Meliẓah, printed at Zamość [according to JewishEncyclopedia, Sachs, Michael Jehiel]. This poetic debut, of rare precocity, foreshadows the sensibility that would make him, decades later, the foremost mediator of Hebrew poetry into the German tongue. Before even defending his doctorate, he also published, in Berlin in 1835, a German translation of the Psalms [according to JewishEncyclopedia], the first testimony to a vocation as a translator that would never leave him.

The trajectory of Sachs is exemplary of the transformation then unfolding within German Judaism. Like the reformers Abraham Geiger (1810–1874) and Holdheim, Sachs was educated at a German university and earned a doctorate from the University of Berlin in 1836; he was the first university-trained rabbi to be employed by the Jewish community of Berlin, inaugurating a tendency that spread to other German congregations. This dual formation — mastery of the rabbinic sources on the one hand, and the philological and philosophical discipline of the Prussian universities on the other — constitutes the key to his entire career. He belonged to the first cohort of those who, bearing the title of doctor, would transform the figure of the rabbi into that of a man of culture fully integrated into German society, without thereby breaking with the Law. One recognizes here the long thread of a history of the rabbinate which, from the priests of Antiquity to the modern doctors, has never ceased to redefine religious authority in keeping with changing political contexts.

The first major milestone in Sachs's career was Prague, where he was called to serve as preacher. Sachs, born in Glogau in Silesia, became preacher in Prague in 1836, succeeding L. Zunz. To succeed Leopold Zunz, founder of the Wissenschaft des Judentums — the critical science of Judaism — was no small charge: Prague was one of the great communities of central Europe, rich in a considerable intellectual heritage, and the preaching chair was a position of influence and prestige.

It was during these Prague years that Sachs forged his reputation as a sacred orator. His time in Prague, then the capital of a significant central European Jewish community, brought him into contact with a demanding audience, deeply attached to its customs, and led him to conceive a form of preaching that, without renouncing the aesthetic of the German language, remained faithful to the traditional ritual framework. This baroque city, where the memory of the Maharal and the great Talmudic schools coexisted with the currents of the Haskalah, offered an exemplary theatre of the tension between fidelity and modernity that Sachs would embody throughout his life. The eight or so years spent in Prague thus constituted a decisive apprenticeship in the art of oratory and communal leadership, before the call to Berlin that would place him at the heart of the major debates of German Judaism. It is from this period, or shortly thereafter, that his enduring collaboration with Zunz on a new German translation of the Bible dates [according to Wikipedia, Michael Sachs (rabbi)] — an undertaking that sealed between the two men an intellectual kinship reaching far beyond their simple succession to the same chair.

In 1844, Sachs moved to Berlin, where he was to remain until his death and carry out his most significant functions. From 1844 onward, he served as a preacher in Berlin, where he also served as dayyan at the beth din. He thus combined preaching — a new and prestigious function — with the rabbinical magistracy of the religious court, the beth din, in the capacity of dayyan (judge). This dual charge made him at once the public voice of the community and one of the guardians of its religious law. The figure of the rabbi-judge, attested from eighteenth-century Algeria to the great European communities, remains one of the pillars of Jewish communal authority; as such, Sachs's dayyanut places him within an immemorial function as much as within a nascent modernity.

The firmness of his convictions is measured by a celebrated refusal. He declined an invitation to become rabbi of the small but growing Orthodox congregation in Francfort, which ultimately chose Samson Raphael Hirsch; Sachs was a strong traditionalist. This refusal is richly instructive: Sachs did not embrace the program of separatist Orthodoxy in the manner of Hirsch, yet neither was he a man of radical Reform. He occupied an intermediate position, concerned with preserving rite and Law while embracing cultural modernity. It is precisely this stance that distinguished him from his contemporaries: whereas Michael Sachs held different views from those of Samuel Holdheim on Jewish religious practice and the role of the rabbi, he opposed on principle the reformist dismantling of traditional worship, while sharing with the reformers a university education and a concern for the aesthetic dignity of the service.

This tension found its most striking breaking point in the organ controversy. Sachs opposed the introduction of the organ into the synagogue with such vigor that he preferred to withdraw from the rabbinate rather than consent to it [according to Wikipedia, Michael Sachs (rabbi)]. The organ, the emblematic instrument of liturgical reforms inspired by the Protestant model, crystallized all the stakes of the moment: for the reformers, an instrument of dignity and solemnity; for the traditionalists, a transgression of Sabbath rest and an imitation of Christian usage. Sachs's gesture — sacrificing his position for a principle — reveals that at the very heart of his cultural modernity there remained an undiminished ritual intransigence. This tension — fidelity to tradition, modernity of means — makes the Berlin period the apex of his public career. He died there prematurely. He died on January 31, 1864, at the age of 55, in Berlin.

