Saul Berlin - Character

Character

To understand this unique personality, note that, as a modern historian remarks, that Berlin was a focal point for the rays of a sinking and rising period in Jewish history. Being a great Talmudist, he knew better how to attack rabbinism, and was filled with a burning desire to lead his people toward intellectual freedom. Mendelssohn's and Wessely's timid attempts to inaugurate a new era did not appeal to him. With his youthful ardor he could not understand that the development of the popular consciousness is a slow process. An open championship of his ideas, however, would have meant a breach with father, wife, and children—in short, with all his associates; it being after all doubtful whether his sacrifices would have helped his cause. His anonymous and pseudonymous authorship was a measure of policy and not of cowardice. He could not, however, escape the consequences of such a mode of warfare. It is debasing and embittering to attack secretly those whom one is forced to praise in public. Hence Berlin became personal in his polemics, and nervous and dissatisfied with himself and the world because he knew he was misunderstood through his own fault.

Besides the works mentioned above, Berlin is said to have written a large number of rabbinic works, including notes to the whole Talmud.