Johann Andreas Eisenmenger - Studies Rabbinical Literature

Studies Rabbinical Literature

The son of an official in the service of the Elector of the Electorate of the Palatinate Charles I Louis (who had, in 1673, offered Spinoza a chair in philosophy at Heidelberg), Eisenmenger received a good education, despite the early loss of his father to plague when he was 12 years old. He distinguished himself at the Collegium Sapientiae at Heidelberg by his zeal for Hebrew studies and Semitic languages. He eventually mastered Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic. He was sent by the Elector to England and Holland to pursue his studies there. He studied rabbinical literature with Jewish assistance for some 19 years both at Heidelberg and Frankfort-on-the-Main, under the pretense, it was rumoured, of wishing to convert to Judaism. In Holland he established amicable relations with figures like Rabbi David ben Aryeh Leib of Lida, formerly of Lithuania, and then head of the Ashkenazi community in Amsterdam. An intended sojourn in Palestine was interrupted by the death of his sponsor in 1680, who died in August of that year.

Later scholars cite two episodes during his sojourn in Amsterdam, which may or may not be apocryphal, to account for the formation of his anti-Judaic outlook. It is said that he was a witness, in 1681, to "otherwise unknown" attacks against Christianity by a senior rabbi there, identified as David Lida, and that he grew indignant on finding that three Christians he met had had themselves circumcised and converted to Judaism. Anti-Christian polemics were, uniquely to Europe, published in Amsterdam and Eienmenger's anger was aroused when Lida quoted Rabbi Isaiah ben Abraham Horowitz to the effect that the archangel Samael, king of the devils, was a celestial representation of Christians.