Beyond the preacher and the judge, Sachs was a scholar whose major work remains a lasting contribution to the history of Jewish literature. Michael Jehiel Sachs published Die religiöse Poesie der Juden in Spanien (The Religious Poetry of the Jews in Spain) in Berlin, at Veit und Comp., in 1845. This work revealed to the German public the poetic genius of the Sephardic Golden Age and offered a presentation that was at once scholarly and literarily sensitive.

The very structure of the book, which cataloguing records allow us to reconstruct with precision, attests to the ambition of the undertaking. The work consists of two parts: the first, entitled Religiöse Dichtungen ("Religious Poems"), gathers poems by Ibn Gabirol, Ibn Abitur, Ibn Ghayyat, Baḥya ben Joseph ibn Paquda, Juda Halévi, Rabbi Ḥalfon, Abraham Ibn Ezra, and Moïse ben Naḥman (Naḥmanide); the second, entitled Geschichtliche Entwickelung der religiösen Poesie der spanischen Juden im Mittelalter ("Historical Development of the Religious Poetry of the Spanish Jews in the Middle Ages"), offers its historical study, while the original Hebrew poems are gathered at the end of the volume [according to JewishEncyclopedia, Sachs, Michael Jehiel]. This architecture — translated anthology, historical study, original texts — makes the book at once a florilegium, a literary history, and an edition of primary sources.

Its scholarly significance was considerable and enduring. This study of medieval Jewish poetry in Spain has remained an essential work since its first publication; Sachs was an excellent scholar endowed with the poetic sensibilities required to carry out such a task. The first half of the work provides substantial examples of the output of all the great Jewish poets of medieval Spain, such as Salomon Ibn Gabirol, Moïse Ibn Ezra, and Juda Halévi. Sachs's authority in the field of Hebrew poetry was such that his translations and analyses were cited by later commentators; thus, concerning the Keter Malkut ("Royal Crown") of Ibn Gabirol, a philosophical hymn in rhymed prose incorporated into many rites for the service of the Day of Atonement, it was to Sachs's translation that one turned to grasp its theological import [according to JewishEncyclopedia, Ibn Gabirol]. Through this undertaking, Sachs took his place among the architects of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, alongside Zunz whose successor he had been in Prague, restoring to German Judaism the Memory of a literary heritage long remaining the preserve of Hebrew scholars alone.

The enduring vitality of the work is measured by its reissues. The work was republished a second time with a biographical introduction and supplementary notes by S. Bernfeld, in 1901. Nearly four decades after the author's death, the book still warranted an expanded critical edition, a sign of the scholarly authority it had acquired. The work was of great importance for knowledge of medieval Jewish poetry in Spain.

The work of Sachs is not confined to his master-book on Sephardic poetry: it unfolds across a wide range of translations and philological studies that make him one of the most active mediators between the Hebrew tradition and the German-speaking readership of the nineteenth century. His genius as a translator shone with particular brilliance in the liturgical domain. He produced a translation of the festival prayers — the Machzor, in nine volumes, published from 1855 onward — whose novelty lay in the metrical rendering of medieval Hebrew hymns, restituted in German verse [according to Wikipedia, Michael Sachs (rabbi)]. Where others contented themselves with a literal translation, Sachs endeavored to transpose into German the very prosodic form of the piyyutim, lending his versions a literary dignity that made them classics of domestic devotion. He had moreover already contributed to the Festgebete der Israeliten, a collection of festival prayers for which he supplied numerous translations [according to JewishEncyclopedia, Ibn Gabirol].

To this liturgical vein is added a narrative and poetic one: his collection Stimmen vom Jordan und Euphrat: ein Buch fürs Haus ("Voices of the Jordan and the Euphrates: a book for the home"), published in Berlin in 1853, offers poetic paraphrases of rabbinic legends — that is, of the talmudic and midrashic aggada [according to Wikipedia and JewishEncyclopedia]. The work met with great popular success, as attested by its republication in Frankfurt through a third edition around 1890–1891. By rendering accessible to the German Jewish household the narratives of the Sages — that narrative treasure which the classic introductions to the Talmud and Midrash describe as the heart of the rabbinic imagination — Sachs accomplished a work of transmission as much as of literature.

The philologist, finally, yielded nothing to the translator. Sachs published Beiträge zur Sprach- und Alterthumsforschung ("Contributions to linguistic and archaeological research"), in two volumes published in Berlin in 1852 and 1854 [according to JewishEncyclopedia; Wikipedia]. This more ambitious critical work, devoted in particular to Greek and Latin borrowings in the language of the rabbis, was judged by posterity to be of less enduring value than his poetic writings [according to Wikipedia, Michael Sachs (rabbi)]; it nonetheless bears witness to the breadth of a scholarly curiosity that did not shy away from the most arid terrain of talmudic lexicography. To his name belong also early exegetical works, such as a study of a chapter of Jeremiah published in the form of a letter in the journal Kerem Ḥemed, and an essay devoted to Yohanan ben Zakkaï [according to JewishEncyclopedia, Sachs, Michael Jehiel].

