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BILIK /
TSENE-RENE:
A YIDDISH LITERARY SUCCESS
101
the
Tsene-rene
thus: “[it consists of] nothing but Midrashim and
strange legends, asks many questions regarding the subject mat
ter of the
parashah,
explains them according to the commen
tators and preachers and does not give a thousandth part of
the literal meaning of the verse.” 14Obviously the public wanted
just such works since these pre-Enlightenment efforts to sup
plant the
Tsene-rene
did not achieve much success. In the 18th
century no less a figure than Moses Mendelssohn mocked what
he termed the “
Tsene-rene
style” of the Polish rabbis. At the end
of the 18th century Joseph the 2nd of Austria under the in
fluence of the adherents of the Haskalah condemned the
Tsene-
rene
for spreading superstition. In German-speaking areas the
Enlighteners sought to suppress the
Tsene-rene
by substituting
contemporary Bible commentaries (including Mendelssohn’s)
for the traditional medieval ones of the original
Tsene-rene.
The
Western
maskilim
were not above exploiting the popularity of
the classic work by using the title page of the original and sub
stituting more modern works such as Mendelssohn’s Bible trans
lation “printed in German but with Hebrew letters.” (Basel,
1822; F irth , 1861).15 The 1810 Sulzbach edition o f the
Mendelssohn translation calls itself
Tsene-rene
in order to appeal
to the traditional audience but states in the foreward: “One
might argue that we already have a
Tsenah Ure’enah.
This is
true, and it is useful. . . too, b u t . . . it is not suited for all, es
pecially not half-grown girls, since its language is too corrupted
and...some passages are too lurid for the sensitivity of our mor
als.16 A more legitimate rationalized version of the
Tsene-rene
by Herz Homburg sought to purge the more fanciful materials,
remove sections which can be interpreted as anti-Gentile, in
clude more “scientific” explanations for natural phenomena,
and generally reflect the ideology of the Enlightenment.17
14. Israel Zinberg,
A History ofJewish Literature,
trans. and ed. Bernard Martin,
8 vols. (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press,) vol. 7 part 8, 137.
15. Jacob Shatzky, “Dray hundert yor
Tsene-rene
,”
In shotn fun over
(Buenos
Aires: Masterworks o f Yiddish Literature, 1947) 74-75.
16. Steven M. Lowenstein,
The Mechanics of Change: Essays in the Social History
of German Jewry
(Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press) 186.
17. Schultz, 8.