To the Editor:
Mr. Alfred Werner’s quotation of Heine’s Jewish “confession” to his “Eckermann” Meissner (“Heinrich Heine to His Eckermann,” July) shows just one aspect of the poet’s attitude towards Judaism. Heine’s manifold and contradictory nature never appears so clearly as in this crucial problem which haunted him all through his life. But in his contradictions he is only a reflecting mirror of the various tendencies that struggled with each other in that generation, the first after Mendelssohn, divided in their interpretation of the meaning of Emancipation. It was a long way to the consolidation of the positions within and towards Judaism, whose extreme wings were represented by both Hirsches: Samuel, the Luxemburger rabbi who was more successful in the American Reform movement than he was in Europe, and Samson Raphael, who defined the modern expression of Orthodoxy.
Heine lived, in many respects, at a time when new ideas were in fermentation before finally crystallizing into political or theological parties; and this accounts for the extreme contradictoriness of his views, echoing the beliefs and opinions of contemporary Judaism in its volcanic evolution. But true disciple of Hegel that he was, his contradictions evolved out of thesis and antithesis to a spiritual synthesis, to an apotheosis of the Jewish religion which entitles him to be considered a Baal T’shuvah who, according to the Talmud, stands higher than ten perfect Zaddikim.
Ch. C. Lehrmann
Grand Rabbi
Luxemburg
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