id="Page_19" class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="19"/> deep ideas cannot be said to have been at his disposal, but he scintillated with original observations and suggestive sallies, which put his new pupil into a fever of enthusiasm. He was the only teacher from whom Graetz’s self-centered being received scientific stimulation; perhaps the only man to exercise, so far as the stubborn peculiarity of Graetz’s nature permitted it, permanent influence upon his reserved, independent character.

On his arrival in Oldenburg, the new-comer was most kindly received by Hirsch, and was at once installed in his house, of which thenceforth he was an inmate. Instruction was begun on the very next day. The forenoons were devoted to the Talmud, the late afternoons to the Psalms. The disciple was singularly attracted and stimulated, fairly elevated by the brilliant, penetrating method applied to the exegesis of these works. Plan, order, and coherence were now imposed upon his scientific acquirements. Hirsch took true fatherly interest in his protegé; he exerted himself to discipline his mind and fix his moral and religious standards. At the same time, as though even then a suspicion of the unusual force and talent of this youth panting for knowledge and instruction had dawned upon him, he guarded against assuming the airs of a domineering pedagogue. Despite the difference in age between them he treated him as an equal. He was endowed with truly marvelous power to stir his disciple’s soul-life to its depths. Every chord of Graetz’s being was set in vibration, and he solemnly vowed to remain a true son and an honest adherent of Judaism under all circumstances. Added years may have contributed to the result; but at all events it is certain that Graetz developed visibly under this master’s guidance.

The services required of him in the house of his teacher were mainly those of an assistant. He accompanied the District Rabbi on his tours of inspection, the tedium of their journeys being relieved with discussions on Talmudic and Biblical subjects. He revised with Hirsch the last part of the latter’s “Horeb,” helped him read the proof of the last sheets of the book, which delighted and thrilled the young man, and assisted him in various similar ways. How flattering an opinion the punctilious rabbi must have held of his assistant is proved by the fact, that when he had to go to a resort for the restoration of his undermined health, he authorized him to render decisions on questions of religious law (שאלות {Hebrew: Sh’eylot}) during his absence. The assistant fulfilled his duties so conscientiously that the responsibility oppressed him. He confessed that he had imagined the rendering of correct decisions much easier. His enthusiasm burst into flame when he received the following affectionate letter from Hirsch:

“My dear Graetz:--I still owe you cordial thanks for your kind lines. I am delighted to hear that you are industrious, and that you keep to my time-schedule so well. Continue to study, for I, on my part, shall soon have forgotten how to study, and literally shall have to begin to learn all over again. Before my departure, I wanted to call your attention to something, and I do now what I then forgot. I have frequently seen you read the works of Bayle. They are a treasury of learning, and much information can be derived from them, but the man takes peculiar pleasure in laying stress upon דברי ערוה {Hebrew: Divrei ervah};8 things of that kind are טמא {Hebrew: tamei} and מטמא {Hebrew: M’tamei}9. Pass lightly over such passages; they are unprofitable and harmful; read only what is purely scientific. Follow my advice, etc., etc.”

Such friendly and tactful admonitions, permitting the pupil to follow out his own bent, were always employed by Hirsch, and they but served to enkindle Graetz’s enthusiasm anew. In spite of the young man’s critical propensities combined with a sanguine temperament, his devoted attachment to his master by no means waned under the strain of daily intimate intercourse, not even when he could no longer doubt his ideal’s lack of historic depth and scientific, or rather philosophic insight. Graetz’s nature strongly impelled him to form friendships, and his attachments were fervent. He always felt a lively interest in what went on about him, and even at that early time he was fond of taking an active part in shaping the occurrences of the day, whenever he thought, that by assuming the rôle of Providence he might be useful to his friends in the ordering of their affairs--a disposition that redounded later to the benefit of many of his pupils. In January, 1837, for instance, the belated news reached him from his home, with which he kept up a steady correspondence, that the Chief Rabbi Akiba Eger had died in Posen. Without being commissioned to do so, he wrote to the directors of the Posen congregation, and brought Hirsch, whose yearning for a wide sphere of activity he knew, to their notice. When the directors entered into negotiations with Hirsch he broke out into jubilation. In fact, a party favoring the pretensions of the Oldenburg District Rabbi formed in Posen, but nothing more resulted. The procedure was repeated when the Wollstein rabbinate fell vacant in 1840, except that Hirsch, to his disciple’s great disappointment, would not share Graetz’s enthusiasm for Wollstein. From this it appears that Graetz was not a recluse nor a bookworm. In Oldenburg, as everywhere, he sought to meet people and cultivate friendly intercourse with them, and his joyous nature readily yielded to the innocent gayety of social pleasures.

At the same time he neglected neither his duties nor his studies. While with Hirsch he acquired the English language, and finding some Syriac books in the rabbi’s library, he began to devote himself to Syriac. The study of the former language his master seems to have encouraged, but not of the latter. Hirsch met his disciple with uniform kindness, and returned his enthusiastic devotion with fatherly benevolence. Graetz was treated as a member of his family. In the third year of his Oldenburg sojourn, his relations with the mistress of the house were disturbed by slight discords, such as cannot fail to arise in long-continued, familiar intercourse, and tend now to strengthen, now to abridge intimacy. With Graetz’s proud sense of independence they finally sufficed to ruffle the tranquillity of a soul wholly absorbed by the present. Anxiety about his future began to disquiet him. The desire to decide definitely upon a career and the longing to see his parents, who in the meantime had removed from Zerkow to Kosten near Posen, a somewhat larger town, united to make his departure from Oldenburg seem advisable.

III.
THE JOURNEYMAN.

The adieux were said with touching cordiality, and after an absence of more than three years Graetz set his face homeward, and arrived in Kosten in the middle of August, 1840. The younger people everywhere received Hirsch’s disciple with joyous welcome, and induced him to preach at Wollstein, Kosten, and Zerkow. His sermons, to be sure, did not transport his audiences with enthusiasm, but they were ample guarantees of the preacher’s fund of knowledge and originality. All his friends, therefore, agreed, that it would be advisable for Graetz to “study,” in the technical sense of the