Sachs's position in the religious disputes of his time deserves to be illuminated, for it defines his historical originality. German Judaism in the mid-nineteenth century was traversed by a major conflict: on one side the Reform movement, embodied by Geiger and more radically by Holdheim, who wished to adapt worship and law to the demands of modernity; on the other, Orthodoxy, whose theorist of communal separation Samson Raphael Hirsch would become in Francfort. Deeply traditionalist, Sachs nonetheless declined the pulpit of the Orthodox congregation of Francfort that chose Hirsch — he was a Jewish scholar and preacher, trained in Berlin where he earned a doctorate in philosophy.

This double refusal — refusal of Reform, refusal of separatist Orthodoxy — traces a third way. Sachs was committed to preserving the integrity of traditional liturgy and Law, while raising the cultural and aesthetic level of worship through the quality of preaching in the German language and through erudition. His university formation, shared with the reformers, did not lead him to the same conclusions: he saw in it an instrument of dignity and depth, not a lever for abrogation. His fidelity to the rite was indeed so complete that he took the conservative side against reformist agitation, going so far as to leave the rabbinate rather than tolerate the organ [according to Wikipedia, Michael Sachs (rabbi)].

One may, with caution, situate him among the precursors of what would later be called "positive-historical" or Conservative Orthodoxy — a Judaism attached to living tradition yet open to critical study. This characterization remains a retrospective reading, one that must be offered with the reserve befitting the historian. It nonetheless belongs to a broader movement of redefinition of Jewish identities on the threshold of modernity, which historians of the fin de siècle have described as a constant oscillation between confessional fidelity and integration into the surrounding culture.

Michael Sachs's legacy unfolds on two levels. On the communal level, he was, in Berlin, one of those rabbi-preachers who anchored a traditional fidelity within a large community subjected to the pressures of Reform, helping to prevent a total rupture between modernity and observance. His authority at the beth din and his public voice made him a moral authority as much as a recognized orator. By the admission of scholarly tradition, he was one of the greatest preachers of his age, and his sermons were collected and published after his death in two volumes of Predigten, appearing between 1866 and 1891 [according to Wikipedia, Michael Sachs (rabbi)]. This posthumous publication, spread over a quarter of a century, attests that the preacher's voice long outlived the man, remaining a model of sacred eloquence for German-speaking communities.

On the intellectual level, his contribution to the Wissenschaft des Judentums ensures his survival in scholarly Memory. His Die religiöse Poesie der Juden in Spanien remained a work of reference, as attested both by its preservation in major public libraries — the books from this collection at the Library of Congress are in the public domain and free to use — and by its critical reissue by Bernfeld in 1901. By revealing Ibn Gabirol, Ibn Ezra, and Juda Halévi to a broad German-speaking readership, Sachs participated in the rediscovery of the Sephardic Golden Age that nourished, throughout the nineteenth century, the historical consciousness and the imagination of the Jews of Central Europe. This rediscovery was not without consequence for the Memory that the Jews of East and West maintained of their Andalusian past, a Memory that was to weigh upon the identity debates of the following centuries. Sachs's erudition extended to other fields of Hebrew and Talmudic philology as well — from the Psalms to the Machzor, from rabbinic legends to lexicography — but it is this master work that sealed his enduring reputation as a scholar who was also a poet. His collaboration with Zunz on the translation of the Bible, finally, associates him forever with the very founder of the critical science of Judaism [according to Wikipedia, Michael Sachs (rabbi)].

Michael Sachs (1808-1864) embodies, in a relatively brief life, the difficult and fruitful synthesis that characterizes the best of German Judaism during the age of emancipation. Born in Groß-Glogau in 1808, one of the first Jewish graduates of modern universities with a doctorate in 1836, he was at once the successor of Zunz in Prague, the preacher and judge of Berlin, and the author of a scholarly work that still carries authority. His singularity lies in his refusal of extremes: neither radical Reform, nor separatist orthodoxy, but an enlightened fidelity to tradition, served by the tools of modern erudition. The gesture by which he resigned his position rather than consent to the organ summarizes, better than any long discourse, the inflexibility of principle beneath the suppleness of culture.

A man of the pulpit and of study, translator of the Psalms and of the Machzor, transmitter of rabbinic legends and Sephardic poetry, guardian of the Law and admired orator, Sachs leaves the image of a rabbi for whom cultural modernity and religious continuity were not contradictory but complementary. It is in this that his figure retains, beyond the nineteenth-century Prussian world, an exemplary value in the history of Jewish diasporas — that of a man who knew how to make erudition an instrument of fidelity, and fidelity a source of work.